Doing bad things to good people : examining the effect of stakeholder orientation on unethical pro-organizational behaviors

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Msc. Business Administration 2016 – 2017

Doing bad things to good people:

Examining the effect of stakeholder orientation on unethical

pro-organizational behaviors.

Name: Yorick van Schoonhoven

Student number: 10193561

Supervisor: mw. Dr. Flore Bridoux

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by Yorick van Schoonhoven who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Abstract

Unethical behavior is still commonplace in organizations, and its results are costly. This study examined a recently uncovered form of unethical behaviors, unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). UPB differs from other forms of unethical behavior in that it is motivated by the intention to benefit the organization or its members. It has been theorized that UPB is motivated by

organizational identification, but the empirical evidence for this relationship is quite weak. We attempt to provide empirical evidence for this relationship, and examine the moderating effect of both moral identity and stakeholder orientation. Stakeholder orientation is a measure we constructed that builds on characteristics of both instrumentalist and moralistic stakeholder approaches, and captures how moralistic a participant's stakeholder approach is. We hypothesized that a stronger moral identity, or a more moralistic stakeholder orientation, would decrease the effects of organizational identification on UPB. Our sample consisted of 196 Dutch employees, and a thorough factor analyses showed that not every established scale was directly suitable for a Dutch sample. Unfortunately, our results indicated that a direct relationship between organizational identification and UPB was not present in our sample, neither was there support for a moderating effect of either moral identity or stakeholder orientation. We did however found that stakeholder orientation had a direct effect on UPB, which indicates new avenues for research on UPB and shows that our measure works. We provide suggestions for improvement on established scales for a Dutch sample, as well as how to expand on our new stakeholder measure.

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1. Introduction

Recent scandals such as the Volkswagen emission scandal or the Toshiba accounting scandal illustrate that fraud and unethical behavior is still commonplace in business, and the results of such behaviors are costly (Umphress, Bingham and Mitchell, 2010). Thus it is not surprising that

unethical behavior has been the topic of many studies. Most research on unethical behavior has focused on unethical activities intended to harm organizations (e.g. lying, embezzling money and stealing office supplies) (Kong, 2016). Only recently have researchers started to investigate a form of unethical behavior with an entirely different motivation: unethical behavior intended to benefit the organization (e.g. deceiving customers and falsifying financial reports) (Umphress, Bingham and Mitchell, 2010). Though these unethical behaviors are committed with the intention to benefit the organization, the final results of these unethical behaviors are likely to be harmful to the

company (Umphress et al, 2010). As illustrated by the Volkswagen case, where engineers installed software to cheat the emission tests which led to a massive backlash and loss of reputation (Hotten, 2015).

While antecedents of unethical self-interested behaviors have been extensively investigated, what drives people to engage in unethical pro-organizational behaviors (UPB) still remains largely unclear (Matherne and Litchfield, 2012). Thus far the most comprehensive theoretical framework has been conceived by Umphress and Bingham (2011), in which organizational identification is posited as one of the main drivers of UPB. Organizational identification is the degree to which an individual identifies with his or her organization (Mael and Ashforth, 1992). Individuals who strongly identify with their organization internalize the organization's successes and failures as their own (Mael and Ashforth, 1992), and are said to disregard personal moral standards and engage in acts that favor the organization (Ashforth and Anand, 2003). Umphress and Bingham (2010) posit that these acts can even be at the costs of those outside of the organization, and thus propose that

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individuals high in organizational identification are more likely to engage in UPB.

Yet, the empirical evidence for this relationship is not as well established. When Umphress et al. (2010), introduced UPB with their empirical study they found no significant direct relationship between organizational identification and UPB. However, they did find that organizational

identification in combination with strong reciprocity beliefs had a positive influence on UPB (Umphress et al., 2010). Since high organizational identification alone does not predict UPB, it is important to search for factors that might influence the relationship to fully understand what is happening (Umphress et al., 2010). Other studies have investigated said relationship by examining the mediating role of moral disengagement (Chen M., Chen C. and Sheldon, 2016), the influence of work passion (Kong, 2016), and ethical leadership (Miao, Newman, Yu and Xu, 2013). However, a complete empirically supported framework is yet to be found. To contribute to this scientific endeavor this thesis will further the understanding of the relationship between organizational identification and UPB by examining different moderators.

In general, researchers agree that unethical behavior in organizations is influenced by individual factors (e.g. a person's level of moral development), interpersonal factors (peer and leader influences), and organizational or contextual factors (e.g. organizational culture or ethical climate) (Treviño, 1986; Treviño, Nieuwenboer and Kish-Gephart, 2014; Treviño, Weaver and Reynolds 2006). This is called the person–situation interactionist model, which tries to explain employees' ethical decision making (Treviño, 1986). This model outlines how employees interpret cues in their environment when determining how to behave, while simultaneously being influenced by their personal characteristics (Treviño, 1986). This thesis builds on the person-situation

interactionist model and examines the effect of both an individual and organizational factor, on the relationship between organizational identification and UPB.

Our individual factor is moral identity. Moral identity is the degree to which a person identifies as a moral person (Aquino and Reed, 2002). Someone with a highly self-important moral

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identity is less likely to employ moral disengagement (Detert, Treviño and Sweitzer, 2008), which has been found to mediate the relationship between organizational identification and UPB (Chen M., Chen C. and Sheldon, 2016).

Then, for our organizational factor we have turned to stakeholder theory. Specifically, this work builds upon Kaptein's (2008) multi-dimensional measure of unethical behavior, in which unethical behavior is seen as breaking ethical responsibilities towards stakeholders. For instance, an organization's ethical responsibility towards its shareholders and financiers is to achieve a good return on investment, while an organization's customers require good products or services and fair information (Kaptein, 2008). This thesis investigated if different stakeholder approaches held these ethical responsibilities in different regards. Based on the stakeholder management models of Berman et al. (1999), and Jones et al's (2007) stakeholder culture typology, we have identified different characteristics of prevalent stakeholder approaches. These characteristics were translated into items, in order to create a scale that measures how moralistic a participant's organization's stakeholder approach is.

