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Introduction

Ethical issues in the information systems industry has been a common issue for an extended duration of time. One the ethical issue that is commonly discussed is salary issues where most information systems employees are underpaid by the organisation by certain amount. And most of the wages that is paid is usually based on the commission especially in sales area. At times this practice can be unethical as employees can start to behave inappropriately such as committing theft, lying to managers about their sales and many more. Therefore, employees believe they should be paid according to the appropriate rate that is fair and well deserve.

According to research done by Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder (2006), it is mentioned that managers do often face employees who caught behaving inappropriately and justify their actions of their wrong doing. This can be caused by poor personality by the employees. However it is argued that personality alone as a reason is rather a poor predictor of deviant behaviour (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006). One of the reason deviant behaviour exists because of norms of the workplace and managerial leadership as an individual personality trait or propensity.

In unforeseen circumstances, honest employees can behave in appropriately if they perceive their work environment is unjust or if they feel that management has treated them poorly. Sometimes, managers can be extremely control on their employees along side with being underpaid, employees will start to act deviant/ unethically. In most literature that is found, most of the literature sources have research on ethics in general but not in wages payment. For that reason the framework below shows each section on what will happen if sales employees are being underpaid and paid according to the rates.

Framework

1. Benefits of this action

· The organisation selling IS products/services

In this case of unethical dilemma of underpaid employees, the benefits are not available as there no little to any benefits of this action in which this can always lead to employee being resign and create a high turnover. But it could be said that experience managers in the organisations for a long duration of time are more professional in dealing ethical dilemma if they are underpaid

· Individual IS sales staffs

Individual sales staffs are not benefits of this action as they feel that being underpaid and this can bring emotional stress to them especially being underpaid and they are working under enormous pressure which can bring unethical sales behaviour which is defined as “short run sales person” that conduct unethical sales behaviour such as lying, exaggerating about the benefits of the products, lying about the availability, lying about the competition, selling products which customers do not need, giving unknown answers and manipulative influence tactics or high pressure selling tactics (Román and Ruiz, 2005). It is shown that high pressure selling tactics by individual IS sales staff can inhibit trust development and this can influence in lower level of trust and hence low pressure selling tactics are thought to create better trust (Kennedy, Ferrell and LeClair, 2001)

From time to time, experience level of the individual IS sales staffs can be beneficial especially the more experienced IS sales staffs. Industry professionals have repeatedly mentioned the variable experience to distinguish between agents who act ethically and who are not (Kurland, 1996), in this case IS sales staff predominantly the more experienced staffs will not be affected by being underpaid as they think being paid is enough rather than not being paid.

In different view, MIS professionals that are optimist think there is a positive relationship between success and ethical behaviour. They do not believe that there is strong pressure to behave unethically since successful manager is not claim to be unethical (Vitell and Davis, 1990) hence individual IS sales staff should feel the benefits of being underpaid even though it is unethical but in long term, it will give the learning experience.

· The organisation business clients

Organisation business clients are not benefits by this action as this can affect the customer satisfactions as customer satisfaction with the sales person reflects an emotional state that occurs in the response to an evaluation of the interaction experience that the customer has with the sales person. As some organisation business clients are focusing on repurchase intention. The definition of repurchase intention is to repurchase a particular brand of product again where a buyer who has higher level of trust of the salesperson (Kennedy, Ferrell and LeClair, 2001) are more trustworthy and will be back again to purchase as they have positively associated.

· The public

There is no research being done on the public being benefits by the action. This is due to lack of research or no reports are available.

· The IS industry/profession

The IS industry/profession set up a union for Information system sales staff that are underpaid. And it is not only aim towards IS sales staff, it should aim towards other IS staff from the lower to higher position.

2. Harm caused by this action?

· The organisation selling IS products/services

Although there are organisations that are highly ethical standards, this action can cause harm such as the widely opportunity to behave unethically where in some cases managers always believe their companies have higher ethical standards than other firms (Vitell and Davis, 1990) which is commonly happen for managers to act even though in this case of underpaid sales staffs where managers can claim that their staffs are being paid well and sometimes this claim can be told as a lie.

· Individual IS sales staffs

Individual Information System sales staff may behave unethically. This is due to pressure to perform and factors resulting in individual Information System sales staff to feel the burden to succeed. From time to time individual IS sales and staff are also pressured to meet goals such as meeting short term goals (Bolander et al., 2015) in which they feel if they do not perform well, they could get underpaid and hence act unethically towards themselves and the organisations. Hence it could be said that performance goals is the reason for employees to act unethically. This is because performance goals can/may motivate unethical selling behaviours (Bolander et al., 2015) especially to new individual IS sales staffs in which if they fail to achieve their goals.

