The Influence of Moral Philosophy on Retail Salespeople's Ethical Perceptions

Abstract

The relatively minimal literature on ethics in a retail selling context indicates that retail sales personnel perceive that their job creates ethical dilemmas. However, what drives those beliefs is virtually unknown. Investigations in non‐retailing venues have found that employees’ moral philosophy (or ideology) influences whether they view a particular situation, action, or behavior as unacceptable (ethically inappropriate). The present study extends previous retail sales ethics research by examining the impact of retail salespersons’ moral philosophy on their perceptions of situations that are potentially ethically troublesome. Findings reveal some evidence that moral philosophy does indeed have an effect on retail salespeople's ethical beliefs. The impact of these results on the consumer is brought out through a discussion of the various implications from the vantage point of consumer welfare.

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

“…These results are consistent with previous research (e.g. Dubinsky et al 2004;Sparks and Hunt 1998;Yetmar and Eastman 2000). In their review of the ethical decision-making literature, O'Fallon and Butterfield (2005) come to the conclusion that idealism and relativism revealed fairly consistent results over the last few decades of ethical research.…”

“…It has been successfully used and validated by several ethics studies (e.g. Chan and Leung 2006;Dubinsky et al 2004;Marques and AzevedoPereira 2009;Shafer 2008;Singhapakdi and Vitell 1993). The EPQ consists of two scales, each containing 10 items provided with a scale of agreement based on a 5-point rating (from (1) 'strongly disagree' to (5) 'strongly agree') to measure personal moral philosophy (idealism and relativism).…”

Ethical Judgments: What Do We Know, Where Do We Go?

“…Idealists often interpret questionable activities as ethically inappropriate , 21 of 26 vignettes considered; Barnett, Bass, Brown, and Hebert, 1998, three vignettes;Bass et al, 1999, two vignettes;Davis et al, 2001, 5 vignettes in Study 1 (three "moral judgments" items) but only one of three vignettes in Study 2 (MES items; idealism was associated with approval of the questionable activity in another vignette, p. 46; Kleiser, Sivadas, Kellaris, and Dahlstrom, 2003, two vignettes, somewhat weaker connections with Forsyth measure than with the self-created Marketing Ethical Ideologies scale; Mudrack, Bloodgood, and Turnley, 2012;Singh, Vitell, Al-Khatib, and Clark, 2007, four vignettes, strongest r = .23; Vitell and Patwardhan, 2008, two of four vignettes in European sample, behavioral intentions only; see also Dubinsky, Nataraajan, and Huang, 2004). Other studies using accounting vignettes and conducted outside of North America, however, were unable to detect significant associations between idealism and ethical judgments (Marques and Azvedo-Pereira, 2009, Portugal; Table 1, China).…”

Ethical Judgments in Business Ethics Research: Definition, and Research Agenda

“…Similarly, measures of ethical perceptions used by DuPont and Craig (1996) and Honeycutt et al (2001) list ethically questionable behaviors, then ask research participants for their degrees of agreement or disagreement with the statement that the behaviors in question should be considered ethical. Ethical perceptions, as measured by Dubinsky et al (2004), utilized responses to ''questionable sales practices'' scaled for appropriateness.…”