The contagion of ethical and unethical behavior: What is the
influence of status?
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business
Master of Science in Human Resource Management
MARIANNE HAAN Student number: 1619462 Aquamarijnstraat 797 9743 PV Groningen +31 (0)6 44072487 E-mail: a.m.haan@student.rug.nl Supervisor University: Msc. S.N. Ponsioen June, 2012
ABSTRACT
This paper first analyzes the hypothesis that ethical behavior will have a stronger spillover effect when there is an exemplar with a high status as opposed to a low status. Second, it analyzes that a spillover effect of unethical behavior will be buffered when there is an exemplar with a high status as opposed to a low status. A scenario study was developed and distributed online to 160 people. Results show a marginal significant main effect of the presence of an unethical exemplar on unethical behavior. This indicates that unethical behavioral contagion is stronger at presence than ethical contagion. Unfortunately, there was no interaction with status. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and further research should focus on other potential factors that moderate the multiply of ethical and unethical behavior.
Keywords: organizational citizenship behavior, ethical behavior, unethical behavior, social
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... 3
INTRODUCTION ... 4
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 6
Organizational Citizenship Behavior ... 6
Interpersonal Interaction ... 7
Status ... 7
Status and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Contagion ... 8
Unethical Behavioral Contagion ... 9
Status and Unethical Behavioral Contagion ... 11
METHODS AND RESULTS ... 11
Methods ... 11
Design and Participants ... 11
Procedure ... 12
Measurements and Manipulation ... 13
INTRODUCTION
Working in an organization is most of the time something you don’t practice on a totally individual basis. This means that employees have work relations with each other. These people behave according to the organizational norms and according to the social norms they have. To secure good interpersonal relationships, employees may take care of the work of others or will help each other when necessary. As such, they will perform extra work behaviors, which are also called pro-social or organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). These behaviors create harmony and will lead to a better performance of the whole organization (Beeri, 2012) and are characterized by the voluntary extending contributions of individuals that go beyond their actual job duties. These behaviors also have a positive influence on the effectiveness of the organization (Organ, 1988; Tsai & Wu, 2010).
Because people work with others and have interpersonal work relationships, employees observe each other’s behavior. They can be influenced by the behaviors of others and change their point of view about what is normal behavior and what is not (Kaptein, 2011). This can result in a spillover effect of the acts and behaviors of others. Role modeling explains that people will be influenced by observing others (Gibson, 2004). Role models are constructions which are developed to create the ideal, or “possible” selves of people based on the needs and goals they develop in their career (Gibson, 2004; Ibarra, 1999). When people see others as role models, they will see their behaviors as important. So, the possibility that they will perform the same behavior is great. As such, behavior is likely to be a result of copying similar behavior from a role model.
However, people are not only pro-social; unethical behavior is also at presence. Especially in the last years, many media attention is given to scandals about the unethical behavior of managers or employees of different companies; like the scandals at Enron, Ahold and, more recently, UBS. These examples clearly show that unethical behavior is a serious problem for organization and can ultimately damage the whole name and reputation of the organization.
chance that his behavior will be copied by others (Kolvereid, 1996). Status is important because people have different views on others who have a higher or lower status than they have, which can influence their perceptions about how to perform different tasks or how to deal with conflicts (Correl & Ridgeway, 2011; Galperin, Bennett & Aquino, 2011; Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson, 2003). When someone has a high status, others will see him or her as influential and prominent and will have respect for that person (Keltner et al., 2003). Because of the position that high status people have in their organizations, they may be more influential when it comes to the initiation of ethical behavior.
