Abstract
Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) has received growing attention from organizational scholars in recent years. As leadership is a key predictor of employee behavior in organizations, research focusing on leadership and UPB holds great potential for theoretical and practical advancements. The current paper presents a comprehensive systematic review of published research exploring leadership and UPB since 2010. The review not only situates the concept of UPB within the relevant literature, but also incorporates various analyses, including context, theoretical perspective, and research design. It also identifies the leadership-based independent variables, mediators, and moderators that impact UPB, which can help advance future theorizing in the field. Lastly, the paper offers suggestions for future research that can help in repositioning the field in order to build more reliable and valuable theoretical and practical policy recommendations.
Keywords
Introduction
Research on employees’ unethical behaviors has largely assumed such practices are aimed at benefiting self or harming others. However, a new stream research advocated by Umphress et al. (2010) pinpointed a relatively unexplored category of employee unethical behaviors, coined as unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). UPB is defined as “actions that are intended to promote the effective functioning of the organization or its members and violate core societal values, mores, laws, or standards of proper conduct” (Umphress & Bingham, 2011, p. 622).
The rise in the number and complexity of corporate scandals, especially those that benefit the organization rather than self, has a significant global impact (Mishra et al., 2021). For example, Apple's “battery-gate” scandal and Boeing's 373 Max scandal, where a group of employees intentionally followed unethical practices and concealed information to help their company gain market share against their competitors. Research over the past decade has provided strong evidence on the existence of UPB and suggested that leadership may be an under researched variable that triggers such behaviors among the employees (Cheng et al., 2019; Miao et al., 2013; Schuh et al., 2021; Umphress & Bingham, 2011; Umphress et al., 2010).
Leadership, being a metaphorical “backbone” of an organization, is immensely important and deserves greater research attention to understand how it helps set the ethical tone of an organization (Brown & Mitchell, 2010). Given the authority attached to their role, leaders play a vital role in shaping an organization's culture and code of conduct (Treviño & Brown, 2005). Leaders’ personal characteristics (Ishaq et al., 2022; Li et al., 2022) and their interrelationships with employees (Jiang & Lin, 2021; Schuh et al., 2013) largely determine organizational culture and employee behavior. Even with the best of intentions, leaders’ actions may deter subordinates from following ethical behavior (Kuenzi et al., 2020; Treviño & Brown, 2005; Wang et al., 2023). Leaders serve as key contact points between organizations and employees, and they influence employees’ behaviors through a reward and punishment system (Ashforth & Anand, 2003; Brown et al., 2005; Treviño & Brown, 2005). Since the nature of UPB differs from other forms of unethical employee behavior, such that it has both positive (pro-organizational) and negative (unethical) aspects, leadership can act as a double-edged sword in tackling such behaviors.
Against this backdrop, this systematic literature review on the leadership–UPB interrelationship not only aims to take a stock of the existing body of knowledge, but also contributes to identifying new research avenues for future investigation, probing researchers to further develop this field of study.
Although UPB has been addressed in earlier systematic reviews (Mishra et al., 2021; Mo et al., 2022; Zhang & Xiao, 2020), the current systematic review builds on prior research and can be distinguished from these earlier reviews in several key ways. First, prior reviews were exclusively focused on UPB as a variable of interest. Zhang and Xiao (2020) provided a review of UPB as a construct, as well as a brief summary of identified antecedents and moderators of UPB. Mishra et al. (2021) adopted a theory-driven approach, where their review was mainly based on various theoretical perspectives on UPB. Likewise, Mo et al.'s (2022) review was built on Mishra et al.'s (2021) work to provide a broad and comprehensive analysis of the UPB literature. The current review digs deeper to provide an in-depth critical analysis of the body of knowledge explicitly exploring how leadership affects employees’ tendency to engage in UPB. In particular, our review situates leadership as a key antecedent of UPB, suggesting that the two concepts are inextricably linked. This approach is important as critically analyzing the literature on leadership–UPB holds promise for providing deeper empirical and theoretical insights and facilitating the development of this important area of research. Second, our review provides a novel summary of statistical findings with respect to the leadership–UPB literature. In so doing, it factors in where the research was published (i.e., which journal), the year of publication, and in which industrial sector the empirical analysis was situated. Further, the previous reviews based their analyses around definitional, theoretical, and empirical challenges related to UPB, whereas our review examines leadership-based antecedents and boundary conditions of UPB, accordingly providing future research directions in terms of methodological (measurement and study design), theoretical, and empirical advancements. Additionally, the theoretical underpinning and methodology used by extant leadership–UPB research is critically analyzed to offer ways in which future research might develop. Finally, this systematic review will not only address the need to critically evaluate leadership–UPB research, but also provides future researchers with recommendations to re-orient the field. It will also elevate the reliability of practical implications for leaders/managers to adapt while devising strategies to reduce UPB propensity among their employees.
The goal of our review is three-fold. First, the review summarizes the main trends nested within the leadership–UPB literature, identifying relevant leadership constructs, and exploring mediating and moderating variables that intercede between the leadership–UPB paradigm. In so doing, we present several categorizations that synthesize the extant research on the topic, with the primary aim of better informing future variable selection for empirical research conducted in this area. Second, we use a systematic technique to review the robustness of the extant research findings and draw attention to two major limitations present in the literature which undermine the veracity of the field: measurement and study design. Third, we critically analyze theoretical lenses that have been used within the existing body of knowledge to justify and describe how leadership is related to UPB. In doing so, our review provides a pragmatic direction for future research to move past the gaps in the extant literature limiting the practical and scientific value of research concerning leadership and UPB.
Situating UPB in the Existing Literature amid Similar Concepts and Blurred Boundaries
When Arendt (1963) introduced the concept of the “banality of evil,” suggesting that evil can stem from unmalicious motives, it sparked considerable controversy. Since then, extensive research in management and related fields has identified various forms of unethical behaviors, their causes, and outcomes (Bersoff, 1999; Marmat et al., 2020; Singh & Twalo, 2015; Umphress et al., 2010). UPB encapsulates the soul of the “banality of evil,” showing that employees may engage in unethical actions without malicious intent (Mishra et al., 2021; Umphress & Bingham, 2011; Umphress et al., 2010). Instead, unethical actions may stem from all kinds of motives, including the ones with positive intentions toward their leaders or organizations, made without much consideration. While this study adhered to the boundaries and definition of UPB (Umphress & Bingham, 2011; Umphress et al., 2010), other closely related concepts pre-date UPB.
UPB typically involves extra-role behaviors closely resembling organizational spontaneity, which includes voluntary actions aimed at benefiting the organization (Katz, 1964). Katz (1964) emphasized on the importance of these behaviors, stating that “an organization which depends solely upon its blueprints of prescribed behavior is a very fragile social system” (p. 132). Out of the five forms of organizational spontaneity (i.e., helping co-workers, protecting the organization, making constructive suggestions, developing oneself, and spreading goodwill), the first two align closely with UPB. These voluntary behaviors aim to facilitate organizational goal achievement, acknowledging the considerable uncertainty organizations face and their reliance on such behaviors to increase effectiveness (Katz & Kahn, 1978). A search for the term “organizational spontaneity” on web of science yielded 17 results, with the most literature suggesting that the phenomenon is primarily related to helping organizations or its member as a goodwill gesture and to promote positivity. However, in a detailed analysis of the concept by George and Brief. (1992) it is asserted that organizational spontaneity involves behavioral patterns (positive or negative) that must lead to organizational gains. Later on, Eisenberger et al. (2001) determined that due to their reciprocity norms, perceived organizational support can lead to felt obligations and positive mood at work, which in turn leads to organizational spontaneity (e.g., actions that protect organization from risk/harm).