Our theoretical research and empirical findings contributes to the existing literature in three ways. First, our factor analyses showed that both Umphress et al.'s (2010) UPB scale and Aquino and Reed's (2002) moral identity scale have to be altered for use on a Dutch sample. We provide reasoning for this decline as well as give suggestions for improvement. Second, we constructed a new scale that measures how moralistic a participant's organization's stakeholder approach is. To our knowledge, it is the first stakeholder approach measure than can be used in a survey. This 7-item scale is based on characteristics of both instrumentalist and moralistic stakeholder approaches, and showed good internal reliability. We provide suggestions for further improvement on the measure. Third, our results showed that stakeholder orientation had a direct effect on UPB. To our knowledge, this is the first time that stakeholder theory has been included in a study on UPB. It is surprising that stakeholder orientation had a significant effect on UPB while organizational

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identification did not. This might indicate that future research on UPB should turn away from employee attitudes and pay more attention to situational variables, which will be discussed more thoroughly later in this thesis.

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2. Literature review

2.1 Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB)

To fully comprehend why UPB is an important form of unethical behavior that deserves more academic attention, we must first define what UPB is and what it entails, before we look at what research has been done in the field of UPB thus far.

UPB as a construct has largely been developed by Umphress et al's (2010) empirical study investigating the effect of organizational identification on UPB, and their subsequent (2011) theoretical framework in which UPB is differentiated from similar concepts and possible antecedents and moderators are theorized. In their work, Umphress and Bingham (2011, p.622) define UPB as “... actions that are intended to promote the effective functioning of the organization or its members (e.g., leaders) and violate core societal values, mores, laws or standards of proper conduct.” This definition entails two key components. The first component is the unethical nature of the behavior, meaning that the behavior violates widely held social norms (Umphress and

Bingham, 2011). The behavior can be both acts of commission (e.g. destroying potentially

incriminating documents to protect the organization) and acts of omission (e.g. not fully informing customers of the flaws or risks of a product) (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). The second key component is that said unethical behavior is committed with the intent to benefit the organization, its members, or both (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). It is this last component that differentiates UPB from other, more studied, forms of unethical behavior. Since most research on behavioral ethics has focused on unethical behavior with the intent to benefit oneself, to retaliate against or harm the organization, or the harm coworkers (Umphress et al., 2010). Though UPB might be committed with the intent to benefit the organization, the behaviors are unethical because they violate larger societal norms and if it is uncovered will have a detrimental effect on the company.

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previous research done on UPB. We will start by examining Umphress and Bingham's (2011) theoretical framework, since this is the framework that developed UPB as a construct. After which we shall take a look at the most important studies done in the field of UPB since then.

First of all, as we mentioned before, UPB as a construct was introduced by Umphress et al's 2010 empirical study. Umphress and Bingham's subsequent 2011 theoretical framework is the most extensive theoretical model of UPB thus far. In this framework they propose that organizational identification and positive social exchange relationships drive UPB through a mental process called neutralization; the process by which the ethical imperative of an act are overlooked or dismissed (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). Umphress and Bingham propose that positive social exchange relationships can lead to employees trying to 'pay back' the organization for their favorable

treatment in a well-intended but unhealthy way (e.g. UPB). While organizational identification may compel employees to disregard others outside of the organization and disregard their personal ethical standards (Ashforth and Annand, 2003). This relationship will be further explored in the next chapter.

Furthermore, Umphress and Bingham propose an individual factor moderator and an organizational factor moderator. For their individual moderating factor Umphress and Bingham (2011) draw on Kohlberg (1969), and identify three broad categories of moral development: preconventional (primarily self-interested), conventional (morals based on social groups) and principled (morals based on principles). From this categorization follows that individuals in the preconventional and principled levels of moral development are less likely to engage in UPB (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). While individuals in the conventional level of moral development may be influenced by their relationship with their organization or leader when faced with an ethical decision (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). For the organizational factor of their framework,

Umphress and Bingham (2011) describe how organizations might fail to foster environments that encourage ethical behavior, which they call an amoral culture. Such environments might be the

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result of amoral leadership, performance goals, and amoral institutions (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). Umphress and Bingham (2011) acknowledge that there is still much unknown about what drives people to UPB, and encourage other researchers to empirically test their propositions as well as look at UPB through a broader lens (e.g. team-level or organization level). The next paragraphs will take a look at the most prominent studies that have answered this call for further research.

Most research on UPB and its antecedents has focused on either employee attitudes (such as organizational identification and affective commitment) or on leadership characteristics (such as transformational leadership and transaction leadership. Graham, Ziegert and Capitano (2015)

examined the effect of leadership style and framing on UPB. They found that when a loss framing is used (emphasizing the negative aspect of a situation) transformational leaders inspired employees to commit UPB (Graham et al., 2015). This is probably due to employees identifying with their

organization, being loyal to their organization, and wanting to protect their organization when it is in a bad situation. The inspirational and charismatic transformational leader motivates these loyal behaviors and stimulates pro-organizational behaviors. While simultaneously the salience of the negative situation overrides the ethical influence of the leader (Graham et al., 2015). Similarly, Effelsberg, Solga and Gurt (2014) investigated the role of transformational leadership on UPB as well. They found that transformational leadership was positively linked to UPB, due to

transformational leaders reinforcing employees' identification with the organization (Effelsberg et al., 2014).

Which brings us to the other investigated antecedents of UPB, employee attitudes. As mentioned in the introduction, in their empirical study that introduced UPB as a construct,

Umphress et al. (2010) their empirical study investigated the effect of organizational identification on UPB. They did not find a direct relationship, but did find a positive effect when testing for an interaction effect with positive reciprocity beliefs (Umphress et al., 2010). This sparked several studies on the relationship between organizational identification and UPB. One of the most notable

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of these studies is Matherne and Litchfield's (2012) empirical study investigating the role affective commitment on UPB. Affective commitment is an employee's emotional attachment to an

organization, which is considered a similar construct to organizational identification (Matherne and Litchfield, 2012). In their study they found that affective commitment had a positive effect on UPB. This effect was moderated by moral identity, with employees being more likely to commit UPB when they hold a lower level of moral identity (Matherne and Litchfield, 2012). The other notable studies investigating organizational identification and UPB are more recent. Both Chen et al. (2016), and Kong (2016) found a positive relationship between organizational identification and UPB. According to Chen et al. (2016) this relationship is mediated through moral disengagement. This proposed relationship was found consistently over three empirical studies (Chen et al., 2016). Kong (2016), on the other hand, investigated how obsessive passion (when people feel compelled to engage in an activity) and mindfulness led to UPB through organizational identification. This led to the suggestion that “UPB is merely the product of low-mindfulness individuals' obsessive work passion and resultant (unhealthy) organization identification” (Kong, 2016, p. 89).