Accordingly, the influence of status differences on organizational citizenship behavior contagion on the one hand and the influence of status differences on unethical behavior on the other hand are interesting topics. Although much research is conducted on the topics separately, little research has been conducted on their combination. The influence of someone with status on the behavior of others has been researched many times before (Anderson, John, Keltner, & Kring, 2001; Galperin et al., 2011; Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010; Oldmeadow, Platow, Foddy, & Anderson, 2003). However, there has not previously been made a distinction between organizational citizenship behavior and unethical behavior according to the contagion of these behaviors. Another new part of this study is the research according to the characteristics of the exemplar in the field of unethical behavior contagion. In this study, we want to examine the influence of an ethical exemplar and the influence of an unethical exemplar with high or low status. When we talk about ethical behavior, we particularly mean organizational citizenship behavior. Turnipseed (2002) found that OCB could be considered as the manifestation of ethical behavior in the workplace. So, OCB is in this study an operationalization for the measurement of ethical behavior.
These combinations of status and organizational citizenship behavior and unethical behavior will lead to the following research question:
“How do the processes of organizational citizenship behavior and unethical behavioral contagion work and how is this process influenced by the status of the behavioral exemplar?”
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is not specific and job-related behavior which is determined by extra-role behaviors of people. This behavior is the willingness of someone to perform additional tasks which are not necessary for the completion of his function and go above and beyond literal contractual obligations (Cicei, 2012; Curral, 1988). Thus, these behaviors consist of the personal choices of employees which go further than their job describes them to do and have positive contributions (Organ, 1988). Examples of this kind of behavior are helping a colleague when he or she cannot do the work according to personal circumstances, or working extra hours when an urgent task should be finished.
People exhibit organizational citizenship behaviors to feel better about themselves; satisfaction would motivate them to engage in OCB (Kandlousi, Ali & Abdollahi, 2010). Another reason why people engage in OCB is because they think it is normative and expected from them to help other people. By displaying these behaviors they believe they will get positive evaluations and feedback (Wimbush, 1999).
Interpersonal Interaction
The observation of someone else behaving ethically can change the understanding of the observer about how to interact with others, and so about the social norms which relate to these behaviors. There are two types of social norms: descriptive norms, which refer to the perceptions of what is commonly done in a specific situation or a specific group; and injunctive norms, which refer to the perceptions of what is commonly approved of within a particular culture (Blanthorne & Kaplan, 2008; Gino et al, 2009; Schultz et al., 2007).
Furthermore, the degree to which people identify themselves with standards has an important influence on their behavior: when the identification is strong, the behaviors of others will have a larger influence on the social norms and behavior of the observer (Gino et al, 2009). In organizations, people often have to work together in teams; therefore they can be seen as a group with in-group members. When people are surrounded by those in-group members, they are likely to show the same behaviors of their coworkers because such behaviors show appropriate norms which will lead to contagion (Gino, Gu & Zhong, 2009). In these group settings, an opportunity for some outperforming group members to serve as a role model for the others will exist. When people observe someone who is showing organizational citizenship behavior, and that one is set as a role model, the observers will take over those behaviors by themselves (Cialdini & Trost, 1998).
Accordingly, when people see others behaving in these citizenship behaviors, their mind will be influenced to this and they will start behaving in the same ethical way and imitate the behavior of the exemplar (Smith & Mackie, 2007). Furthermore, Yaffe and Kark (2011) found that the pro-social behavior of someone will be seen as an example for others, who will be influenced by that behavior and show the same behaviors. In addition, Baker, Hunt and Andrews (2006) found that, according to ethical rules in an organization, employees will take over the ethical behaviors if they believe that others are also behaving according to those rules. Therefore, there is a great possibility that people who see others behaving in pro-social behavior will be influenced by this and will behave more pro-pro-socially themselves too.
Status
those with status that set the norm and serve as a role model, status of the exemplar may be of great influence in one’s susceptibility to copy behavior.
Status is defined by the amount of attributes that produces differences in respect, influence and prominence a person enjoys in the eyes of others (Anderson et al., 2001; Anderson, Srivastava, Beer & Spataro, 2006; Keltner et al., 2003). People from different layers in the organization can have status; it is dependent on how others see those people. Although many people see status and power as the same attributes, they are not the same. It is possible to have power without status (e.g. a secretary who controls access) and to have status without power (e.g. a vice president who has a title but little authority) (Galperin et al., 2011; Keltner et al., 2003).
