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Since the idea of “Unethical Pro-organisational Behaviour” (UPB) was introduced in 2010, a substantial corpus of empirical research has contributed to its expanding, contemporary knowledge. This includes research studies on how leadership exerts an influence on UPB. This paper aims to consolidate the current understanding of organisational leadership’s impact on employee UPB and offer future research agendas.

A systematic literature review (SLR) using the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines was adopted for the study. Literature that satisfied the search conditions was examined. The factors determining leadership’s influence on UPB were studied, and the findings were thematically synthesised.

Leader behaviour plays a large part in influencing UPB in organisations. Leader-member exchange and organisational belonging create favourable circumstances for UPB in organisations. UPB is moderated by the employee’s personal moral orientation.

UPB is unethical behaviour that benefits the organisation and is likely to be rewarded. However, there is a cost that other stakeholders pay. UPB has been researched since 2010, as well as the role of leaders in perpetuating UPB. However, there has not been an SLR of this study. This paper seeks to capture the essence of the research so far and pave a path for future research on the subject. These insights would prove valuable to management practitioners and academic experts.

This study investigates the validity of Ferreira et al.’s (2020) Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale by examining its distinctiveness from similar constructs (perceptions of organizational politics, organizational cynicism, procedural justice) and its predictive validity through its relations with important organizational attitudes (organizational identification) and behaviors (counterproductive work behavior and organizational citizenship behavior). This study also examines the moderating effects of honesty–humility on the relations between organizational bullshit perception and the outcomes of counterproductive work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior and organizational identification. Finally, this study examines the incremental validity of organizational bullshit perception in predicting counterproductive work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior and organizational identification above and beyond similar constructs in an exploratory fashion.

Survey data were collected from a sample of working adults online via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform across two waves (final N = 323 for wave 1 and 174 for wave 2), one month apart.

The results indicate that organizational bullshit perception, as measured by Ferreira et al.’s (2020) scale, represents a distinct construct that has statistically significant relations with counterproductive work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior and organizational identification, even after controlling for procedural justice, organizational cynicism and perceptions of organizational politics. The results, however, showed no support for honesty–humility as a moderator.

These findings suggest that organizations can benefit from assessing and working to alleviate their employees’ perceptions of organizational bullshit. This construct predicts behaviors and attitudes important for organizational functioning.

This study adds to Ferreira et al.’s (2020) original work by demonstrating organizational bullshit perception’s distinctiveness from existing constructs in the literature and its implications for organizations and their employees.

This study aims to explore the mechanism of abusive supervision differentiation on employee work-family conflict, and examine the chain mediating role of work-related rumination and organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior, as well as the moderating role of work-family boundary segmentation preference.

The authors designed two studies: Study 1 was a scenario experiment with 120 Master of Business Administration students. To further explore this finding, the authors conducted a multiwave survey in Study 2 with 345 employees from various organizations.

The results of Study 1 showed that abusive supervision differentiation had a positive effect on work-related rumination, and work-related rumination mediated the relationship between differentiated abusive supervision and organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior. The results of Study 2 not only confirmed the conclusions of Study 1 but also revealed that organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior significantly affected work-family conflict. Abusive supervision differentiation had a positive effect on work-family conflict through work-related rumination and organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior. In addition, work-family boundary segmentation preference negatively moderated the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and work-family conflict.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first paper to test the spillover effect of abusive supervision differentiation on the family domain through a chain mediation model. It extends the research on abusive supervision differentiation from the work domain to the family domain. Second, previous research has highlighted role conflict or role insufficiency as significant factors contributing to work-family conflict. However, this study suggests that abusive supervision differentiation from workplace managers can also trigger work-family conflict, providing a new perspective in the study of precursors to work-family conflict.

For start-ups or growing firms, to effectively navigate the unpredictable nature of digital development and achieve superior innovative performance, it is crucial to have a workforce comprised of creative and innovative employees. Drawing upon the principles of social information processing theory, this study aims to investigate whether specific combinations of organizational internal and external environments, as well as work characteristics in the digital age, can foster a high level of employee innovative behavior.