For instance, if the presence of performance goals is sufficient to produce a sense of pressure and temptation to behave unethically hence this could increase logically as performance failed to accumulate. On the other hand, stress can be one factor that is found to contribute to unethical behaviour (Bolander et al., 2015) in which individual IS sales staffs can find themselves if they are underpaid, they can be stress as they could be able to sustain themselves financially in a long term.

· The organisation business clients

Organisation business clients may lose trust in the organisation. As customers trust towards the sales person may diminish as customer trust in a salesperson as customer trust is developed through repeated interactions between both parties in which customers observes the trust that is commitment and a property of an ongoing relationship which is not merely based on a single exchanged episode (Román and Ruiz, 2005), instead it is a repeated process. Once the trust is broken, it could be difficult for the organisation business clients to trust the sales person.

· The public

Public may talk bad things about the company if unethical issues such as underpaying workers on social media. And sometimes the media reporting can even affect the reputation of the organisation. This can bring the organisation reputation to a downfall

· The IS industry/profession

The IS industry/profession will lack of profession. In order to retain the profession, the industry/profession should revise and set the rules/policy and regulations on unethical behaviour of staff related to underpaid. This will give IT companies to manage their information system employee much better and ethically.

3. Benefits if action is universalised

· The organisation selling IS products/services

The organisation needs to revise their wage policy in order to retain their IS sales staffs as IS sales staffs are contributing to the finance of the organisation and maintain the company at the same time.

· Individual IS sales staffs

Occasionally, if individual IS sales staff feel they are being paid appropriately, this can increase the relationship with the manager. It could be said that employees that have positive trust relationship with their manager have more extreme negative reactions to violation of trust compare to employees who do not have trust relationship in the first place (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006). With negative reactions trigger, it is most likely to lead to much stronger emotions such as anger and other negative emotions (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006). It is argued that with negative emotions being trigger, it is most likely to lead the occurrence of deviant behaviour in the workplace because sales staff may feel unmotivated to do sales

· The organisation business clients

Organisation business clients are generally not affected by the benefits if the action is universalised as they can find other IS organisation that is ethical and trustworthy.

· The public

The public are not affected as there are no research/articles that reported or mentioned

· The IS industry/profession

IS industry/profession are not affected.

4. Harm if action is universalised

· The organisation selling IS products/services

Social pressure or influence can happen within the group (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006) and can influence a large part of the group within the employees and organisation. This tactic is called group norm conformity which is influenced by an individual desire for acceptance and cohesive among the employees and rewards that is associated with the conformity (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006).

· Individual IS sales staffs

Individual IS sales staffs that is underpaid may feel direct pressure from managers to conform Unethical sales ethic occurs. This occurs for new or recently hired sales people. When unethical sales occur hence this can result in cheating on sales in which it was so institutionalized among sales representatives at one organisation (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006). This offense always occur as sales staff can create a short hand names for their tactics. For instance, in able to meet with the sales quotas for an average dollar spent per order, individual IS sales staff would make a strategy which is the silent sales by adding extra items to the customer’s order (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006) to make sure they get extra sales.

Sometimes if individual IS sales staff is underpaid and feel the pressure from the managers, negative attitude and untrusting attitudes can occur as they feel betray by their managers at work. This can bring revenge to the next level in which where an incident of an employee bring a gun to seek revenge against their superiors

· The organisation business clients

Organisation business clients especially they are customers to the individual IS sales staff will feel cheated when they discover a silent sale being sold to them. At times the clients will return the item to the organisation (Litzky, Eddleston and Kidder, 2006). This can cause mistrust between sales staff and the business clients as the clients will think twice before purchasing items from the organisation. Also the organisation will find another organisation that is more trustworthy to purchase as this can be cause by misrepresentation or manipulation tactic.

· The public

The public can outcry and protest on the street on underpaid IS sales person/employees as they demand a fair pay.

· The IS industry/profession

IS industry/profession need to get involve to resolve the matter to make sure unethical behaviour is not tolerated in the industry/profession.

5. Contradiction if universalised

· The organisation selling IS products/services

Social influence can bring disadvantage and productivity towards the organisation. Also this can bring more damage than benefits. Also organisation should focus on the company policies (Chu, Chau and So, 2014) especially on wages standard instead of focusing on common issues such as legal issues, regulations, security standards and many more. The reason organisation focus on this common issues is because they increasingly emphasizing the risk management (Chu, Chau and So, 2014) instead of focusing the wages being paid to the staffs especially IS sales staffs. Hence researchers should consider underpaid IS sales staffs as an unethical topic to be research on.

· Individual IS sales staffs

Individual sales staffs can feel terrified if one individual IS sales staff is under paid and the manager are being aggressive towards the individual sales staff at the same time. This can affect them mentally in which being pressured to work overtime and trying to achieve sales target and start to behave unethically. It is argued that unethical behaviour is not intentional (Chu, Chau and So, 2014). This is because some individual can be influence easily by unethical behaviour which sometimes they need to cut corners to be competitive with their colleagues.