To explain how evaluation, influence and participation, also called status-related behaviors, emerge and are maintained, Berger, Cohen and Zelditch (1972) developed the expectation states theory. This theory further explains how observed differences between people become the basis for inequality. It states that people evaluate others based on two criteria: the first is the specific skills and abilities that are relevant to the task, and the second is the status characteristics that encourage people to believe that someone is superior to others (Correl & Ridgeway, 2003; Kervin, 1974). These status characteristics are further explained in the status characteristics theory (SCT). This theory states that status characteristics such as age, gender and race determine the distribution of participation, influence, and prestige among members of groups (Berger et al., 1972; Berger, Balkwell, Norman, Smith, 1992; Oldmeadow et al., 2003). When someone has a higher status level he or she will participate more and will be more influential when disagreements occur than when someone has a lower status level (Berger et al., 1992). Philips et al. (2009) developed the concept of status distance: the degree of status difference between individuals. When two individuals are exactly the same in status they will have zero status distance (Philips et al., 2009). This means that they will not be influential by the status of the other, because they are exactly the same.
Prior research has found that status can be divided in qualitative (like gender and race) and quantitative (like wealth and beauty) characteristics (Jasso, 2001). High status people are viewed as more attractive, influential, and tolerated and have more preponderance than lower status people. Furthermore, people with a high status are mostly white men (Carli, 2001).
Status and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Contagion
would be seen as a valued employee. Thus, they increase their chances of being made permanent and get a higher organizational status (Feather & Rauter, 2004). Also, they may engage in OCB as they believe such behavior is normative and expected. When they observe others engaging in OCB they will be triggered into the same conduct, which will be even more so when the exemplar has a high status as opposed to a low status. When people see someone with a high status behaving in a particular way, they will be more susceptible to engage in the same behavior, because the higher status people are important to them. As they want to be similar to the one in the high status position, they believe that by copying the behavior the status distance will become smaller (Philips et al, 2009). Also, people may believe that a high status person is more influential in rewarding extra task performance. Another argument is that taking over the behavior of the one in the higher status position is the case of the social norms combined with commitment to the organization (Cho & Johanson, 2008; Gino et al., 2009). When the high status exemplar is engaging more than once in organizational citizenship behavior, the lower status observers will think that it is normal in the organization to help others and behave pro-socially. This is, because high status persons are viewed as more norm-setting than low status persons. Therefore, when people see someone in a higher status position behaving pro-socially, they become more susceptible to behave pro-socially too, which will lead to the first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: People will be more susceptible to and copy organizational citizenship
behavior when confronted with a high status social exemplar than with a low status pro-social exemplar.
Unethical Behavioral Contagion
Not only ethical behavior exists in organizations, unfortunately unethical behavior occurs as well. Therefore, it is important to discover by which processes these unethical behaviors will spread through the organization.
forms of unethical behavior like stealing, sabotage, or fraud (Robinson & O’Leary-Kelly, 1998).
People behave unethically because they have the desire to maximize their self-interest. When their self-control is depleted, they will earlier engage in unethical behavior (Gino, Schweitzer, Mead & Ariely, 2011). Self-control resource depletion increases unethical behavior because it reduces the extent to which people can and do recognize how unethical the situation is. Furthermore, when people are confronted with (potential) losses, their self-interest becomes larger and thus gives rise to selfish and unethical behavior (Reinders Folmer & De Cremer, 2012).
Like organizational citizenship behavior, observing someone behaving unethically can change the observers’ understanding about the social norms which relate to behaviors. When someone sees someone else performing an unethical act, they might think it is normal to do so. Therefore, when someone is behaving unethically, and others have set him or her as the normative, there will be a higher possibility that they will also engage in this unethical behavior (Blanthorne & Kaplan, 2008; Gino et al., 2009).
