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Essay / Case Study on Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior
Miao, Newman, Yu, and Xu present a study of 239 participants working full-time in the Chinese public sector. Participants would receive an email survey in Chinese and translators would translate it into English (2013, p. 646). The results indicated that moderate ethical leadership leads to a higher rate of unethical organizational behavior than high ethical leadership because it generates more confusion among employees. While high ethical leadership demands high standards and expresses consistency in its words and actions, moderate ethical leadership shows a lack of consistency. Moderate ethical leaders fail to convey an unambiguous message to employees about the priority of ethical action in the organization. Employees tend to underestimate the importance of ethical behavior in the company, which increases the possibility of employees getting involved in unethical pro-organizational behavior (Miao et al, 2012, p..