In conclusion, UPB is a relatively new construct still lacking in well-defined and (strongly-) empirically supported antecedents. Most research has focused on either organizational identification as a driver of UPB, or on the influence of leadership styles. In this thesis we shall further investigate the first relationship. Although antecedents of organizational identification (e.g. obsessive passion and transformational leadership) have been investigated, there is still no clear picture of what factors moderate the relationship between organizational identification and UPB. Our aim is to address this gap in the literature by building upon the person-situation interactionist model (Treviño, 1986) and stakeholder theory. But first we shall have a closer look at the concept of organizational identification.

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2.2 Organizational identification

Before we can further explore the relationship between organizational identification and UPB by investigating moderating factors, we shall first give some insights into organizational identification's theoretical background, into the consequences associated with organizational identification, and into why it is an interesting construct to study in relation to UPB. We shall not further explore previous studies on organizational identification and UPB since we feel that the previous paragraphs give a clear picture on what has been found thus far.

Organizational identification as used in this study finds its conception in the social identity theory. According to social identity theory, a person's self-concept consists of a personal identity and a social identity (Tajfel and Turner, 1985, as cited in Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Personal identity encompasses personal characteristics such as bodily attributes, abilities and interests, whereas social identity encompasses salient group classifications such as gender, age-cohort, and nationality. Personal and social identities are distinguished by what Ashforth, Harrison and Corley (2008) call the 'level of self', placing them on the individual level or group level respectively. These identities allow us to classify both ourselves and others into various social categories, which help us order the social environment and enables us to define or locate ourselves in it(Tajfel and Turner, 1985, as cited in Ashforth and Mael, 1989). This self classifying into social categories, or the perception of belonging to a group classification, is called social identification. A clear example of the impact that social identification can have is that of an individual that classifies himself as a fan of the local football team. This identification makes him experience the successes and failures of the football team as if they were his own, and causes the individual to perceive himself as

“psychologically intertwined with the fate of the group” (Mael and Ashforth, 1992). Ashforth and Mael (1989) argue that organizational identification is a specific form of social identification, that might help individuals find meaning, connectedness and empowerment. Mael and Ashforth's (1992) subsequent empirical study investigates antecedents and outcomes of organizational identification,

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in this paper they formally operationalize organizational identification as “the perception of oneness with or belongingness to an organization, where the individual defines him or herself in terms of the organization(s) in which he or she is a member.” (Mael and Ashforth, 1992, p.104). This is the

definition of organizational identification that we will follow in this thesis. It is important to note that this is purely a cognitive construct and does not describe behaviors or affects. It merely describes the perception of being psychologically intertwined with the fate of the group (i.e. organization) (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). In the next paragraph we shall give a short insight into why people feel the need to identify with their organization, before taking a look at the behaviors associated with organizational identification.

Employees who strongly identify with their organization internalize the organization's successes and failures as their own (Mael and Ashforth, 1992), and will behave in ways that benefit the organization (Mael and Ashforth, 1995). It is therefore not surprising that organizational

identification has been linked with so many beneficial behaviors such as organizational citizen behavior (van Dick, Grojean, Christ, and Wieseke, 2006), increased job performance and

motivation (van Knippenberg, 2000), and decreased turnover intentions (Mael and Ashforth, 1995). However, it has been theorized that there is a dark side to organizational identification as well (Ashforth and Anand, 2003; Dukerich, Kramer, & Parks, 1998; Elsbach, 1999, as referenced in Umphress and Bingham, 2011). Ashforth and Anand (2003) theorized how organizational

identification might compel employees to disregard their personal ethical standards. Furthermore, employees might place the interests of the organization above those who will be harmed by the unethical act. Dukerich et al., (1998) warns of the dangers of overidentification: “when the needs of the actor become secondary to the needs of the organization” (Umphress and Bingham, 2011, p. 625), suggesting that it might cause employees to engage in unethical acts in order to protect the organization and creates a greater toleration of unethical behaviors conducted by others in the organization (Dukerich et al, 1998, as referenced in Umphress and Bingham, 2011; Miao et al.,

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2013). Umphress and Bingham (2011) build on this foundation and propose that “individuals with a stronger organizational identification are more likely to perceive threat to their organization's material and reputational status and be more willing to seek out and take all means necessary to satisfy with the competitive needs of the organization” (Chen et al., 2016 p. 1083). Stronger organizational identification drives individuals to act on loyalty and organization serving instincts, which are used to justify breaking ethical standards and motivates employees to commit UPB (Chen et al., 2016).

However, as noted in the previous chapter, the empirical support for the relationship between organizational identification and UPB is not as well established as the theoretical

foundation would suggest. We aim to develop the empirical foundations by building upon the upon the person-situation interactionist model (Treviño, 1986), specifically by investigating the role of moral identity and stakeholder approach on the relationship between organizational identification and UPB. These factors shall be discussed in the following two sections.

2.3 Moral identity

According to the person-situation interactionist model of Treviño (1986), a person's ethical behavior is dependent on cues in their environment and their personal characteristics. This thesis shall investigate the role of moral identity as a moderating factor on the individual level. Moral identity as defined by Aquino and Reed (2002) draws on social identity theory in a similar fashion to organizational identification. The next paragraph will give a brief theoretical background, followed by an overview of previous studies linking moral identity to (un)ethical behaviors. As noted in the previous chapter, people hold multiple personal and social identities.

Besides social identities based on salient group memberships (such as organizational identification), people can also identify around many personal traits and characteristics (Aquino and Reed, 2002). Aquino and Reed (2002) base their conceptualization of moral identity around a group of moral

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traits (e.g. caring, fair, honest etc.). This is due to the logic that a person's moral self-concept is made up of many different traits, and some traits might be more central to a person's self-concept than others. While one person might strongly identify with being a caring person, the next might not. However, this is not to say that the first person is a more moral person than the other, luckily, “moral traits form part of a network of connected components” (Aquino and Reed, 2002, p. 1424). Meaning that it is not necessary to discover all traits that make up a person's unique moral identity; activating a subset of moral traits will activate other moral traits more central to the person's

identity (Aquino and Reed, 2002). Moral identity motivates moral behavior through the consistency principle, which states that “an identity creates the need for the individual to be true to him or herself and, therefore, the need to act consistently with his or her identity” (Reynold and Ceranic, 2007, p.1611). In other words, an individual who strongly identifies as a moral person will behave in a way that is in accordance with this identity in order to uphold it, meaning that the individual will experience a higher obligation to behave in a moral way (Matherne and Litchfield, 2012; Reynolds and Ceranic, 2007).

