The Impact of Adversity Quotient Profileon Employee Performance-The Case of Egyptian Telecom Industry.

Prof. Dr. Ammar Hamed, Visiting Professor,

The Nile University, Egypt

Email: ammarsha@aucegypt.edu, Tel: +201005450661

Khaled A. Bekhet, DBA Scholar,

The Maastricht School of Management, (MSM), TheNetherlands

Email: Kbekhet@gmail.com, Tel: +2010015002249

Ayman Amiri, DBA Scholar,

The Maastricht School of Management, (MSM), The Netherlands

Email: aamiri@mobinil.com, Tel: +201223269291

AbstractThe main purpose of the paper is to examine the relationshipbetween Adversity Quotient Profile and employee performance amongthe customer service agents in telecom business sector of Egypt.A total of 300 questionnaires were randomly distributed out tocustomer service agents with at least 12 months tenure working inof the largest GSM network operators in Egypt with different agegroup, experience and educational level. Out of the 300questionnaires, 242 were returned and usable. T-test and linearregression analyses were then employed to analyze the data,whereby the dependent variable is employee performance , and the

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independent variable is employee Adversity Quotient Profile. Theempirical finding offers the evidence of a direct, positive andsignificant relationship between the level of Adversity QuotientProfile and employee performance. The implication, limitationand future research area in the study also described.

Key words: Telecommunication Business, Adversity Quotient, Adversity Response Profile, Customer Service Agents, Performance.

1.Introduction

“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holdsus back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears awayfrom us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterwardwe see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we mightlike to be.”― Arthur Golden,  Memoirs of a Geisha

Adversity is no thing you like it, it is any hardship, ordifficulty you may encounter at any time in your life. But“Extraordinary people survive under the most terriblecircumstances and they become more extraordinary of it.”―Robertson Davies

Life these days is a mixture of all sorts, on one hand there isknowledge explosion, technology revolution, and progress in everyfield while, on the other hand we see poverty, scarcity of foodand resources, increase in crime, social and politicalturbulences etc. The combined effects of such changes arepowerful, bewildering, and essentially unpredictable. Thistransition affects the viability of all institutions particularlythe business community and specifically those who are working assales agents in business organizations.

The last several years have been challenging times forsalespeople, regardless of their company or industry. The globaleconomic slowdown has changed customers’ buying behaviors as wellas their expectations of salespeople including customer serviceagents . Companies have delayed and cut back spending, demandedprice concessions, and involved more players in the buying

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process. Salespeople have had to work harder to demonstrate theunique value of their products (which are increasingly viewed ascommodities), and to provide high levels of service simply toretain customers. Even as the economy improves, many salesorganizations are finding that selling is as demanding as ever.The rules of the game have changed.

As an essential pillar of sales operation, customer serviceagents are often forced to deal with recurrent internal andexternal problems in their daily work -related environment. Howthese problems are resolved is highly dependent upon theindividual principal’s personal qualities express in attitude andactions toward these problems. As the driving wheel to any forprofit organization, the sales mangers, supervisors, sales staffand customer service agents are in a critical position to theorganizational development and growth. According to Sojka &Deeter-Schmelz ( 2002) Success in sales in today’s turbulent anddynamic environment requires salespeople to possess a competitiveadvantage. Specifically in sales fields that require continualhigh growth, such as the telecom business industry (Cohen, Stolk,& Niezen, 2007; Pearce, 2008; Wettermark, Godman, Andersson,Gustafsson, Haycox, & Bertele, 2008; Young & Dixon, 2008) withaggressive growth goals, there is a need for these organizationsto possess an effective sales force to achieve and exceed goals,therefore enhancing the overall organization’s performance.

