The moderating role of ethical leadership on the relationship between the organization’s external prestige and unethical pro-organizational behavior

Behaviors can be unethical but in line with the interests of the organization. Unethical pro-organizational behavior is a creative deviant behavior that seeks to maximize the interests of the organization and stakeholders by evading the law and misleading the supervisory and upstream institutions. The external prestige of the organization is an indicator of the organization's quality and directs the behaviors of employees. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the organization's external prestige on unethical pro-organizational behavior considering the moderation of ethical leadership.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

People tend to join organizations of having valuable social features. Based on this fact, organizations try to improve their external image and prestige with internal and external stakeholders. The image of the organization is mostly influenced by the external stakeholders, so their perceptions and opinion affect the understanding and evaluation of the internal stakeholders of the organization. Organizational prestige describes the employee's perception of how external institutions look at the organization. Organizational image is of great importance for many companies because today, their work and overall existence depend on their credit from the point of view of various shareholders. To maintain the social image and the prestige of the organization, the managers and employees of the organizations may resort to actions that are not appropriate from the point of view of ethics and logic, however, they bring success and pride to the organization. Such behavior is more precisely called positive deviant behavior or unethical behavior of the organization. The positive deviation is used as a practical strategy and is an intelligent search for change and creating solutions. Therefore, with such an approach to maintain a positive and powerful image of the organization, any action that is beneficial in this direction can be used. On the other hand, the atmosphere and leadership of the organization play an important role in using ethical or unethical strategies. Ethical leaders show good values with their words and actions. In such a case, measures are followed with more sensitivity and only technical issues will not be considered. In Iran's business environment, all public and private companies are under the influence of multiple stakeholders and various regulatory organizations, and sometimes they turn to unethical behaviors to maximize their interests.

The present research is an applied study in terms of purpose, and in terms of data collection, it is a descriptive-correlational study. The statistical population of the study was the managers and supervisors of companies under the Saipa Group. Using Cochran's formula, a sample size of 109 was selected by conducting stratified random sampling. A pre-made questionnaire was used to gather data after reaffirming reliability using Cronbach's alpha. The obtained data was analyzed in SPSS and Amos software.

According to the first hypothesis, the external prestige of the organization significantly affected unethical behaviors (beta = 0.84; t-value = 9.91). Regarding the second hypothesis of the research, the path coefficient was equal to 0.47 at the confidence level of 95 percent. Therefore, the organization's external prestige significantly affected unethical behaviors (t-value = 4.15).

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

The external prestige of the organization affects the future and the existence of the organization and causes the managers to exert different actions and behaviors to maintain and improve it. In other words, managers and employees work in line with the image of the organization they have created in the eyes of stakeholders and society. This may cause unethical actions and behaviors despite they are very beneficial. On the other hand, the leadership of the organization and its atmosphere can moderate these behaviors. The research results will help managers and employees to understand the importance of the organization's prestige and its leadership style. In this regard, researchers are recommended to investigate the moderating role of the organization's external prestige on the association of ethical leadership with organizational citizenship behavior, commitment, and identity.