التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
| العنوان: |
ETHICAL ISSUES IN SALES: WHAT SHAPES ETHICAL JUDGMENTS OF SUPERVISOR BEHAVIOR? ACTION INTENTION OR OUTCOMES. |
| المؤلفون: |
Babin, Barry J., James, Kevin W., Shows, G. David, Ocal, Yasemin |
| المصدر: |
AMA Summer Academic Conference Proceedings; 2011, Vol. 22, p104-105, 2p |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: |
PSYCHOLOGY of executives, SUPERVISORS, ETHICAL problems, EXECUTIVES' attitudes, ALTRUISM, PSYCHOLOGY |
| مستخلص: |
Introduction How do salespeople ethically judge managerially actions? This study attempts to addresses the question of whether managerial intentions, actions, or the outcome matter most when salespeople make ethically laden decisions. Specifically, managers can have opportunistic and/ or altruistic motivations and outcomes can be opportunistic and/or altruistic. At the same time, mangers can either take an action to curb a morally questionable circumstance or fail to do anything in hopes that the situation will take care of itself (Reidenbach and Robin 1990). This research examines how these factors affect an onlooker's moral judgments and reactions to the sales manager's decision process. Specifically, an experimental design manipulates whether or not a sales manager had opportunistic or altruistic intentions, whether the manager took action or ignored the situation, and whether the outcome turned out opportunistically (personal gain) or altruistically (gain for society) in an experimental design. Contributions The work contributes to marketing ethics and sales management theory and practice. An experiment modeled after a real-world professional sales situation provides a venue for testing hypotheses. Given the real-world nature of the scenario, the moral dimensions are not so clear and obvious. Thus, we contribute theoretically by intermingling ethics and leadership theories in a context involving how comfortable one would be with a supervisor who either acted to benefit others unselfishly or himself selfishly, and either acted or stood idle, to try and shape the eventual outcome. Basic leadership tenets suggest that a manager's ethics influence those of subordinates both through explicit and implicit actions. Practically, leadership theory likewise suggests that managers are placed in lofty positions because they are expected to take action when confronted with a dilemma. This notion proves to be very telling in this particular research. Hypotheses Development The hypotheses present a basis for assessing the impact of the manipulations on subjects' assessment of morality and willingness to be lead by the manager as captured by desire to work for the particular manager. Three hypotheses predict that subjects prefer a manager who (1) takes action, (2) is altruistic, and (3) is associated with an altruistic outcome. However, the role of action is theoretically pivotal and should interact with the other experimental variables in way that creates larger differences in judgments when actions are taken. Action implies that the manager is acting out a plan and not just conceiving a plan. Methodology A 2 X 2 X 2 experimental design includes manipulations of sales manager action, their intent, and the outcome of the situation. A nationwide online sampling firm with access to salespeople encompasses the sample frame. Subjects were contacted via email, clicked through to a scenario and then answered an online questionnaire. A causal design was implemented by randomly assigning subjects to one of each of the eight conditions embedded in a sales management scenario (Kerlinger and Lee 2001). Results The findings suggest a strong tendency for sales-people to have an affinity toward action-oriented sales managers. ANOVA results show a strong tendency for taking action in both moral equity and intentions to work for the manager. Intention and outcome were likewise significant for both dependent variables however weaker in magnitude than intentions. A significant two-way interaction for the Action by Outcome manipulations exists with Moral Equity as the dependent variable. The mediation analysis also supports the contention that moral equity mediates the relationship between the experimental variables and the intention construct. The causal process is then from the experimental variables to the moral judgment of the act, which then affects the intention to work for the sales manager. The results suggest a strong partiality toward sales managers taking action when presented a moral dilemma, regardless of motivation. Reasons for the strong action bias may include subject perception that a manager is in fact a leader and leaders should take action or that apathy in itself is a negative sales manager characteristic. References are available upon request. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| قاعدة البيانات: |
Complementary Index |