Aquino and Reed (2002) conceptualized two dimensions of moral identity: internalization and symbolization. “Internalization reflects the degree to which a set of moral traits is central to the self-concept, whereas symbolization reflects the degree to which these traits are expressed publicly through the person’s actions” (Reynolds and Ceranic, 2007, p. 1611). Empirical studies have shown how both dimensions are predictors of moral behavior (Treviño, 2006). However, internalization has been found to be the better predictor and thus most empirical studies measure for the degree of internalization only (Aquino and Reed, 2002; Detert et al, 2008; Matherne and

Litchfield, 2012). It is easy to see that moral identity influences moral behavior, and thus will have an effect on willingness to commit unethical pro-organizational behaviors. But the question

remains: how does moral identity relate to organizational identification?

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that make up a person's social self-schema (Asforth and Mael, 1989, Aquino and Reed, 2002). An empirical study has found that social identities can be activated or suppressed by contextual or situational variables (Forehand, Deshpandé and Reed, 2002). However this study was aimed at priming social identities (ethnicity) through marketing communications and generalization of the findings are questionable (Forehand et al., 2002). Therefore it remains interesting to see how the different identities – organizational identity and moral identity – will interact.

In addition, there have been several studies that point towards moral identity playing a role in the relationship between organizational identification and UPB.

Previous studies have shown how someone with a highly self-important moral identity is less likely to employ moral disengagement (Detert, Treviño and Sweitzer, 2008), which has been found to mediate the relationship between organizational identification and unethical

pro-organizational behaviors (Chen M., Chen C. and Sheldon, 2016). In addition, Matherne and Litchfield (2012) found that moral identity moderated the relationship between affective commitment (a construct similar to organizational identification) and UPB.

In conclusion, moral identity is known to be a good predictor of ethical behavior. In

addition, previous studies point towards moral identity having an effect on the relationship between organizational identification and UPB but there is no direct empirical support yet. This makes moral identity an interesting variable to take into account when researching UPB.

2.4 Stakeholder Theory

This section shall shortly describe the relevance of stakeholder theory in strategic management, after which we shall present our arguments for a relation between different stakeholder approaches and UPB.

The stakeholder approach developed in the 1980s when Freeman (1984) proposed a new conceptual framework to broaden the concept of strategic management beyond its traditional

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economic roots (Freeman and McVea, 2001). Freeman argued that rather than the traditional sole focus on the fiduciary duty to the shareholders, organizations should also pay attention to the interests of other groups involved in the organization (i.e., the stakeholders) (Freeman, 1984). Stakeholders are defined as any group or individual who is affected by or can affect the

achievement of the organization's objectives (e.g., employees, customers, suppliers, communities...) (Freeman, 1984). Early stakeholder theory was marked by conceptual confusion (Jones, Felps and Bigley, 2007), until Donaldson and Preston (1995) categorized three types of stakeholder theory: normative (How should the firm relate to its stakeholders?), instrumental (What happens if the firm relates to its stakeholders?), and descriptive (How does the firm relate to its stakeholders?)

(Donaldson and Preston, 1995). Stakeholder theorists argue that organizations that serve the

interests of their stakeholders will create more value over time (Freeman, 1984; Harrison and Wick, 2013), in addition to economical firm performance (Freeman, 1984; Donaldson and Preston, 1995) and increased non-economical (e.g. stakeholder participation and cooperation) (Harrison and Wick, 2013). It is therefor not wondrous that stakeholder theory has been implemented in many industries outside of strategic management, such as health care, law and public policy (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, and de Colle, 2010). But how does stakeholder theory relate to UPB?

Stakeholder theory and unethical behaviors

As mentioned previously, unethical pro-organizational behavior can be defined as: “... actions that are intended to promote the effective functioning of the organization or its members (e.g., leaders) and violate core societal values, mores, laws or standards of proper conduct.” (Umphress and Bingham, 2011, p.622). The second part of this definition (i.e. the violating of core societal values, mores, laws or standards of proper conduct) defines what makes UPB unethical. But what are these values and mores that an employee breaks when committing UPB?

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Kaptein (2008) looked at stakeholder theory. According to proponents of a stakeholder approach, an organization has a moral responsibility to protect and promote the interests of their stakeholders (Freeman, 1984). Stakeholders enter into relationships with businesses to protect or promote their interests, and in handling with the organization, stakeholder and organization become

interdependent. In this relationship a mutual expectation arises that each party will engage with each others' interests in an ethically responsible manner (Kaptein, 2008). Since different

stakeholders have different interests, it makes sense that the organization has different ethical responsibilities towards different stakeholders as well. For instance, an organization's ethical responsibility towards its shareholders and financiers is to achieve a good return on investment. While an organization's customers require good products or services and fair information (Kaptein, 2008). Kaptein (2008) based his multidimensional measure of unethical behavior on these ethical responsibilities that an organization holds towards its stakeholders. When we compare Kaptein's framework of unethical behavior with Umphress and Bingham's (2010) construct of UPB we see that the behaviors specified as UPB (e.g. misrepresenting or exaggerating the truth, withholding a refund, withholding or concealing negative information) can all be considered as unethical

behaviors at the expense of ethical responsibilities towards stakeholders. Since employees with a strong organizational identification take on their organization's norms and values, it would make sense to consider how highly an organization holds these ethical responsibilities towards

stakeholders when considering what drives people to commit UPB.

In this thesis we have tried to capture how highly an organization holds their ethical responsibilities through a newly designed measure called Stakeholder Orientation. The theoretical basis for this measure will be presented in the theoretical framework, while the operationalization of this measure can be found in the methods section of this thesis.

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2.5 Research question

The literature on UPB shows strong theoretical support for organizational identification as a driver of UPB. However, empirical support for said relationship is not as well established as the theory would imply. By building upon the person-situation interactionist model (Treviño, 1986), this thesis aims to add empirical support to the literature by examining the role of moral identity and

stakeholder orientation. Thus this thesis aims to answer the following research question:

What is the effect of moral identity and stakeholder orientation on the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior?

The following chapter will continue with the theoretical investigation of unethical pro-organizational behaviors and provide arguments for our hypothesized relationships.

