Exploring the influence of supervisor and family work support on salespeople’s engagement and unethical behaviors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Salespeople’s unethical behaviors have been the subject of extensive academic research and practitioner outcry. High pressure, complex selling environments and extant methods of monitoring, control and compensation of salespeople have been found to lead to short-term sales behaviors, such as lying, that are detrimental to both customers and firms in the long run. Furthermore, work and family pressures can lead to unethical sales behaviors. However, research on the impact of the social environment on unethical behaviors in sales is scant. This study aims to examine the impact of social factors (e.g. supervisor support and family work support) on salespeople’s unethical behaviors as a social exchange process in an emerging market context where work and family pressures are high. Specifically, the mediating role of emotional and cognitive engagement on the relationship between social support and unethical behaviors is investigated. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study was conducted to examine the relationship between social support (family work support and supervisor support), engagement (emotional and cognitive) and unethical behaviors. Survey data were collected from 496 salespeople from multiple industries in India, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships. In addition, post hoc qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 salespeople to corroborate the findings. Findings Supervisor support is positively related to emotional and cognitive engagement and negatively related to unethical behaviors. Contrary to our hypothesis, family work support is positively related to unethical behaviors. However, this relationship becomes negative when the salesperson is emotionally and cognitively engaged with their work. Research limitations/implications This research enhances the understanding of the antecedents of unethical behaviors in sales. Supervisor support, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement reduce unethical behaviors. However, family work support increases unethical behaviors. The relationship between social support (supervisor and family work) and unethical behaviors is mediated by emotional and cognitive engagement. These findings offer sales managers dealing with increasing work and family pressures and the blurring of personal and professional life a way to motivate their sales force to act in a manner that benefits customers and the firm in the long run. Practical implications The findings offer insights on how sales managers and organizations can help design supportive work environments for their salespeople to help reduce unethical behaviors. The findings also highlight the importance of understanding salesperson family values during the hiring process and keeping salespeople engaged, especially while they work from home, are isolated from their work environment and spend more working hours at home with family members. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current research is the first to investigate the impact of family work support on unethical behaviors. This is timely and valuable as the current COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of salespeople working from home, reduced sales performance and increased anxiety due to economic uncertainty, all of which could encourage unethical sales behaviors. This paper is also the first to investigate the mediating role of engagement on the effects of social support on unethical behaviors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".