· The organisation business clients

The organisation business clients will not deal with unethical IS companies that have the reputation of underpaying the workers as the clients are paying a huge amount of money to purchase products and services related to IS which business clients expect

· The public

Similarly, the public would be upset as employees are being underpaid for their hard work

· The IS industry/profession

The IS industry/profession may not be happy about IS sales staffs are being underpaid. Also IS industry may bring issues such as globalization, cultural ethical diversity and the impact of internet

6. Used as means to end, violating their rights

· The organisation selling IS products/services

The organisation selling IS products/services used as means to end which violating their rights

· Individual IS sales staffs

Since individual IS sales staffs are underpaid with deviant behaviour occur, privacy issues can occur in which sales staff can bring up issues such as IT employees occupational health and safety and quality of life. Sometimes individual IS sales staff can plan the “logical bomb” in the systems for asking higher salary and they can be charged (Zhang, 2011).

When an individual IS sales staffs feel their rights being violate, poaching can occur. Poaching happens when a sales person leave the company and takes all the relevant data with him or her. It can be a worrying problem as it is mention that ten percent of sales executives have mentioned this issue as a concern (Bush et al., 2007). With technology growing rapidly, individual sales staffs can take advantage of it and distribute information to competitors. This can be demonstrated through a situation where a manager who works for the medical industry have mentioned that employees have jump ship to go with the competitors and there should be a limit on how much company should share their information with competitors (Bush et al., 2007). This can be applied to the disclosure of wages where employees can tell how much they are earning via social media.

· The organisation business clients

Organisation business clients are particularly not affected as they are just the clients which means this is not within their matter and they not involved. Also there are no reliable resources that show if organisation business clients are affected by it. In most cases, clients can either cut ties with the organisation

· The public

The public will not be affected as violating the rights is within the IS sales staff and not related to the public.

· The IS industry/profession

The IS industry/profession will have to look into policy related to violating rights of staffs.

7. Violating their rights, unfair (to powerless), action-taker has more power?

· The organisation selling IS products/services

In most cases where unethical behaviour like underpaid workers, the organisation that is selling IS products/services have the power over the employees. They will take action to cover up the issues

· Individual IS sales staffs

If individual IS sales staff feel their rights being violate, they can either leave the company and find another company. From time to time sales staff can report this matter to Fair Work in their respective countries if they feel powerless at times. In Australia particularly, if unfair work occur most employees will report to the Fair Work Ombudsman about their wages being underpaid and most underpaid sales staff will not report it due to the fact several of them will not report the matter as they are still working or they can find a better employer or organisation which is going to pay them appropriate and fair.

· The organisation business clients

In general organisation business clients are not violated with underpaid employees. Instead some of the business clients may bring the underpaid employees to the respective company as they offer a better wages for the employees.

· The public

Public are not affected by this issue

· The IS industry/profession

The IS industry/profession may need to rework on better

Conclusion

In conclusion, more future research should be done on the information system industry especially in researching information system sales staff wages being underpaid. This can be done via the industry/ professional body

Framework Theory

References

Bolander, W., Zahn, W., Loe, T. and Clark, M. (2015). Managing New Salespeople’s Ethical Behaviors during Repetitive Failures: When Trying to Help Actually Hurts. Journal of Business Ethics.

Bush, A., Bush, V., Orr, L. and Rocco, R. (2007). Sales technology: Help or hindrance to ethical behaviors and productivity?. Journal of Business Research, 60(11), pp.1198-1205.

Chu, A., Chau, P. and So, M. (2014). Explaining the Misuse of Information Systems Resources in the Workplace: A Dual-Process Approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 131(1), pp.209-225.

Kennedy, M., Ferrell, L. and LeClair, D. (2001). Consumers' trust of salesperson and manufacturer: an empirical study. Journal of Business Research, 51(1), pp.73-86.

Kurland, N. (1996). Sales Agents and Clients: Ethics, Incentives, and a Modified Theory of Planned Behavior. Human Relations, 49(1), pp.51-74.

Litzky, B., Eddleston, K. and Kidder, D. (2006). The Good, the Bad, and the Misguided: How Managers Inadvertently Encourage Deviant Behaviors. Academy of Management Perspectives, 20(1), pp.91-103.

Román, S. and Ruiz, S. (2005). Relationship outcomes of perceived ethical sales behavior: the customer's perspective. Journal of Business Research, 58(4), pp.439-445.

Vitell, S. and Davis, D. (1990). Ethical beliefs of MIS professionals: The frequency and opportunity for unethical behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 9(1), pp.63-70.

Zhang, J. (2011). Ethical Issues in Information Systems. In: 2011 International Conference of Information Technology, Computer Engineering and Management Sciences. [online] IEEE, pp.312-323. Available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6113649/ [Accessed 11 May 2017].