The impact of sales environment competitiveness on salespeople’s inclination towards unethical sales practices: The mediating role of self-control depletion and the moderating role of ethical leadership

The study aims to explore the relationship between the sales environment competitiveness and the tendency towards unethical sales practices among salespeople who work in a demanding sales environment. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study proposes that the perceived sales environment competition leads to self-control depletion, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of unfair sales practices. The study also suggests that ethical leadership can mitigate the aforementioned relationships. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaires from 379 salespeople working in the retail banking sector of Pakistan, using a time-lagged research design and structural equation modelling for analysis. Findings reveal that an increase in perceived sales environment competition leads to a higher probability of unethical sales practices due to self-control depletion. Ethical leadership plays a crucial role in constraining the influence of the perceived sales environment competition on self-control depletion. The study contributes to the sales ethics literature by investigating unethical sales practices from the perspective of sales environment competitiveness in contrast to the prevailing research that largely emphasizes on organizational or individual-level factors. Practically, this study suggests organizational decision makers and managers to consider the influence of a demanding sales environment and the psychological mechanisms that incline salespeople towards unethical sales practices; they should then design the appropriate mechanisms to control this behaviour. For instance, this can be achieved by incentivizing ethical sales practices or fostering a strong ethical culture within the organization to internalize sales ethics. Moreover, this study recommends sales manager to maintain high ethical standards to prevent the negative effect of a competitive sales environment on the ethical behaviour of salespeople. JEL Classification: M50