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3. Theoretical framework

This thesis aims to further understanding on what drives unethical behaviors in organizations that are committed with the intention to promote the organization's effective functioning. First, in alignment with Umphress et al. (2010), we argue for a direct positive

relationship between organizational identification and UPB, based on the arguments of individuals disregarding personal ethical norms in favor of organizational norms (Ashforth and Anand, 2003), and on the increased in-group vs. out-group mentality that is experienced by individuals who strongly identify with their organization (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). Furthermore, building on the person-situation interactionist model (Treviño, 1986), we argue for a moderating effect of both a situational- and an individual-level variable. For the situational-level variable, we examine the stakeholder orientation that an organization holds, and argue that individuals with strong

organizational identification active in organizations with a more moralistic stakeholder norms will take on these moralistic norms and be less inclined to commit UPB. While on an individual level, we propose that individuals with a stronger moral identity will be less likely to disregard their personal ethical norms in favor of the organization's norms, due to these ethical norms being of greater importance to their self-concept (Aquino and Reed, 2002). Figure 1 (below) provides an illustration of our proposed hypotheses. The next sections will cover the arguments for each of our hypotheses one by one.

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Figure 1. Research model

3.1 Direct relationship with organizational identification

The arguments for a direct relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behaviors can be divided into two aspects: (1) disregarding personal ethical norms in favor of the organization's norms, and (2) what might be summarized as an in-group versus out-group mentality.

According to social identity theory, organizational identification provides the social context for how people behave (Hogg, Terry, and White, 1995). As organizational identification becomes stronger, employees increasingly behave in ways that are consistent with organizational norms and values (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). Ashforth and Anand (2003) argue that organizational

identification may compel employees to disregard their own personal ethical standards, and take on the values of the organization. Similarly, it has been theorized that people might augment their morality to better coincide with the morality of their social in-group (Banfield, 1958).

Furthermore, employees who strongly identify with their organization, internalize the organization's successes and failures as their own (Mael and Ashforth, 1992). High organizational

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identification might drive employees to be indifferent to how their actions affect those outside of the organization when the action benefits their organization (Ashforth and Anand, 2003).

Employees who identify strongly with their organization may place a stronger concern on the needs of their organization to the point of ignoring moral implications (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). In the extreme case of overidentification, even the employee's own needs become secondary to the needs of the organization (Dukerich et al, 1998).

To sum up, a high organizational identification drives employees to take on the

organization's values and norms and even to disregard personal ethical standards for organizational gain. In addition, it makes employees place the needs of the organization above those outside it, and even above broader ethical standards (Umphress and Bingham, 2011). Thus, it is suggested that: “individuals who strongly identify with their organization may disregard their own moral standards in favor of unethical acts that protect or help the organization “(Umphress and Bingham, 2011, p.625). This leads us to the following hypothesis:

H1: There is a positive direct relationship between organization identification and unethical pro-organizational behaviors.

3.2 Moderating effect of Stakeholder Orientation

Unethical behaviors in an organization are made in a social environment, and is influenced by both personal and situation variables (Trevino, 1986). In this section we will examine how an organization's stakeholder orientation can have an effect on the relationship between OID and UPB. First, we shall examine an extensive stakeholder culture framework developed by Jones et al

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Jones (1999). These two theories will form the basis of our stakeholder orientation measure. Then, we provide arguments for how different stakeholder approaches result in different ethical norms, and how an organization's stakeholder orientation moderates the relationship between

organizational identification and UPB.

According to Jones et al (2007), in dealing with stakeholder's interests, managers are faced with a tension between self-interest and other-regarding moral sentiments. In their search for an answer to this tension, managers look towards the organizational environment and are guided by the stakeholder culture (Jones et al., 2007). Stakeholder culture is defined by Jones et al as an

organization's “...shared beliefs, values, and evolved practices regarding the solution of recurring stakeholder-related problems” (Jones et al., 2007, p. 142). Jones et al. (2007) describe five different stakeholder cultures, namely, agency, corporate egoist, instrumentalist, moralist and altruist, and place these cultures on a continuum ranging from individually self-interested to fully other

regarding. The cultures at the extremes of the continuum are ill suited for the dynamic competitive environments that most organizations face nowadays, thus most organizations will hold one of the central three cultures, namely corporate egoist, instrumentalist and moralist (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). Each stakeholder culture is characterized by four dimensions: moral orientation (self-regarding vs. other (self-regarding), relevant stakeholders (shareholders vs. stakeholders), stakeholder rights (shareholder rights only vs. prima facie respect for the rights of stakeholders), and moral philosophies (limited morality vs. broad morality) (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). All together, these dimensions supply a comprehensive framework of organizational level factors that might influence manager's behavior in stakeholder relations. We propose that the values, norms and practices captured in this stakeholder culture typology will be a useful basis for identifying possible values and norms that employees high in organizational identification take on and that drive them to UPB.

Stakeholder orientation is used in the literature to describe the general approach that an organization takes towards its stakeholders (Berman, Wicks, Kotha, and Jones, 1999; Ferrell,

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Gonzalez-Padron, Jult and Maignan, 2010). Often, stakeholder orientation is divided into two opposing stakeholder management models, either an instrumentalist approach or a normative (moralistic) approach (Berman et al., 1999). In the instrumentalist approach, the organization is ultimately driven by its own market success, and see managing important stakeholders as a way to achieve its self-interested organizational objectives. The well-being of its stakeholders is no concern to the organization, its main objective is achieving shareholder value (Berman et al., 1999). The normative or moralistic approach on the other hand, acknowledges the moral obligations the organization holds towards its stakeholders. To an organization with a normative approach,

stakeholder interests have an intrinsic value that is considered in the organization's decision making process before strategic considerations (Berman et al., 1999). Berman et al's (1999) stakeholder management approaches are similar to Jones et al.'s (2007) stakeholder culture typology. Both theories place their stakeholder cultures or stakeholder management models along the same continuum, i.e. from self-regarding to other-regarding. The different approaches identified by Berman et al. (1999) are thus comparable to Jones et al.'s (2007) different cultures. The instrumentalist approach is comparable to the instrumentalist stakeholder culture, while the normative approach is comparable to Jones et al.'s moralistic stakeholder culture.

