Paved with good intentions: role of situational and dispositional influences on employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior

Abstract

Purpose The rise in the instances of ethical scandals in recent times has brought to light the hitherto ignored phenomenon of unethical proorganizational behavior (UPB) by employees. Drawing upon the social exchange theory, this study aims to examine the role of perceived organizational support (POS) and organizational identification on UPB. The research also investigated the moderating role of core self-evaluation (CSE) and positive reciprocity beliefs. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses were tested with three-wave survey data collected from 306 executives from India. Data was analyzed using mediation and moderated mediation analyses on PROCESS v 3.0 macro. Findings Results showed that organizational identification mediated the relationship between POS and UPB. Further, CSE and positive reciprocity beliefs were seen to moderate the mediated relationship providing support for the moderated mediation framework. Practical implications The study highlights the importance of clear code of ethics, communication of ethical guidelines and ethical behavior of the managers as some of the ways to reduce the menace of UPB. Further, managers should be more vigilant toward the employees low on CSE and high on positive reciprocity beliefs as they are more prone to engage in UPB given their identification with the organization. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the mediating role of organizational identification in the relationship between POS and UPB. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has explored the moderating role of CSE and positive reciprocity beliefs in the aforesaid mediation.

Spiritual Leadership, Organizational Identification and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior in Hospitality Sector: A Social Exchange Perspective

“…Unethical conduct is recurrently befalling in organizational settings, though sometimes employees oblige unethical actions not merely for their selves but for the benefit or aid of their leaders or firms (Umphress et al, 2010). According to a past study by Chhabra and Srivastava (2022), organizational sustenance, as well as leadership, are affirmative organizational aspects which fuel the manifestation of unethical conduct in organizational boundaries. These asserting aspects enhance identification as well as the commitment of workers to their organizations; consequently, workers detriment societal comforts to deliver benefits to their organization by executing unethical pro-organizational behaviors (Umphress et al, 2010;Wen et al, 2020).…”

“…On the other hand, because of good quality social exchange association between leader and followers, employees' organizational identification gets elevated, and as a result, the likelihood of executing UPB declines (Kelebek & Alniacik, 2022;Song et al, 2022). Chhabra and Srivastava (2022) also theoretically appraised positively exchanged thoughts and robust identification with organizations that exclusively affect the UPB of employees. Likewise, employees considered strong organizational identifiers found more executing UPB at the workplace (Graham et al, 2020).…”

“…Extensive preceding literature high spot that in the relentlessly modest business environment, UPB is extensively prevailing in the organizational settings and have considerable impending destructive influences on the organizations and entire society (Chhabra & Srivastava, 2022;Lian et al, 2022;Yin, Zhang, & Lu, 2021). Therefore, in management and organizational studies, lessening such unethical pro-organizational behavior is becoming a grave concern (Zhang & Xiao, 2020).…”

A relational view of unethical pro-organisational behaviour

“…UPB is an unethical employee practice that benefits an organisation but violates societal norms (Umphress et al , 2010; Wang et al , 2019). Although scholars have conducted studies to uncover and explain UPB (Chhabra and Srivastava, 2022), a gap exists in the literature in providing the philosophical reason to justify why employees feel morally obligated to engage in UPB when they identify with the organisation. To address this void, we introduce the use of Darwall’s (2006) second-person relational philosophy as the philosophical foundation of UPB.…”

Does employee empowerment moderate the effect of situational and dispositional variables on emotional exhaustion differently? The COVID-19 crisis context

“…First, from a theoretical angle, this study will extend the knowledge of variable categorizations. While the discourse of situational and dispositional attributions separation has been long established (Miller et al, 1981), to date, only a few management and organization studies (Chhabra & Srivastava, 2022; Ilies et al, 2011) apply clustered situational and dispositional variables interplay within a single frame. Such a situation restricts understanding of how different variable categories react to particular variables.…”