Abstract
While a large body of literature has focused on the positive effect of work effort on improving individual performance and organizational effectiveness, little is known about how work effort produces the negative outcome, such as unethical pro-organizational behavior. Our study proposes that work effort will activate the moral licensing mechanism through moral credential to increase unethical pro-organizational behavior, and leader Confucian value negatively moderates this relationship. Through the single-factor two-level experimental research (study 1) and the multi-time point investigation data analysis (study 2), the mediation model and the moderated mediation model proposed in both two studies have been supported by observation data. These findings are significant to further understanding of the psychological mechanism and boundary condition of unethical pro-organizational behavior, and provide practical guidance for managers to effectively control employee’s unethical pro-organizational behavior.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aquino, K., & Reed, A., II. 2002. The self-importance of moral identity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6): 1423–1440.
Audi, R. 2007. Can utilitarianism be distributive? Maximization and distribution as criteria in managerial decisions. Business Ethics Quarterly, 17(4): 593–611.
Avgoustaki, A., & Bessa, I. 2019. Examining the link between flexible working arrangement bundles and employee work effort. Human Resource Management, 58(4): 431–449.
Blanken, I., van de Ven, N., & Zeelenberg, M. 2015. A meta-analytic review of moral licensing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(4): 540–558.
Brown, M. E., & Mitchell, M. S. 2010. Ethical and unethical leadership: Exploring new avenues for future research. Business Ethics Quarterly, 20(4): 583–616.
Brown, S. P., & Leigh, T. W. 1996. A new look at psychological climate and its relationship to job involvement, effort, and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(4): 358–368.
Brown, S. P., & Peterson, R. A. 1994. The effect of effort on sales performance and job satisfaction. Journal of Marketing, 58(2): 70–80.
Bryant, W., & Merritt, S. M. 2019. Unethical pro-organizational behavior and positive leader–employee relationships. Journal of Business Ethics, (2): 1–17.
Chai, S. K., & Rhee, M. 2010. Confucian capitalism and the paradox of closure and structural holes in East Asian firms. Management and Organization Review, 6(1): 5–29.
Chen, M., Chen, C. C., & Sheldon, O. J. 2016. Relaxing moral reasoning to win: How organizational identification relates to unethical pro-organizational behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(8): 1082–1096.
Christen, M., Iyer, G., & Soberman, D. 2006. Job satisfaction, job performance, and effort: A reexamination using agency theory. Journal of Marketing, 70(1): 137–150.
Clark, A. E., & Oswald, A. J. 1996. Satisfaction and comparison income. Journal of Public Economics, 61(3): 359–381.
Conway, P., & Peetz, J. 2012. When does feeling moral actually make you a better person? Conceptual abstraction moderates whether past moral deeds motivate consistency or compensatory behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(7): 907–919.
De Cooman, R., De Gieter, S., Pepermans, R., Jegers, M., & Van Acker, F. 2009. Development and validation of the work effort scale. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 25(4): 266–273.
Effelsberg, D., Solga, M., & Gurt, J. 2014. Transformational leadership and follower’s unethical behavior for the benefit of the company: A two-study investigation. Journal of Business Ethics, 120(1): 81–93.
Effron, D. A., Cameron, J. S., & Monin, B. 2009. Endorsing Obama licenses favoring whites. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(3): 590–593.
Grant, R. M., & Visconti, M. 2006. The strategic background to corporate accounting scandals. Long Range Planning, 39(4): 361–383.
Greene, M., & Low, K. 2014. Public integrity, private hypocrisy, and the moral licensing effect. Social Behavior and Personality, 42(3): 391–400.
Hart, O. D., & Holmstrom, B. 1987. The theory of contracts. In T. Bewley (Eds.). Advances in economic theory: Fifth world congress. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hayes, A. F. 2012. PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling.
Hofstede, G. 1991. Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw-Hill.
Holmstrom, B. 1979. Moral hazard and observability. Bell Journal of Economics, 10(1): 74–91.
Ip, P. 2009. Is Confucianism good for business ethics in China? Journal of Business Ethics, 88(3): 463–476.
Jordan, J., Mullen, E., & Murnighan, J. K. 2011. Striving for the moral self: The effects of recalling past moral actions on future moral behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(5): 701–713.
Kacmar, K. M., Carlson, D. S., & Harris, K. J. 2013. Interactive effect of leaders’ influence tactics and ethical leadership on work effort and helping behavior. The Journal of Social Psychology, 153(5): 577–597.
Kacmar, K. M., Zivnuska, S., & White, C. D. 2007. Control and exchange: The impact of work environment on the work effort of low relationship quality employees. Leadership Quarterly, 18(1): 69–84.