Research supports the existence of unethical behavioral contagion. Robinson and O’Leary-Kelly (1998) found that many persons will adapt some of their behaviors, cognitions, and attitudes to better fit with the environment in which they are working. They also found that the influence a group’s unethical behavior has on an individual’s unethical behavior became stronger as the time that the individual in the group was increased (Robinson & O’Leary-Kelly, 1998). In addition, Cialdini and Trost (1998) found that observing the unethicality of someone else simply can change a person’s understanding of the social norms related to dishonesty. Also, the likelihood-of-being-caught mechanism implies that by just observing someone else’s unethical behavior will increase the tendency to act unethical himself (Gino, Ayal, & Ariely, 2009). And according to Brass et al. (1998), unethical behavior exposed by a work group seems to be a significant predictor of the unethical behavior of another.
Status and Unethical Behavioral Contagion
In contrast to OCB, when people see high status members behaving unethically, it is not necessary that they will be influenced by these higher status people in such a way that they will take over that unethical behavior. Because the exemplar has a higher status, the observer will think that he is not allowed to behave in the same way because he is in a lower status position (Bunderson, 2003). He will believe that someone in a higher position will have more privileges then the observer has himself (Anderson, et al., 2006), also in performing unethical behavior. Research has shown that when people are confronted with unethical behavior, their internal morality will be fueled and consequently, they will notice that those behaviors are wrong (Gino, Gu & Zhong, 2009). Furthermore, when moral standards, and therefore also unethical behaviors, are more salient, the internal morality will be triggered so that they need to confront the meaning of their actions more readily and therefore will be more honest. (Mazar, Amir & Ariely; 2008). This is especially the case when people observe someone behaving unethically who is in a higher status position, because the behavior of high status people is by definition more salient than that of low status people. Therefore, the high status people are held more accountable when he or she behaves unethically than someone with a lower status in the same organization (Keltner et al., 2003; Kolvereid, 1996). Therefore, their behavior will not be copied. This will lead to the second hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: People will be more unethical when confronted with an unethical
exemplar than without such an exemplar, but this effect will be buffered when the exemplar has a high status as opposed to a low status.
METHODS AND RESULTS Methods
Design and Participants
Procedure
People were approached for this online study in different ways. In the first place, a link to the study was placed on an intranet for students of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen. Another way in which the study was distributed was via Facebook. Furthermore, the study was also distributed via e-mail to contacts with the accompanying request to further distribute the study among their contacts. Last, the study was placed on a forum of a student association in Groningen.
For this study, 8 different scenarios were developed. In each scenario, participants had to identify with the scenario and were so to speak part of the story. Four scenarios were about the influence of ethical behavior on others in the same organization. The scenario described a working situation, presenting a normal day at the office. After the introduction of the working context, a description was given about a colleague. This description represented the status condition. In the high status condition, this colleague was characterized as an above average respected colleague who brings significant work contributions to the organization and has more influence on the decisions taken at work than the participant of the study. In the low status condition this colleague was described as someone with a lower position in the organization hierarchy, as well as someone who is not particularly highly regarded. He is a below average respected colleague who does not bring significant work contributions to the organization and has less impact on the decisions taken at work than the participant of the study has.
Subsequently, the scenario described a behavioral action of that colleague. The behavioral action of the colleague served as the (absence of an) ethical exemplar condition. In the ethical exemplar condition, the exemplar took a lot of time to help and answer questions of a new colleague. In the absence of an ethical exemplar condition, the exemplar quickly answered the main questions of the new colleague and focused mainly on his own work.
Subsequently, participants had to imagine another day at the office where they were faced with a similar dilemma. They had to indicate to what degree they would be willing to help someone instead of doing their own work.
Subsequently, the scenario described a behavioral action of that colleague. The behavioral action of the colleague served as the (absence of an) unethical exemplar condition. In the no unethical exemplar condition it was told that the exemplar took two bottles of wine from the organization in his bag to offer to guest speakers. In the unethical exemplar condition it was told that the exemplar took two bottles of wine from the organization for a party that night at home.
