Research On Generating Mechanism Of Enterprise Employees' Unethical Pro-organizational Behaviors

Commercial development comes with problems of business ethics,which have been brought into focus by both the academic field and industrial research areas.In recent years,a spate of business scandals came to light which could be harmful for the business environment as well as the long-term reputation and development of the enterprise,and also even goes againt corporate strategy.Though the purpose of employees' unethical behavior in the workplace might not be destructive,and sometimes could be unintentional or good intentions gone awry,the negative effects for the enterprises should still be paid attention to.The recent hot issue about unethical pro-organizational behaviors(UPB)refers to unethical behaviors in favour of the short-term interest of the enterprise but could cause seriously damage to the long-term benefit of the company in the end.Although the original intention of employees to engage in UPB might be protecting the organization,the long-term virtuous strategic development of the enterprise should be regarded as a high-priority.Hence,the understanding of the reasons for the generating of the UPB and the inhibition to govern effectively with it are the guarantee to keep healthy development and long-term strategy of the enterprises,and furthermore to promote optimization of social commercial civilization.This study combines the extended theory of planned behavior which offers good explanatory of individual behaviors with social,organizational and personal factors,which are employees' organizational identification,moral identification,empowerment and moral disengagement from the perspectives of “agreement between knowledge and action” in order to understand and master the overall research context and status of the relevant literature.Based on the social identity theory,social cognitive theory,self-determination theory and the theory of planned behavior,this study constructs the theoretical model of the generating mechanism of enterprise employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors.We also explore the reasons and paths of the UPB generation and expands the role boundary by study the moderating effect of moral disengagement.Statistical analysis methods such as structural equation analysis,bootstrap mediation analysis and hierarchical regeression model are applied so as to analyze the survey data and verify the research model and hypothesizes in this study.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:1.There are differences among the impacts of organizational identification,moral identification and empowerment in the generating mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors.The generating mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors(UPB)includes three antecedents,which are organizational identification(OI),moral identification(MI)and empowerment(EM).In this study,the organizational identification has positive influence on UPB through the mediating effects of attitude toword the behavior and intention.That is to say,given the dark side of OI,when employees have high OI,they tend to hold a positive attitude toward UPB and then are inclined to engage in it.Moral identification has negative influence on UPB through the mediating effects of subjective norm and intention.However,the result is non-significant,yet which bring into correspondence with the results of the domestic and foreign researches in the matter of the negative relationship between MI and UPB.Moral identification refers to predictive factors of individual toward ethical behaviors under socially acceptable moral standard.The subjective norm covers the meaning of perceived social pressure for individual whether to engage in certain behavior.Therefore,we assume MI has positive effect on subjective norm,which is proved by the empirical test.The reason for the invalid assumption of the mediating effects of subjective norm and intention between MI and UPB might be that UPB has both pro-organizational and unethical characteristics,which lead to the fact that although individual is negative about UPB to resist the moral principles,the pro-organizational aspect renders individual to be ambivalent toward it,with regards to the content of promote welfare of others included in moral identification.Meanwhile,the inconvenience to be public to others and the invisibility to be detected of UPB might weaken the effect on individual by external environment.When it comes to the empowerment(EM),it has a positive effect on perceived behavioral control,and the mediating roles of perceived behavioral control and intention are significant between EM and UPB.The results indicate that with perception of EM,people feel to be enabled and easy to engage in UPB.In other words,the obstacles to engaging in UPB might be removed,so the perceived behavioral control could be higher,and then it facilitates the intention and behavior of UPB.2.There are three paths for the generating mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors.Firstly,organizational identification(OI)becomes an intention through attitude towards the behavior,and then influences the UPB.OI has a significantly positive correlation with attitude,and attitude is positively related to intention,and the relationship between intention and UPB is significant positive correlated.Attitude and intention are mediators between OI and UPB.Therefore,the first path for the generating mechanism of UPB is from OI to attitude to intention and then to UPB.Secondly,moral identification(MI)becomes an intention through subjective norm,and then restrains UPB.MI is positively related to subjective norm,while the relationship between subjective norm and intention is non-significant,and the path coefficient of subjective norm and intention is negative.Intention and UPB are significantly positive related.Neither of the mediating roles of subjective norm and intention is valid.In conclusion,the path of MI to subjective norm to intention and then to UPB doesn't work.Thirdly,empowerment(EM)becomes ant intention through perceived behavioral control,and then acts on UPB.EM is significantly related to perceived behavioral control with a positive relation.Perceived behavioral control has positive influence on intention,and then intention affects UPB significantly.Perceived behavioral control and intention are effective mediators between EM and UPB.Hence,the path of EM to perceived behavioral control to intention and then to UPB is successful.3.Moral disengagement plays the role as moderator in the generating mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors.Moral disengagement(MI)is introduced as a moderator in the generating mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors(UPB).The purpose is to explore the difference between UPB and common unethical behaviors based on the characteristic of “pro-organizational” of UPB.The empirical result shows that MI is significantly moderated on the process from intention to UPB analyzed with the method of hierarchical regeression model.Therefore,MI is a significant moderator of the relationship of intention and UPB.When employees hold high MI,intention is more likely to be UPB.The main innovations of this study:1.This study integrates social,organizational and personal factors and extended theory of planned behavior(TPB)so as to systematically explain the generating mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors(UPB).The current research on UPB is mainly based on the social identity theory,social exchange theory and social cognitive theory in order to find antecedents,however,the motivation and path system of UPB is not mentioned.To fill the gap,on the basis of the planning characteristic of UPB and previous research on effects of personal factors,this study uses extended and comlete model of TPB from the perspective of “agreement between knowledge and action” to verify the influencess of personal factors on UPB through TPB.2.Enriching the research of unethical behaviors explained by the theory of planned behavior(TPB)by applying TPB to interpret UPB.TPB has proved to be a sound explanation on positive behaviors,such as ethical behaviors.Nevertheless,the research on negative behaviors,such as unethical behaviors,by using TPB has not been launched extensively.Although several studies used TPB to study UPB,which only used the idea of TPB or partial model.This study makes application to complete model of TPB to understand UPB.It is a verification of negative behaviors using TPB and a supplement to the TPB application to unethical behaviors as well.A a result,this study expands the TPB's range of application and universality.Meanwhile,this study provides a new paradigm for UPB research.3.This study focuses on the systemic mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors generation.According to the “pro-organizational” and“unethical” characteristics of UPB,moral disengagement(MI)is introduced to be a moderator and thereby fuctioning as the boundary of the mechanism.Based on the literature of MI and UPB,it was studied as mediator generally.However,this study refers MI to the phenomenon for individual to seek excuses for behaving unethically during the process from intention to UPB.In consequence,MI is treated as the moderator in the mechanism of employees' unethical pro-organizational behaviors generation,and it could be a development of UPB research.