IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v185y2023i2d10.1007_s10551-022-05135-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Double-Edged Effects of Creative Personality on Moral Disengagement and Unethical Behaviors: Dual Motivational Mechanisms and a Situational Contingency

Author

Listed:
  • Xin Liu

    (Renmin University of China)

  • Byron Y. Lee

    (China Europe International Business School (CEIBS))

  • Tae-Yeol Kim

    (China Europe International Business School (CEIBS))

  • Yaping Gong

    (The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology)

  • Xiaoming Zheng

    (Tsinghua University)

Abstract

Research shows that the effects of creative personality on moral disengagement and unethical behaviors are mixed. To reconcile the disparate findings, we draw on interdependence theory to unravel how and when creative personality is related to moral disengagement through countervailing pathways. Specifically, we propose competitive motivation and prosocial motivation as two distinct mechanisms that explain the double-edged effects of creative personality on moral disengagement and subsequent unethical behaviors. Furthermore, we hypothesize a cross-level moderating effect of competitive climate on the relationships between competitive/prosocial motivation and moral disengagement. Results based on three-wave data from 753 employees showed that creative personality increased moral disengagement and subsequent unethical behaviors through competitive motivation but decreased moral disengagement and subsequent unethical behaviors through prosocial motivation. In addition, competitive climate weakened the negative relationship between prosocial motivation and moral disengagement and the negative indirect relationship between creative personality and unethical behaviors via prosocial motivation and moral disengagement.