Then, how do these stakeholder orientations and stakeholder cultures differ in their ethical norms and values? Managers in an organization with an egoistic stakeholder culture value the short-term maximization of shareholder value above all else (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). Egoistic

stakeholder cultures value the interests of stakeholders only if these interests affect the short term shareholder value (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). Organizations on this side of the continuum would have little problems with overstepping ethical boundaries and damaging stakeholders in return for short term gains (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). Moralistic stakeholder cultures (and moralistic

stakeholder approach), on the other hand, show genuine concern for all stakeholders (Berman et al., 1999) and try to take stakeholder interests into account regardless of economic considerations

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(Boesso and Kumar, 2016). Organizations on this side of the continuum do not allow ethical standards to be broken for financial gains (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). These examples show how organizations on the self-interested side of the continuum do not hold their ethical responsibilities to their shareholders in a high regard, and are more short term profit oriented. Whereas firms on the other side of the continuum, the other-regarding side, seems to hold stronger morals. It is this based on this continuum that we will name the stakeholder orientation of a firm. Organizations with a strong stakeholder focus on the other-regarding end of this continuum will be called organizations with a more moralistic stakeholder orientation, whereas organizations with a more profit centered focus on the self-interested end of the continuum, will be called organizations with a less moralistic or instrumentalist stakeholder orientation (for the full operationalization of this measure, see the methods section).

Since employees with a strong organizational identification take on their organization's norms and values, we propose that employees in organizations with a moralistic stakeholder orientation will take on their organization's ethical responsible values and thus be less likely to commit UPB (and vice versa for strongly identified employees in organizations with a

instrumentalist stakeholder orientation). Or formally:

H2: The positive direct relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behaviors is moderated by Stakeholder Orientation, so that this relationship is weaker for employees active in firms which hold a moralistic Stakeholder Orientation.

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3.3 Moderating effect of moral identity

According to the person-situation interactionist model of Treviño (1986), a person's ethical behavior is dependent on cues in their environment and their personal characteristics. This thesis therefore investigates the role of moral identity as a moderating factor on the individual level.

As noted in the literature review, moral identity has two dimensions: internalization and symbolization. “Internalization reflects the degree to which a set of moral traits is central to the self-concept, whereas symbolization reflects the degree to which these traits are expressed publicly through the person’s actions” (Treviño, 2006, p. 963). We suspect that both dimensions of moral

identity have a moderating effect on the relationship between organizational identification and UPB, and thus provide arguments for both dimensions. But first, to quickly reiterate, organizational identification drives people to commit UPB through two mechanisms, (a) disregarding personal ethical norms in favor of the organization's norms and values, and (b) an in-group versus out-group mentality.

The internalization dimension of moral identity reflects the degree to which moral traits are central to the self-concept. It makes sense intuitively that individuals with a high level of

internalized moral traits will be less willing to disregard personal ethical norms in favor of the organization's norms and values, even if they strongly identify with the organization, because their personal ethical norms are so important to them (Aquino and Reed, 2002). Furthermore, as

explained in the literature review, moral identity motivates moral behavior through the consistency principle, which states that an identity creates the need to be true to oneself and act in accordance with that identity (Reynold and Ceranic, 2007). A high degree of internalization reflects the moral norms taking a more central position in the person's self concept (Aquino and Reed, 2002), which means that individuals with strongly internalized moral traits experience an increased need to behave in accordance with these norms since they are central to their identity (Reynold and Ceranic,

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2007). Due to both (1) the higher importance of ethical norms (Aquino and Reed, 2002), and (2) these norms being more central to their identity (Reynolds and Ceranic, 2007), we argue that

individuals with a high degree of internalization will be less likely to disregard their personal ethical norms in favor of the organization's norms, even if they strongly identify with their organization. In addition, it is possible that individuals with strongly internalized moral norms will experience the in-group versus out-group mentality less, since they care more about concepts like honesty and fairness (Aquino and Reed, 2002). This might make it more difficult for these individuals to be indifferent to how their actions affect those outside of the organization, even if their actions are beneficial to their organization and they strongly identify with their organization.

Finally, the arguments for a moderating effect of the symbolization dimension are similar in nature. Individuals with a high degree of symbolization find it important to express their moral traits to others. Therefore, even if they identify strongly with the organization, they should be less willing to disregard their ethical norms in favor of the organization's norms and values, since they want to express their moral traits and show their moral character (Aquino and Reed, 2002). In addition, it is possible that individuals with a high degree of symbolization will experience the in-group versus out-group mentality less, since being indifferent to how your actions affect individuals outside of your organization does not coincide well with expressing your moral character. More so, one might say that there is no better way to show your moral character than by standing up for those who other strongly identifying coworkers would brush aside.

In sum, individuals with a strong moral identity are less likely to disregard personal ethical norms and take on the organizations norms, even if they strongly identify. Since these ethical norms are more important to them, are more central to their identity which demands consistent behavior, and they want to express these norms to others. In addition, individuals with a strong moral identity are probably less likely to experience the in-group versus out-group mentality, since they care more about concepts like honesty and fairness, and it could be in conflict with publicly expressing their

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moral character. Formally:

H3: The positive direct relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behaviors is moderated by moral identity, so that this relationship is weaker for individuals who hold a strong moral identity.

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4 Methodology

4.1 Study design

We collected our data through means of an online survey. Surveys are easy to use, cheap, save time, and allow for convenient collection of a large amount of data (Kaplowitz, Hadlock and Levine, 2004; Wright, 2005). In addition, most of our measures (except stakeholder orientation) are relatively short measures that are well suited for online surveys. Our survey was available in both Dutch and English, to maximize our pool of possible participants. Several measures had to be translated, but luckily there were translations available from previous Dutch master students that exhibited good reliability in previous research. The stakeholder measure originally composed in English, and then translated to Dutch with the help of a friend with a background in linguistics.

Together with a fellow student we obtained participants for our combined study through the means of convenience and snowball sampling. We both utilized our network to gather participants, and asked family and acquaintances to distribute the study among their coworkers and peers. We also posted a call for participants on social media.

This method of data collection has as main benefit that it has barely any costs, and provides data that is compatible with statistics handling programs like SPSS. The main downside of using an online survey and relying on the researchers' network, is that a low response rate is quite likely (Kaplowitz et al., 2004), whereas it is not possible to have information about the response rate and non-response bias as researchers do not know exactly who saw the call to participate in the study. To somewhat alleviate this problem, we added an anonymous link to a raffle for a small monetary reward at the end. Then there are some methodological limitations that our chosen method of data collection brought with it. The next paragraph covers the biggest limitations.

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concerns as well. According to Farrokhi and Mahmoudi-Hamidabad (2012), two big problems of convenience sampling are: (1) the presence of outliers, and (2) it being ill-suited for experimental study designs due to differences between the experimental and control group. The latter is of no concern to this study, and the former can easily be checked and accounted for before analysis. Of more concern, is the low external validity associated with convenience sampling due to it being difficult to argue that the convenient sample is sufficiently similar to the intended population (Landers and Behrend, 2015). Since our intended population is very broad (i.e. everyone actively employed in an organization), we attempted to minimize the risk of a low external validity by approaching as many possible participants from as many different industries and positions as possible. Second, due to our data being collected with the same instrument at a single point in time, common method bias might be present (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee and Podsakoff, 2003).

