Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior: A Moderated Mediational Model of Its Transmission From Managers to Employees

This study explores the psychological mechanism underlying and the boundary conditions affecting the relationship between managers’ unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) and subordinates’ willingness to engage in UPB. Drawing upon social learning and social cognitive theories, employee moral disengagement was predicted to mediate the relationship between managers’ UPB and employees’ UPB willingness; in addition, the moderating roles of both leader–member exchange and ethical relativism were investigated within this relationship. The results, based on 29 managers and 200 subordinates in Vietnam, supported the proposed mediation model. The findings further indicated that leader–member exchange augmented the positive relationship between managers’ UPB and employee moral disengagement, whereas employee ethical relativism weakened the positive relationship between moral disengagement and employees’ UPB willingness. By elucidating the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions, our findings offer an empirical basis for considering managers’ UPB as a critical antecedent to employees’ willingness to engage in UPB and also inform effective intervention approaches for organizations to constrain UPB.

The effect of formalism on unethical decision making: The mediating effect of moral disengagement and moderating effect of moral attentiveness

This study examined the relationship between formalism and unethical decision making among Chinese working adults. A total of 316 Chinese adult employees completed measures of ethical predispositions, unethical decision making, moral disengagement, and moral attentiveness. The results showed that formalism was related to a weaker propensity to morally disengage. Moral disengagement positively predicted unethical decision making and mediated the relationship between formalism and unethical decision making. Further, perceptual moral attentiveness negatively moderated the relationship between formalism and moral disengagement. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are presented.