Similarly, pro-social organizational behavior (POB) conceptually resembles UPB as it entails behaviors (a) conducted by the organization's member, (b) directed toward individual, team, or organization, and (c) intended to benefit them (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986). While the definition of POB encompasses a broad range of behaviors, George and Brief (1992) noted that it includes almost any employee behavior that is perceived to be beneficial for the co-workers, leaders, or organization. A search of “pro-social organizational behavior” on Web of Science revealed that the extant literature is silent on the role of leaders on POBs. A closer look at the POB literature suggested that such motives have a dark side and may lead to unintended consequences. For example, employees may engage in pro-social rule breaking (Morrison, 2006), demonstrate dishonesty (Levine & Schweitzer, 2015), commit injustice (Gino & Pierce, 2010), and violate ethical societal norms (Umphress et al., 2010). Therefore, POB can be regarded as an umbrella term covering a variety of behaviors intended to benefit organizations or its members, through positive extra-role behaviors (such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)) or unethical behaviors (such as UPB, pro-social rule breaking). To gain a better understanding of these behaviors, it is crucial to consider the full range of behavioral intentions that make up POB (Fineman, 2006).
Another phenomenon closely resembling UPB is noble cause corruption (Klockars, 1980), which adopts utilitarian ethics approach to prioritize the greater good, regardless of the means to achieve it. While much of the noble cause literature has focused on breaking the law to achieve the greater good (Johnson, 2001), Van Halderen and Kolthof (2017) viewed it as a commitment to achieve the good end through legal (yet unethical) means. We searched for the term “noble cause corruption” on Web of Science and found fewer (six) results. Although none of the articles directly examined leadership's impact on noble cause corruption, certain similarities with UPB could be drawn out of resulting articles. For example, van Halderen and Kolthoff (2017) reported noble cause corruption to be closely related to UPB. It can be demonstrated through the tactics used by police officers and detectives such as “cutting off” and “judge shopping,” where these officials consider “rule bending acceptable as long as it is not reported in official reports” (Loyens, 2014, p. 69). These examples demonstrate a clear streak of UPB in noble cause corruption. Given that the UPB literature is predominantly based in private sectors, this stream of research can open avenues toward yet another important debate on how UPB exists in the public sector context and what forms does it take in those complicated, hierarchical law formulating organizations.
UPB's placement within the existing literature necessitates further attention. While Umphress et al. (2010) have attempted to distinguish UPB from similar concepts like necessary evil, workplace deviance, and pro-social rule breaking, their scope remains limited. Previous attempts do not fully encapsulate UPB's unique essence, despite its historical presence in organizations. Three closely resembling concepts identified above highlight the complexity in presenting UPB's boundaries. Thus, a clearer demarcation is crucial to clarify UPB's uniqueness within these related phenomena.
Methodology
To review the available empirical literature on the topic, we conducted a comprehensive search of relevant studies. The procedure used to conduct this systematic review is aligned with the Newman et al.'s (2021) recommended protocols and has been widely used across other systematic literature review papers (see, e.g., Hartmann et al., 2022; Lee & Herrmann, 2021; Su et al., 2022). This review adopted a critical approach to provide a synthesized view of the leadership constructs and their relationship with UPB, including reviewing and categorizing moderators and underlying mediating mechanisms. Moreover, this article synthesizes and presents a summary of the underpinning theoretical perspectives used by the extant research to explain the proposed relationships.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The following inclusion criteria were devised before carrying out the literature search. First, we included studies with “Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior” in any part of the research study. This helped us filter the articles that focused on similar yet different constructs such as unethical organizational behavior. Second, we restricted our search to articles that only focused on UPB in relation to leadership. This helped us shortlist the relevant articles that explored UPB and had leadership as one of the variables of interest. Third, we outlined an inclusion criterion to ensure that only research articles from scholarly listed journals should be included in our review. Accordingly, our review included articles published in Q1, or Clarivate analytics impact factor 1 or above, or A*/A/B category journals from Australian Business Dean's Council (ABDC) 2021 classification. Lastly, we excluded any articles that only superficially talked about UPB and leadership and were not actually focused on examining their relationship. This approach is consistent with previously published literature review papers in reputable journals (see, e.g., Eva et al., 2020; Newman et al., 2019; Rojon et al., 2021; Salmony & Kanbach, 2022).
Literature Search Strategy
In line with best practices (Short, 2009), we searched six databases (Web of Science, Scopus, PsycInfo, EBSCO Host, Wiley Online Library, and Google Scholar) to identify peer-reviewed articles published before January 1st, 2024 with terms “Leadership,” “Leader” and “Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior,” “Unethical Pro-Leader Behavior,” “Unethical Pro-supervisor Behavior” in their title, abstract, or keywords. While we did not put any time restrictions on our search, we identified that the earliest published article on UPB was in 2010. Our literature search was based on three boundary conditions determined by Umphress and Bingham (2011) to differentiate UPB from other forms or similar concepts, which cannot be categorized under the UPB umbrella. Unethical behavior cannot be considered UPB if it is conducted without a purpose, or if the intention is to benefit the organization, but it ends up doing harm instead, or if it is conducted to serve oneself (Umphress & Bingham, 2011). Concepts such as necessary evils, workplace deviance, pro-social rule breaking, and organizational misbehavior may sound similar to UPB, but do not fit into this category based on the boundary conditions mentioned above. Table 1, which entails details of the similarities and differences between these similar terms with UPB, presents how these constructs conceptually differ from UPB.
Differentiating Similar Constructs From UPB.
Based on the definition of UPB, and keeping in mind these boundary conditions (Umphress & Bingham, 2011), we ensured that all the relevant literature was included in this systematic review. The exhaustive literature search included the body of literature on unethical behavior that was intended to benefit stakeholders of an organization, such as unethical pro-leader behavior, or unethical pro-supervisor behavior, or unethical pro-group behavior. We then followed a systematic way to identify the relevant articles. First, we examined the title, abstract, journal, ranking of journal (Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), Scimago Journal Ranking (SJR), Clarivate analytics impact factor), and publication type. We found that 102 out of 3,370 studies were related to leadership and UPB. Second, we read the full text of 102 identified articles to rule out those that only superficially talked about leadership and UPB and were not actually relevant to our review. We found that 39 of them were not from a scholarly journal and did not meet our inclusion criteria. Third, in line with best practice (Newman et al., 2021), we undertook forward and backward citation search on already identified and shortlisted articles to ensure we did not miss any relevant article that had not included the term in their title, abstract, or keyword. This process did not result in any additional articles being identified. Additionally, given the blurred boundaries between UPB and concepts of “noble cause corruption,” organizational spontaneity,” and “pro-social organizational behaviors,” an additional search of literature was carried out for these terms along with the term “leader*.” However, it did not result in any paper being identified to be added to our review. After this exhaustive literature search, we were left with 63 articles to review. Figure 1 provides a summary of research procedure.
Summary of search procedure.
Findings: Review of UPB and Leadership Literature
Review of Methodology Employed by Leadership–UPB Research
Based on our review, 63 research studies were identified that explored the relationship between leadership and UPB. Two main methodologies were employed in the identified studies: field survey and experimental method.