By collecting a multilevel and multisource data set comprising 693 employees and 88 CEOs from 88 start-ups or growing firms, this study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the distinctive configurations associated with achieving a high level of employee innovative behavior.

The study found that six solutions enabled employees to innovate more effectively, but six solutions led to the absence of employee innovative behavior.

The findings of this study offer important theoretical and practical implications to motivate employee innovative behavior in Chinese enterprises.

First, this study contributes to the literature on employee innovative behavior by addressing the need to explore the impact of the digital context on promoting innovation among employees. Second, this study adds to the existing literature on employee innovation and entrepreneurship by examining multiple organizational contexts and their influence on innovative behavior. Third, this study makes a significant contribution to the field of employee innovative behavior by examining the macroenvironment surrounding digital transformation within enterprises and integrating both internal and external organizational factors.

This study proposes that the relationship between the employee's moral identity and unethical behavior might sometimes differ from linearly negative, given certain contextual variations, such as unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). The pro-organizational motivation of UPB may appeal to individuals' morality to perform unethical behavior for their organization. Herein, using the social identity perspective, the present study hypothesizes a curvilinear relationship between moral identity and UPB with the moderation of organizational identification.

Data collected in two field studies, from 316 and 185 executives in Study 1 and 2, was analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results affirmed an inverted U-shaped relationship between moral identity and UPB. Further, organizational identification moderated the relationship such that an increase in organizational identification augmented the UPB tendency for low moral identity individuals while inhibiting the UPB tendency for high moral identity individuals.

The current study uniquely demonstrates how moral identity might promote unethical behavior in pro-organizational contexts. Further, this research shows how high moral identity might mitigate the negative outcomes of high organizational identification.

The determination of human behaviours due to individual characteristics (personality traits) or situational factors has long remained inconclusive. Although the literature stream on personality as the determinants of behaviour is voluminous, the interest of researchers is also growing towards organisational situational cues as the determinant of behaviours. According to situation strength theory (SST), behaviours are determined by situations in strong situations and by personality in weak situations. This study aims to propose a theoretical model of intrapreneurial behaviour (IB) emanation from empowering leadership (EL) by extending the epistemology of SST under the influence of organisational strong situations of job autonomy (JA) and perceived organisational support (POS).

Using SST, the present study argues that strong situations play a key role in determining human behaviours, and the same can be viewed deductively to assess IB.

The study attempts to propose whether EL is capable of predicting IB under the strong situation effect of JA and POS while dampening the impact of human personality characteristics.

The current study offers a significant departure from current human resource practices in person-situation dialectics, moving away from personality assessments and toward the creation of cues from strong situations for fostering human behaviour. As a result, personality researchers are being encouraged to conduct a reality check on the extensive personality research conducted in occupational settings. Considering organisational situational cues can impact human resource scope in areas such as talent management, selection, promotion and employment.

Communication with employees during times of crisis has become a crucial aspect of crisis management for building organizational resilience knowledge. Thus, explaining how internal crisis management promotes positive employee behaviour has become imperative. This study aims to investigate the relationship between internal crisis communication, job engagement, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour towards the Environment, Communicative behaviour for sensemaking and sensegiving and organizational resilience.

An online survey was conducted with 483 full-time employees in Pakistan. The structural equation modelling technique was employed to assess the study's hypotheses.

The findings of this study demonstrate that internal crisis communication can boost employee job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment, sensemaking and sensegiving, which will also have a downstream effect on organizational resilience.

The findings of this study indicated that effective internal communication can aid managers in making well-informed decisions, coordinating response efforts and disseminating vital information to relevant stakeholders. As a result, this study contributes to the literature on internal crisis management by incorporating employee behavioural intention towards the environment. It provides managers and practitioners with knowledge on managing employees during a crisis.

Surprisingly, the conservation of resource theory (COR) does not explain communicative conduct (sensegiving) and environmental (e.g. organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment) components. This research combines the tenets of COR theory that have yet to be researched with the employees' environmental responses element. The mechanisms of cognition and communication were also ignored in earlier studies. This study sheds light on the process through which higher levels of job engagement, organizational citizenship behaviour towards environment and the capacity for comprehension (e.g. sensemaking) and meaning-transmission (e.g. sensegiving) ultimately help organizations navigate the crisis successfully.

