5. Create and manage an ethical climate.
Ethical climate concerns the way employees view their work environment on moral dimensions. Four dimensions of ethical climate are policies and rules, trust and responsibility, peer behavior, and a bottom-line sales orientation. In particular, a strong bottom-line orientation-heavy emphasis on making the numbers-is responsible for motivating unethical actions. The sales manager can work toward a more positive ethical climate by emphasizing four workplace outcomes: (1) employees should know and understand ethics, (2) management should measure the ethical climate and use the measure to diagnose potential problems, (3) managers should lead by example, and (4) managers should use an ethics checklist to avoid making poor decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas.