Research On The Influence And Mechanism Of Unethical Pro-supervisor Behavior:The Perspective Of Supervisor-follower Interaction

With the rapid development of economy and society,business ethics issues are increasingly concerned by the practical and academic circles.In the early days,the negative impact of unethical behaviors on organizations was discussed more.Later,academic circles began to pay attention to unethical pro-organizational behaviors(hereinafter referred to as "UPB").It should be said that the unethical pro-organizational behaviors of enterprises may do good to enterprises in the short term,but the adverse impact of the enterprise itself,the business environment and the whole society cannot be ignored.Following the above research logic,the academic community has begun to pay attention to the unethical pro-supervisor behavior(hereinafter referred to as "UPSB").Some of the corporate unethical incidents exposed in recent years were carried out by followers to cover up motives such as leadership mistakes,and this behavior has brought harm to corporate and social welfare in the long run.Therefore,take the long view on the development of the organization,it is necessary to restrain and correctly guide this behavior.However,suppressing UPSB is difficult,because supervisors with decision-making power that may benefit from this behavior have little incentive to stop such behavior.It would say that the influence mechanism of UPSB is very complex,which is also one of the important motivations for this study.Previous studies have explored the mechanism of UPB or UPSB from the perspective of followers themselves or colleagues,but less from the perspective of organization or leadership.Therefore,it is difficult to provide effective measures and paths to intervene in this behavior from the organizational or leadership level.For those above reason,this study explores followers’ UPSB from the perspective of supervisors as observers,aiming to understand supervisors’ cognition,attitude,and feedback on followers’ UPSB in the process of interaction.Since UPSB has the dual attributes of "pro-leader" and "non-ethical",its influence mechanism may be complicated from the perspective of leadership.Most of the previous studies focused on the positive or negative one-way effect of UPB or UPSB,and there was a lack of research on its dual-path effect.This has also become the starting point and focus of this research.Starting from the practical background and related theories and literatures,this study uses the theory of moral domain and social information processing as the basic theories to analyze the problem,and constructs the follower’s UPSB and its cognitive process observed by supervisors from the perspective of binary interaction between supervisors and followers.A theoretical model of behavioral responses.Since the UPSB of follower has the dual attributes of "pro-leader" and "non-ethical",according to practical experience,supervisors may acquiesce or even accept this kind of behavior according to their own preferences,and of course may punish this kind of behavior based on system requirements.It can be seen that the supervisors have at least two different outcomes of tolerance or punishment when dealing with followers’ UPSB.Accordingly,this study selects supervisor lenient behavior and supervisor non-contingent punishment as positive and negative outcome variables,respectively,to analyze the impact mechanism of dual pathways.Regarding the mediating mechanism of this dual path,according to the basic assumptions of social information processing theory,individuals’ cognition and respond to situations according to the response paradigm of social information-cognition-behavior.Individuals will carry out cognitive processing according to the acquired social information,and then form corresponding perceptions,attitudes,and behaviors.Therefore,when supervisors observe the behavior of followers,the cognitive process generated is an important prerequisite for determining their behavioral response,and the most important way at the cognitive level is identification or rational reflection.Based on the above understanding,this study selects two cognitive variables,"perspective taking",which is biased towards identification,and "rumination",which is biased towards rational reflection,as mediating variables to explain the mechanism of dual pathways.Regarding the boundary conditions of the model,this study introduces the perspective of the integration of moral domain theory and social information processing theory,and uses supervisor-follower value congruence and moral courage as moderator variables.Moral domain theory divides individual domain knowledge into personal domain,conventional domain,and moral domain.Individuals who are dominant in different domains tend to choose different understanding methods and cognitive processes.For example,the supervisor’s values belong to the category of the personal domain.When the supervisor-follower value congruence is high or low,they tend to understand this event as an event in the personal field.When it is high,it will be more inclined to recognize the behavioral motivation of followers "pro-leader".Even if the followers implement UPSB,they will choose to understand and tolerate the follower’s behavior.On the other hand,when supervisors have high moral courage,based on high moral standards,it is difficult to understand the "non-ethical" aspect of the follower’s behavior,and corresponding punishment will be implemented accordingly.It should be noted here that the supervisor observed that the