As globalization brings the world closer together, thesepressures increase. A recent Aberdeen survey (2007) on telecombusiness challenges revealed; companies that implement mobilesales force automation solutions are 1.5 times more likely to seean improvement in sales force productivity versus those that donot. Sales teams are looking at Mobile Sales Force Automation(SFA) technologies to arm their customer service agents to beable to handle the ever increasing customer demands on a globalbasis. However, this also could be a more challenging burden tocustomer service agents which make the situation for them evenworse and more stressful. Further, the same survey noted that,customers are demanding faster sales decisions, best-in Class(BIC) companies are addressing this pressure by re-aligning thecustomer service agents to meet customer demand and arming themwith the necessary technologies to gain access to data in theglobal marketplace. The World Wide Web has provided informationaccess to customers who at one time had no access at all.

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Customers are looking for responses to their inquiries in hoursnot days and location can no longer be used as an excuse for lackof responsiveness. Companies today are relying increasingly ontheir sales teams and customer service agents as engines ofgrowth and productivity. The sales role has never been moredifficult—customers are more demanding, products moresophisticated, competitors more aggressive. Not surprisingly,many sales organizations are delivering disappointing results;they have not been able to find the right formula for success intoday’s business environment (Aberdeen survey, 2007). Employees of any organization must be encouraged to meet and beatall adversities brought by the work place, economical, andpolitical changes that are currently taking place and take anactive and sustained interest in the broad span of the future.Understanding the deep-seated changes opens up to developpositive and forward-looking business employees in the twenty-first century.

According to Stoltz’s theory (1997), one with high adversityquotient respond most effectively to adversity and will prevailin work and in life. Adversity Quotient (AQ) is a relativelynew area of research that has gained popularity in the last tenyears, specifically in examining AQ and its relationship to salesforce performance. Adversity Quotient is defined as the capacityof the person to deal and respond with the different adversitiesof life. AQ refers to the total score obtained on the AdversityQuotient Profile (ARP) developed by Dr Paul Stoltz version 8.1(2009) to get the sum of the scores obtained on four scalesnamely; Control, Ownership, Reach and Endurance(CORE)---which aremeasured on the AQ profile®.

Previous studies by Stoltz and others linking AQ to performancehave attempted to understand the characteristics of the emergingsales environment and what it takes to succeed in thatenvironment. An extensive review of recent research wasconducted and a number of themes was identified. These includethe need to move toward a consultative, relationship-based salesmodel.

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While there is general agreement that selling today involvessomething new and different, there is no single formula forsuccess. How can companies best prepare their sales teams tosucceed in the current “dark curtains” sales environment? We setout to build on prior research by identifying the role of AQ asnew key factor that accelerate sales performance in businesstoday and recommending ways in which companies can improve theirsales effectiveness by focusing on this factor. Employeeattitudes toward waves of daily adversities, work-related andsocietal stress have changed. As a result, Skilled sales staffand sales managers are operating under severe conditions offierce fight competition, rapid technological change, and aboveall, the current political and economical problems that strikemany places in the world particularly in the Middle East andspecifically in Egypt. Telecom business organizations hirecustomer service agents to increase their number of potentialcustomers, thus generate more sales revenue and achieve goals.So, the need is felt, if management could screen sales forcemotivation and predict sales performance success by improvingemployees’ Adversity Quotient Profile scores, the telecom salesorganizations could be more successful.

1.2 Adversities face Telecom businessorganizations Telecom organizations are facing many striking challenges today,including the following:

1. The worldwide economic downturn has placed pressure on theprofitability of the larger telecommunications companies and hashampered the industry’s ability to invest in innovation, capitalprograms and new product offerings.

2. Containing costs while delivering increasingly more complexservices and providing a consistently higher level of customerservice across wide geographical areas;

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3. Enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of communicationswith citizens and other stakeholders;

4. Utilizing emerging technologies to improve staff productivity;

5. Ensuring the reliability, availability, survivability andsecurity of telephone, data network and Internet platforms andservices;

6. Implementing centralized administration of services providedat satellite sites. Customer service departments provide theinformation and support for sales teams with their instantinteraction with customers which make them one of the mostimportant and comprehensive infrastructure and assets intelecommunications business environment. Customer servicedepartments are also under pressure to support their sales teamsin order to achieve organization’s goals and insuring to provideenhanced customer service. With increasingly limited resourcesand time, customer service staff is challenged to stay currentwith the fast pace of technological change. The performance ofcustomer service department in any telecommunications andinformation technology organization can no longer be viewed asmerely a job function but as a strategic asset to anorganization’s goals.

