رابطه جو اخلاقی با رضایت شغلی، تعهد سازمانی و قصد ترک خدمت در نیروهای فروش

This paper examines ethical climate's relationship to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention among salespeople. Although salespeople are believed to be physically, psychologically, and socially separated from the organization, results suggest that the organization's ethical climate nevertheless influences them. Results suggest that salespeople's perceptions of a positive ethical climate are positively associated with their job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Implications and directions for future research are provided.

Climate refers to the ways organizations operationalize routine behaviors and the actions that are expected, supported and rewarded (Schneider and Rentsch, 1988). Due to differences in individuals' positions, work groups, and employment histories, perceptions of organizational climate may vary within the firm (Victor and Cullen, 1988). Furthermore, an organization, subunit and work group may consist of many different types of climates — including an ethical climate (Schneider, 1975). Today's organizations are likely to contain climates that run anywhere from very ethical to very unethical. A national survey of 4000 business employees found that 25% of those responding believed that their companies ignore ethical conduct to meet business objectives, and nearly 17% stated that their company overtly encourages misconduct to meet business objectives (Goodell, 1994). While such evidence suggests that unethical climates exist, it conversely implies that not all organizations' climates are perceived as unethical. A firm's ethical climate dictates its ethical values and the behaviors expected, and has been shown to influence the ethicalness of its members Wimbush and Shepard, 1994 and Verbeke et al., 1996. It has long been suggested that ethics be incorporated into the organization (e.g., Robin and Reidenbach, 1987), and creating an ethical climate within the organization may provide one means for doing so. However, ethics' relationship to certain job-related outcomes is unknown, particularly in sales. Research relating ethics to job outcomes finds significant relationships between organizational ethical values and organizational commitment (Hunt et al., 1989, Posner and Schmidt, 1993 and Sims and Kroeck, 1994), role conflict (Schwepker et al., 1997), job satisfaction Vitell and Davis, 1990, Weeks and Nantel, 1992 and Deshpande, 1996, turnover (Sims and Kroeck, 1994) and performance (Weeks and Nantel, 1992). A closer look at these studies, however, finds that while the relationships between organizational ethical values and role conflict, satisfaction, and performance have been investigated in a sales setting (i.e., Weeks and Nantel, 1992 and Schwepker et al., 1997), the relationships between organizational ethical values, and organizational commitment and turnover have not. Moreover, the one study (i.e., Weeks and Nantel, 1992) that examined the relationship between ethics and satisfaction in the salesforce examined only one company in one industry. The present study examines the relationship between the organization's ethical climate (an expression of its ethical values), job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention among salespeople. Salespeople make an interesting group to study when examining these relationships. As boundary spanners, salespeople typically work outside the organizational setting. As such, they are believed to be physically, socially, and psychologically separated from the organization (Dubinsky et al., 1986). With the tendency to experience such separations, and to be less closely supervised than those working inside the organization, are salespeople less prone to the effects of the firm's ethical climate? Given that ethical climate has been associated with ethical behavior (e.g., Wimbush et al., 1997 and Bartels et al., 1998), coupled with the importance of practicing ethical principles to develop long-term customer relationships (i.e., relational marketing exchanges) (Gundlach and Murphy, 1993), the ability of climate to influence salespeople's behavior takes on a critical role. As boundary spanners, salespeople play a pivotal role in initiating and establishing customer relationships. How ethical salespeople are in performing their responsibilities should play a key role in determining whether long-term mutually satisfying customer relationships are developed. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between ethical climate, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention among salespeople (see Fig. 1). The model in Fig. 1 proposes that ethical climate is positively related to salespeople's job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and negatively related to their turnover intention. Furthermore, job satisfaction is positively related to organizational commitment, which is negatively related to turnover intention. Understanding these relationships may provide greater insight for incorporating ethics into the organization and effectively managing the salesforce. If significant relationships between ethical climate and these outcome variables exist, managers may be provided with direction for managing the organization to bring about greater levels of satisfaction and commitment, and lessen turnover intention. Given the high costs associated with negative turnover (e.g., recruiting, selecting, and training costs; opportunity costs of a vacated territory; potential negative impact on current customer relationships due to problems in covering the lost salesperson's accounts), a better understanding of factors affecting it can make a difference in effectively managing the salesforce.The paper begins with a discussion of the theoretical foundation, followed by a description of the research methods and results. Subsequently, results are discussed in light of current theory, and implications are provided. Finally, study limitations and future research are addressed.

Fig. 2 shows the significant relationships found in this study. In general, the results support the hypotheses. First, Table 3 (step 1) shows that the control variables do not appear to play a significant role in predicting the outcome variables. While none of the control variables is related to the composite measure of job satisfaction (adjusted R2=0.01, F=1.13, p=0.35), organizational commitment (adjusted R2=−0.03, F=0.38, p=0.93) or turnover intention (adjusted R2=−0.02, F=0.66, p=0.72) in the regression equations, some (education, marital status, what is sold) are related to certain facets of job satisfaction (customers, supervisor, promotion and pay; see Table 3, step 1).To test Hypothesis 1, ethical climate was added to the control variables as an independent variable (step two, Table 3). As suggested in Hypothesis 1, there is a positive relationship between salespeople's perception of their organization's ethical climate and their job satisfaction (change in adjusted R2=0.19, F=3.70, p<0.01). The more salespeople perceive their organization's climate as ethical, the higher their reported levels of job satisfaction. This is true for every dimension of job satisfaction (at p<0.05) except for satisfaction with customers. Perhaps the failure to find a significant relationship between ethical climate and the customer dimension of job satisfaction results from this dimension being external to the organization and beyond its direct control. Salespeople's satisfaction is related to management control (via climate) and this control mechanism has no direct bearing on how salespeople perceive customers. Furthermore, although there is a significant relationship between ethical climate and salespeople's satisfaction with fellow workers, climate is not significant in explaining the variation in salesperson satisfaction with fellow workers. To test Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 4, organizational commitment was regressed on the control variables, ethical climate and job satisfaction (step 3, Table 3). As suggested in Hypothesis 2, there is a positive relationship between salespeople's perception of their organization's ethical climate and their organizational commitment (change in adjusted R2=0.36, F=7.95, p<0.01). The more salespeople perceive their organization's climate as ethical, the higher their reported levels of organizational commitment. Likewise, as proposed in Hypothesis 4, greater job satisfaction is associated with stronger organizational commitment (β=0.70, p<0.01), suggesting that salespeople who are more satisfied with their jobs are likely to be more committed to their organization. Finally, Hypothesis 3 and Hypothesis 5 were tested by regressing turnover intention on the control variables, ethical climate, job satisfaction and organizational commitment (step 4, Table 3). Although the model is significant, there was a drop in the adjusted R2 (adjusted R2=−0.17, F=2.60, p<0.01). The results show that ethical climate is not directly related to turnover intention as suggested in Hypothesis 3. However, the results support Hypothesis 5. The more committed salespeople are to the organization, the less they intend to leave the organization (β=−0.53, p<0.01).