Kalshoven, K., van Dijk, H., & Boon, C. 2016. Why and when does ethical leadership evoke unethical follower behavior? Journal of Managerial Psychology, 31(2): 500–515.
Kang, J. H., Matusik, J. G., & Barclay, L. A. 2017. Affective and normative motives to work overtime in Asian organizations: Four cultural orientations from Confucian ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 140(1): 115–130.
Kim, K. Y., Atwater, L., Jolly, P. M., Kim, M., & Baik, K. 2020. The vicious cycle of work life: Work effort versus career development effort. Group & Organization Management, 45(3): 351–385.
Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. 2010. Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1): 1–31.
Kitai, A., Suzuki, R., Uenoyama, T., & Matsumoto, Y. 2018. Pitfalls of pro-organizational behavior: Theories and research on unethical pro-organizational behavior. Organizational Science, 52.
Klotz, A. C., & Bolino, M. C. 2013. Citizenship and counterproductive work behavior: A moral licensing view. Academy of Management Review, 38(2): 292–306.
Kong, D. T. 2016. The pathway to unethical pro-organizational behavior: Organizational identification as a joint function of work passion and trait mindfulness. Personality and Individual Differences, 93(4): 86–91.
Kouchaki, M. 2011. Vicarious moral licensing: The influence of others' past moral actions on moral behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4): 702–715.
Lai, M. C., & Chen, Y. C. 2012. Self-efficacy, effort, job performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intention: The effect of personal characteristics on organization performance. International Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology, 3(4): 387–391.
Lal, R., Outland, D., & Staelin, R. 1994. Salesforce compensation plans: An individual-level analysis. Marketing Letters, 5(2): 117–130.
Lasarov, W., & Hoffmann, S. 2018. Social moral licensing. Journal of Business Ethics, 165(5): 1–22.
Lee, A., Schwarz, G., Newman, A., & Legood, A. 2019. Investigating when and why psychological entitlement predicts unethical pro-organizational behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 154(1): 109–126.
Li, F., Chao, M. C. H., Chen, N. Y. F., & Zhang, S. 2018. Moral judgment in a business setting: The role of managers’ moral foundation, ideology, and level of moral development. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 35(1): 121–143.
Lievens, F., Conway, J. M., & De Corte, W. 2008. The relative importance of task, citizenship and counterproductive performance to job performance ratings: Do rater source and team-based culture matter? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 81(1): 11–27.
Lin, L., & Ho, Y. 2009. Confucian dynamism, culture and ethical changes in Chinese societies-a comparative study of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(11): 2402–2417.
Lin, S. H. J., Ma, J., & Johnson, R. E. 2016. When ethical leader behavior breaks bad: How ethical leader behavior can turn abusive via ego depletion and moral licensing. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(6): 815–830.
Loi, T. I., Kuhn, K. M., Sahaym, A., Butterfield, K. D., & Tripp, T. M. 2020. From helping hands to harmful acts: When and how employee volunteering promotes workplace deviance. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000477.
Matherne, C. F., & Litchfield, S. R. 2012. Investigating the relationship between affective commitment and unethical pro-organizational behaviors: The role of moral identity. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 9(5): 35–46.
Mayer, D. M., Aquino, K., Greenbaum, R. L., & Kuenzi, M. 2012. Who displays ethical leadership, and why does it matter? An examination of antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership. Academy of Management Journal, 55(1): 151–171.
Mazar, N., Amir, O., & Ariely, D. 2008. The dishonesty of honest people: A theory of self-concept maintenance. Journal of Marketing Research, 45(6): 633–644.
Merritt, A. C., Effron, D. A., & Monin, B. 2010. Moral self‐licensing: When being good frees us to be bad. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(5): 344–357.
Miao, Q., Newman, A., Yu, J., & Xu, L. 2013. The relationship between ethical leadership and unethical pro-organizational behavior: Linear or curvilinear effects? Journal of Business Ethics, 116(3): 641–653.
Miles, L., & Goo, S. H. 2013. Corporate governance in Asian countries: Has Confucianism anything to offer? Business and Society Review, 118(1): 23–45.
Miller, D. T., & Effron, D. A. 2010. Psychological license: When it is needed and how it functions. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 43, pp. 115–155). Academic Press.
Monin, B., & Jordan, A. H. 2009. The dynamic moral self: A social psychological perspective. Personality, identity, and character: Explorations in Moral Psychology, 341–354.
Monin, B., & Miller, D. T. 2001. Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1): 33–43.
Nisan, M. 1990. Moral balance: A model of how people arrive at moral decisions. The Moral Domain, 283–314.