Field Survey Method. As evident in Table 1, the typical study used cross-sectional design (N = 57) to explore the relationship between leadership and UPB. Out of those 57 studies, only eight studies used dyadic approach, where instead of using a sole source data, the studies used data collected from leaders as well as subordinates. In total, 89% of identified studies used cross-sectional design that examined causal process models along the lines of leadership → mediator → UPB. Unfortunately, these designs, when used without a consideration for procedural remedies such as temporal separation of the focal variables (Johnson et al., 2011) and multiple sources (Podsakoff et al., 2012), as well as statistical remedies such as instrumental variable estimation (Antonakis et al., 2010), marker variable (Williams & O'Boyle, 2015), and Gaussian copulas (Becker & Ringle, 2022), are incapable of providing robust causal effect estimates because of endogeneity biases. The dominant UPB measure used for data collection was Umphress et al.’s (2010) six-item self-report scale. However, responding to western cultural differences, Chinese scholars re-contextualized this scale (Yan et al., 2021) by excluding the item “If my organization need me to, I would give a good recommendation … instead of my own.” Lin and Cheng's five-item scale, as adapted from Umphress et al.’s (2010) original scale. Moreover, Kim et al. (2023b) used a secondary approach to data collection where they extracted data from a pre-existing survey based on a self-established scale containing three items from Umphress and Bingham (2011). It is important to note that the wording of all versions (or adaptations) of the Umphress and Bingham measure of UPB assesses “behavioral intentions” only (and not actual behaviors), where the respondents are asked to conjecture what they would or would not do in the future. It can therefore be assumed that the measure of “unethical pro-organizational behavior” is mislabeled and needs to be revisited.
Experimental Method. Randomized experiments are a benchmark to estimate causal effects in research, where you randomize participant selection and allocation to experimental or control groups. By doing so, researchers can confidently assume that the differences in participants’ responses in diverse groups are due to experimental manipulations. Despite the recognition of experiments as a gold standard for estimating causal effects, our review has identified that only a small number of studies central to leadership–UPB have made use of experimental design (N = 9). Most of the identified studies (N = 6) used a multi-method approach through employing a cross-sectional survey method in addition to an experimental approach to cross-validate their results. For instance, Fehr et al. (2019) assessed UPB through a vignette approach, where employees’ UPB was examined through respondents’ willingness to sell health hazardous banned chemicals that were profitable for the organization. Supervisors’ UPB was manipulated through an email from a boss with higher propensity to engage in an UPB. Li et al. (2022) explored different work-related situations in the three experimental studies. They operationalized perceived supervisor support from its definition and asked the respondents to recall and describe a supervisor that did (or did not) care about their wellbeing and (did not) value their contributions and were then asked to indicate how likely it was that they would be willing to engage in unethical pro-supervisor behavior. Similarly, Liu et al. (2021) manipulated authoritarian leadership levels (low-high) and respondents’ reaction to the likelihood of their selling software with unnoticed bugs to customers under low or high levels of authoritarian leadership. Promisingly, each of these experimental studies exhibited a causal relationship between leadership and UPB. Given the capacity of experimental studies to assess the causal effects between different variables, we strongly recommend using experimental design in future studies.
Theoretical Perspectives
The most compelling explanations of the impact of leadership constructs on employees’ UPB are based on socially designed theoretical perspectives. In the extant literature on leadership and UPB, the most common underpinning theories include social exchange theory (SET) (N = 19), social identity theory (SIT) (N = 13), social learning theory (N = 12), and social cognitive theory (SCT) (N = 10).
Social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) provides the most compelling explanation of leader and subordinates relationship dynamics leading to UPB, where followers have an urge to reciprocate for status and resources. Numerous studies have relied on SET to explain how social exchange mechanisms are at work when followers want to return leaders’ positive and favorable behaviors and attitudes with what they perceive will please the leader, thereby leading to UPB. Given the paradoxical nature of UPB, SET has been used by leadership–UPB research to unveil the potential dark side of various positive leadership styles that may facilitate UPB. For instance, empowering leadership has been found to increase subordinates’ UPB as they would want to reciprocate toward their empowering leaders with favorable behaviors (even if they are unethical). When an employee perceives their workplace status to be higher than rest of their colleagues while working under empowering leader, they have a higher felt obligation to reciprocate toward their leadership with UPB (Wang et al., 2023). In addition, empowering leadership can also facilitate subordinates’ inclination toward UPB through subordinates’ duty orientation, especially when their perceived leader expediency is high (Zhang et al., 2021). Similarly, SET also explains how ethical leadership can inculcate an increased sense of reciprocation among the subordinates to indulge in UPB through their higher organizational identification (Kalshoven et al., 2016). Subordinates working under moderate levels of ethical leadership have higher propensity to engage in UPB because they feel trusted and treated fairly by their leaders, and because they have developed a higher level of supervisor identification, they exhibit a strong inclination to reciprocate toward their ethical leaders (Miao et al., 2013). The extant literature also shows that servant leadership (Uymaz & Arsalan, 2021), transformational leadership (Kim et al., 2023b), responsible leadership (Inam et al., 2021), and authentic leadership (Gigol, 2021) may inculcate positive reciprocity beliefs among their subordinates, who would then want to reciprocate through UPB. These positive exchange mechanisms leading to UPB have been found to be contingent to positive leaders’ characteristics and attitudes such as leaders’ humility (Song et al., 2022), perceived leadership support (Li et al., 2022), perceived interpersonal justice and leader–member exchange (LMX) (Bryantt & Merritt, 2019), leader forgiveness and gratitude (Lu et al., 2022), and supervisor's bottom-line mentality (Babalola et al., 2021). Kelebek and Alniacik (2022) also used SET to explain how LMX leads to higher propensity of UPB through organizational identification. SET has also been used to explain how negative leadership style such as abusive supervision may lead to UPB, especially among the employees who have proactive personalities (Guo et al., 2020). In addition, SET has been used to explain a more straightforward effect of leader's UPB inclination on subordinates’ UPB through moral disengagement, while LMX and ethical relativism play a role as moderators in this relationship between negative leader–subordinate interrelationships (Nguyen et al., 2021).
Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2004) similarly explains the leadership–employee UPB relationship. This theory defines organizational identification as a psychological attachment to one's organization so that their organization's successes and failures become their own. Various scholars have determined that organizational identification, emerging as a result of certain leadership styles and behaviors, acts as a psychological ground for employees to develop a group mentality, which, in turn, encourages them to engage in UPB. For instance, ethical leadership has been argued to inculcate strong organizational identification among their subordinates, who would then feel obliged to reciprocate through UPB (Kalshoven et al., 2016). Similarly, other positive leadership styles that have previously been asserted to reduce employees’ unethical behaviors have been argued to facilitate UPB because of the pro-organizational nature of these behaviors. For example, benevolent leadership (Kang-Hwa & Hung-Yi, 2021), moral leadership (Wang & Li, 2019), authentic leadership (Gigol, 2021), and self-sacrificial leadership (Yang et al., 2021) have all been referred to as facilitative of employee UPB behaviors through supervisor/organizational identification. Employees working under such leadership develop a higher sense of belongingness with their leaders or organization and provides a compelling ground to protect their organization/leaders even if they must forgo the ethical standards (Johnson & Umphress, 2018; Umphress & Bingham, 2011) based on their LMX quality (Irshad & Bashir, 2020). SIT, therefore, provides an underpinning to further elaborate the dark side of potentially positive leadership styles or characteristics. Furthermore, it has also been argued that leaders who have higher organizational identification are perceived by their employees as highly transformational leaders as they are willingly involved in the self-sacrificial behaviors to further the organization's or team's interests regardless of considering the ethical dimensions (Effelsberg & Solga, 2015). Likewise, leader's inclination to engage in UPB also reinforces the same behaviors among their subordinates, provided subordinates’ level of identification with their leaders (Zhang et al., 2018). However, Gao et al. (2023) have used SIT along with social information processing theory to explain that when leader's moral identity is high and goal congruence with the group is low, employees UPB can create distrust in their leaders, which may lead to abusive supervisor behavior. Overall, SIT has been used by the extant research to explain how a strong sense of identification with leaders or organization enhances subordinates’ inclination toward UPB, especially when they believe that these behaviors are crucial for their organization's operations.
Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), on the contrary, asserts that followers learn from a leader's behaviors how to act in a certain situation, thereby engaging in UPB when they feel observe their leader engaging in such actions or believing that the leader(s) would condone such behaviors through reinforcement or punishment. For instance, leader's UPB has been identified as a determinant of employees’ UPB (Fehr et al., 2019) as the employees get morally disengaged based on their observation that the leaders not only themselves engage in UPB but also reinforce such behaviors among their subordinates as acceptable behaviors (Lian et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2021). The effects of ethical leadership on employees’ UPB have also been studied; however, mixed findings have been reported in this regard. For example, ethical leadership has been asserted as an antidote for unethical employee behavior (including UPB) because ethical leaders would not only emulate ethical behaviors themselves at workplace, but also would not tolerate unethical employee behaviors as acceptable behaviors (Kim et al., 2023a). This happens because while working under ethical leadership reduces the propensity of employee moral disengagement (Hsieh et al., 2020), and/or increases employee moral attentiveness (Miao et al., 2020), thereby reducing the chances of employees’ involvement in UPB. However, Miao et al. (2013) asserted that higher level of ethical leadership reduced the chances of employee UPB because of vicarious learning mechanisms that their leaders will not accept their UPB. Nevertheless, a moderate level of ethical leadership increases the chances of UPB among the employees because they observe that their ethical leaders may regard ethical issues as important, but there are other issues/aspects (such as organization's interests) that their leaders consider to be of superior importance. Therefore, employees engage in UPB to positively reciprocate toward their moderately ethical leaders. Responsible leadership (Cheng et al., 2019; Inam et al., 2021), transformational leadership (Kim et al., 2023b), and leader's humility (Song et al., 2022) have also been asserted to have negative effect on employees’ UPB because of social learning mechanisms.
Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) essentially uses a similar approach to social learning theory to explain how supervisors act as role models shaping their followers’ perceptions and attitudes, thus molding their behaviors in a specific direction. This notion underpins theoretical perspectives on why followers justify their UPB based on supervisor's approval or disapproval of their actions, forming cognitive schemata that might (or might not) approve their UPB. For example, authoritarian leadership has been asserted to have a positive impact on employees’ UPB propensity because their subordinates find it easier to morally disengage (Shaw et al., 2020), specifically to displace the responsibility of their unethical actions on their leaders (Liu et al., 2021). Similarly, ethical leadership has been referred to as a determinant of employee UPB, as employees feel psychologically empowered while working under such leadership, where employees’ moral identity moderates this relationship (Ahmed & Khan, 2023). Empowering leadership has also been referred to as an antecedent of employees’ UPB through moral disengagement (Dennerlein & Kirkman, 2022). Additionally, Chen et al. (2023) built on SCT to determine that leaders’ UPB may reduce employee moral ownership, which then triggers subordinate silence. Moreover, leader immorality encouragement has been referred to as another important determinant of employee UPB, as employees get easily morally disengaged under such circumstances and have higher reward expectations from their leadership as a result of UPB (Mesdaghinia et al., 2023). Similarly, a supervisor's bottom-line mentality has also been suggested to increase the chances of employees’ UPB propensity through moral disengagement (Farasat & Azam, 2022; Zhang et al., 2020). This research uses SCT to explain how moral disengagement acts as a defense mechanism providing the basis for cognitive dissonance to engage in UPB, which is an under-utilization of a comprehensive theoretical perspective that entails social, environmental, and individual/dispositional factors that shape human behaviors. Leadership–UPB research can use this overarching theory to gain deeper insights on the leadership-driven UPB in various industries. For example, this theory may be used to explore how leadership–subordinate dynamics operate within public, private, and non-profit organizations thus leading to chances of their engagement in UPB. The theory can be utilized to explore more antecedents, boundary conditions, and consequences of UPB in different perspectives.
Other less commonly used theoretical perspectives explaining the leadership–UPB relationship were adopted within the reviewed sources, while some studies (N = 16) used a combination of theories to explain the underlying dynamics of their proposed relationships. In conclusion, there are a multitude of theories and approaches that have been used to explain the leadership–UPB relationship, with a degree of crossover between these theoretical perspectives and approaches. Table 2 provides a summary of theoretical perspectives employed by the extant leadership–UPB research.
Summarizing the Theoretical Perspectives Used by Leadership–UPB Research.
Additional Analysis
Context. Table 3 shows that the extant literature on leadership–UPB predominantly draws on a Chinese context, leaving a considerable room for similar studies in other contexts. Our review identified that China (N = 32) was the most extensively studied, followed by the USA (N = 5), Pakistan (N = 5), Europe (N = 4), and Korea (N = 3). Additionally, Vietnam (N = 2), Turkey (N = 2), Taiwan (N = 1), ASEAN countries (N = 1), and Nigeria (N = 1) were also subject to limited research. Some of the aforementioned studies were conducted across multiple locations, such as China and the USA (N = 3), China and Taiwan (N = 1), Europe and the USA (N = 1), and collectively in the UK, USA, and Canada (N = 1).
Summarizing the Context of Leadership–UPB Research.
Journal and Year. There has been a growing interest in exploring the relationship between leadership and UPB in recent years, as evidenced in an increasing trend in the number of publications, as evident in Table 4. Moreover, the table also shows a list of journals that are increasingly publishing leadership–UPB research.
Summary of Number of Publications in Scholarly Journals and Year of Publication.
Sector. Research on leadership and UPB has primarily been conducted in the private sector service provider context (including customer services, information technology, financial services, education, and healthcare). Only six of the studies were conducted in the public sector, and one in a non-profit organization. We can assume, therefore, that scholarly understanding of the relationships between leadership and UPB in the public or non-profit sector is limited.
Key Insights Gleaned From Additional Analysis
Overall, review of the prior leadership–UPB research reveals several key insights. Theoretically, leadership–UPB research predominantly relies on socio-cognitive perspectives, which are important to address individual-level factors contributing to leadership–UPB dynamics in various ways. However, the complexity of leadership–UPB dynamics exceeds the explanations of leader–subordinate interaction from a socio-cognitive standpoint alone. Understanding leadership–UPB dynamics at both micro- and macro-levels through psychological, economic, socio-cultural, and political perspectives may offer a more comprehensive understanding.
Given the predominantly collectivist culture in China, where most studies were conducted, employees may find it more convenient to engage in UPB (for instance, Zhang et al., 2020). Furthermore, the unique characteristics of Chinese organizational culture that may set it apart from other countries such as high power distance (Lian et al., 2020), the prevailing political climate (Tang & Li, 2021), and employees’ heightened identification with supervisors (Kang-Hwa & Hung-Yi, 2021) may contribute to the occurrence of UPB.
Moreover, leadership–UPB research is excessively nested in private sector organizations. Provided the importance of public sectors, the impact of UPB has been undermined. Considering the complexity of public sector organizations and paradoxical nature of UPB, it is important to identify the contextual factors that may affect the leadership–UPB dynamics in public sectors.
Review of Leadership-based Antecedents of UPB
This section reviews leadership constructs that have been identified as antecedents of UPB among the employees. Antecedents include independent variables and mediators tested by extant research. The most studied leadership style as an antecedent of UPB is ethical leadership (N = 7) followed by transformational leadership (N = 3). The leader's UPB (N = 8) is identified as the most studied characteristic with respect to its effect on employees’ UPB. The most studied mediator explaining the effect of leadership on UPB is employee's moral disengagement (N = 8), which is a key deactivation process freeing individuals from guilt associated with unethical conduct (Bandura, 1999). Compared to the most studied leadership styles, such as ethical and transformational leadership, emerging constructs such as servant, empowering, moral, and relational leadership have received less attention. Our review categorizes antecedents into five distinct sections based on the type of leadership constructs and their effect on UPB. Table 5 provides a summary of UPB and leadership literature and Figure 2 provides a summarized model of leadership-related antecedents and moderators of UPB.
Summarized model of leadership-related antecedents and moderators of unethical pro-organizational behavior.
Summary of UPB and Leadership Literature.
