Role of moral judgment in peers’ vicarious learning from employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior

ABSTRACT

By integrating theories of social learning and moral judgment, we developed a theoretical model on whether and when peers imitate employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) in the workplace. The study, which involved 256 employees in a large manufacturing company in China, revealed that employees’ UPB positively predicted peers’ vicarious learning of UPB, with the effect strengthened by employees’ organizational tenure but weakened by peers’ deontic injustice. Moreover, the positive effect of employees’ UPB on their peers’ vicarious learning was mitigated, and even turned negative when employees’ organizational tenure was low, but peers’ deontic injustice was high.

KEYWORDS:

• Unethical pro-organizational behavior
• social learning
• moral judgment
• organizational tenure
• deontic injustice

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement:

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author Huang W., upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of China [21NDQN211YB], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71672175], the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2019M662110] and the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China [LY20G020017].