7. The risks that telecommunications companies face, whether theyare customer loyalty, reputation or pricing and revenue, appearto be common among companies large and small. Although scale maymake a difference to an operator’s long-term chances of success,the risks themselves are the same. Size also doesn’t seem to playa role in the sophistication of risk management practices. Often,smaller companies have stronger risk programs, and largercompanies have weaker risk management systems.Telecom business organizations spend millions each year trainingand developing sales force, and with the changing economy,companies are expected to do more with less (Zoltners & Lorimer,2000). Recruiting an effective sales force can be one of themost important investments a telecom sales organization can make.However, if the sales force are unproductive or if there isexcessive turnover, an organization can face great losses infinancial and market momentum (Walker, Churchill, & Ford, 1977).

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According to Cravens and Woodruff (1973), “while the needs formethods of predicting and evaluating the salesmen is great,previous research has not been particularly successful inidentifying variables associated with salesmen performance” (p.242).

On the same notion, customer driven organizations need a methodto identify, screen and motivate potential candidates for highlevel performance, which could be critical to the success ofhiring practices and the improvement of employees’ corecompetencies development programs. From this point of view itcomes as no surprise that many companies experience a workforceshortage, or perhaps shortcoming. Nowhere is this more apparentthan in the knowledge-intensive industry sector such as telecomindustry, where the scarcity of well-educated, talented salesstaff has been a growing source of dismay for quite some time.The lack of technically well-educated and talented sales staff,combined with the fact that many employers seek to insure theregeneration of their organizations by bringing in ‘new blood’,has helped make young talented sales force one of the most wantedgroups of employees in the labor market of today. (Paré &Tremblay, 2000; Niederman et al., 2007).

1.3 Statement of the problemSales teams and customer service agents are under constantpressure to meet customer expectations, while bringing in revenuefor the company.

In the case of Egypt, the decline in profits of some of the majorcompanies in Egypt is a new sign of the negative effects causedby the Egyptian revolution and upheaval which have started inJanuary 2011 and still casts shadows on the country's economy.Analysts say that the banking, manufacturing and real estatesectors have been hit the hardest by the revolution and politicaluncertainty. These situations, are part of the challenges thatsales force including customer service agents of telecom business

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industry organizations face today. They go through numerousadverse situations as such, at societal level (political andeconomical turbulent), at work place level (workers’ frequentdemonstrations for pay increase and improve work conditions,undesirable labor relations and the tendency towards conflict andviolence, temporary disruption of economic activity, below-capacity production) and finally at individual level (lack ofnecessary technical information and support from their companiesto instantly satisfy an ever demanding and angry customer, andabove all, the fierce competition with their peers to achievetargeted goals and success by bringing in new customers in acontinuously saturating and shrinking local market).

So, customer service agents of Egyptian telecom companies arelike any other business sectors, face different adversitiesunique with respect to time and work place. Some of them can passthrough to the other side unscratched while others fail. In otherwords, the output of a sales man under these pressures isdiffering from one to another. This is the phenomenon understudy.Is this phenomenon relates to one’s perceived adversity stresstherefore the rate of his effectiveness as sales agent? Anotherimportant question is leaping to the mind, will the ability of asales agent to handle such adversities can be used as predictorof his overall performance and goal achievement? This study wasmeant to answer such questions and find out the impact ofmeasuring customer service agent’s AQ profile scores on personalperformance and goal achievement.

The research was guided by two main objectives, which are derivedfrom Stoltz’s theory (1997) of AQ approach to improving salesperformance.