Afterwards, participants had to imagine that they invited some friends over for dinner that night and that they forgot to buy wine. As such, they were faced with an unethical dilemma. They had to indicate their inclination to take a bottle of wine from the organization at home.
Measurements and Manipulation
Ethical behavior. This variable is measured by a single outcome variable. The item
asked was: “What would you do: take time to help the new colleague or not?” This was measured on a six point answering scale (1= I take certainly no time to answer all the questions calmly, 6 = I certainly take the time to answers all the questions calmly).
Unethical behavior. This variable is, like ethical behavior, measured by a single
outcome variable. The item asked was: “What would you do: take a bottle of wine at home or
not?” This was also measured on a six point answering scale (1= I would certainly not take a
bottle of wine at home, and 6 = I certainly take a bottle of wine home).
Manipulation checks status (ethical scenarios). As a status check the participants
were asked the following items: “Stefan had, compared to me, a higher status”, “Stefan had,
compared to me, a higher position”, “Stefan had, compared to me, more influence”, and “Stefan had, compared to me, more power”. Participants answered on a seven point
answering scale (1 = completely disagree, 7 = fully agree). The scale was also highly reliable (Cronbach’s α =.96).
Manipulation checks status (unethical scenarios). In the unethical scenarios, the
same items were asked to the participants as in the ethical scenarios and on the same scale. Here, the scale was also highly reliable (Cronbach’s α = .98).
Manipulation checks presence / absence of an ethical exemplar: As a check for the
presence or absence of an ethical exemplar the participants were asked to answer the
following items: “In the scenario Stefan took the time to help a new colleague, while he was
either busy himself”, and “In the scenario Stefan’s behavior could be seen as pro-social”.
Manipulation checks presence/absence of an unethical exemplar. As a check for the
presence or absence of an unethical exemplar we asked the participants the following items: “In the scenario, Stefan took two bottles of wine for personal use” and “In the scenario, Stefan
took two bottles of wine to thank guest speakers”. Participants answered on a seven point
answering scale (1= completely disagree, 7 = fully agree). For the analysis, the scale of the second question was recoded. The scale was highly reliable (Cronbach’s α = .96).
Results
Manipulation Checks
Status. We checked whether our manipulation of status worked effectively. In the
ethical condition, a one way ANOVA showed a successful manipulation for status (F (1,84) = 116.56, p <.001). In the high status condition, participants had a stronger belief that the colleague in the scenario, Stefan, had a higher status position (M = 5.19) than in the low status condition (M = 2.56).
A one way ANOVA showed also a successful manipulation for status in the unethical condition (F (1,68) = 497.81, p <.001). In the high status condition, participants had also a stronger belief that Stefan had a higher status position (M = 5.65) than in the low status condition (M = 1.91).
Absence/presence of an ethical exemplar. A one way ANOVA on the manipulation
for an ethical exemplar showed a difference between the condition with and without such an ethical exemplar (F (1,84) = 458.21, p <.001). In the ethical exemplar condition, participants believed more strongly that the exemplar was acting ethically (M = 6.00) than in the no ethical exemplar condition (M = 2.27).
Absence/presence of an unethical exemplar. A one way ANOVA on the
manipulation for an unethical exemplar showed a difference between the condition with and without such an unethical exemplar (F (1,68) = 180.45, p <.001). In the unethical exemplar condition participants believed more strongly that the exemplar was acting unethically (M = 6.49) than in the no unethical exemplar condition (M = 2.26).
Ethical Behavior
which participants became influenced by the behavior of the colleague in the scenario. The results are shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
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Insert Table 1 and Table 2 about here ---
Although in the no ethical exemplar condition participants were somewhat more involved in ethical behaviors (M = 4.60, SD = 0.09) than in the ethical exemplar condition (M = 4.49, SD = 0.10), there was no significant main effect of the presence of an ethical exemplar on ethical behavior (F (1,84) = 0.67, n.s.). Also, although the high status condition participants were somewhat more involved in ethical behavior (M = 4.63, SD = 0.10) than in the low status condition (M = 4.46, SD = 0.09), there was no main effect of the presence of status differences on ethical behavior (F (1,84) = 1.65, n.s.).
