The Shoe Store Incident
Should Bob swap Tom and Mary so that the store gets the benefit of Imelda’s purchases, or should he stand firm that only Tom is available to sell her shoes? What legal and ethical issues arise in this case, and what legal and ethical principles guide this decision? What choice do you make and why?
In any business, a written policy can avoid or prevent lawsuits. The shoe store chain has clearly established that the rotation of two employees daily or weekly will occur in the store to create fairness in commission sales. In addition, if only two employees are present one works in the back of the store and the other works in front, this clearly creates fairness of commissions earned (pay), good business ethics practice. Working in sales requires a lot of personal judgment from a company representative. By its nature, the job relies heavily on social relationships and on persuasion. Sales people also usually work on commission; if they do not make the sale, they lose cash. In the wrong hands, these elements can lead to unethical behavior, causing undue pressure on customers or vendors. Ethical behavior and doing the correct or right thing is at the forefront for salespeople today. Subsequently ethical performance is an individual process and training development related issues are important. Salespeople require guidelines on ethical, equality and discrimination issues. The guidelines should be formulated and clearly communicated to help employees to effectively deal with situations of equal pay, fairness, and or discrimination whenever the need arises. Job performance, employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction will prevail with knowledge and understanding of employment laws (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2007).
What has guided the ethical issues is the set of standards the company has worked out from human reason by which the human actions