MOTIVATIONS OF UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR

Jay T. Bates

doi:10.7273/000006545

This three-essay dissertation serves to better understand what motivates employee unethical behavior and what organizations can do to limit unethical behavior. Essay one explores how external factors such as long-term orientation and ethical work climate may influence the behavior of narcissistic employees. It tests whether these factors mitigate the tendency of narcissistic individuals towards unethical behavior through moral disengagement. The findings suggest that when narcissistic employees have a long-term orientation and are in an ethical work climate, their unethical behavior decreases. This challenges the notion that narcissists are solely driven by short-term motives and identifies some conditions under which the negative effects of narcissists may be attenuated. This essay contributes to both the unethical behavior and individual differences literatures. Essay two investigates the factors influencing individuals to engage in unethical behaviors that benefit their organization. It adapts a model of moral decision-making and extends it to other decision-making contexts. The study examines parallel models involving moral, prosocial, and selfish schemas. Through an online scenario-based experiment with 355 participants, it identifies that moral awareness reduces while selfish awareness increases the likelihood of engaging in unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPBs). Surprisingly, selfish awareness drives UPB engagement more than prosocial awareness does. This research enriches the UPB literature by considering schema-type awareness and contributes to the moral decision-making literature by exploring various decision-making schemas. Essay three investigates how perceptions of workplace ethics relate to ethical behavior when considering the influence of contextual factors. It applies contingency theory to examine how perceptions of ethical priorities, known as ethical work climate (EWC), interact with cultural values and job context variables. Through meta-analysis, the study finds that in societies with higher power distance, EWC perceptions have a stronger positive association with ethical behavior, while in contexts with greater job autonomy, this positive association weakens. The role of collectivism as a contextual moderator shows mixed results. Surprisingly, the consequences of errors in work contexts do not influence the association between EWC perceptions and ethical behavior. Overall, this study underscores the importance of organizational context in shaping the impact of EWC perceptions on ethical behavior.

MOTIVATIONS OF UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR

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