Then, we measured the interaction of the ethical exemplar condition x status condition. For high status exemplars, there was no difference between them acting ethically (M = 4.46,
SD = 0.13) or not ethically (M = 4.46, SD = 0.12). Also for the low status condition, there was
only somewhat more ethical behavior with an ethical exemplar (M = 4.52, SD = 0.14) than with no ethical exemplar (M = 4.38, SD = 0.14). The interaction effect between status and an ethical exemplar was not significant F (1,84) = 0.59, n.s.). Therefore, we have to reject hypothesis 1.
Unethical Behavior
We also hypothesized that individuals would become more susceptible to engage in unethical behavior, when they observe others being unethical too. This effect will be weaker when the exemplar has a high status opposed to a low status. We performed a 2 (absence versus presence unethical exemplar) x 2 (high status versus low status) way ANOVA on the extent to which participants would take a bottle of wine of the organization at home. The results are shown in Table 3 and Table 4.
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The main effect of the presence of an unethical exemplar on unethical behavior was moderately significant (F (1,68) = 3.80, p <.10). In the unethical exemplar condition, participants were more inclined to take a bottle of wine from the organization at home (M = 2.20, SD = 0.16) than in the no unethical exemplar condition (M = 1.77, SD = 0.15). The main effect of status differences on unethical behavior was not significant (F (1,68) = 2.23, n.s.).
Finally, the interaction of the unethical exemplar condition x status condition was measured. For high status exemplars, there was some more unethical behavior with an unethical exemplar (M = 2.20, SD = 0.24) than with no unethical exemplar (M = 1.44, SD = 0.23). Also in the low status condition, there was somewhat more unethical behavior with an unethical exemplar (M = 2.19, SD = 0.21) than with no unethical exemplar (M = 2.10, SD = 0.21). However, the interaction effect between status and an unethical exemplar was not significant (F (1,68) = 2.36, n.s.). Therefore, we also had to reject hypothesis 2.
DISCUSSION
In this research we explored the extent to which status differences between an exemplar and an observer influenced the contagion of organizational citizenship behavior and unethical behavior. The results showed unfortunately no significance, which means that an ethical or an unethical exemplar has no influence on the behavior of the observer. Furthermore, status makes no differences according to that.
Theoretical Implications
Kessler & Purcell, 2004). Reciprocal relationships exist in many ways between managers and their subordinates. This indicates that these relationships are insensitive to status, (Uhl-Bien & Maslyn, 2003), which may explain the non significant result. Another reason why status may be of no influence is because ethical behavior has a lot to do with the personality of people. Personal traits of people may be of much more importance for behaving ethically than an ethical exemplar may have. According to the Big Five, conscientiousness and agreeableness seem to be positively related to ethical behaviors as helpfulness and obedience to the organization (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine & Bachrach, 2000). So, people who score high on conscientiousness and agreeableness are more inclined to behave ethically opposed to those who score low on these dimensions.
However, to our knowledge, the contagion of ethical or, more specifically, organizational citizenship behaviors is something on which little research is conducted yet. When it is known how this behavior can have a spillover effect on others, a more ethical organization will exist in which people help each other and help the organization to perform better. Future research could focus on factors that moderate the multiply of ethical behavior. For example, when team commitment is high, people are more willing to help each other (Foote & Tang, 2008). So, team commitment could be a moderator in this relationship. Another moderator is personal norms. People have different ethical norms, which could have an influence on how they behave among others.
with regard to status. What mechanisms cause people to either follow or refrain from copying the behavior of high status people. For example, norms seem to be important by copying unethical behavior. If people have ethical norms in which they are also focused on others, they will behave less unethically than others who have norms by which they are mainly focused on themselves. These people may think that when others are behaving unethically, they can do that as well and will not think about the effects for the organization or others.