1.3 Objectives of the studyThe objectives of this study were:

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1) To ascertain the impact and relationship of measuring customerservice agents’ overall AQ on the level of personal performanceand goal achievement in Egypt’s telecommunications industry;

3) To examine the extent at which each factor of CORE dimensionsof one’s AQ has led to a significant impact in calculating hisoverall AQ with respect to customers service agents in Egypt’stelecommunications industry.

2. AQ model, Adversity Quotient model of Stoltz (1997) as shown in figure (1)explains the three levels of adversity in a pyramid shaped modelwhich categorizes the challenges in life into the “Three Levelsof Adversity”. This model begins from the top and works down tothe individual explaining the two effects. First, it shows anddescribes societal, workplace and individual adversities peopleface every day in their lives, and second, it shows how anindividual changes positively, affecting the workplace and thelarger scale, the society. According to Stoltz, “We areexperiencing a profound shift in wealth, a pervasive sense ofuncertainly about the future, a dramatic rise in crime, aheightened sense of anxiety about our economic security,unprecedented environmental destruction, a radical redefinitionof the home, a nationwide moral crisis, a and a loss of faith inour institutions, including our educational system.” This hecalls as societal adversity. Workplace adversity includes thechallenges that go along with a job. Individual adversityincludes the adversities at a more personal level. (Stoltz, 1997)

According to AQ model, the three levels of Adversity also showsthat positive change at all three levels starts with theindividual, and works up, affecting the workplace, and ultimatelysociety at large. In order to create change, one must have therelentless fortitude to climb through adversity. In that case,one must develop a sufficiently high AQ (Stoltz, 1997).

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Figure :1 The AQ Model

Source: (Stoltz, 1997)

As can be noticed from the above figure:1, , AQ begins withindividual, but goes beyond as one is exposed to an organization.Stoltz (2000) advised that these skills can be applied tooneself, to others, and to organization. The theory discoveredthat AQ can be measured and enhanced the effectiveness of teams,relationships, families, organizations, communities, cultures,and societies Making it one of the most important tools that canbe relied upon to develop and improve the performance of humanresources.

2.2 The call for AQ

The traditional measure of intelligence is always thought to beIQ, i.e., Intelligence Quotient. It has always been taken forgranted to predict the chances of success of a person. Yet thereis large number of people who have high IQs but theyhaven’t been successful always. It means IQ isn’t enough to

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succeed. There must be something more and over and above IQ thatis required for consistently successful people. Then came theidea of EQ, i.e. Emotional Quotient or Emotional Intelligence. EQis the measure of how well you control your emotions , howwill you empathize with others , your level of self –awareness, your control on your impulses, your persistenceand how effectively you interact with others. Therefore,possessing high EQ with a high IQ can strengthen one’s chances ofsuccess because to be successful one not only requiresintellectual capabilities but also emotional abilities. AQ issomething in addition to these two, it can answer the question,why some people persist and keep on striving hard in toughsituations while others who are high on IQ and are emotionallywell- adjusted still fail and give up? AQ can be useful topredict performance, motivation, empowerment, creativity,productivity, learning, energy, hope, happiness, vitality,emotional health, physical health, persistence, resilience,attitude, longevity and response to change (Phoolka & Kaur, 2012).

Sales teams including customer service agents are under constantpressure to meet customer expectations, while bringing in revenuefor the company. As globalization brings the world closertogether, these pressures increase. Therefore, the need for a newmeasure that can control and enhance one’s intellectual,emotional, resilience, optimism, hardiness, locus of control,explanatory style, self efficacy, and learned helplessnesscapabilities is strongly required.

