How Do Individual Traits Affect Unethical Behavior?Trait Activation Perspective

This paper investigates the path through which individual traits affect amoral behavior.Employees working in an organization are often stipulated to act within the scope permitted by the organization’s rules,such as not being late,early,or absent without reason,not wasting company resources,etc.Many studies have shown that individual traits have a significant impact on their behavior.Neurotic and narcissistic individuals are more likely to engage in unethical behavior,while conscientious individuals will strictly demand their behavior and are less likely to engage in unethical behavior.Moral disengagement provides a mechanism to explain why people behave unethically.People generally seek consistency in moral beliefs to avoid discrepancies between what they think is right and what they do.Conflicts between behaviors and beliefs often create a psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance.It is easier to justify one’s unethical behavior if one is freed from personal moral standards.Therefore,this paper introduces moral disengagement as a mediating variable to explore whether neuroticism,conscientiousness,and narcissism affect amoral behavior through moral disengagement.In the work scene,employees’ unethical behavior is driven by subjective factors such as individual characteristics,and organizational factors determine the boundary conditions of their behavior.As a reflection of employees’ control and decision-making power over their work,autonomy is believed by many scholars to affect the behavior of individuals in organizations.For a long time,the positive effect of work autonomy has been confirmed by many studies and widely used by enterprise managers to improve employees job satisfaction and work engagement and help them achieve better performance goals.Although autonomy gives employees more initiative and freedom over their work,allowing individuals to allocate more resources to work,at the same time,less organizational oversight and greater autonomy enable employees to be flexible Treat normative norms in the organization so that individuals have more opportunities and less risk to pursue their interests,and reduce compliance with organizational rules and due performance outputs.At present,most of the research results in the field of work autonomy focus on the discussion of the positive effects of this construct,and the literature on its negative effects focuses on two aspects: the negative effects of individual work autonomy at the team level;and the individual level.The role of work autonomy in promoting prosocial violations.Among them,the latter is still not focused on the positive effects of work autonomy.This paper puts job autonomy as a moderator variable into the path of individual traits affecting unethical behavior and believes that if individuals are endowed with work autonomy,the reduction of organizational restrictions and supervision will increase the original individual’s degree of freedom and promote individuals to follow the rules in the organization.Acting on its characteristics increases the production of unethical behaviors;on the contrary,the job requirements are the opposite.In organizations with stricter requirements,individuals will lack a certain degree of freedom and sense of control and will try to act in accordance with organizational rules,thereby reducing the incidence of unethical behaviors.Therefore,exploring the mediating path of neuroticism,conscientiousness,and narcissistic personality through moral disengagement affect an individual’s amoral behavior,as well as the moderating role of job autonomy and job requirements,is the research theme of this paper.The relevant hypotheses in the model were verified through questionnaire research.Based on a sample of questionnaires(N = 205),this paper indicates that neuroticism has a direct negative effect on amoral behavior,conscientiousness and narcissism have a positive effect on amoral behavior,and job requirements are in the effect of neuroticism on amoral behavior.The negative effect can be weakened on the path,and the positive effect can be enhanced on the path of conscientiousness and narcissism on amoral behavior,and the mediating effect of moral disengagement has also been verified.However,the moderating effect of work autonomy has not been confirmed.Through the research of this paper,the path of individual traits affecting amoral behavior,the moderating role of job requirements,and the mediating role of moral disengagement are proposed and confirmed.This result develops the mediating mechanism of individual traits to amoral behavior;in addition,it enriches the research results of job requirements,and provides theoretical and data support for future research on job requirements.