Personal Characteristics and Salesperson's Justifications as Moderators of Supervisory Discipline in Cases Involving Unethical Salesforce Behavior

Abstract

Role-playing sales managers were asked to evaluate the personnel records of a salesperson who has been found to be using an unethical selling practice. Overall, saleswomen and salespeople who were described as extremely over weight were evaluated more harshly. Using excuses as justi fication did not neutralize the sales managers' supervisory responses and, in the case of blaming one's unethical be havior on the unethical behavior of customers, harsher dis ciplinary treatment resulted. Attribution theory is used to explain the findings. or withhold discipline for the wrong reasons. This study examines some of the factors which may mediate the use of discipline by sales managers in response to salesperson be havior. While many of the general management studies ex amined job performance behavior (e.g., unauthorized work breaks) or common violations of company work rules (e.g., excessive lunch hour), this study examines a critical issues in sales management which can be controlled by the appro priate use of discipline, unethical selling behavior.