OCB: organizational citizenship behavior; BLM: bottom-line mentality; OI: organizational identification; PSM: public service motivation.
Positive Leadership Styles that Enhance UPB
Many leadership researchers argue that positive leadership styles enhance positive outcomes among the followers. However, seminal research proves that leader–follower interaction dynamics are not that simple. Organizations usually have an intricately woven system based on leader–subordinate relationships. Certain positive leadership styles also have a dark side. Although unethical in nature, UPB creates an illusionary positive aspect as employees may believe they are supporting their leader and organization. For instance, ethical leadership-driven UPB may be attributed to employees’ organizational identification (Kalshoven et al., 2016) leading to moral disengagement from its unethical nature (Hsieh et al., 2020), while trying to reciprocate toward their leader (Tang & Li, 2021). Additionally, employee psychological empowerment can also act as a mediation mechanism to enhance employee UPB under ethical leadership (Ahmed & Khan, 2023). Researchers also agree that supervisor or organizational identification explains the increased willingness of employees working under moral leadership (Wang & Li, 2019), benevolent leadership (Shaw et al., 2020), and transformational leadership (Effelsberg et al., 2014) to engage in UPB. Similarly, servant leadership inculcates trust in a manager among the employees, thereby leading to greater chances of employee UPB (Uymaz & Arslan, 2021); charismatic leadership leads to increased willingness of followers’ UPB (Graham et al., 2015) by enhancing a sense of psychological safety (X. Zhang et al., 2020); empowering leadership strengthens sense of duty orientation which in turn leads to increased UPB (Dennerlein & Kirkman, 2022; Zhang et al., 2021). Moreover, authentic leadership (Gigol, 2021), self-sacrificial leadership (Yang et al., 2021), relational leadership, and high-level responsible leadership can also lead to an increased employee willingness to engage in UPB due to, respectively, work engagement, instrumental ethical climate, and low-level responsible leadership (Cheng et al., 2019; Gigol, 2020; Zhang & Yao, 2019). Although every study has interpreted these nuanced findings from a different perspective, it is still unclear what causes these contradicting and diverging results. One explanation for such divergence in findings may reside in the contradictory nature of UPB (i.e., unethical yet pro-organizational nature of these behaviors). Due to this reason, subordinates feel obligated to reciprocate toward their leaders as they confuse the organizational success as success of their leaders. Moreover, positive leadership instills a strong sense of cohesion among the subordinates, yet workplace ethics might not be the top priority of all types of the positive leadership such as authentic, transformational, or self-sacrificial. This may make it more permissible for their subordinates to engage in UPB as they rationalize UPB as a means to support organization's success that they assume to be aligned with their leader's organizational goals or desire for success. This review's findings may assist future researchers to identify the dark side of positive leadership styles and attributes and potentially unravel previously overlooked antecedents of UPB.
Negative Leadership Styles That Enhance UPB
Researchers agree that negative leadership styles may lead to increased propensity of followers engaging in UPB. For example, authoritarian leadership may increase chances that followers will engage in UPB by displacing their responsibility on others (Liu et al., 2021). Abusive supervision may also lead to followers’ willingness to engage in UPB by promoting status challenge among them (Xiong et al., 2021). Employees working under abusive supervisors seek to challenge the established hierarchy because of their insecurity toward resource allocation. This ability of challenging hierarchy (status challenge) therefore leads to their involvement in UPB. These findings seem to follow the natural flow of leader–follower dynamics, i.e., a negative leader's attributes encouraging unethical behavior among the employees. However, there is also a potential for research here identifying what mechanisms foster either certain negative leadership styles or attributes that may lead to positive outcomes (decreased UPB).
Leadership Styles That Have Curvilinear Relationship With UPB
Our review identified research studies which argue that certain leadership styles have a curvilinear relationship with UPB, where an inverted U-shaped curve was asserted to exist between them. This is a relationship where UPB increases with the increase of leadership style from low to moderate level, after which UPB starts decreasing with the increase of leadership style from moderate to elevated levels. In four different studies, we identified UPB's curvilinear relationship with ethical leadership (Miao et al., 2013), transformational leadership (Kim et al., 2023b), abusive supervision (Guo et al., 2020), and leader humility (Song et al., 2022). Interestingly, these observations confirm that both positive and negative leadership characteristics/styles can have a non-linear relationship with the subordinate's UPB. SET provides the underlying explanation for the curvilinear relationship of subordinates’ UPB with transformational leadership (Kim et al., 2023b) and ethical leadership (Miao et al., 2013). These studies suggested that at moderate levels of these positive leadership styles, subordinates tend to develop positive relationships with their leaders than the ones working under lower or higher levels of the same leadership styles. At the moderate levels, their subordinates believe that although the leaders might be concerned about ethical issues in the organization, but they deem other factors (such as organizational reputation and interests) as more important. Therefore, they have higher willingness to engage in UPB under the moderate level of these positive leadership styles due to positive reciprocation effect, as compared to those working under lower or higher levels of the same leadership styles. Additionally, both of these studies were conducted in a public sector setting. This might provide another explanation as public sector employees, due to the nature of their jobs, and the ultimate goal of their organization (i.e., public welfare), may be more willing to engage in UPB to further the interests of their organizations, specifically when working under positive leadership at moderate levels. Song et al. (2022) also asserted that leader's humility has the same effect on subordinate's UPB specifically when subordinates possessed higher levels of organizational identification due to their positive social exchange mechanisms toward their leader. Lastly, a potentially negative leadership style (i.e., abusive supervision) was also found to have a non-linear (inverted U-curve) relation with subordinate UPB, specifically when they had highly proactive personality. This was also explained through SET, as proactive individuals (with their proactive tactics) adopted UPB as a coping mechanism to counter the moderate level of abusive supervision of their leaders (Guo et al., 2020).
These findings highlight one of the most important aspects of leadership–UPB relationship, i.e., due to the paradoxical nature of UPB, its relationship with leadership becomes even more complicated. Therefore, it becomes even harder to predict how certain leadership characteristics will affect their subordinates’ UPB. Promisingly, this area of leadership–UPB research can help researchers further tap interesting dimensions. As previously suggested, paradoxically, a negative leadership style (e.g., abusive leadership) can potentially lead to a decrease in UPB. It may also be productive to examine whether other factors, such as context, culture, and sector, influence the curvilinearity of these relationships and to explore other possible curvilinear relationships between UPB and different leadership styles and attributes.
Other Leadership Characteristics That affect UPB
Apart from leadership styles, our review identified other leadership variables that may affect employee's UPB. For example, the extant literature asserts that the most predominant determinant of subordinate's UPB can be leader's own involvement or inclination toward UPB (Fehr et al., 2019; Zhan & Liu, 2021; Zhang et al., 2018). The most plausible explanation of such relationships can be drawn from the role of leader as a role model, who shapes their subordinates’ behaviors by condoning those behaviors and modeling those behaviors themselves. This helps shape subordinates’ cognitive schemata that their leaders not only expect such behaviors from them, but also rewards them as acceptable behaviors at workplace. Provided the paradoxical nature of UPB, it then becomes easier for the subordinates to disengage from their moral side and indulge in UPB, especially when their leaders are also exhibiting these behaviors in the workplace (Fehr et al., 2019; Lian et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2021; Wen et al., 2020).
Previous research has also asserted that supervisors may (explicitly or implicitly) encourage UPB among their subordinates because of their bottom-line mentality and increased focus on organizational goals (Babalola et al., 2021; Mesdaghinia et al., 2019) as employees can easily displace their unethical behaviors on their leaders and get morally disengaged (Farasat & Azam, 2022; Zhang et al., 2020) thereby avoiding the cognitive dissonance attached to the unethical acts. These beliefs are further strengthened when employees perceive that they are supported by their supervisors in the workplace, thereby having strong feelings of reciprocity toward their leaders and organizations. Such employees may engage in UPB to demonstrate loyalty toward their supportive leaders (Li et al., 2022), and the chances of their involvement in UPB are even greater when they perceive that their leaders are forgiving and will forgive their unethical behaviors (Lu et al., 2021).