follower’s UPSB has different effect on perspective-taking and rumination in different condition.It is placed in a certain situation(such as supervisor-follower value congruence,moral courage,etc.),that will have an impact on perspective taking and rumination.Accordingly,this study does not explore the direct effects of UPSB on perspective taking and rumination,but focuses on the interaction effects of UPSB and supervisor-follower value congruence,and the interaction between UPSB and moral courage on perspective taking and rumination,respectively.Specifically,this study includes the following three aspects: First,the interaction effect of UPSB and supervisor-follower value congruence(personal domain)and moral courage(moral domain)on perspective taking and rumination;the second is to explore the influence of perspective taking on the supervisor’s lenient behavior,and the influence of rumination on the supervisor’s non-contingent punishment behavior;and the moderated mediating effect between them.Through a comprehensive review of the literature on various variables such as UPSB,supervisor-follower value congruence,moral courage,perspective taking,rumination,lenient behavior,non-contingent punishment behavior,etc.,the operational definitions of each variable are defined and selected.Mature scales measure and collect data on individual variables.This study selected 148 team leaders and their followers from two financial service enterprises in the southwest region.To verify the model,this study carried out a three-stage data collection procedure with a 2-week interval between each stage,and finally obtained 110 valid supervisor questionnaires.The data analysis part mainly uses SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.4 two statistical software for data processing and verification such as descriptive statistical analysis,confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesis verification.Judging from the results of theoretical analysis and empirical data,this study draws the following conclusions:(1)It is observed that the interaction effect of followers’ UPSB and supervisor-follower value congruence affects their perspective taking and rumination.(2)It is observed that the interaction effect of follower’ UPSB and supervisor moral courage affects the supervisor’s rumination and perspective taking.(3)Perspective taking positively affects supervisors’ lenient behavior.(4)Rumination positively affects supervisors’ non-contingency punishment behavior.(5)Supervisor-follower value congruence moderate the effect mechanism of UPSB observed by supervisors on supervisor’s lenient behavior and non-contingent punishment behavior through perspective taking and rumination respectively.(6)Moral courage moderate the effect mechanism of UPSB on supervisors’ lenient behavior and non-contingent punishment behavior through perspective taking and rumination,respectively.The theoretical contributions and innovations of this study include: First,it expands the subdivision concept and related research of unethical pro-organizational behavior.This study attempts to explore supervisors’ cognition and response process to followers’ implementation of UPSB from an observer’s perspective.The results of the study enrich and develop the relevant theories of UPSB,further expand the research perspective,and then supply a more comprehensive analysis and understanding of organizational The UPSB provides important literature support.Second,based on the consideration of the dual properties of UPSB,this study explores the dual path effect of UPSB.It reveals the inner cognitive information processing process and the action mechanism of the behavioral response of the supervisor when he observes the follower’s behavior.By fully considering the positive and negative aspects of UPSB,new ideas are opened for future research to further expand the impact of UPSB.Third,this study found that there is an interaction effect between the individual’s domain knowledge(moral domain,personal domain)and the observed UPSB.From the perspective of moral domain theory and social information processing theory,it is found that UPSB does not necessarily affect lenient and punishing behavior of employees,but requires domain knowledge as a precondition.Different cognitive judgments are made on UPSB,resulting in different behavioral responses.The results of this study extend the existing research on the mechanism of leadership style on UPSB,and provide useful inspiration for future research.Fourth,this study uses the moral domain theory in developmental psychology to analyze,and expands the research scope of the moral domain theory.Research shows that supervisors’ knowledge of the moral domain plays an important role in their cognitive judgment and derivation process.Therefore,this study expands the application of moral domain theory in management practice and provides a new theoretical perspective for future research.Fifth,this study uncovers the "black box" of the mechanisms that supervisors who belong to different domains(moral domain,personal domain)observe the impact of follower UPSB.Based on social information processing theory,we conclude that perspective taking and rumination as mediating variables for individuals’ cognitive judgment of events play an intermediary role for supervisors in the cognitive and behavioral decision-making process of supervisors who observe UPSB.The study attempts to reveal the mechanism of action of this internal process,and provide new research ideas for the future investigation of individuals’ cognitive process of UPSB.