Why Do I Do What I Do? How Searching for Meaning at Work Can Facilitate the Spread of Unethical Conduct through Organizations

Abstract Existing research explains the trickle‐down of unethical leader behaviour in organizations primarily in terms of social learning and social exchange processes. We highlight a key limitation of these explanations and propose a novel, meaning‐based mechanism. Drawing on Baumeister's account of meaning as a system of mental connections that enables people to interpret their experiences, we argue that organization members' search for meaning at work strengthens behavioural alignment with unethical leader conduct and thereby amplifies the trickle‐down of unethical leader behaviour from higher‐level managers through lower‐level managers to employees. Across a multi‐source survey of employees and their lower‐level managers (Study 1), an experiment with participants in the lower‐level manager role (Study 2), and two yoked experiments examining lower‐level managers (Study 3a) and employees (Study 3b), we find convergent support for this interaction pattern. Studies 3a and 3b further show that this amplification occurs only when behavioural alignment is perceived as organizationally validated. Our findings reveal a potential dark side of searching for meaning at work and identify a new mechanism through which unethical behaviour cascades through organizational hierarchies.