BETWEEN GOOD INTENTIONS AND DARK CORNERS: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP AND UNETHICAL PRO-ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Employees who are keen to uphold their organizational competetiveness by practicing organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) may, at some point within practical workplace settings, based on their social exchange perceptions (SEP), cross the ethical and moral boundary conditions to benefit the organization and engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), and social cognitive theory (SCT), a mediated-moderation model has been theorized to broaden our take on UPB as one of the possible downstream effects of OCB, mediated by SEP and moderated by moral attentiveness (MA). As a novel study of its kind, it is likely to have a significant contribution to the body of knowledge regarding the paradoxical nature of UPB.