Suggested Citation

  • Xin Liu & Byron Y. Lee & Tae-Yeol Kim & Yaping Gong & Xiaoming Zheng, 2023. "Double-Edged Effects of Creative Personality on Moral Disengagement and Unethical Behaviors: Dual Motivational Mechanisms and a Situational Contingency," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 185(2), pages 449-466, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:185:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05135-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05135-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05135-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-022-05135-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Franziska Zuber & Muel Kaptein, 2014. "Painting with the Same Brush? Surveying Unethical Behavior in the Workplace Using Self-Reports and Observer-Reports," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 401-432, December.
    2. Ethan Waples & Alison Antes & Stephen Murphy & Shane Connelly & Michael Mumford, 2009. "A Meta-Analytic Investigation of Business Ethics Instruction," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 87(1), pages 133-151, June.
    3. Chen, Xiao-Ping & Xie, Xiaofei & Chang, Shiqing, 2011. "Cooperative and Competitive Orientation among Chinese People: Scale Development and Validation," Management and Organization Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 353-379, July.
    4. Markus Baer & Abhijeet K. Vadera & Roger T. A. J. Leenders & Greg R. Oldham, 2014. "Intergroup Competition as a Double-Edged Sword: How Sex Composition Regulates the Effects of Competition on Group Creativity," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(3), pages 892-908, June.
    5. Yip, Jeremy A. & Schweitzer, Maurice E. & Nurmohamed, Samir, 2018. "Trash-talking: Competitive incivility motivates rivalry, performance, and unethical behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 125-144.
    6. Paul Bierly & Robert Kolodinsky & Brian Charette, 2009. "Understanding the Complex Relationship Between Creativity and Ethical Ideologies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 86(1), pages 101-112, April.
    7. Daniel Arce & Mary Gentile, 2015. "Giving Voice to Values as a Leverage Point in Business Ethics Education," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 535-542, October.
    8. Brian Kulik & Michael O’Fallon & Manjula Salimath, 2008. "Do Competitive Environments Lead to the Rise and Spread of Unethical Behavior? Parallels from Enron," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 83(4), pages 703-723, December.
    9. Jeri Beggs & Kathy Dean, 2007. "Legislated Ethics or Ethics Education?: Faculty Views in the Post-Enron Era," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 71(1), pages 15-37, March.
    10. Low, Murray B. & Abrahamson, Eric, 1997. "Movements, bandwagons, and clones: Industry evolution and the entrepreneurial process," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 435-457, November.
    11. Xiaoming Zheng & Xin Qin & Xin Liu & Hui Liao, 2019. "Will Creative Employees Always Make Trouble? Investigating the Roles of Moral Identity and Moral Disengagement," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 653-672, July.
    12. Larry Floyd & Feng Xu & Ryan Atkins & Cam Caldwell, 2013. "Ethical Outcomes and Business Ethics: Toward Improving Business Ethics Education," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(4), pages 753-776, November.
    13. Alexander Newman & Huong Le & Andrea North-Samardzic & Michael Cohen, 2020. "Moral Disengagement at Work: A Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 167(3), pages 535-570, December.
    14. Liz Wang & Lisa Calvano, 2015. "Is Business Ethics Education Effective? An Analysis of Gender, Personal Ethical Perspectives, and Moral Judgment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(4), pages 591-602, February.
    15. Xiao-Ping Chen & Xiaofei Xie & Shiqing Chang, 2011. "Cooperative and Competitive Orientation among Chinese People: Scale Development and Validation," Management and Organization Review, The International Association for Chinese Management Research, vol. 7(2), pages 353-379, July.
    16. Treviño, Linda Klebe & Butterfield, Kenneth D. & McCabe, Donald L., 1998. "The Ethical Context in Organizations: Influences on Employee Attitudes and Behaviors," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 447-476, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yuhyung Shin & Mihee Kim & Won-Moo Hur, 2019. "Interteam Cooperation and Competition and Boundary Activities: The Cross-Level Mediation of Team Goal Orientations," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(15), pages 1-24, July.
    2. Christopher Winchester & Kelsey E. Medeiros, 2023. "In Bounds but Out of the Box: A Meta-Analysis Clarifying the Effect of Ethicality on Creativity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 713-743, March.
    3. Raymond O. S. Zaal & Ronald J. M. Jeurissen & Edward A. G. Groenland, 2019. "Organizational Architecture, Ethical Culture, and Perceived Unethical Behavior Towards Customers: Evidence from Wholesale Banking," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 825-848, September.
    4. Lam D. Nguyen & Quan H. M. Tran, 2018. "Working Adults and Personal Business Ethics in South East Asia: a Comparative Study in Thailand and Vietnam," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 159-174, June.
    5. Yong Zhang & Chuling Lin & Jialing Yang, 2019. "Time or Money? The Influence of Warm and Competent Appeals on Donation Intentions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-17, November.
    6. G. Venkat Raman & Swapnil Garg & Sneha Thapliyal, 2019. "Integrative Live Case: A Contemporary Business Ethics Pedagogy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 1009-1032, April.
    7. Sarkar, Juhi Gahlot & Sarkar, Abhigyan & Balaji, M.S., 2020. "The “right-to-refuse-service” paradox: Other customers’ perception of discretionary service denial," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 686-695.
    8. Alison Booth & Elliott Fan & Xin Meng & Dandan Zhang, 2019. "Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete: The Role of Culture and Institutions," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(618), pages 734-764.
    9. Katarina Katja Mihelič & Barbara Culiberg, 2019. "Reaping the Fruits of Another’s Labor: The Role of Moral Meaningfulness, Mindfulness, and Motivation in Social Loafing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 713-727, December.
    10. Foulk, Trevor A. & Venkataramani, Vijaya & Cao, Rujiao & Krishnan, Satish, 2022. "Thinking outside the box helps build social connections: The role of creative mindsets in reducing daily rudeness," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    11. Sean Valentine & Seong-Hyun Nam & David Hollingworth & Callie Hall, 2014. "Ethical Context and Ethical Decision Making: Examination of an Alternative Statistical Approach for Identifying Variable Relationships," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 509-526, October.
    12. Mai Chi Vu & Nicholas Burton, 2022. "Bring Your Non-self to Work? The Interaction Between Self-decentralization and Moral Reasoning," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(2), pages 427-449, November.
    13. Marian Eabrasu, 2020. "Cheating in Business: A Metaethical Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 519-532, March.
    14. Ross McDonald, 2015. "Leveraging Change by Learning to Work with the Wisdom in the Room: Educating for Responsibility as a Collaborative Learning Model," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 511-518, October.
    15. Guangxi Zhang & Jianan Zhong & Muammer Ozer, 2020. "Status Threat and Ethical Leadership: A Power-Dependence Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 665-685, January.
    16. Kristen Bell DeTienne & Carol Frogley Ellertson & Marc-Charles Ingerson & William R. Dudley, 2021. "Moral Development in Business Ethics: An Examination and Critique," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 429-448, May.
    17. Yansong Li & Zhenliang Liu & Yuqian Wang & Edmund Derrington & Frederic Moisan & Jean-Claude Dreher, 2023. "Spillover effects of competition outcome on future risky cooperation," Post-Print hal-04325682, HAL.
    18. Lam D. Nguyen & Loan N. T. Pham & Natalia Ermasova, 2019. "Business Ethics in a Global Economy: A Cross-Cultural Study Among Working Adults in Russia and Vietnam," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 20(4), pages 856-870, August.
    19. Bahman Paul Ebrahimi & Sandra A. Young, 2023. "Managerial motivation in China: replication and extension of miner’s hierarchical role motivation theory," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 91-112, February.
    20. Irene Chu & Mai Chi Vu, 2022. "The Nature of the Self, Self-regulation and Moral Action: Implications from the Confucian Relational Self and Buddhist Non-self," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 245-262, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:185:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05135-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.