Observer reactions to unethical pro-organizational behavior and their feedback effects

Abstract: In the past decade, unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) has been a hot topic in the organizational behavior field. Compared to the research on the formation mechanisms of UPB, the studies on the effects of UPB are still rather limited and mainly focus on the effect of leader UPB on employees and the effect of UPB on self-aware actors. Learning from and inspired by some views of correspondent inference theory and social cognitive theory, we develop a social interaction model of UPB between coworkers. This model, in which both actors and observers are employees, proposes that after observing actors conducting UPB, observers will expect the effect of UPB on actors and attribute motives to UPB, which, then affected by observers’ integrity, may trigger relevant psychological and behavioral reactions of observers. Furthermore, after receiving observers’ behavioral reactions, actors will interpret the intentions underlying beneath observers’ feedback, which then will affect the behavior changes of actors. In the end, we put forward some future research directions of this theoretical model in terms of observers’ moral judgment to UPB, cognitive appraisals related to the unethical attribute of UPB, and the internal mechanisms of behavior changes of UPB actors.