Achieving Top Performance While Building Collegiality in Sales: It All Starts with Ethics

While previous literature provides evidence of the positive relationship between ethical climate and job satisfaction, the possible mechanisms of this relationship are still underexplored. This study aims to enhance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the ethical climate–job satisfaction r...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Itani, Omar S. (Author) ; Jaramillo, Fernando (Author) ; Chonko, Larry (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2019
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2019, Volume: 156, Issue: 2, Pages: 417-438
Further subjects:B Salespeople
B Team work
B Social / psychological contract theory
B Ethical Climate
B Job satisfaction
B Performance
B Workplace isolation
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:While previous literature provides evidence of the positive relationship between ethical climate and job satisfaction, the possible mechanisms of this relationship are still underexplored. This study aims to enhance scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding of the ethical climate–job satisfaction relationship by identifying and testing two of the possible mechanisms. More specifically, this study fills an existing research gap by examining social and interpersonal mechanisms, referred to in this study as workplace isolation of colleagues and salesperson’s teamwork, of the ethical climate–job satisfaction relationship. This is vital for the selling profession because job satisfaction is known to drive higher levels of salespeople’s performance. The arguments for such mechanisms are built on the foundations of social/psychological contract theory and ethical climate literature. Empirical testing using a large sample of salespeople shows higher levels of ethical climate to decrease workplace isolation and increase teamwork. Findings support hypothesized model where ethical climate positively relates to job satisfaction as partially mediated by workplace isolation and teamwork. Ethical climate is negatively related to workplace isolation and positively to teamwork. Further, findings indicate negative effect of workplace isolation on teamwork and sales performance. Job satisfaction is found to be key factor in driving performance of salespeople.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3598-z