RT Article
T1 Achieving Top Performance While Building Collegiality in Sales: It All Starts with Ethics
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 156
IS 2
SP 417
OP 438
A1 Itani, Omar S.
A1 Jaramillo, Fernando
A1 Chonko, Larry
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785668706
AB 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.
K1 Workplace isolation
K1 Teamwork
K1 Social/psychological contract theory
K1 Salespeople
K1 Performance
K1 Job satisfaction
K1 Ethical Climate
DO 10.1007/s10551-017-3598-z