Factors Affecting to the Unethical Behavior of Insurance Salespeople: Evidence from Sri Lankan Insurance Industry

Abstract

There are limited studies on the unethical behaviour of insurance salespeople in Sri Lanka that focused on organizational factors that affect for unethical behaviour of insurance salespeople. The Ethical Impact Theory (EIT) and the Theory of Bounded Rationality theory used as a unique feature in the study. The sample of 330 insurance salespeople confirmed from the top 05 life and top 05 general insurance companies in Sri Lanka based on market capitalization and simple random sampling method. The data collected via questionnaires. The Researcher used income, benefits, job satisfaction, inability to identify customer needs, failure to fulfil responsibilities, sales target, coaching by the supervisor, and ethical training as independent variables. The data analysed using correlation and multiple regression analysis. The study revealed that income, benefits, job satisfaction, failure to fulfil responsibilities, sales target and coaching by supervisors have a significant positive relationship with the unethical behaviour of insurance salespeople whereas job satisfaction indicated a strong positive relationship. Study concludes that there is a negative impact on coaching by supervisor and unethical behaviour of salespeople in the Sri Lankan Insurance industry. The study is limited only to investigating the reasons for unethical behaviour. Further scholars, can study the consequences of these unethical behaviours and can conduct in-depth interviews to find more insights.