Similarly, leader's immorality encouragement can also lead to employee UPB as employees have higher reward expectancy through such behaviors and, therefore, could become morally disengaged to carry out such unethical behaviors (Mesdaghinia et al., 2023). Likewise, the supervisor's bottom-line mentality is another crucial factor affecting employees’ UPB (Mesdaghinia et al., 2019) through employee felt obligation bottom-line mentality (BLM) (Babalola et al., 2021). LMX quality is also shown to impact employee UPB (Bryant & Merritt, 2019). Investigating leader–follower relationships at a microlevel can bring in-depth insights to the research. In addition, surprisingly little attention has been paid vis-á-vis leadership–UPB research to well-recognized individual differences such as impact of leader's personality traits on employee behavior (Walumbwa & Schaubroeck, 2009). Provided the paradoxical nature of UPB, it will be fruitful for the future researchers to explore the effect of these variables to determine the effect of employee UPB.
Review of Boundary Conditions
This section discusses the crucial boundary conditions that enhance or suppress the effects of the above-mentioned leadership-related antecedents on UPB.
Dispositional Variables
Our review identified that personal characteristics can be the most significant boundary conditions that may affect the leadership–UPB relationship in myriad ways. Frequently studied dispositional factors moderating these relationships include employee moral identity (N = 7), Machiavellianism (N = 2), and employee power distance orientation (N = 3), in addition to others as mentioned in Figure 2. The following sections discuss these factors in detail.
Moral Identity. It (Aquino & Reed, 2002) refers to a person's internal moral values which act as an important psychological mechanism that converts moral cognitions into moral behaviors (Mulder & Aquino, 2013). Our review highlights that employees’ moral identity moderates leadership–UPB relationship. For instance, Kang-Hwa and Hung-Yi (2021) noted that moral identity weakens the relationship between benevolent leadership and employee UPB through supervisor identification. Lu et al. (2021) asserted that moral identity tends to weaken the relationship between leader forgiveness and UPB through employee gratitude. Similarly, it has been shown to weaken the positive relationship between organizational identification/supervisor identification and unethical pro-supervisor behavior (Johnson & Umphress, 2018). Moreover, it has been asserted to weaken the positive relationship of supervisor's bottom-line mentality (Mesdaghinia et al., 2019), leader's UPB (Zhang et al., 2018), or relational leadership (Zhang & Yao, 2019) on subordinates’ UPB tendencies. Moral identity can, therefore, be considered as one of the vital moderating factors that may lessen employees’ UPB inclination.
Machiavellianism. It is a personality trait with a tendency to manipulate others to foster self-interests and keep things under one's own control (Christie, 1970). Researchers have observed that both leader's and employee's Machiavellianism can act as a boundary condition that strengthens the leadership–UPB relationship. For instance, Wen et al. (2020) asserted that leader's Machiavellianism strengthens the relationship between leader's UPB and subordinate's UPB through subordinate's moral disengagement. Similarly, employee Machiavellianism can strengthen the effect of perceived supervisor support and employee UPB through feelings of reciprocity toward the supervisor (W.-D. Li et al., 2021). Employees with high Machiavellianism engage in unethical pro-supervisor behaviors as a response to perceived supervisor support for getting future benefits from their supervisors. Machiavellianism is generally considered to be a negative trait that encourages negative behaviors. This notion has been supported by research that evidences that its presence leads to an increased propensity of a person engaging in UPB.
Employee Power Distance Orientation. It refers to an individual's personal beliefs and values about authority, power, and status in an organization (Kirkman et al., 2009). Such employees have a better understanding of hierarchical ranks and are obedient toward authority figures (Fehr et al., 2019). Our review identifies that employees’ high power distance orientation strengthens the relationship between supervisor bottom-line mentality (Y. Zhang et al., 2020), or leader's UPB (Lian et al., 2022) and employee UPB through employee moral disengagement. However, it weakens the relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and employee UPB through organizational identification (Yang et al., 2021). Insufficient evidence on the moderation effect of an important construct such as power distance orientation calls for more research in the future. It will be noteworthy to explore it as a boundary condition in contexts/cultures with high power distance and bureaucratic hierarchical structures.
Leadership-related Constructs. Among the leadership constructs, ethical leadership and responsible leadership styles have been tested as a boundary condition. Lee et al. (2020) asserted that employees’ perceived status in an organization increases their UPB predilection, whereas ethical leadership tends to weaken this relationship. Responsible leadership may also act as a mediator in diminishing the negative relationship between socially responsible human resource practices and employee UPB through corporate social responsibility (Luu, 2023). In addition, LMX is also observed to strengthen the relationship between abusive supervision and employee UPB through status challenge (Xiong et al., 2021). Similarly, LMX strengthens the relationship between leader's UPB and employee UPB through moral disengagement (Nguyen et al., 2021). Supervisor–employee value congruence (Zonghua et al., 2022) and leader's gratitude for employee UPB (Liu et al., 2022) have also been examined as strengthening various leader–UPB relationships in recent studies.
Future Research Agenda
This section discusses the research gaps identified by this review and various ways through which future research can address these gaps.
Empirical Advancements
As important as the leadership–UPB relationship is, it is equally important to unravel the intricate details involved in determining the nature and dynamics of these relationships. Specifically, we identified that numerous positive leadership styles are correlated negatively with UPB and vice versa, yet we identified studies demonstrating different leadership–UPB dynamics. To add to its complexity, a few studies have also identified a curvilinear relationship between the two variables. Our review has highlighted that extant research has not yet been able to explicitly examine the relative contribution of different leadership approaches toward UPB, that is, it is still not clear which leadership constructs are strongest predictors of UPB among the employees. Future research should address these issues of theoretical clarity by focusing on the following agenda.
A shift toward increased focus on a micro-perspective is recommended regarding the leadership–UPB relationship. Rather than focusing predominantly on leadership styles capturing broader leadership approaches, researchers should also pay attention to other unexplored yet important leaders’ characteristics (including personality traits, psychological mechanisms, body language, and intelligence quotient) as predictors of UPB. This will improve our knowledge of the building blocks of leadership–UPB relationship dynamics.
It will also be valuable to focus on examining the relative effects of various leadership attributes to establish comparatively stronger predictors of UPB, specifically addressing areas that remain untouched (e.g., negative leadership constructs leading to higher employee UPB propensity). In addition, future researchers need to apply procedural and statistical remedies to tackle the endogeneity-related issues contingent with cross-sectional surveys. Antonakis et al. (2010) offered some examples for such variables including genetic (e.g., personality, cognitive ability), demographic (e.g., age, sex), biological (e.g., hormones, height), or other regional/geographic factors. In addition, Eckert and Hohberger (2023) offer a guide on how to address endogeneity without instrumental variables. Moreover, future research needs to focus more attention on team and organizational levels. At the team level, research should be focused on how the leader–follower relationship influences team/group/departmental UPB inclination. At the organizational level, it should explore how leader–follower dynamics impact organizational culture and its implicit undercurrents that may influence employees’ UPB propensity.
Methodological Advancements
Measuring UPB. Based on previous trends of organizational and management research, more attention is needed when it comes to the construct definitions and their translation into measurement tools. The same is true for UPB research. Our review identifies that the extant research is using Umphress et al.’s (2010) scale for measuring UPB by and large, thus providing a clear message that we need new scales to measure UPB with respect to different contexts, cultures, workplace settings, etc. The operationalization of the UPB construct is confounded in a way that it confounds motivations with their associated manifestation into the behavioral intentions in each statement.
