An Analysis of Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior

The Effects of Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior

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Summary of findings

Unethical pro-organisational behaviour (UPB), described as “activities meant to encourage the successful running of a business or rather its personnel while violating key society laws, mores, values, or norms of positive conduct,” is widespread throughout employment. In approaches to understanding the forebears of UPB, the investigation has very much focused on its cognitive viewfinders of recognition, governance, and personal traits, implying that staff members who possess elevated corporate authentication, impactful governance, as well as a greater Machiavellianism rating are more likely to participate in UPB. Such a field of study might have offered a complete description of what motivates participants to participate in UPB and how businesses might reduce its incidence.

Despite extensive experimental research on the causes underlying UPB, almost nothing is recognized on how personnel reacted to their individual UPB participation. UPB is designed to improve the firm’s operating as well as includes actions of conviction (e.g., faking manufacturing figures for buyers) and absence (e.g., hiding product defects from consumers), all of which involve significant expenses and can cause damage to clients and customers (Yang, Lin, Liao & Xue, 2021). Participation in UPB thus necessitates a compromise involving advancing the organisation’s goals and preserving professional ethics, and abandoning the other for the sake of the latter causes psychological stress in personnel’s moral self-esteem.

The scarcity of study on this topic has resulted in a scarcity of awareness about whether participating in UPB causes workers’ behaviours that bounce backwards to impair the overall running of their businesses. Addressing this subject is significant from both a practical and theoretical standpoint since it sheds further insight into how UPB, designed to assist the business, may harm the entity. Admittedly, even though certain conduct may offer instant benefits, many businesses fail to restrain it.

The writers’ study makes three additions to the knowledge. Initially, they broadened UPB studies by changing the emphasis beyond causes to outcomes. The authors widen the conceptual model of UPB by examining personnel’s behavioural and cognitive implications after UPB. Furthermore, the authors’ investigation provides a novel conceptual perspective for studies on behavioural morals by examining whether workers respond to the UPB using the cognitive dissonance concept.

They define ethical character inversion as one cognitive technique that reduces conceptual dissonance caused by UPB and relates UPB to future moral (or immoral) professional actions (Lee, Schwarz, Newman & Legood, 2019). This helps to broaden the overall utilization of the cognitive dissonance hypothesis in contemporary research on cognitive and behavioural principles. Finally, by investigating the mediating impact of the contextual factors stage, they identify the variable component that influences workers’ reactions to UPB. This may be a significant advance in the research since this explains between-person heterogeneity in personnel’ attitudes to professional practices that enforce opposing parts on self-perception.

According to cognitive dissonance theory, people who behave in a manner that contradicts their attitudes or beliefs may suffer discomfort. The authors claim that because UPB is inherently unethical, it should be classified as counter-attitudinal conduct that causes cognitive conflict. Notwithstanding its pro-organisational intentions, UPB contradicts commonly acknowledged ethical qualms on becoming compassionate and ethical (Guo, Zhao, Cheng & Luo, 2020). UPB, in particular, consists of actions of omission and commission.

Inside the guise of a corporation, irresponsible practices harm consumers and clients, compromising the compassionate and fair aspects underlying individual-based ethical consciousness. This reasoning was based on the notion, backed by the studies on ethical appraisal and moral self-esteem, that persons normally attempt to create and preserve favourable moral self-esteem (Fehr et al. 2019). Additionally, cognitive dissonance theory contends that autonomous decisions, as well as endeavours, amplify cognitive dissonance.

Using the cognitive dissonance paradigm, the authors have explored how and why personnel’s prior UPB influences subsequent behavioural and cognitive results. According to their findings, personnel experience a decrease in moral character consolidation after UPB, therefore diminishing OCB and inducing CWB. Additionally, they discovered the construal threshold as a regulator within the construal level approach, decreasing UPB’s detrimental influence on moral character integration while indirectly increasing CWB (Tang, Yam & Koopman, 2020).

In conclusion, these findings add to the existing understanding of UPB by stressing both the moral identity viewpoint and the construal threshold viewpoint within a cognitive dissonance paradigm. Altogether, these findings reveal fresh insight into the behavioural and cognitive repercussions of previous UPB and have important relevance for future study and therapy.

 

Limitations of the current study

This argument was founded on the idea, supported by research on ethics assessment and moral self-esteem, that people generally want to build and maintain positive moral self-esteem. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance theory claims that autonomy and effort exacerbate cognitive dissonance; nevertheless, cognitions threshold attenuated overall indirect influence on CWB of UPB. This suggests that ethical character absorption has a larger capacity to diminish the implicit influence of UPB for later immoral actions (namely, CWB) than for the indirect consequence affecting ethical practices (i.e., OCB).

A potential explanation would be that a significant extent of construal is related to increased moral standard adherence, but moral standards get a bigger influence on preventing unethical activities than it does on stimulating ethical behaviours (Grabowski, Chudzicka‐Czupała, Chrupała‐Pniak, Mello & Paruzel‐Czachura, 2019). Inside this context, they advocate for further study into the function of the cognitions scale in anticipating appropriate and inappropriate conduct, which might throw more illumination on cognitive morality.

Furthermore, while they discovered that moral character processing is a facilitator, other possible explanations for the link involving UPB and later occupational actions exist. According to the latest studies, the immoral activity could also result in various moral dispositions, including the apparent absence of ethical values or ethical feelings, including psychological ambiguity (Gigol, 2020). As a result, after engaging in UPB, personnel may suffer various emotional and cognitive alterations. Further study should look into other mediating factors to better comprehend the effects of UPB.