According to the AQ theory, the causes of events are perceivedalong four dimensions: C, O, R and E. C stands for “control,” Ostands for “ownership,”R stands for “reach,” and E stands for“endurance.” Together, the four dimensions of C,O, R and E standfor your CORE and make up your overall Adversity Quotient or AQ(Stoltz, 1997). When adversity strikes, "the higher one’s AQ,the more likely one is to perceive some way to influence thesituation (Control), take it upon oneself to make it better(Ownership), and perceive it as limited and fleeting (Reach and

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Endurance). The lower one’s AQ, the less control one perceives,and the less ownership one will take for dealing with whatappears to be a far-reaching, long-lasting setback” (Stoltz,2000a, p.39). One’s Adversity Quotient profile addresses theimportance of remaining resilient in the face of adversity.Merriam-Webster’s (2005) defines resilience as “tending torecover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.”

AQ profile has its own measure that is used to better understandwhich factors are most important in determining who will succumbto the obstacles in life and who will thrive as measured by themagnitude of the correlations. The Adversity Response Profile(ARP) is used to measure AQ (Stoltz, 2000). The AdversityResponse Profile (ARP) measures a person’s AQ based on hisresponses to questions about negative events only. The ARP yieldsa score for each of the CORE dimensions along with a total AQscore, which is the sum of all the CORE dimension scores. Thismeasure has been used in studies which have tried to betterunderstand what makes a person successful in one of the mostadversity-ridden occupations, sales (Stoltz, 1997). These studieshave included insurance sales, retail sales and business tobusiness sales, thus in this study we add one more challengingcategory of sales in telecom industry which is customer serviceagents. It is unlikely that any other occupation deals with moreadversity in the form of rejections and obstacles on a dailybasis than customer service agents. It is inherently part of thesalesperson's job to be subjected to particularly stressfulevents. The salesperson’s role is one in which resistance andrejection come with the territory. It would make sense that inorder to be successful in a position that is fraught withadversity, one must be resilient (Johnson, 2005).

Since resilience seems to be more the exception than the rule,this could explain why almost every business in every industryexhibits the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule: 20% of the salesforce produces 80% of the company revenues. According to theresearch that has been conducted within each framework mentioned,salespeople on average are more resilient in terms of optimism

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and AQ than any other group tested, higher than managers and evenhigher than world class athletes (Schulman, 1999; Stoltz, 2000).However, even the most resilient person, when faced with theconstant adversity that is so prevalent in the world of sales,may become overwhelmed and develop pessimistic beliefs at times.This may again be the reason for the 80/20 rule within salesorganizations (Johnson, 2005).

While there appears to be some increasing interest in the AQconcept, relatively few studies have explored the relationshipbetween AQ and sales performance, and the current body ofresearch concerning this topic has yielded some consistentresults (Stoltz, 1997).

According to Stoltz’s theory, AQ builds on the Explanatory Stylemodel and incorporates elements of additional models as wellincluding hardiness, learned helplessness, resilience, and locusof control, etc. In addition, Weiner’s attribution theory alsolends important components to this model (i.e., the Control andOwnership dimensions, which assess the individual’s perceivedcontrol and their ability to take ownership to improve thesituation).

2.3 AQ and performance Telecom operators are facing huge challenges. In saturated andhighly competitive markets, their services are quickly becoming acommodity. At the same time, margins are shrinking. Manyoperators are launching "customer-first" or "customer-centric"initiatives. But often they are not able to deliver the goods.Telecom operators have very complex and non-harmonized datastructures that result from legacy systems and incoherentprocesses. Drawing valuable knowledge from such data today stillinvolves a lot of manual work. Against this backdrop, sales teamsand customer service agents suffer enormous pressure exerted onthem in order to be effective and customer satisfaction remainselusive concept.

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According to Stoltz (2009) as cited on peak learningincorporation website, Adversity quotient has a positiveinfluence on performance at work in ones society, workplace(Lazaro, 2003) and self. In contrast to many constructs andmeasures, AQ model was developed through the acquisition of dataacquired through research and application in numerousorganizations. Some of the corporations who have participated inAQ studies are: Cellular One (SBC Telecommunications), Deloitte &Touche, LLP, and Diversified Collection Services, Inc. (Stoltz,1997). Also study on ADC Telecommunications (2004) was conductedto measure the relationship between AQ and performance.