Practical Implications
The results show that ethical behavior has no spillover effect on others. In contrast to what we expected, good exemplars do not set the tone. For practice this means that no investments need to be made in ethical exemplars. Instead, ethical awareness should be trained by individual colleagues. So, investments should be made in the form of training and/or workshops to create an awareness of the added value of pro-social behavior among individuals. That is, if organizations want to stimulate a pro-social culture within their organization.
We found marginal significance for the contagion effect of unethical behavior. This means that the presence of an unethical exemplar will lead to more unethical behavior by the observer. This result lightens the importance of being alert of unethical behavior by any person in the organization. Even small unethical acts can have an effect on others, showing the importance of active prevention methods of unethical behavior within organizations. According to Kantor and Weisberg (2002), one such method is explicit rulemaking by means of codes of conduct. Such codes are supposed to stimulate ethical behavior which can spill over to other employees (Kantor & Weisberg, 2002). Another method that can be used is to give penalties to the person who is behaving unethically, which will make clear that unethical behavior is unacceptable. A final example of a method is giving workshops about integrity, or more specific, about how to deal with unethical dilemmas. Such workshops could further focus on the creation of awareness according to unethical behaviors.
Limitations
No study is free of limitations, neither is our study. In the first place, in the ethical scenarios the manipulation of OCB was specifically focused on one aspect, namely altruism. This aspect is about helping behaviors directed at specific individuals. However, by only measuring this aspect, the concept of OCB as a whole is possibly not measured sufficiently by which the results were not significant and the desired effect was stayed away (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994; Vigoda-Gadot, 2006).
A second limitation was in the unethical scenarios according to the test of variance that was conducted. Here, Levene’s test of equality of error variances showed that the null-hypothesis could not be rejected, because this null-null-hypothesis was significant (F (3,38) = 4.15,
p <.05). This means that there was too little variation of the dependent variable across the
groups in these unethical scenarios.
A third limitation of this study is the potential for a sample bias. The majority of participants were students, causing a possible bias in the representation relevance. Moreover, for students it will be harder to imagine that they are working in an organization, making their answers probably less likely to match reality.
Another limitation is according to self-enhancement bias. With this kind of bias, people see themselves as more intelligent, honest, skilled, and ethical than they see others. So, people think they are doing better than others and employees will perceive that their behavior is more ethical or less unethical than that of the others in the organization (Pfeffer & Veiga, 1999; Kantor & Weisberg, 2002). Last, in the case of self-report on unethical behavior, the social desirability bias may exist. Social desirability may cause respondents to give the “right” answers, biasing the results (Bennett & Robinson, 2000).
A final limitation of this study was the measurement of intentions instead of real behavior. Saying what you probably are going to do is not always the same as what you are actually doing in that position. This is called the intention-behavior gap (Sheeran, 2002). Subsequently, research in which real behavior was measured, e.g. a field experiment, would have made this study stronger.
Conclusion
to have no influence. This makes it more important to create awareness on individual level for such behaviors to stimulate ethical behavior and prevent unethical behavior.
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APPENDIX
Table 1
Analysis of Variance for ethical behavior and status condition
Source df MS F p
Status 1 0.65 1.65 0.203
Ethical exemplar 1 0.26 0.67 0.415
Status * ethical exemplar 1 0.23 0.59 0.445
Table 2
Mean and standard deviation of ethical exemplar and status condition
Status
High status Low status
M (SD) M (SD)
No ethical exemplar 4.46 (0.12) 4.38 (0.14) Exemplar
Ethical exemplar 4.46 (0.13) 4.52 (0.14)
Table 3
Analysis of Variance for unethical behavior and status condition
Source df MS F p
Status 1 1.88 2.23 0.140
Unethical exemplar 1 3.21 3.80 0.055
Status * unethical exemplar 1 1.99 2.36 0.129
Table 4
Mean and standard deviation of unethical behavior and status condition
Status
High status Low status
