On a more general level, Cooley (2002) discusses the conditions for combining business and friendships, and argues that most relationships in business must be kept on the lower level of business acquaintanceship. On the one hand, the rigours of competing well in the current economic system may well lead to unethical relationships on the parts of the participants. On the other hand, by refraining from deceiving those in business relationships with them and treating everyone including themselves as ends in themselves, each person can create good business acquaintanceships that will help them compete efficiently and ethically (ibid).
As discussed previously, the established view on commerce as a primarily organizational act puts the NM practitioner view on friendships to the test. The NM practitioner community as well as some relationship marketing academics (see Price & Arnould 1999) propose friendships as suitable contexts for commerce. In this view, both marketers and customers gain mutual benefits through engaging in relationships with each other via affection, loyalty and reciprocal gift giving.
This instrumental view clashes with the view on friendships as expressive and altruistic relationships, and thus reveals the modernist, dualistic assumptions related to the issue.
It is noteworthy that business ethics and salespeople’s professionalism are often viewed as entangled and interconnected constructs. For example, Hawes et al. (2004) conclude that the classification of a sales job as a profession will require the development and enforcement of an ethical code. This view is explicitly recognized within the direct selling industry, which develops and markets its international and national ethical codes and best practices through the industry associations around the world.
In their study on gendered practices within an academic work community, Katila and Meriläinen (1999:117) note how the characteristics required for professional identity at university seems to be ‘tied to a system of values in which identities defined as masculine were prioritized’. Their study shows how women’s gender positions are made explicit through categorizing them, for example, as a ‘girl’ or a ‘seducer’ in an academic context. Further on, this image of incompetent women is strengthened by the behaviour of all organizational members. Men display masculinity by being public, visible, and aggressive whereas women tend to adopt a feminine position by being more private, invisible, and submissive. They conclude that according to the academic standards of professionalism, women’s behaviour is regarded as unprofessional (ibid).
Media discourse on NM reveals similar standards of professionalism associated with selling jobs.
Professional NM salespeople adopt the images, e.g., of businesswomen or conmen – both described in masculine terms as self-determined, visible, and public characters. Furthermore, professionalism in this context is associated with success in financial terms, which also seems to
require masculine features from salespeople. Non-professionalism then is constructed through feminine cues, such as altruism, privacy, and financial insignificance, leading to representations of the NM salespeople as housewives and stay-at-home mothers.
Altogether, this study implies that it is still more convenient and natural to see women dabbling at home, than running financially significant businesses. For example, the statistical fact that most NM salespeople are female appears to erode and lessen the professional status of NM. This implies that the prevailing cultural conditions for female-dominated businesses are still likely to be restricted and bounded by stereotypically gendered prejudices. The common presumption in the NM context is that the female-driven sales organization is ethical, but in financial terms a ‘pin money business’.
Furthermore, the analysis of the media discourse shows a prevailing tendency to separate emotions from work and rational thinking from intimate relationships. In general, this view implies unwillingness to tolerate emotional involvement with professional work, and a disinclination to accept commercial activities in the context of intimate relationships.
Following that, in order to gain a professional and ethical identity, NM salespeople in the ethical/professional frame are constituted as stereotypically masculine characters, which are detached from emotions and intimate relationships. Accordingly, businesswomen in this frame are featured as having masculine characteristics also, and social networks are seldom seen as appropriate scenes for commercial activities.
The distinction between the sales and NM stories, in terms of ethics and professionalism identified in this study, has a notable analogy to a broader discussion of a suggested
differentiation between morality and economy. For example, Panula (1999) argues that moral and economic choices are always exclusive, that we enter daily the crossroads of ethical and business worlds, and that in any new ethical choice situation we as cognitive human beings make our choices either on the basis of our good moral will or on the basis of our amoral goals. In this view, postmodern social reality distinguishes between a rational and instrumental world, which may override the normative and expressive aspects of human lives, resulting in a world view of differentiated moral and economical worlds (ibid 12-13).
Analogous to this view is the visualization of NM frames consisting of the horizontal dimension with the extremes of non-professionalism and professionalism, and the vertical dimension with the extremes of ethical and unethical. Whereas Panula in his study focuses particularly on the crossroads of the moral (ethical) and economic (professional) dimensions of individual choices, my focus here has been on the conditions in which the representations of selling and NM take
diverse forms in terms of the ethical, unethical, professional and non-professional dimensions.
Thus, in this study I have identified and described the discursive battles and negotiations between the moral and business worlds.
Panula (1999:12) states that one is admittedly likely to argue against the suggested differentiation between moral and economic worlds: why should it be impossible to have both morality and economy? Why cannot one have both? In this study, I share this view on our common concern to ‘have it all’, and argue that this particular dilemma is an elementary aspect and determinant of clashes between the conflicting views of NM. In other words, the attempt to combine ethical and economic choices in these specific social settings for commerce underlies the discursive clashes concerning selling and NM. Furthermore, these clashes are likely to take place independently of the viewers’ beliefs whether the attempt to combine ethics and economy is discursive and rhetorical, political, ideological, and/or cognitive and rational. On the basis of this study, I argue that regardless of whether or not it is possible to have both morality and economy in terms of commerce in social settings, we as incomplete humans continually strive to have it all.
Taking the above discussion into consideration, the representations of ethical and professional selling, NM and NM salespeople are in a flux, as diverse knowledge-creating communities negotiate their views between the potential moral and economic choices and the results of those choices.
To summarize, NM business applications challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions of the established conditions for ethical and professional commerce in a variety of ways. Competing discourses in the media deal with and take a stand on whether business relationships can coexist and complement relationships that are primarily social, or whether business relationships destroy and substitute intimate relationships. The conditions for NM are thus strongly bounded by cultural norms concerning relationship ethics and business professionalism. Overall, it can be concluded that all communities creating knowledge of NM acknowledge the features that raise serious concerns related to the ethics and professionalism of selling in private settings, among social relationships, and that use several discursive, practical and/or cognitive tactics to solve or avoid them. As can be concluded, consideration of ethics and professionalism is likely to be of extreme relevance in other types of consumer-to-consumer marketing applications as well.