Unfortunately, due to our limited resources this is a bias that was impossible to exclude. Finally, because unethical behavior is a somewhat sensitive subject and our data collection was done

through self reporting we should be weary of social desirability bias. However, Cohen et al's (2014) study on moral character showed that using self report measures on ethical behavior is acceptable. In addition, we included a short form of the Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale as a control variable, as well as a short introduction in which we assure the participants that their data is collected anonymously and will be handled with confidentiality.

In the end, our combined survey ended up consisting of 81 items, of which 10 were descriptive questions (e.g. age, gender, tenure) and 13 were easy yes or no questions (the social desirability scale). All in all, the survey turned out quite long, with the median completion time lying a little over 13 minutes. The complete questionnaire can be found in Appendix A.

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4.2 Sample

Our survey was open from 29th of May till the 12th of June, in that time 306 participants opened our survey. Of these 306 participants, 196 completed the survey, which comes to a

completion rate of 64%. Of the 196 complete surveys, 176 were in Dutch and 20 in English. As one can read in the results section, we decided to exclude the English participants from our sample due to some methodological issues. Which leaves us with the Dutch participants. Of these 176

participants, 59.7% was female, and the average age was 37. A quick look at our control variables shows that we were successful in gathering participants from different industries. The most well represented sector was banking with 29 participants (16.5%), with second best going to the government with 21 participants (11.9%), all other sectors were considerably smaller.

4.3 Measures

This next section will discuss the measures we adopted from other studies, both how they are measured as well as how reliable they are. A full overview of our survey and all the complete scales is provided in the appendix. Our stakeholder orientation measure will be discussed in the section after. Unless stated otherwise, our items were measured on a 7 point Likert scale ranging from 1 (entirely disagree) to 7 (entirely agree).

For our dependent variable, unethical pro-organizational behavior, we are going to use Umphress et al's (2010) six item measure of UPB. This measure is used throughout the literature to measure UPB (α=.89, in Umphress et al, 2010). An example of one of the six items is: “If it would help my organization, I would misrepresent the truth to make my organization look good.” The Dutch version of this scale is adopted from Kalshoven, Van Dijk and Boon (2016) (α = .80), in which they translated the previous item as: “Als het mijn organisatie zou helpen, zou ik de waarheid mooier maken zodat mijn organisatie beter overkomt”.

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Our independent variable, organizational identification will be measured with Mael and Ashforth's (1992) six item measure. Which is a short measure with a high reliability (α=.81), which has been used throughout the literature for years. This measure has items like: “My organization's successes are my successes”. The translation of this scale comes from the Master's Thesis by Voorma, in which she reports a Cronbach's alpha of .86.

Then, for our first moderating variable, stakeholder orientation, there was no existing measure. We designed our own measure that tried to place individuals along a self-interested to other regarding continuum. Due to the length of our arguments for this measure, it will be discussed in full in the next section.

Our second moderating variable, moral identity, will be measured using Aquino and Reed's (2002) ten item scale(α =.76). This scale presents participants with a number of traits (honest, ethical, honorable, fair, trustworthy, principled, compassionate, caring, charitable) and asks participants five questions regarding how much they internalize these traits, and five questions regarding how much they act out these traits to others (Matherne and Litchfield, 2012).

Finally, we will take several control variables under consideration which have been theorized to have an influence on either identification or ethical behavior. Namely: age, gender, education, tenure, job level, size of the organization, hours worked a week, in what sector the participant is employed and the Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale. Of these control

variables, age (Riketta, 2005), tenure (Mael and Ashforth, 1992; Riketta, 2005), job level (Riketta, 2005) and size of the organization (Knippenberg, Knippenberg, Monden and Lima, 2002) have been found to correlate with organizational identification. Whereas, age (Borkowski and Ugras, 1998; Treviño et al., 2006), gender (Borkowski and Ugras, 1998) and education (Treviño et al., 2006) have been found to correlate with ethical behaviors. Because of our use of convenience and snowball-sampling, we choose to include the control variable 'sector of employment' to be able to

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orientation measure. In addition, we measured how many hours our participants worked each week, in order to be able to control for those who barely worked and would thus not identify strongly with their organization. Lastly, we included a 13-item Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale in order to control for a social desirability bias.

4.4 Stakeholder orientation measure

Our stakeholder orientation measure aims to capture the associated characteristics and values at different ends of the self-interested to other-regarding continuum. Then, by asking participants to what extent these characteristics and values describe their organization, we hope to approximate a position on the continuum. The relevant characteristics and values are mainly built from Jones et al.'s (2007) stakeholder culture and subsequent Boesso and Kumar's (2016) measure of said stakeholder cultures, as well as Berman et al.'s (1999) stakeholder management models. These relevant characteristics will be discussed after we define the limits of the continuum.

At the other-regarding end of the continuum, Jones et al. (2007) identifies two moralistic stakeholder cultures, the moralist and altruist. However, due to the demands of today’s highly competitive and dynamic market, an altruistic stakeholder culture is unlikely (Jones et al, 2007; Boesso and Kumar, 2016). Thus we will focus our attention on the moralistic stakeholder culture, which is similar in nature to Berman et al.'s (1999) normative stakeholder approach. On the self-interested end of the continuum, Jones et al. (2007) identifies the agency and corporate egoist cultures. Again, the stakeholder culture at the extreme end (agency culture), is deemed to be improbable (Jones et al, 2007; Boesso and Kumar, 2016). After examining mission statements of prominent Dutch organizations, we believe that in today's market most organizations are aware of how stakeholders can affect the organization's activities. Therefore we believe that most

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chosen to limit the continuum to the instrumentalist stakeholder culture or Berman's instrumentalist stakeholder approach. Thus, the stakeholder orientation continuum will range from an

instrumentalist approach to a moralistic approach. For simplicity's sake this will be the terminology we use when describing the different stakeholder cultures or stakeholder management models. The next section will describe what characteristics are associated with the different limits of the

continuum.

The first fundamental difference between the two approaches is the underlying motivation of their actions. The instrumentalist approach's ultimate objective is to achieve market success.