 

 

Improvements that could be done and attributes for future study

Consequently, more studies should address threshold variables apart from construal threshold, including norms. UPBs, besides necessity, break hype standards if they are congruent with them or contradict corporate norms. Because cultures assign larger importance to hype standards over institutional values, most individuals utilize hype standards as their major basis of independent ethical appraisal (Graham et al. 2020). As a result, the conceptual assumption is based on the assumption that most individuals will suffer cognitive conflict following partaking in UPB since acting so jeopardizes commonly stated ethical qualms regarding compassion and is merely drawn upon hype standards.

Some impact estimates that have been seen in this field investigation (particularly the tangential impacts on UPB affecting OCB as well as CWB via moral character integration) are quite tiny, raising questions about the article’s pragmatic relevance as well as the comparability of the outcomes. According to the findings, tiny correlation values might nevertheless have significant practical consequences on the investigation environment (For example, the significance of the endpoint factors, as well as the expected influence of the outcomes).

Due to the serious implications of UPB on people and companies, experts feel these results are both accurate and useful, despite its small influence magnitude. Alternatively, these tiny oblique influence values may highlight future study possibilities to better confirm the observations and discover other plausible pathways that might underlie additional variation. Finally, they demonstrate that certain study factors (e.g., CWB, UPB) were significantly favourably slanted due to their low basest instincts, which might also limit the external validity of these observations.

Even though factual proof from interpersonal psychology demonstrates how genuine information is frequently not distributed normally, they ran supplemental studies to alleviate this issue (Tang, Yam, Koopman & Ilies, 2022). Several resilience tests were performed, involving (1) principal components analysis containing parameter estimates, (2) converted information of reduced rate components, as well as (3) information after aberrations were removed. These studies confirmed the consistency of the observations and hardly changed the results.

 

 

Application in the real world

These discoveries have significant importance for management strategy as well. Firstly, despite these positive intentions, managers frequently miss UPB’s negative consequences. These results, meanwhile, suggest that indulging in UPB might reduce OCB as well as encourage CWB, therefore hindering the performance of the organisation. As a result, management must be aware of their workers’ UPB and its possible harmful consequences. To reduce personnel’s unethical practices, it is suggested that managers adopt punitive mechanisms. Managers may also include ethics into the business culture to enhance workers’ sense of morality, including moral attention, reducing the prevalence of UPB inside the workforce.

Furthermore, these findings point to moral identification integration as a primary factor connecting UPB to lower OCB and higher CWB. As a result, management must be aware of any drop in personnel’s moral identity integration. It is advised of firms include moral integrity assessments into recruiting and evaluation procedures, offer training programs, cultivate a socially responsible atmosphere, and build leadership behaviour to develop a highly ethical and proficient labour force.

Finally, the study has discovered that increasing individuals’ construal ability can reduce the negative impacts of UPB affecting moral character integration and eventual CWB. Construal value is most probably adjustable. Throughout this approach, firms might offer education sessions to help personnel improve and develop their conceptual level (Shaw & Liao, 2021). Furthermore, experts recommend that managers improve their individual construal quality and lead by example for their colleagues to raise workers’ cognitions capacity.

 

References

Fehr, R., Welsh, D., Yam, K. C., Baer, M., Wei, W., & Vaulont, M. (2019). The role of moral decoupling in the causes and consequences of unethical pro-organisational behavior. Organisational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 153, 27-40. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2019.05.007

Gigol, T. (2020). Influence of authentic leadership on unethical pro-organisational behavior: The intermediate role of work engagement. Sustainability, 12(3), 1182. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031182

Grabowski, D., Chudzicka‐Czupała, A., Chrupała‐Pniak, M., Mello, A. L., & Paruzel‐Czachura, M. (2019). Work ethic and organisational commitment as conditions of unethical pro‐organisational behavior: Do engaged workers break the ethical rules?. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 27(2), 193-202. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12241

Graham, K. A., Resick, C. J., Margolis, J. A., Shao, P., Hargis, M. B., & Kiker, J. D. (2020). Egoistic norms, organisational identification, and the perceived ethicality of unethical pro-organisational behavior: A moral maturation perspective. Human Relations, 73(9), 1249-1277. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0018726719862851

Guo, L., Zhao, H., Cheng, K., & Luo, J. (2020). The relationship between abusive supervision and unethical pro-organisational behavior: linear or curvilinear?. Leadership & Organisation Development Journal, 41(3), 369-381. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2019-0214

Lee, A., Schwarz, G., Newman, A., & Legood, A. (2019). Investigating when and why psychological entitlement predicts unethical pro-organisational behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 154(1), 109-126. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3456-z

Shaw, K. H., & Liao, H. Y. (2021). Does benevolent leadership promote follower unethical pro-organisational behavior? A social identity perspective. Journal of Leadership & Organisational Studies, 28(1), 31-44. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1548051820957996

Tang, P. M., Yam, K. C., & Koopman, J. (2020). Feeling proud but guilty? Unpacking the paradoxical nature of unethical pro-organisational behavior. Organisational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 160, 68-86. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.004

Tang, P. M., Yam, K. C., Koopman, J., & Ilies, R. (2022). Admired and disgusted? Third parties’ paradoxical emotional reactions and behavioral consequences towards others’ unethical pro‐organisational behavior. Personnel Psychology, 75(1), 33-67. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12446

Yang, N., Lin, C., Liao, Z., & Xue, M. (2021). When moral tension begets cognitive dissonance: An investigation of responses to unethical pro-organisational behavior and the contingent effect of construal level. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-15. Retrieved on 19th July 2022; From: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04866-5