A tale of two theories over time: ethical leadership and UPB

Abstract Drawing on the competing mechanisms of social cognitive theory and social exchange theory, we propose that ethical leadership influences employee unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), unethical actions ostensibly benefiting organizations, through two pathways: moral disengagement and job satisfaction. Specifically, we argue that the suppressing impact explained by social cognitive theory and moral disengagement is more likely to sustain over time, while the triggering influence explained by social exchange theory and job satisfaction is more likely to be transient and short-lived. We also examine the role of employee implicit beliefs in determining which pathways they are more likely to follow. Across three field studies of 455 working adults, we found robust support for: (1) the social cognitive mechanism, whereby ethical leadership is negatively related to employee moral disengagement, which sustains over time and thereby circumscribes employee UPB after one year; (2) employees who are incremental theorists aligning with this social cognitive mechanism; (3) the social exchange mechanism, whereby ethical leadership enhances employee job satisfaction and thereby elicits employee UPB cross-sectionally in a paradoxical way; and (4) employees high in learning goal orientation counteracting this short-term social exchange momentum, refraining from heuristics and thus avoiding UPB. The implications of our research for practitioners and future research focused on circumscribing employee UPB are discussed from a temporal perspective.