The Relationship between Role Stress and Job Performance: An Empirical Study of Travel Agents

The job performance of salespeople is the key effect to a company’s success. By looking at many successful companies, they all have a group of salespeople with professional ability and enthusiasm in the market (Behrman & Perreault, 1984;Sohi, 1996). Therefore, it is obviously important to study how to improve the job performance of salespeople. However, salespeople usually would face challenge and role stress from heavy workload; it is one of the most important issues for the company’s executive level to reduce role stress and to improve job performance. Travel industry is one of the general industries, and its major service is to provide a complete package of traveling plans and arrangements for travelers. The travel businesses provide services on ticket reservations, required papers such as passport, visa, and certificates of vaccination as well as traveling plans and accommodation arrangements or group tours for travelers. Also, the services must work cooperatively with airlines, hotels, restaurants, and sightseeing attractions to provide excellent services to improve job performance. This study investigates the effects of the relationship between role stress and job performance of salespeople for Travel Agents in Taipei. 164 samples were analyzed to test the research hypotheses by Path analysis. Results indicate that there is a negative relationship between role ambiguity and job performance, while there exists a positive relationship between role conflict and job performance. .