Pan, Y., Rowney, J. A., & Peterson, M. F. 2012. The structure of Chinese cultural traditions: An empirical study of business employees in China. Management and Organization Review, 8(1): 77–95.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. 2003. Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5): 879–903.
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. 2004. SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(4): 717–731.
Preacher, K. J., Rucker, D. D., & Hayes, A. F. 2007. Addressing moderated mediation hypotheses: Theory, methods, and prescriptions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 42(1): 185–227.
Preacher, K. J., & Selig, J. P. 2012. Advantages of Monte Carlo confidence intervals for indirect effects. Communication Methods and Measures, 6(2): 77–98.
Qian, M. 1976. The spirit of Chinese history (Chinese). Taipei: Don Da.
Rostan, S. 2005. Understanding extraordinary moral behavior in children and adolescents. In Education, arts, and morality (pp. 103–120). Springer, Boston, MA.
Rotundo, M., & Sackett, P. R. 2002. The relative importance of task, citizenship, and counterproductive performance to global ratings of job performance: A policy-capturing approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1): 66–80.
Sachdeva, S., Iliev, R., & Medin, D. L. 2009. Sinning saints and saintly sinners: The paradox of moral self-regulation. Psychological Science, 20(4): 523–528.
Schaubroeck, J. M., Hannah, S. T., Avolio, B. J., Kozlowski, S. W., Lord, R. G., Treviño, L. K., & Peng, A. C. 2012. Embedding ethical leadership within and across organization levels. Academy of Management Journal, 55(5): 1053–1078.
Simbrunner, P., & Schlegelmilch, B. B. 2017. Moral licensing: a culture-moderated meta-analysis. Management Review Quarterly, 67(4): 201–225.
Treviño, L. K., Weaver, G. R., & Reynolds, S. J. 2006. Behavioral ethics in organizations: A review. Journal of Management, 32(6): 951–990.
Umphress, E. E., & Bingham, J. B. 2011. When employees do bad things for good reasons: Examining unethical pro-organizational behaviors. Organization Science, 22(3): 621–640.
Umphress, E. E., Bingham, J. B., & Mitchell, M. S. 2010. Unethical behavior in the name of the company: The moderating effect of organizational identification and positive reciprocity beliefs on unethical pro-organizational behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(4): 769–780.
Urban, J., Bahnik, S., & Kohlova, M. B. 2019. Green consumption does not make people cheat: Three attempts to replicate moral licensing effect due to pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 63(6): 139–147.
Valentino, N. A., & Brader, T. 2011. The sword's other edge: Perceptions of discrimination and racial policy opinion after Obama. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75(2): 201–226.
Vincent, L. C., & Polman, E. 2016. When being creative frees us to be bad. In P. A. M. van Lange, & van Prooijen (Eds.), Cheating, corruption, and concealment: The roots of dishonesty (p. 166). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wang, T., Long, L., Zhang, Y., & He, W. 2019. A social exchange perspective of employee–organization relationships and employee unethical pro-organizational behavior: The moderating role of individual moral identity. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(2): 473–489.
Woods, P. R., & Lamond, D. A. 2011. What would Confucius do? Confucian ethics and self-regulation in management. Journal of Business Ethics, 102(4): 669–683.
Yam, K. C., Klotz, A. C., He, W., & Reynolds, S. J. 2017. From good soldiers to psychologically entitled: Examining when and why citizenship behavior leads to deviance. Academy of Management Journal, 60(1): 373–396.
Yan, J., & Sorenson, R. 2010. The effect of Confucian values on succession in family business. Family Business Review, 19(3): 235–250.
Yang, J., Yu, K. H. F., & Huang, C. J. 2019. Service employees’ concurrent adaptive and unethical behaviors in complex or non-routine tasks: The effects of customer control and self-monitoring personality. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 36(1): 245–273.
Yukl, G. A. 2002. Leadership in organizations. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Zhang, H., Kwan, H. K., Everett, A. M., & Jian, Z. 2012. Servant leadership, organizational identification, and work-to-family enrichment: The moderating role of work climate for sharing family concerns. Human Resource Management, 51(5): 747–768.
Zhang, S. 2020. Workplace spirituality and unethical pro-organizational behavior: The mediating effect of job satisfaction. Journal of Business Ethics, 161(3): 687–705.
Zhu, Y. 2015. The role of Qing (positive emotions) and Li (rationality) in Chinese entrepreneurial decision making: A Confucian Ren-yi wisdom perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(4): 613–630.
Funding
The article is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation project (No: 71902103).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kong, M., Xin, J., Xu, W. et al. The moral licensing effect between work effort and unethical pro-organizational behavior: The moderating influence of Confucian value. Asia Pac J Manag 39, 515–537 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-020-09736-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-020-09736-8