The Effect of Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior on Hiring Intention: The Moderating Effects of Collectivism and Consideration of Future Consequences
Tremendous costs created by corporate scandals have enhanced social and scholarly attention to employee unethical behaviors. Among various types of unethical behaviors, unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB), with their unique qualities of unethicality and pro-organizational orientation, elicit ambivalent attitudes from observers. Shifting from previous approaches that focused on either actors or ingroup observers, the current research aimed to explore the attitudes of outgroup observers toward a hypothetical job applicant who either engaged in or refused to engage in UPB. Especially, drawing on moral utility theory (Hirsh et al., 2018) that considers subjective expected utility of behaviors, the current research explored how observers’ consideration of future consequences moderates the relationship between collectivistic orientation and reaction to the applicant’s UPB history. The current online experimental study involved hypothetical scenarios, and analysis was conducted on 173 workers in Korea who completed both questionnaires with two waves. First, participants preferred candidates with no UPB-related episode over others, supporting Hypothesis 1. Second, consistent with Hypothesis 2, the three-way interaction among UPB condition, collectivistic orientation, and consideration of future consequences was supported. Specifically, in UPB condition, when consideration of future consequences is high, collectivistic orientation was positively associated with hiring intentions; however, when consideration of future consequences is low, collectivistic orientation was negatively associated with hiring intentions. Finally, Hypothesis 3 was not supported because the higher the collectivistic orientation, the higher the hiring intentions, regardless of the level of consideration of future consequences. This study contributed to expanding UPB research by comprehensively considering the response of third parties to the applicant’s UPB history and empirically testing the effects of moderating variables. Finally, based on the research findings, we provided practical implications.