Preview

Oxymoron Sales Ethics?

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1860 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Oxymoron Sales Ethics?
It has been said that sales ethics is an oxymoron. Do you agree? Discuss this statement.
Do you agree that sales ethics is an oxymoron? Repeatedly, this statement has been a dispute amongst business enthusiast for decades. For this essay, oxymoron is a figure of speech described as a conjoined pair of two obvious contradictory such as pretty ugly, living dead, pretty ugly, jumbo shrimp etc. To kick off with, sales ethics is the application of ethical values to sales behaviour (Clive 2011). Ethical values are things that make up a person 's moral. In addition to that, the most basic foundation of ethical values are "treat others as you would like to be treated yourself". In the ethical practice of day-to-day businesses, the management should set a specific standard when it comes to sales even though it is often argued that individual factors play a fundamental role (Everyday Ethics 2013). The term sales ethics was originated in the United States and became widespread back in the 1970s (De George 2013). By contrast, it would be incompatible if the term; 'sales ' and 'ethics ' were to be separated into two absolute words. Sales can be defined as an act of selling where as ethics can be defined as values of moral a person have (Your Dictionary 2013). However, the main connection between the company and the customer is always the salesperson. In order to maintain an ethical foundation between the customer and company all narrows down to the relationship their salesperson have with their customer.

Here I am going to talk more about sales ethics and how it applies to any business behaviour. As stated above, it stated that sales ethics are ethical values to any business behaviour whilst applying its strategies of aspects on how organizations treat their stakeholders such as suppliers and customers. Ethics usually go beyond a company 's legal requirements therefore it is discretionary. This is why ethical concerns a person 's moral judgements about being right or



References: Clive, Chester. 2011. What is Business Ethics. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/What+Is+Business+Ethics-a01074206117 Everyday Ethics Program Proposal De George, Richard T. 2013. A History of Business Ethics. Accessed August 26, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/article/a-history-of-business-ethics/?fullscreen=true Dubinsky Alan J, Nataraajan Rajan and Huang Wen-Yeh Dubinsky, A. J, Jolson, M. A, Kotable, M. and Lim, C. U. 1991. "A cross-national investigation of industrial salespeople’s ethical perceptions”, Journal of International Business Studies,Vol Drucker Peter, F. 1958 "Business Objectives and Survival Needs: Notes on a Discipline of Business Enterprise." The Journal Of Business, Vol. 31, No.2 PP. 81-90 Hegarty, W Schmidt, David. 2008. Isn 't Business Ethics An Oxymoron? http://www.inc.com/leadership-blog/2008/10/isnt_business_ethics_an_oxymor.html Shaw, William H Your Dictionary. 2013. Definition of Sales and Ethics. Accessed August 26, http://www.yourdictionary.com/sales

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    References: Beauchamp, Tom L., & Norman E. Bowie (2004). Ethical Theory and Business. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Unit 1 Assignment

    • 308 Words
    • 2 Pages

    McMurrian, R. C., & Matulich, E. (2006). Building Customer Value and Profitability with Business Ethics. Journal of Business & Economics Research, 4 (11), 11–18.…

    • 308 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Companies that take the “high road”, will make lifelong customers out of even the most distrusting consumers. Who is the main connection between the company and the customer? The Salesperson! A company’s ethics and integrity are based on the relationship between the salesperson and the customer. How does one build or maintain an ethical foundation that will make a lifelong customer?…

    • 818 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Valentine, S. (2009). Ethics training, ethical context, and sales and marketing professionals ' satisfaction with supervisors and coworkers. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 29(3), 227-242. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.vlib.excelsior.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=3966067e-7273-461f-9aa0-9c93ba6d0592%40sessionmgr112&vid=5&hid=115…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ethical and moral issues in business go hand in hand, and go along well with one another. We each have our own moral standards that make us who we are and what we stand for. Our character comes from our moral ethics, and how we were raised to handle ourselves in certain situations. Ethical behavior comes from society and how we are perceived by society. Ethics in a business setting involves both morals and strong ethics. I am going to attempt to explain what the difference is between moral ethics and business ethics in this paper.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    What are business ethics? “The behavior that a business adheres to in its daily dealings with the world. The ethics of a particular business can be diverse. They apply not only to how the business interacts with the world at large, but also to their one-on-one dealings with a single customer. Many businesses have gained a bad reputation just by being in business. To some people, businesses are interested in making money, and that is the bottom line. It could be called capitalism in its purest form. Making money is not wrong in itself. It is the manner in which some businesses conduct themselves that brings up the question of ethical behavior.” (Crystal)…

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Currently, business ethics are considered to be very important, but there are still many organizations that do not engage in ethical behavior, not toward their employees and not toward other companies they work with, such as distributors and suppliers.…

    • 1473 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The author Robert Solomon argues that ethics has to an integral part with regard to business management. He does not believe that business management must include unethical or illegal methods to be able to succeed. Solomon preaches that business management is not as simple as obtaining revenue. “Businesses need to abide by fair policies and their owners have to be ethical in dealing with their customers” (Shaw p. 37). The author acknowledges that while illegal practices in business management could bring positive results at first, eventually the business is bound to fail. This is why Solomon recommended eight important policies that can help businesses in integrating ethics into their operations.…

    • 1517 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I feel like the people acting ethical in order to increase profits are just lying to the business they work for, they have to lie in order to make a profit, which I think is extremely wrong because in the first place the sales people shouldn’t be lying to the consumers.…

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ethics and moral obligation are something that we all encounter at one time or another. Even in a professional setting, all persons should act in a manner that would uphold the good of society. Why is it that good, ethical and moral behavior is not always adhered to? Is it because some people do not understand ethics and what it means to be ethical? To be ethical, one has to decide between right and wrong, determine what is for the betterment of society and act accordingly. Ethics have three basic criteria that must be met – obligations, moral ideas, and consequences (Ruggiero, 2004). Businesses have their own code of ethics and the individuals within that business have to determine whether or not they will follow that code of ethics. Ethical behavior in business is consistent with the principles, norms, and standards of business practice that have been agreed upon by society (Trevino & Nelson, 2004). At times, however, an individual decides to go against the code of ethical behavior for personal gain. This was just the case in the article researched by Team A.…

    • 2854 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Marketing Ethics

    • 5954 Words
    • 21 Pages

    pay a fine, and draft a proposed code of ethics for the advertising industry.1 The…

    • 5954 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Personal Views Ethics

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Each person should live with moral standards. To distinguish between the right and wrong is based on the person’s ethics. It describes what kind of values and beliefs does the person has. In business, it composed of standard ethics that serves as a guideline among employees about their expectation to the company. Newell S. stated that ethics in business focuses on identifying the moral standards of right and wrong as they apply to behaviour within and across business institutions and other related organizations.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This report will discuss the events that took place during the phone hacking scandal at News International and evaluate the behaviour of the Organisation and its Management. It will review the issues in this case against several ethical and ideological theories as well as providing recommendations for how things could have been handled differently. It will examine the role of Management within an organisation and reflect on its social and ethical responsibilities.…

    • 5454 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Business Ethics

    • 7229 Words
    • 29 Pages

    Ethics is a branch of philosophy and is considered as normative science because it is concerned with norms of human beings. Business ethics has evolved through time and across disciplines into a discipline that is one of the most important topics in the field of business. business ethics from a managerial perspective can be defined as ‘decisions about what is right or wrong (acceptable or unacceptable) in the organizational context of planning and implementing business activities in a global business environment to benefit: organizational performance, individual achievement in the workplace, social acceptance and approval of peers and coworkers in the organization as well as responding…

    • 7229 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics