For the sake of my family: Understanding unethical pro‐family behavior in the workplace

• Author: Huiyao Liao,Zhaopeng Liu,Yamei Liu
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2463

RESEARCH ARTICLE

For the sake of my family: Understanding unethical pro-family

behavior in the workplace

Zhaopeng Liu

1

| Huiyao Liao

2

| Yamei Liu

3

1

School of Management, Shandong University,

Jinan, China

2

Department of Management &

Entrepreneurship, The University of Iowa,

Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A.

3

College of Business, Shanghai University of

Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China

Correspondence

Huiyao Liao, Department of Management &

Entrepreneurship, The University of Iowa,

Iowa City, IA, U.S.A.

Email: huiyao-liao@uiowa.edu

Summary

Unethical behaviors are prevalent and costly in organizations, and much recent

research attention has been paid to different forms of workplace unethical behaviors.

We contend that the extant research has overlooked an important form of

workplace-related unethical behaviors: unethical behaviors that are conducted to

benefit one's family but which violate societal and organizational moral rules, a con-

struct we label as “unethical pro-family behavior”(UPFB). Our paper systematically

conceptualizes UPFB and develops a scale for it. Drawing upon social cognitive the-

ory, we argue that employees with stronger family financial pressure are more likely

to employ moral disengagement mechanisms to deactivate moral self-regulation,

resulting in higher levels of UPFB. Additionally, we argue that the proposed relation-

ship is more pronounced when employees have high family motivation but is miti-

gated when employees have high organizational identification. Two studies are

conducted for this paper. In Study 1 (N= 328 for Sample 1; N= 243 for Sample 2;

N= 279 for Sample 3; N= 267 for Sample 4), we demonstrate that our UPFB scale

has good construct validity and that our construct is differentiable from relevant con-

structs. In two time-lagged survey samples in Study 2 (N= 255 for Sample 1; N= 233

for Sample 2), we find support for our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implica-

tions, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS

family financial pressure, family motivation, family-oriented moral disengagement,

organizational identification, unethical pro-family behavior

1|INTRODUCTION

“My family just financed an apartment, and we are cur-

rently living paycheck to paycheck. So, I sometimes

bring my son to my company, where he can have meals

in the restaurant for free. It helps to cut household

expenses.”

“One year I was the organizer of our company's annual

retreat, and employees were welcome to bring their

family members to the retreat. There was a raffle on

that day, and the first prize was a computer that my

husband had always wanted. So, I drew out the first-

prize raffle ticket before the party began and gave it to

my husband so that he could get the computer

directly.”(Anonymous accounts from two of our

interviewees)

Unethical behaviors are prevalent and costly in organizations.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Ethics Resources Cen-

ter based in Washington, D.C., each day roughly 120 million people

walk into a workplace somewhere in the United States, and almost

half of these workers personally witness some form of ethical miscon-

duct (Schwartz, 2015). These unethical acts can cause substantial

Zhaopeng Liu and Huiyao Liao contributed equally to this article.

Received: 24 September 2018 Revised: 18 May 2020 Accepted: 19 May 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2463

638 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2020;41:638–662.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

damage to a company's reputation (Van Riel & Fombrun, 2007), its

stock price (Long & Rao, 1995), and even its continuity (Grant &

Visconti, 2006; Kaptein, 2008). Struck by this worrisome evidence,

researchers have started to identify the causes of workplace unethical

behavior and have highlighted a number of reasons why employees

might act unethically: to benefit themselves (e.g., lying for one's self-

gain; Mulder & Aquino, 2013), to get revenge against the organization

(e.g., organizational retaliation behavior; Skarlicki & Folger, 1997), to

harm a supervisor or coworkers (e.g., personal aggression; Robinson &

Bennett, 1995), or to benefit the organization (e.g., unethical pro-

organizational behavior; Umphress, Bingham, & Mitchell, 2010).

We contend that the extant research overlooks another form of

unethical behavior: behavior that is conducted to benefit one's family

but which violates societal and organizational moral rules, norms, or

codes, a construct we label as “unethical pro-family behavior”(UPFB).

As illustrated by the two quotes that open this paper, employees may

engage in unethical acts such as abusing their position in the company

or disclosing confidential company information to their family mem-

bers, so as to ensure that their family or family members benefit. Both

research and anecdotal evidence suggest that UPFB is prevalent in

organizations. For example, Peterson (1947) found that a top reason

why employees act unethically in their organizations is to benefit their

family. The author described a real-life case wherein an employee

stole money from his employer so that he could provide his sick wife

with the best available medical care. Similarly, theTexas Medical Asso-

ciation (2014) cited employees' desire to benefit their family members

as one of the most important causes of employee embezzlement. In

addition, UPFB frequently makes national headlines. For example, a

2015 report in the New York Daily News indicated that an 18-year-old

vandal got help from his Washington State Patrol trooper father in

destroying evidence from an alleged crime (Hensley, 2015).

Although scholars from different research streams have noted the

occurrence of such phenomena (e.g., nepotism, defined as favoritism

shown to one's family members by giving positions to them because

of kinship instead of competence; Arasli & Tumer, 2008), none has

thoroughly and systematically examined family as a motivational fac-

tor underlying employees' workplace ethical misconduct, let alone

established a valid scale to assess such behavior. Moreover, no theo-

retically grounded framework has been developed to fully understand

its causes. The present study seeks to address these gaps. Specifically,

we first provide a systematic conceptualization of employees' UPFB.

Then, in Study 1, we use four samples to develop a scale to measure

UPFB and examine its psychometric properties. In Study 2, we take

the first step toward constructing the nomological network for UPFB

with two samples. Since UPFB is conducted with the employee's fam-

ily interests in mind, we expect factors in the family domain to have a

strong spillover effect on employees' UPFB. One of these factors is

the family's financial condition. Specifically, when an employee's fam-

ily is walking a financial tightrope, it increases the urgency for the

employee to take actions to alleviate the financial difficulties. Hence,

employees are more likely to view immoral actions taken to benefit

their family as morally acceptable, or at least less morally questionable

(i.e., family-oriented moral disengagement; Bandura, 1986, 1999),

leading to their engagement in UPFB. This effect is more pronounced

for employees with strong intentions to support their family

(i.e., family motivation, defined as desire to expend effort to benefit

the family; Menges, Tussing, Wihler, & Grant, 2017). In contrast, if

employees strongly identify with the organization (i.e., organizational

identification; Mael & Ashforth, 1992), they will be more reluctant to

conduct UPFB to benefit their family, as doing so violates organiza-

tional moral norms. Therefore, we expect organizational identification

to buffer the effect of family financial pressure on UPFB via family-

oriented moral disengagement. Figure 1 depicts our theoretical model.

Our paper contributes to the literature in four ways. First, by

introducing a new construct, UPFB, to the realm of employee

unethical behaviors, our study helps capture a fuller range of

employees' ethical misconduct in the organizations, which is “of grow-

ing interest to both academics and practitioners”(Umphress

et al., 2010, p. 769). Second, in developing a psychometrically valid

scale of UPFB, we provide a viable instrument for researchers to

examine both this phenomenon and a wide array of organization

behavior (OB) research topics that may benefit from incorporating

UPFB. Third, we take the first step toward establishing the nomologi-

cal network of UPFB and, in doing so, answer two important ques-

tions about UPFB—namely, why and when UPFB happens. Fourth and

relatedly, by examining the strengthening effect of family motivation

in the relationship between family financial pressure and UPFB, we

add to a small body of literature documenting the potential detrimen-

tal effects of strong family motivation (Menges et al., 2017; Zhang,

Liao, Li, & Colbert, 2020). From a practical standpoint, our research

helps draw practitioners' attention to UPFB and informs them of

effective workplace interventions to control this behavior.

2|THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

2.1 |Unethical pro-family behavior

We define unethical pro-family behavior in the workplace as an

employee's actions that are aimed at benefiting his or her entire family

or specific family members, but which violate societal and organiza-

tional moral rules, norms, standards, laws, or codes. This definition has

two core components. First, UPFB is aimed at benefiting one's family,

a family member,

1

or both. Second, UPFB is unethical in nature, mean-

ing that it violates generally accepted societal and organizational

moral norms (Donaldson & Dunfee, 1994; Treviño, Weaver, &

Reynolds, 2006). Based on this criterion, some behaviors—such as

employees frequently asking for permission to leave work early to pick

up their children from the kindergarten—are not UPFB: Even though

these behaviors are conducted to benefit the employee's family mem-

bers, the acts are not “illegal or morally unacceptable to the larger

community”(Jones, 1991, p. 367). Because UPFB violates organiza-

tional norms, we contend that it is very likely to occur at the expense

of organizational interests. Indeed, many UPFB actions involve the

abuse of organizational resources. For example, disclosing confidential

information to family members so that they have an advantage in

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