Confounding the items in this way may create a lack of conceptual clarity. The first part of each item reflects the motivation (e.g., “To benefit my organization…”) and the second part of each item reflects various behavioral intentions deemed to be unethical (e.g., “…I would misrepresent…”). Like the predominance of other research in the organizational behavior field, measuring the motivations (as antecedent to behavior) and behaviors/intentions separately would not only bring conceptual clarity, but will also allow researchers to assess other additional antecedents to those behaviors. It will also establish causality using longitudinal designs that separate motives from behaviors (something that cannot be done with the current UPB measure). For instance, tacking on various motivations to the front end of these same items, such as “To get ahead in this organization…,” “To support my team…,” “To cover for one of my peers…,” or any other “pro-social” motives would lead to a proliferation of constructs, one for each possible motive to “tack on” to each of these unethical behaviors. With the current measure, UPB seems to be a deviance/unethical behavior intention that is being measured with a single selected motive placed on the front end of each item which uses the organization as referent. This contradicts with the UPB definition that defines it to be an unethical behavior intended to benefit the “organization or its member (e.g., leaders).” It will be fruitful to measure it as an unethical behavior (rather than behavioral intentions), and instead of confounding a single motive with every behavioral intention, letting the researchers put any motivation construct(s) in their model as an antecedent can make major shift to this measure.
In the decade since its conceptualization, UPB has been treated as a primarily voluntary behavior. However, this notion has recently been challenged by Wang et al. (2023), who have argued that some part of UPB can be compulsory in nature, which means employees may engage in UPB not because they want to, but because they have to. This notion can also be backed by our review on leadership and UPB (Kalshoven et al., 2016; Uymaz & Arslan, 2021; Xiong et al., 2021). If we have a closer look at the currently used UPB measure (Umphress et al., 2010), it becomes dubious whether all the behaviors listed in the UPB measure are inherently “unethical.” Many of the items, for example, concern the transparency or proper representation of company information. Take for example the items, “…withhold negative information about my company” and “…conceal information.” Such acts are not only expected in many companies, but even legally required. Many companies require employees to sign confidentiality agreements which require them to withhold most negative information, except that which is egregious or inherently illegal. Other items such as “exaggerated the truth about my company's products” are certainly not socially desirable, but are they blatantly unethical? If so, wouldn't entire industries such as marketing and advertisement, and the companies that buy those ads all be culpable of unethical behavior? Thus, it seems that this line of research needs more discussion on how “ethical/unethical” is defined, and perhaps the items in the measure need to be clear and concise, for example, on what information is unethical to conceal.
On these grounds, we call for future researchers to develop well thought-out new psychometric scales that can assess various key elements of UPB and can be treated as a construct representative measure, which strictly captures the relevant and important features of this construct. To do so, there is a need to cultivate divergent yet realistic thinking allowing for assessment of different facets of UPB in an organization. Once a comprehensive standardized scale is developed (i.e., a reliable and valid measure of this construct), researchers can begin to identify antecedents of UPB, leader behavior evidently being one of the important antecedents.
Study Design. Rigorous empirical research efforts are needed to gain a better understanding of the leadership–UPB relationship. Current scholarship on the topic is skewed toward quantitative cross-sectional studies, with limited studies relying on experimental design. Alternative methods can provide deepened insights into ethical leadership (EL)–UPB link.
The underlying assumption for every study identified in our review was to examine how leadership may influence (or cause) the propensity of follower's UPB in the organization. However, the majority of the identified papers used a research design poorly fitted to do so due to sensitivity and endogeneity biases (Inam et al., 2021; Miao et al., 2020). As experiments are a “gold standard” to determine causality, future studies can potentially combat issues of unfair comparisons by preventing experimental group treatment to passive control group comparisons (Cooper & Richardson, 1986). This approach is known to give realistic estimates of the intended causal effects by making comparisons with more relevant groups and pertinent conditions to avoid unrealistic placebo effect-based results (Chambless & Hollon, 1998). Moreover, future studies are encouraged to use laboratory experiments to increase experimental control (such as randomization and blind conditions), which is lost while using field experiment. Furthermore, future research should strive to formulate more realistic experimental vignettes and protocols for leadership and UPB.
Additionally, regarding the issue of experimental validity in organizational research, there has been a long-standing debate on the use of unrealistic simulations not reflective of real-life organizational settings (Hauser et al., 2017). Experimental studies have been using unrealistic tasks and/or samples that do not represent real-life leader–follower connotations in organizations (Baumeister et al., 2007). Encouragingly, the experimental studies identified in our review have used quasi-experiment or field experiment design (Hauser et al., 2017) using employees from various organizations as their sample, thereby ensuring the ecological validity of the study. However, future studies should also use laboratory experiments to increase experimental control (such as randomization and blind conditions) that is lost while using field experiment. Furthermore, future research should strive to formulate more realistic experimental vignettes and protocols for leadership and UPB.
Data collection at multiple time points reduces the chances of common method bias and creates temporal separation to help investigate processes between the knowledge hiding and its determinants (Podsakoff et al., 2012). The use of longitudinal study designs with theoretically appropriate time-lags (Fischer et al., 2017) where the beginning of the relationship between leader and follower is captured at time 1, and as interpersonal dynamics change over time, the possible effects of an enhanced or faded relationship could be identified at time 2. This direction would help understand how varied social dynamics over time impact on the leadership–UPB link that would have implications for managers in understanding the phenomenon and craft suitable strategies.
Future research should also consider more appropriate qualitative research designs to explore the leadership–UPB link. Observational research would provide the opportunity to conduct more in-depth studies of microprocesses and practices. A possible methodology is to look at the verbal and non-verbal communication leader–follower use when interacting with one another. From a quantitative perspective, since experimental designs are underutilized in the literature on leadership–UPB link, researchers can utilize online panels, employee samples, and general participants to test the effects of various moderators on leadership–UPB link in a controlled rather than field setting. To combat the shortcomings of current designs, mixed methods combining quantitative studies with qualitative ones would be able to answer applied research questions more adequately. For example, utilizing different methodologies for different populations/studies would help deeply understand the phenomenon and validate findings. Future studies can build on the research conducted by Ivankova and Plano Clark (2018) and Clark (2019) to understand how both methods can be utilized for this research.
Alternative Theoretical Explanations
Our review suggests that a prevalent body of knowledge explains the leadership–UPB relationship through the lens of socio-cognitive theories, mainly including SIT, SET, and social learning theory. The dynamics of human interaction cannot be so simply understood, however, especially when accounting for leader–follower interactions. Explaining this complexity from a purely socio-cognitive theoretical perspective is an over-simplification of the underlying aspects. Indeed, we cannot ignore the psychological, economic, socio-cultural, and political factors in explaining what it takes for a leader–follower relationship to lead to UPB. Addressing leadership–UPB through these micro- and macro-perspectives would help understand their interaction and antecedents in a better way. The following section briefly sheds light on various explanations of leadership–UPB interaction through theoretical lenses from these fields. Future researchers may use the following examples as a guide (but should not be restricted to only using the below mentioned theoretical lenses) to provide an unconventional explanation to leadership–UPB relationship.
At its core, the development and quality of human relationships can be explained through attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973, 1980, 1982, 1988, 1997), especially during times of stress, fear, and uncertainty. This theory revolves around the belief that humans have an innate tendency to develop and maintain relationships with an attachment figure and their behavior can be explained through their attachment styles. Attachment theory can explain the intricacies of human interaction at the workplace, in teams and organizations. Bowlby explained attachment as one of the four “behavioral systems” that gets activated to bring relief from stress, fear, or uncertainty. Based on success or failure of gaining proximity and support from the attachment figure, individuals develop different forms of attachment styles, which thereby defines their interaction patterns within a workplace (Hudson, 2013; McClean et al., 2021). It can be useful to provide a better explanation of causes of subordinate's inclination toward UPB based on their attachment patterns with their leader (attachment figure). It will help provide valuable insights into the within-person view of leader's support leading to various behaviors. This theoretical lens seems to provide a promising perspective to leadership–UPB relationship for future research.
