A Typology of Situational Factors: Impact on Salesperson Decision-Making about Ethical Issues

We explore two dimensions of situational factors expected to influence decision-making about ethical issues among sales representatives – universal vs. particular and direct vs. indirect. We argue that these distinctions are important theoretically, methodologically, and managerially. We test our hy...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Ross, William T. (Author) ; Robertson, Diana C. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer 2003
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2003, Volume: 46, Issue: 3, Pages: 213-234
Further subjects:B person-situation interaction
B Salespeople
B universal vs. particular
B situational factors
B direct vs. indirect
B decision-making about ethical issues
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Summary:We explore two dimensions of situational factors expected to influence decision-making about ethical issues among sales representatives – universal vs. particular and direct vs. indirect. We argue that these distinctions are important theoretically, methodologically, and managerially. We test our hypotheses by means of a survey of 252 sales representatives. Our results confirm that considering universal and particular and direct and indirect situational factors contributes to our understanding of decision-making about ethical issues within a sales context, specifically willingness to engage in an unethical act. We also find that personal factors act independently and interact with situational factors in decision-making about ethical issues. Both demographic factors, age and gender, and personality factors, Machiavellianism and self-monitoring, have main effects on decision-making, and some of these factors interact with situational factors to affect decision-making. For example, age of the decision-maker (younger) and size of commission (larger) interact such that the likelihood of choosing an unethical alternative is greater.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1023/A:1025563624696