Measuring the Importance of Ethical Situations As a Source of Role Conflict: A Survey of Salespeople, Sales Managers, and Sales Support Personnel.

The article measures the importance of ethics of salespeople in marketing as a source of role conflict. Ethics of salespeople is an area of marketing that draws constant public criticism. According to reports of few researchers, salespeople wanted more guidelines to help them resolve ethical questions. This implies that salespeople and sales managers must agree on what ethical problems exist. Every institution has a set of expectations among its participants, who occupy distinct role positions, their interactions constituting the personal aspect of marketing. This is "the part of marketing" in which ethical considerations arise. When disagreement between expectations occurs, role conflict can result. When members of a group hold differing expectations, interaction may be difficult. Placed in an organization, then, the salesperson must attempt to integrate the organization's role expectations with his role expectation. To determine if differences in expectations exist, the sales role must be examined from multiple perspectives.