Can we decrease unethical behavior at work? The role of ethical culture, ethical culture strength and collective moral identity

Abstract

Past research suggests that ethical culture and moral identity impact ethical behavior in organizations. However, research has yet to consider if collective moral identity interacts with ethical culture to predict ethical behavior and how ethical culture strength has a role in this relationship. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of ethical culture, ethical culture strength, and collective moral identity with unit-level observed unethical behavior and unethical pro-organizational behavior while examining their moderating effects. We test our model with 1942 employees from 96 units of ten organizations and within-unit agreement was estimated for all variables. Our findings point out that ethical culture, and ethical culture strength have a strong association on unethical behavior, but that collective moral identity has no association. We discuss implications regarding the influence of collective moral identity on societies where the perception of corruption is high.