A meta-analysis of incremental, comparative, and conditional motivations of unethical pro-organizational behavior

Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) was originally described as employees’ unethical acts to benefit the organization, driven by pro-social and organization-focused motivations of organizational identification (OI). However, subsequent perspectives suggest it can emerge from supervisor-focused pro-social motivations of high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX) and be facilitated by employees’ pro-self motivation enabled by moral disengagement (MD). We meta -analyzed the effects of OI, LMX, and MD on UPB (K = 262; N = 88,787) to compare these types of motivation and provide a descriptive update on UPB’s nomological network. MD explained variance in UPB beyond that explained by OI and LMX, suggesting the unique relevance of pro-self motivation. Additionally, OI explained twice the variance in UPB compared to LMX, underscoring the importance of different pro-social motivations. Moderation analyses revealed that country corruption amplified the relationships between pro-social motivations (OI and LMX) but not pro-self motivations (MD) and UPB.