Impacts of peers’ unethical behavior on employees’ ethical intention: Moderated mediation by Machiavellian orientation

Abstract

Research suggests a direct negative relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. But several possible mechanisms might explain this relationship in more detail. For example, Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterized by interpersonal manipulation and the use of unethical means to achieve certain self‐interested ends, whether useful or pleasant. This article adopts an Aristotelian understanding of philia, related to three goods on which human relationships rest: useful, pleasant, and honest. We propose that Machiavellianism, a self‐interested, pragmatic personality orientation, might explicate the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and ethical intention. The results of a structural equation model applied to a sample of 436 banking employees in Spain reveals that Machiavellianism partially mediates the relationship between peers’ unethical behavior and employees’ ethical intention. We also find that with a greater level of peers’ unethical behavior, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention increases, and that when peers’ unethical behavior is nonexistent, the negative effect of Machiavellianism on ethical intention disappears. These findings advance current literature by revealing that unethical peers can indirectly influence ethical intention, through shaping Machiavellianism. Our study is also the first to show that pairing high Machiavellians with ethical peers can help to cancel out the negative influence of Machiavellianism on ethical intention.

Are Happy Workers More Productive? The Mediating Role of Service-Skill Use

“…On the other hand, peers' self-interest and unethical behaviors are expected to harm HAW. In a recent study, Ruiz-Palomino et al (2019) found that peers' unethical behavior increased the negative impact of self-interest (Machiavelianism) on employees' ethical intentions. They also showed that when peers' unethical behavior is not present, the negative effect of selfinterest on ethical intentions disappears.…”

How Upper/Middle Managers' Ethical Leadership Activates Employee Ethical Behavior? The Role of Organizational Justice Perceptions Among Employees

“…When the opportunity to observe others' behaviors is not easy, using reports from others is likely not to be more appropriate than using self-reports (Podsakoff et al, 2012), given that on certain occasions, individuals are the most aware of their own personal behavior (Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019). Thus, to measure this variable, we slightly adapted a 12-item scale used in previous research (Newstrom and Ruch, 1975;Ferrell and Weaver, 1978) and asked employees to assess their level of agreement on these 12 items, which were a faithful reflection on what ethical behavior is, that is, behavior that rests upon universal moral principles leads to human growth (Ruiz-Palomino et al, 2019) and helps to ensure the good functioning of the organization (Ko et al, 2018). We combined the responses to each of the 12 items linearly to form a Mode A first-order composite variable, such that higher scores indicated stronger employee ethical behavior.…”

A relativistic approach to moral judgment in individuals: Review and reinterpretation

“…Relativism scores relate positively with Machiavellianism (e.g., r = .319, Al‐Khatib, Malshe, & Abdulkader, ; r = .45, Gurbuz & Eris, ; r = .328, Ho, Vitell, Barnes, & Desborde, ). Decades of research have confirmed that high Machiavellians are manipulative (Austin, Farrelly, Black, & Moore, ), regularly tell lies (McLeod & Genereux, ), intend to behave in ethically questionable ways (Ruiz‐Palomino, Banon‐Gomis, & Linuesa‐Langreo, ), adhere to questionable social norms (Shafer & Wang, ), and engage in destructive behaviors at work (Galperin, ). Although questionable ethics among Machiavellians suggest the same about high relativists, the implications of high Machiavellianism here may not be so straightforward.…”