Moral cleansing or moral licensing? A study of unethical pro-organizational behavior’s differentiating Effects

Unethical Pro-organization Behavior (UPB) refers to the unethical behavior which can benefit the organization. Whereas previous studies focus on UPB’s antecedents and its formation mechanisms, this paper mainly explores UPB’s differentiating effects, that is, individuals’ moral decision and the corresponding psychological mechanisms after engaging in UPB based on moral balance model. The empirical results indicated that UPB has moral cleansing and moral licensing effect simultaneously: On the one hand, UPB can induce guilt and then result in Organizational Citizenship Behavior towards social charity (OCB-S). On the other hand, UPB can stimulate psychological entitlement and then generate self-interested unethical behavior (SUB). Reflective moral attentiveness moderates the mediated relationship between UPB and SUB via psychological entitlement, such that this relationship will be stronger for individuals with lower reflective moral attentiveness.