Proposal for a Measurement Scale of the Ethical Climate in Business: A Study in the Area of B-to-B Selling

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop and test a measurement scale of ethical climate in a French-speaking context. Although companies are becoming aware of the need to incorporate ethics into their strategy, there is no existing tool for evaluating its progress within the organization. Semi-directive interviews, followed by data collection by questionnaire among B-to-B salespeople, enabled us to draw up a scale of measurement consisting of fourteen items articulated around four dimensions: “The company's ethical procedures”, “Peer behaviors”, “Sales practices” and “Remuneration plan”. While the results confirm the importance of ethical procedures and the need to establish them within the company, they also reveal that they are not sufficient to create a strong ethical climate and that other variables, such as the remuneration plan, play a major role. As a result, the establishment of an ethical climate assumes that companies make a sometimes difficult choice between a priori contradictory requirements such as specifying set targets for salespersons while developing ethical selling techniques.