In the SBC Telecommunications study, the relationship between AQand sales performance within their Cellular One division wasexamined. Performance was measured in three ways: percentage oftop-line (new sales), percentage of quota and percentage of netsales, respectively. The results found a statisticallysignificant difference between the means of those scoring in thetop half of AQ and those scoring in the bottom half of AQ in allthree categories. Those who scored in the top half of AQ sold166% more in the percentage of top-line category, they sold 106%more in the percentage of quota category, and 150% more in thepercentage of net category (Stoltz, 2000).

In a study with Deloitte & Touche, the relationship between AQand performance was assessed among 125 new experienced hires.Additionally, it was hypothesized that higher AQ employees wouldbe promoted sooner than low AQ employees. Results showed AQsignificantly correlated with performance and promotion.

The relationship between AQ and performance was also examined ina study with Diversified Collection Services. Among 450 subjects,AQ significantly predicted performance: the AQs of top performerswere significantly higher than low performers.

Finally, A study on AQ Performance, morale, and retention inhighly volatile, extremely demanding global business wasconducted at ADC Telecommunications (2004), the study wasconducted on 237 sales professionals across the U.S., Europe,

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Asia, and Latin America. The purpose of the study was to examinethe predictive strength and overall influence of AQ regardingperformance, morale, and retention in a highly volatile,extremely demanding global business. ADC Telecommunications wasfacing unprecedented challenges in the global telecom market. Thecompany hired PEAK learning to assess and strengthen the AQ ofits global sales force. ADC’s goal was to determine the potentialpredictive strength and, ultimately, the effect AQ could have onits people. This longitudinal study tracked sales professionalsover 3 years, with a particular focus on the AT&T Global SalesTeam, because of its size and strategic importance to thebusiness. The results of the study revealed that AQ can beimproved dramatically as the study resulted in a significantincrease in the performance of the sales team over the time lineof the study (3 years), Sales rose from below quota (beforeprogram) to 230% and 147% of quota in succeeding years. Alsoduring the time line of the study, predicted desirable retentionof the sales force was improved by 74%. And finally, the level ofemployee attrition was significantly improved; one’s reportedintention to leave the job within 6 months—dropped from 73% to19% of the entire sales organization, representing a significantreduction.

Today the world is facing global economic crisis and radicalpolitical turbulent which affected society including theeconomical system. The work related adversity now demands moreeducation, well training, reengineering, restructuring,rightsizing, downsizing, revitalizing and decentralization. Salesteams are faced with constant change that calls to upgradeknowledge and skills. Individual adversity is the accumulatedburden sales man carries due to societal and work relatedadversities. The accumulated effects of large-scale adversitiesare sometimes inspiring for many but to others the danger oflosing hope. Changes begin at the individual and controllingone’s AQ is instigated to make a difference. Therefore, base onprevious research, we formulated the following relationshipbetween AQ and customers service agent’s performance in telecomsector of Egypt.

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Figure: 2 Relationship between Adversity Quotient Profile and

Employee Performance

Adversity Quotient Profile is taken as an independent variable,which has an overall score as well as four dimensions (CORE);Control, Ownership, Reach, and Endurance. This AQ has thepositive and strong relationship with Employee Performance andEmployee Performance is serving as a dependent Variable. Base onLiterature Review and model to following hypothesis has beengenerated for this study.

H 1: There is positive & strong relationship between Adversity Quotient Profile and Employee Performance.

3. Methodology3.1 Sampling & sample size

The research was conducted in the telecom sector of Egypt and wascarried out by using an email survey approach. For the purpose ofanonymity, the authors will refer to the company under this studywith a different name (FONATIM) , is a leading wireless telecom and cellular service provider in Egypt, and has 32.m.4mn subscribers as of March 2012 (32.9mn as of December 2011), which translates into approximately 38.95% of market share. Its network of 5299 sites at the end of 2011 and 34 switches

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Employee Performance

AdversityQuotient

Profile (AQ)

currently covers most of the urban areas in Egypt, or 99.66% of the population. . FONATIM is listed in Egypt Stock Exchange and is considered one of the most actively traded companies in the market.

