Empathic concern in network sentinels and their impact on peer sales performance: a study of salespeople higher in psychopathy

Abstract

Sentinels control information flow between disconnected groups, but the benefits of this position depend on the motivation to share information. This study examines how sentinelism and empathic concern affect individual and peer sales performance, focusing on salespeople who are higher in psychopathy and have muted dispositional empathic concern. The study hypothesizes that situational empathic concern can be evoked in psychopathic salespeople under certain conditions. A field study using survey, social network, and performance data employed social network analysis and Markov clustering to measure sentinelism, and PLS-SEM to test the hypotheses. Results show that low empathic concern benefits individual performance but harms peer performance, while the reverse is true for high empathic concern. Organizational support increases situational empathic concern in psychopathic salespeople, improving peer group outcomes. The study challenges the assumption that gatekeeping benefits the team and provides strategies for managing psychopathic salespeople and balancing performance through organization- and network-level strategies.