The relationship between salespersons’ ethical philosophy and their ethical decision-making process

The aim of the present research is studying the relationship between the salespersons’ ethical philosophy and their ethical decision-making process and seeks to answer two fundamental questions: first, what is the ethical philosophy of salespersons? And second, how does the salespersons’ ethical philosophy affect their ethical decision-making process? Statistical population of this research is salespersons who have passed the sales training course at the Department of Commerce Research Centre. One hundred thirty-seven questionnaires of total 300 accessible populations were analyzed through path analysis method. The findings indicate that most salespersons are idealists. Although this idealism affects the ethical judgment directly, but the effect of relativism on ethical intention is more considerable. © 2013, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.