The study used self-administered questioners. The respondentswere selected among full time employees who were currentlypursuing the customer service job, specifically, the customerservice agents. Respondents were drawn from the pool of allcustomer service function departments employees as they fairlyrepresented a wide variety of industries that encompassed allprivate sector businesses. The simple random sampling method wasalso employed where a full list of candidates were requested fromthe company contains all names and details of customer serviceagents working for FONATIM company. Only 000 questionnaires werecompleted and returned, giving a response rate of approximately00 percent. Table 1 presents the demographic profile ofrespondents. Majority of the respondents were highly educatedwith more than 00% having at least a Bachelor’s degree orpostgraduate qualification. This may be due to the respondentsbeing highly competing in the labor market for a highlycompensated job in a swell established company. None of therespondents had a secondary school level of qualifications. Thisfinding supports this study’s underlying notion that theworkforce are becoming more knowledge-based and therefore may beready for a transformation in the way they are thinking abouttheir lives.

We had an approximately ?????? distribution of male (000 %) andfemale customer service agents (000%). A ????? proportion ofrespondents (000%) had worked in their current company and withtheir immediate manager for 0-0 years. A ???? distribution in theindustry sector was noted with most respondents working insectors such as ITC, Internet, manufacturing and professionalservices. In terms of organization size, most of the respondentswere from the large scale companies which had above 150 employeesand locally owned or multinational company.

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There were two sections in the questionnaire—one section looks atthe demographic information of respondents whereas the secondsection focused on the independent measure (AQ).

Table 1 below provides a demographic summary of the respondentsin the study.

Characteristics Frequency PercentageGender Female MaleTotalEducation College Graduate TotalAge 25 years or less 26-30 years 31-35 years 36-40 years Total Length of employment 1-2 years 3- years 5-6 years 6-above TotalMarital status Single Married Total

3.2 Process & Measurement

The measurement for customer service agent performance includedactual performance reports from direct managers or supervisors toeach respondent. In order to link each respondent’s performancereport to his survey, a simple coding system was followed. Forinstance ranking the respondents’ performance reports which was

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collected from their direct managers or supervisors with simplenumeric codes 1,2,3 … and using the same numbers s to respondentsby giving them the same codes when distrusting the surveys. Apre-consent was obtained from the management of the company tosend the authors a complete list with the names of potentialcandidates for the study and to attach their performance reportsfor the last 12 month to each name of the candidate in order tofacilitate coding and insure anonymity for the respondents.

The measure for Adversity Quotient Profile was adopted from TheStoltz’s ARP® (2009) which is a self-rating questionnaire tomeasure an individual’s style of responding to adversesituations.

ARP measure was submitted to a pilot test to 20 candidates thatlooked into the Adversity Response Profile® describes 30scenarios. Each scenario represents a hypothetical event, whichcan be answered on a 5-point bipolar scale, (1-not responsible atall to 5-completely responsible). That was in order to insureunderstanding and clarity of concepts prior to be fully

distributed to all respondents. Of the three hundredquestionnaires that were distributed, 0000000 were returned(response rate 00 percent), but only 000000 were complete and canbe used in further analysis.

3.3 Procedure

Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to customersservice agents in FONATIM company. The respondents were asked tochoose the appropriate answer to each scenario of the surveyquestions in terms of their personal perception and behaviorSpontaneously with respect to each scenario. .

We ensured that only respondents who had worked for FONATIMcompany for more than 1 year received the survey. This was toensure that the respondents had spent enough time to be evaluated

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in terms of all performance aspects and therefore would be ableto provide a more accurate assessment.

4.Findings and Discussion

5. Limitations & Future Research

6. Conclusion

To be continued

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