Designing Unethical Pro-Organizational BehaviourModel in Public Companies

One of the challenges of state-owned companies in Iran is the emergence and spread of immoral behaviors. Recently, a new type of unethical behaviors has emerged as the unethical pro organizational behavior that its intention is benefitting the organization and/or its employees. There are various theories, and models about ethical behaviors, but this seems to be less discussed about antecedents, components, and strategies to deal with unethical pro organizational behavior in public companies. The ultimate goal of this research is designing unethical pro-Organizational behavior model in public companies. Research has used qualitative approach. Primary codes, basic and organizing themes were identified with applying thematic analysis and then research concept were categorized. The respondents were among the managers of state-owned companies and academics of organizational behavior. Interviewed data were collected through purposeful judgmental and snowball sampling method. For this purpose, 15 interviews were conducted and the theoretical saturation was reached at the 12th interview. The research findings identified 1350 primary codes, 124 basic themes, 32 organizing themes and 6 global themes. The results showed that unethical pro-organizational behavior consists of 3 components including life abuse, financial abuse and information abuse and the key influencing factors are in three categories of direct, mediating and moderating factors. The consequences of this behavior were also identified and the coping strategies were presented in the form of a model of explaining unethical pro-organizational behavior in public companies.