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1. Introduction
Business scandals and unethical behaviors in the workplace have been widely reported in recent decades. Scholars have conducted research focusing on workplace unethical behavior due to its universality and serious consequences for commercial society (Moore and Gino, 2015; Treviño et al., 2014). Especially, an emerging stream of research has begun to systematically theorize and investigate unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). The term UPB refers to “actions that are intended to promote the effective functioning of the organization but violate ethical norms, values or standards of proper employee conduct” (Umphress and Bingham, 2011, p. 622). Examples of UPB involve lying to customers to sell a perishable product, bribing government officers and falsifying data in documents.
Literature review results have demonstrated that most studies on UPB focus on its antecedents (Chen et al., 2016; Miao et al., 2013; Umphress et al., 2010). For example, a large number of empirical studies have shown that the individual traits (such as organizational identification, bottom-line mentality, job insecurity, job embeddedness, psychological entitlement and workplace spirituality), leadership (abusive supervision, relational leadership, responsible leadership and ethical leadership) and organizational situations (high-performance work systems and ethical climate) can trigger individual’s UPB under certain conditions (Wang et al., 2019; Ghosh, 2017; Kong, 2016; Cheng et al., 2019; Dou et al., 2019; Mesdaghinia et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2019; Kalshoven et al., 2016; Matherne and Litchfield, 2012). However, in general, previous studies have primarily focused their attention on the antecedents of UPB and limited attention has been given to the consequences of UPB. Although some studies theoretically pointed out the negative effects of UPB such as harming the interests of the public and damaging the reputation of the organization (Umphress and Bingham, 2011; Hosain, 2019), they have not sufficiently considered the potential positive impacts of UPB on employees who engage in them (Xia et al., 2020). In terms of its “pro-organizational” nature, UPB can benefit the organization in the short term (Umphress et al., 2010) such as avoiding the negative press. These short-term benefits might encourage the organization to reward or provide promotion opportunities for individuals who engage in UPB, which results in “giving a plum in return for a peach.” Therefore,...