According to Berman et al. (1999) these organizations see stakeholders as part of an environment that must be managed to achieve financial gains, while Jones et al. (2007) proposes that these firms see maintaining the appearance of morality as an instrumental useful way to achieve financial success. In contrast, the moralistic stakeholder approaches “are motivated by normative

considerations and are committed “to humanistic values for their own sake”(Boesso and Kumar, 2016, p. 818). More concretely, the moralistic approach's main obligation is to support the broad interests of society (Boesso and Kumar, 2016). These organizations are driven by moral principles above financial consideration (Berman et al., 1999). Thus, our first items will ask participants about the ultimate motivation of their organization. “My organization is ultimately driven by upholding moral obligations”, and as a reverse item “My organization ultimately motivated by financial success above all else”.

In addition to asking for the ultimate motivation of their organization, we will examine how these motivations relate to the nature of their stakeholder relationships. In instrumentalist

organizations, concerns of stakeholders only enter a firm's decision making processes if they have strategic value (Berman et al., 1999). In contrast, moralistic organizations show genuine concern for all stakeholders (Berman et al., 1999) and try to take stakeholder interests into account before any

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intrinsic motivation that drives stakeholder relationships in moralistic firms, and the underlying financial motive that drives stakeholder relationships in instrumentalist firms (Berman et al., 1999, Boesso and Kumar, 2016). “My organization shows a genuine concern for their stakeholder's interests”, and “My organization appears to show concern for their stakeholders interests, but only because it might further my organization's financial goals”.

Building further on these different motivations for behaving morally towards stakeholders, our measure examines which stakeholders are important for an organization. Moralistic firms are driven by normative concerns, and want to support the interests of society. Thus moralistic

organizations should show a genuine, intrinsic concern for all of their stakeholders (Berman, 1999; Boesso and Kumar, 2016). In contrast, instrumentalist organizations are motivated by financial gains, and therefore mainly concern themselves with stakeholders that can have an effect on their financial performance(Berman, 1999). This leads to the items: “My organization is concerned about the well-being of all our stakeholders, regardless of their capacity to affect the performance of the organization” and “My organization only shows concern for the stakeholders that could influence its financial performance”

The next important difference between the two approaches that we will discuss is their willingness to break moral responsibilities towards their stakeholders. According to Jones et al (2007), instrumentalist organizations value financial performance above moral obligations,

and will violate moral standards when it is financially advantageous to do so (Jones et al., 2007). In contrast, for organizations with a moralistic approach, their moral standards are a large part of their identity (Berman, 1999), and therefore they would not violate their moral standards to increase financial performance (Berman, 1999; Boesso and Kumar, 2016). In terms of items this leads us to use: “My organization would never bend moral standards, even if it would profit the firm greatly financially”, and: “My organization would be willing to bend moral standards for financial profits”.

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In addition, Berman (1999) describes the instrumentalist approach as being ultimately driven by market success. Market success is what drives all decision making in instrumentalist firms. Organizations with a moralistic approach on the other hand, let their strategy be driven by

moralistic obligations, which are described by organizational members as being a part of “what we stand for” as a company. Therefor we arrive at the following two items: “At my organization, our moral obligations are a large part of who we are”, and “At my organization, we will always want to be the best in the market place”.

Since organizations with a moralistic approach to stakeholders are other-regarding in nature (Jones et al., 2007), we propose that these organizations will always treat their stakeholders fairly, because they genuinely care about their stakeholders' interests (Berman, 1999), whereas

instrumentalist organization are self-interested, and only care (or appear to) about their stakeholders because it is strategically valuable to do so (Berman, 1999; Jones, 2007). We propose that rather than treating all stakeholders fairly, instrumentalist organizations will take a more bargaining power based approach to stakeholders. We believe that if an instrumentalist organization feels that it is able to demand more, without long term negative consequences, then it will choose to do so. In contrast, moralistic organizations, due to their other regarding nature, will be satisfied with a fair distribution. Thus the last set of items is: “My organization strives to divide value fairly between its stakeholders and itself” and “My organization will always strive to extract as much value as

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5 Results

5.1 Consolidating our multilingual survey

Before we can begin to analyze our data, we should first check for differences between the Dutch and English versions of our survey. To do this, we took the raw data, recoded the counter items, and compared the means between main variables using the t-test.

As one can see in table 1, the participants that took the English survey were significantly younger and had a significantly higher degree of moral identity. The significantly younger age is probably due the fact that the participants who opted for the English survey are mainly foreign workers employed in Dutch companies, and working abroad is something that one is more likely to do when one is younger. In addition, six out of the twenty participants that took the English survey answered that they lived in a different country than the Netherlands (either India or Italy), which might complicate things as well. Even more worrying is the significant difference in moral identity, which might point towards a bias introduced by the way we asked about a person's moral identity. When we compare the English moral identity questions and the Dutch moral identity questions the terms used to describe the moral person seem accurate translations. Add to this that the questions about moral identity are more related to activating the 'system' of moral traits, and the specific wording of the moral traits should not have a significant influence. Together this makes it unlikely that it is the formulation of the question alone that caused the significant difference.

All in all, the English sample was significantly younger, scored significantly higher on moral identity, and consisted of only fourteen participants working in the Netherlands for an unspecified amount of time. Thus we decided to exclude these participants to be on the safe side, since only a small amount of data would be lost.

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Table 1, Comparing descriptives between Dutch and English survey N M SD ΔM P UPB Dutch 176 3.03 1.018 0.31 0.2081 UPB English 20 2.72 1.226 OID 176 4.66 1.127 0.42 0.1145 20 5.08 1.081 MID 176 3.53 0.476 0.23 0,0052** 20 3.86 0.64 STK 176 4.49 0.741 0.15 0.7274 20 4.34 0.601 Age 176 37.36 13.164 6.61 0,0398** 20 30.75 12.532 Gender 176 0.57 0.492 0.02 0.864 20 0.55 0.51

Note. Gender is dummy coded such that 0:male, 1:female.

5.2 Factor analysis and reliability

The initial descriptives provided above was done on basis of all items, as intended by the studies that provided the scales. With a new measure for stakeholder orientation and a measure for UPB that has not been used often in the Netherlands in a Dutch translation. We decided to go beyond the ordinary reliability analysis and preform a factor analysis for our main variables as well. This section will merely describe the procedures and display the relevant statistics. Possible

explanations for unexpected results (i.e. exclusion of items) will be provided in the discussion section. Before we conducted our factor analyses we checked for outliers, but found no outliers over the limit (2.5 times the standard deviation) described by Field (2009).

Doing bad things to good people : examining the effect of stakeholder orientation on unethical pro-organizational behaviors

Msc. Business Administration 2016 – 2017