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Ethical Decision Making in Sales Organizations
The study of marketing, sales and company ethics has a very diverse foundation of empirical and analytical research ranging from gender- and trait-based analysis to the defining of models that seek to capture the dynamics that create ethical paradoxes and drive decision-making in organizations. In the research completed and presented in the article A Framework For Personal Selling and Sales Management Ethical Decision Making (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007) the authors carefully analyze trait-based and situational ethics theories and previous research. The first sections of this well-written and researched article illustrate that trait theories alone cannot explain the spectrum of ethics within sales and marketing departments and their decision-making processes, or provide insights into corporate cultural mindsets with regard to ethics. What the authors do however in this initial section of the article is frame up the foundation of their model, A Framework For Selling And Sales Management Decision Making (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007). This model captures the paradoxical nature of ethics by showing how organizational culture, sales activity, ethical issue intensity (perceived and actual) and ethics decisions are dependent on both the sales ethical climate and individual factors of a business (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007). All...
What is missing from this model is a contextual component that the authors only speak to, yet don't include as a component in the overall model. Contextual reference could have been added as a core foundational element or created as an overarching module that unifies the entire model. Figure 1, A Framework of Selling and Sales Management Ethical Decision Making is shown, illustrating the integration of concepts the authors make reference to.
Source: (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007)
Assessing the Framework of Selling and Sales Management
Ethical Decision Making
The authors build a defensible and logical structure to define the aspects of sales ethics, taking into account organizational culture aspects while also defining ethical intensity as a driving factor in their framework. In addition, the authors cite the contributions of descriptive and prescriptive studies of ethics and how their limitations led to the framework defined (Ferrell, Johnston, Ferrell, 2007). In defining the shift form descriptive to prescriptive studies, the authors introduce the concept of ethical intentions in professional selling (Martin, 2012). The authors have in short created a framework that can provide guidance for organizational or enterprise-wide ethical decision making while…
References
Ferrell, O.C., Johnston, M.W., & Ferrell, L. (2007). A framework for personal selling and sales management ethical decision making. The Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 27(4), 291-299.
Joseph, G.W., Pergola, T.M., & Butler, M.G. (2011). All you have to do is rearrange the numbers. Journal of Business Cases and Applications, 4, 1-20.
Martin, C.A. (2012). An empirical examination of the antecedents of ethical intentions in professional selling. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 9(1), 19-26.
Wotruba, T.R. (1990). A comprehensive framework for the analysis of ethical behavior, with a focus on sales organizations. The Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 10(2), 29-29.
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