Adaptation of the Ethical Sales Behavior Scale for Mozambique

• Published in: Global business and management research 2023-04, Vol.15 (2), p.87-98
• Main Authors: José, Adelino Bernardo Barros, Zagheto, Jeanine Ăngela Vieira, Porto, Juliana Barreiros
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptation; Behavior; Behavior rating scales; Confidentiality; Consumers; Culture; Customer services; Ethics; Intellectual property; Quantitative psychology; Salespeople; Social norms; Validity
• ISSN: 1947-5667

The application of scales and questionnaires in a country other than that in which they were developed requires a process of translation, validation, and cross-cultural adaptation to ensure items attain semantic equivalence (Beaton et al., 2000) and psychometric value (Borsa et al., 2012) in the culture where they will be used. [...]the study presented in this article aims to adapt to Mozambican Portuguese and to obtain validity evidence for a scale measuring ethical sales behavior based on the work of Román (2003). Adapting and validating the ethical sales behavior scale will be useful because it will allow researchers to survey salespeople's behavior and study its antecedents and consequences. [...]this may help organization leaders understand the relationship between their sales teams and consumers and thus adopt models that favor the latter. (2017) performed a qualitative analysis of literature, codes of ethics and critical incidents to propose 10 behavioral dimensions of ethical performance at work: truthfulness (does not knowingly provide wrong or inaccurate information), conflict of interest (avoids or overtly acknowledges potential conflicts of interest), intellectual property (does not violate the intellectual property rights of others), confidentiality (maintains appropriate confidentiality), unfair treatment (does not provide an unfair advantage to self or others via), defamation of others (does not maliciously harm the reputation, work, or performance of others), workplace bullying (does not subject others to physical or psychological harassment), whistleblowing (reports maliciousness, harmful, or unlawful behavior to the appropriate authority), abuse of power (uses own position power to coerce others) and respect for mies (does not violate laws or agreements). Furthermore, the authors propose that the ethical dimension be added to Campbell's (2012) work performance model. [...]ethical behaviors are an integral part of work performance and should be considered in any performance assessment.