How Does Power Affect Unethical Behaviors:from A Perspective Of Perceived Control

Officials corrupt, stars drug, urban management officers and vendors fight each other, firms or managers abuse employees, migrant workers commit arson or murder to seek revenge on society, kinds of startling unethical behaviors seem to be happening around us every day. Such behavior not only hurt others, but also, hurt the agents themselves more in the long run, and even threat to the stability and development of the whole society. But most agents is not born to be a thief or a robber, but good persons, yet, why do these "good guys" just do "bad" at all?It is not hard to find that, most unethical behaviors above-mentioned are social and interpersonal, and that most of the agents and objects of those behaviors seem to rank different in the society. Officials, stars, urban management officers, firm managers rank in the top, whereas vendors, employees and other kinds of "vulnerable groups" are just in the bottom of the society. This makes it easy to think of the concept of power, a basic element of social interaction, defined as the ability to control key valuable resources and then to control others’results. Not all people have real power, but everyone have a sense of power in different degree, which means the perception of the ability of controlling key valuable resources and others’results without any external or social factors. The sense of power just affects everyone either on cognitions, emotions or behaviors.Many researchers have explored how power affects unethical behaviors, but there are no unified conclusions yet. On one hand, power makes individuals focus more on their own goals, just ignore others’ feelings and opinions, and even regard others as the tool to achieve goals, so, high-power individuals are more likely to make unethical behaviors such as selfishness, moral hypocrisy; However, on the other hand, power makes people more responsible, committed, and self-controlled, and thus more likely to strive for the collective interests even sacrifice self-interests. There is still a lot of work to do to explore the influence power make on unethical behaviors.This research attempts to explore the relationship of power and unethical behaviors from the perspective of sense of control. We designed two studies, study1and2. Study1focused on how individuals’sense of power may affect personal unethical decision-making through illusory control and helplessness from the individual level. We made a survey on202medicine salesmen. The results implicit that:high level of sense of power increases illusory control and then increases individuals’ unethical decision-making; on the other hand, high level of sense of power decreases helplessness and then decreases individuals’unethical decision-making.Study2focused on how actual power may affect supervisors’ abusive management behaviors from the organizational level through factors of personal perceptions of control, dominance motivation and power distance. We made a cross-layer paired survey on71work teams all with definite leader-member relations. Each team consists of one supervisor and3-5subordinates. Personal variables, such as illusory control, helplessness, dominance motivation, are reported by the supervisor and dependent variables such as abusive management behaviors and the moderated variable as power distance are reported by the direct subordinates. The results implicit that the level of personal dominance motivation moderated the first stage of the mediation effect of illusory control positively and moderated the first stage of the mediation effect of helplessness negatively. And the level of organizational power distance moderated the second stage of both the mediation effect of illusory control and that of helplessness positively.This research has both theoretical and practical meanings. On theoretical aspects, firstly, we have explored the mechanism of how power may affect unethical behaviors from the perspective of sense of personal control and verified our ideas from the level of individual and organization both; Secondly, we have integrated the factors of sense of personal control, personal achievement motivation and organization culture, to explore the relationship of power and abusive management behaviors further. Thirdly, we have used multiple samples and different survey ways, both single-layer and cross-layer, and made a progress and an innovation on methods. On practical aspects, our conclusions not only give important revelations about how to behave unethically to everyone, but also inform organizations about how to build the culture and select managers.