When morality matters: impact of socially responsible human resource management on unethical behavior

Abstract

Unethical behavior may result in detrimental consequences for the organization. Therefore, scholars are proactively trying to explore its antecedents. Human resource management, as a crucial factor that controls employees' behavior for effective organizational functioning, has gained limited attention in previous studies. To complement this aspect, we argue that socially responsible human resource management with moral nature may affect employees' unethical behavior. Drawing on moral self-regulation theory, our study constructs a theoretical model that socially responsible human resource management negatively affects employees' unethical behavior through the decrease of moral disengagement. We additionally contend that the effect becomes stronger as employees exhibit a higher level of moral attentiveness because contextual factors (i.e. socially responsible human resource management) and individual characteristics (i.e. moral attentiveness) could interactively influence employees' cognition of immoral conduct and their unethical behaviors. A survey consisted of 229 employees supports the proposed model and hypotheses. Our research contributes to the theoretical and practical implications for socially responsible human resource management and unethical behavior literatures, and we also discuss the limitations and future research directions.