The motivational aspect of leadership–UPB is another under-explained area. With recent research advancement on defining UPB from a distinct perspective (compulsory UPB perspective), Wang et al. (2023) asserted that considering UPB merely as a voluntary behavior is an over-simplified view of these behaviors. Employees not only engage in UPB voluntarily, but sometimes they are required to engage in such behaviors (i.e., compulsory UPB). What motivates employees to engage in UPB has not clearly been answered yet. Theoretical perspectives such as regulatory focus theory and self-determination theory can explain motivational aspects of employees’ leadership–UPB dynamics in an explicit manner. Regulatory focus theory, for instance, can explain how promotion focused or prevention focused mindsets work behind an employee's self-regulatory mechanism behind his actions and the way situational triggers can enhance one focus over the other (Higgins, 1997, 1998). Similarly, self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) can explain how autonomous and/or controlled motivation may lead an employee to engage in UPB while working under a leader with certain characteristics. It will be a fruitful endeavor to explain the motivation factors behind leader-induced UPB among the employees.
Our review suggests that the leadership–UPB relationship has predominantly been looked at from a micro-perspective and explained through the socio-cognitive theoretical perspectives. It is advisable to view this relationship from a macro-perspective including organizational and cultural perspectives to gain a better understanding. It will be worthwhile to have a look at the power-driven aspects to explain the leadership–UPB relationship, as power is an essential concept in social sciences. It is as essential as “energy” is for physics “the laws of social dynamics are laws which can only be stated in terms of power (Russell, 1938, p. 10).” Future research, for instance, can explain it through the approach–inhibition theory of power (Keltner, 2003). This theory assumes that “power” creates a balance between approach and inhibition systems, which thereby informs cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes. This theory can, therefore, better explain how power orientation of a leader activates certain behavioral inclinations among their subordinates to determine their UPB propensity.
Unethical behavior in the workplace has always led to the famous “bad apple or bad barrel” approach. There is a need to take this debate to yet another level and consider the broader contextual or institutional factors to understand why these unethical behaviors occur within an organization. An organization's context or society is an important factor that needs to be taken into consideration while examining unethical employee behaviors to get a holistic view of their underlying causes. An institutionalized view of individuals’ and organizations’ roles and responsibilities in certain contexts can help understand behaviors in a better way. For instance, explaining leadership–UPB relationship through a neo-institutionalism approach, which assumes that studying individual behavior in isolation without taking institutional constraints into consideration would lead to a biased understanding of the political reality. Therefore, all forms of human behaviors and interaction in an organization can only completely be understood by taking rational choice institutionalism (economic perspective), sociological institutionalism (socio-cultural perspective), and historical institutionalism (historical perspective) on board.
Combinative Effect of Multiple Leadership Styles on UPB
The major gap identified by our systematic review calls for future research to address the complexity inherent in leadership dynamics within organizational contexts. In real-life organizations, there is often a combination of leadership styles exhibited by leader(s), as leadership is a dynamic process influenced by numerous factors at individual, team, organizational, or societal levels (Ametepe & Onokala, 2023; Kanji et al., 2023; Müller et al., 2024). While valuable insights have been gleaned from examining single leadership behaviors, particularly their impact on UPB, this approach falls short of capturing the holistic view.
Traditional studies often focus on individual leadership styles, such as transformational or transactional leadership, yet organizational leaders typically exhibit a combination of leadership styles, adjusting their approach based on situational factors, organizational culture, and the needs of their subordinates (Casimir & Ngee Keith Ng, 2010; Li et al., 2016). Leaders exert their influence through the interpretations that subordinates make of their behaviors (Nixon et al., 2012; Talwar, 2011). The combination leadership behaviors are pivotal, depending on the nature and needs of subordinates, thus influencing the employees’ behaviors. Therefore, there is a significant gap in leadership–UPB research in understanding how various leadership behaviors and styles interact and potentially counteract each other concerning UPB. Investigating these simultaneous (synergistic or antagonistic) effects can provide a more nuanced understanding of ethical decision-making processes within organizations.
Additionally, it's crucial to explore how leadership interacts with organizational-level phenomena, such as culture, processes, and systems, to influence UPB. Organizational context significantly shapes ethical conduct, yet this aspect is often overlooked in leadership–UPB research. Understanding how leadership practices interact with contextual factors is vital for developing effective strategies to promote ethical behavior and mitigate UPB within diverse organizational contexts. Future research is called to address these gaps in the literature, as they pave the way for advancing our understanding of leadership dynamics and their implications within organizational contexts with more relevant practical implications.
Conclusion
Our review has shown that leadership–UPB research is an evolving area of knowledge that has attained myriad captivating and interesting findings. There is clear empirical and theoretical research backing the notion that leadership is one of the crucial antecedents of employee UPB. Given the contrasting nature of UPB as it has both positive (pro-organizational) and negative (unethical) aspects, leadership might act as a double-edged sword in handling these behaviors. The review has clearly identified that nuanced, divergent, and complex findings in terms of various forms of leadership effect UPB. Specifically, various studies show that ethical leadership tends to reduce UPB (e.g., Miao et al., 2020). On the contrary, other studies have indicated that the relationship between ethical leadership and UPB is not straightforward and have asserted that ethical leadership may induce higher levels of UPB among the employees (e.g., Kalshoven et al., 2016; Tang & Li, 2021). Yet another study presents an interesting finding that ethical leadership can have a curvilinear relationship with UPB (Miao et al., 2013). Similarly, there were other divergent findings that have been identified in our review. For instance, research proposes that both positive and negative leadership styles can enhance UPB. Additionally, a few empirical findings also asserted that several leadership styles have a curvilinear relationship with UPB. While every study explained those findings based on various theoretical lenses (mainly socio-cognitive theoretical lenses), there is a pressing need to find answers and explanations to this black box. Thus, future research is vital to improve our understanding of which leadership attributes and behaviors are more important to hinder employee UPB propensity and to identify the mechanisms through which these leader behaviors carry their influence. Specifically, we call on future researchers to assess the simultaneous effects of multiple leadership behaviors, or leadership behaviors that may offset each other. Moreover, we also call on researchers to explore how leadership interacts with the organizational-level phenomenon to influence UPB (for instance, organizational culture, processes, systems, etc.). However, more rigorous and robust research designs are needed for leadership–UPB research in the future, while looking at fresh and nuanced perspectives of these relationships.
The current systematic literature review extended prior reviews (Mishra et al., 2021; Mo et al., 2022; Zhang & Xiao, 2020) through providing deeper empirical and theoretical insights on the leadership–UPB literature. It highlights the importance of the necessary leadership–UPB discourse through situating leadership as a key antecedent of UPB, and critically reviewing the current empirical knowledge through various angles. This exercise will not only provide a clarity on scarcity in the field, but also provides with future research directions with respect to the antecedents, boundary conditions, methodology, scale development, theoretical perspectives, etc. Specifically, provided the central position of leadership in shaping employee behaviors (including UPB), the current review will provide fruitful insights on what has been done and directions for future research. In conclusion, our systematic review highlights the importance of adopting a holistic approach to studying leadership's impact on UPB. Investigating the simultaneous effects of multiple leadership styles and their interactions with individual, team, or organizational level phenomenon can contribute to development of comprehensive frameworks for impeding UPB among the subordinates.
Compliance With Ethical Standards
This research meets all applicable standards with regard to research integrity and ethics. None of the authors of this paper has a financial or personal relationship with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias the content of the paper. In addition, there are no competing interests at stake and there is no conflict of interest with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias the content of the paper.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