This study responded to the call to empirically reconcile conflicting findings in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) literature. It did so by examining the influence of organizational culture on the relationship between affective organizational commitment and UPB.

Using a sample of 710 U.S. service sector employees based on a three-wave data collection design, structural invariance assessment was utilized to evaluate the relationship between affective organizational commitment and UPB across organizational cultures with opposing effectiveness criteria (i.e. focused on stability vs flexibility).

The result indicated a statistically significant positive direct effect between affective organizational commitment and UPB for the stability-focused cultures, while finding a statistically insignificant effect for the flexibility-focused cultures. These results support organizational culture research, which shows that organizational cultures with opposing effectiveness criteria (i.e. stability vs flexibility) can either encourage or discourage ethical behavior.

While leaders and managers encourage employee commitment to the organization, it is important to understand that increased organizational commitment is not limited to positive outcomes. Cultivating elements of flexibility-oriented cultures, like promoting teamwork (as in clan cultures) or fostering innovation and adaptability (as in adhocracy cultures), can be a strategic approach to minimize the chances of UPB among committed employees.

By integrating insights from social exchange theory, Trevino’s interactionist model and the competing values framework, we have contributed to a nuanced understanding of how different organizational cultures can suppress or stimulate UPB.

In recent years, counterproductive knowledge behavior (CKB) and its types have received increasing interest in knowledge management as the degree of knowledge sharing and innovation in enterprises continues to increase. A rapidly growing number of studies have shed light on the important antecedents and consequences of employees’ CKB. However, the various labels, conceptualizations and operationalizations of CKB have fragmented this body of research. This study aims to systematically integrate the effects of the six types of organizational characteristics on CKB and further draws more general conclusions based on the results of previous studies.

Based on a survey of 103 effect values responsible for 52 CKB samples, the authors use the ABC theory to explore the effects of the six types of organizational characteristics on CKB. Moderator analysis were performed to resolve inconsistencies in empirical studies and understand the contexts under which CKB has the strongest or weakest effect.

The results showed that task interdependence and a positive organizational atmosphere, in general, negatively affect employees’ CKB in the moderation analysis. In contrast, workplace discomfort, negative organizational atmosphere, internal competition and time pressure positively and partly affect employees’ CKB. The direction and magnitude of these effects were affected by emotional factors, knowledge personnel types and sample sources. Discussing the theoretical, methodological and practical implications of these findings can offer a guiding framework for future research.

Better control of employees’ CKB is not achieved by adjusting organizational characteristics alone but by combining personal characteristics and mood changes with it to balance organizational characteristics and CKB. Furthermore, the large-sample joint study integrated the conceptual definition of CKB. The multivariate data study provided more reliable conclusions and a solid theoretical foundation for CKB research areas.

This study aims to draw on social exchange theory and reciprocity norm to examine the direct effects and mechanisms through which developmental human resources (HR) practices influence employee knowledge hiding behaviors. Additionally, the authors investigate the mediating role of psychological collectivism and the moderating role of affective organizational commitment.

To test the research model, the authors employed a three-stage time-lagged study design and surveyed a sample of 302 employees in China. The authors utilized confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrapping method using statistical product and service solutions (SPSS) and analysis of moment structures (AMOS) to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate the following: (1) Developmental HR practices are negatively associated with playing dumb and evasive hiding, but positively linked with rationalized hiding; (2) Psychological collectivism serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between developmental HR practices and knowledge hiding; (3) Affective organizational commitment not only moderates the relationship between developmental HR practices and psychological collectivism, but also reinforces the indirect impact of developmental HR practices on knowledge hiding.

This study offers a fresh perspective on previous research regarding the impact of developmental HR practices on employee behavior. Furthermore, it provides practical recommendations for organizations to enhance knowledge management by fostering stronger emotional connections between employees and the organization.