Salespeople Who Reshape Their Jobs Can Become More Ethical, or Less. It Depends on Why
Salespeople who redesign their work to seek out growth act more ethically and find more meaning in the job. Those who redesign it to avoid threats do the opposite. Supportive organizations and empowering managers tip the balance.
Job crafting is the term for employees reshaping their own work: changing which tasks they take on, whom they work with, and how they think about the job. Management research has mostly treated it as a good thing. A study by four McCoy College of Business faculty members, published in the Journal of Business Ethics, shows that for salespeople the picture is split.
The authors are Aditya Gupta, Vishag Badrinarayanan, and Linda Alkire of the Department of Marketing and Indu Ramachandran of the Department of Management.
Two ways to craft a job
The study separates job crafting by its motive. Promotion-focused crafting is about seeking out opportunities: taking on challenges, building relationships, expanding the role. Prevention-focused crafting is about avoiding threats: shedding demands, narrowing the role, and staying out of harm’s way.
Salespeople have unusual latitude to do either. They work with less supervision than most employees, and they face pressure that can push them toward shortcuts. That combination makes the sales force a useful place to ask whether crafting helps or hurts ethical conduct.
What the studies found
The researchers ran a preliminary experiment and then a survey of business-to-business salespeople. Across both, crafting aimed at growth went with more ethical behavior, and crafting aimed at avoidance went with less.
The link runs through meaning. Growth-oriented crafting increases the sense that the work matters, and salespeople who find their work meaningful behave more ethically. Avoidance-oriented crafting reduces that sense of meaning, and ethical behavior falls with it.
What the organization can do
The company is not a bystander. Two organizational conditions changed the results. Where salespeople felt supported by their organization, and where their managers led in an empowering way, the benefits of growth-oriented crafting were stronger and the damage from avoidance-oriented crafting was smaller.
For sales leaders, the practical message is twofold. Encourage salespeople to shape their jobs, but pay attention to the direction they take. And invest in support and empowering leadership, since those are the levers that turn crafting toward ethical conduct rather than away from it.
This summary is based on the paper’s abstract. The full article reports the measures, samples, and effect sizes.
What it means for managers
- Not all initiative is good initiative. Salespeople who craft their jobs to pursue opportunities behave more ethically. Those who craft to dodge demands behave less ethically.
- Meaning is the mechanism. Growth-oriented crafting raises the sense that work matters, and that sense carries through to ethical conduct. Avoidance-oriented crafting drains it.
- Managers can shift the outcome. Perceived organizational support and empowering leadership strengthen the benefits of good crafting and soften the harm of the other kind.
Gupta, A., Badrinarayanan, V. A., Alkire, L., & Ramachandran, I. (2026). The countervailing effects of job crafting on salesperson ethical behaviors: The role of meaningful work and organizational interventions. Journal of Business Ethics, 203(2), 425-451. 10.1007/s10551-025-06003-y
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