The Role of Self-Interest in Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior: A Nomological Network Meta-Analysis

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Steele, Logan M.; Rees, Rebecca; Berry, Christopher M.
• 署名单位: State University System of Florida; University of South Florida; Indiana University System; IU Kelley School of Business; Indiana University Bloomington
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0001139
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 362-385
• 关键词: unethical pro-organizational behavior; Meta-analysis; nomological network

摘要

To date, the unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) literature has been guided by a prosocial perspective, which argues that people engage in UPB primarily to benefit the employers with whom they identify and have a positive social exchange. According to this perspective, employees who are characteristically self-interested are less likely to engage in UPB. However, recent evidence suggests self-interest may play a larger role in motivating UPB than originally theorized. To clarify this controversy, we offer two different, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, perspectives of UPB-one in which UPB is driven primarily by prosocial motives and one in which it is driven primarily by self-interest. We tested which of these accounts of UPB was more strongly supported by comparing UPB's relationships with two nomological networks: one containing relatively prosocially motivated constructs and the other containing relatively self-interest-motivated constructs. Two of the eight hypotheses from the prosocial perspective were supported, while seven of the eight hypotheses from the self-interest perspective were supported. Additionally, the average absolute value of UPB's correlations with prosocial perspective constructs was .09, while the comparable average correlation with self-interest perspective constructs was .33. Thus, the results favored the self-interest perspective. We discuss how these findings change our theoretical understanding of UPB by acknowledging both its prosocial and self-interest motivations, and we accordingly propose a revised definition for UPB that allows for both of these motivations. We also examined more broadly the relationship between UPB and other constructs to provide a comprehensive meta-analytic overview of this literature.