关键词: 组织认同, 亲组织非伦理行为, 社会责任型人力资源管理, 组织道德性

Abstract: Organizational identification is widely deemed as an important antecedent of unethical pro-organizational behavior. Yet, extant empirical research has not drawn consistent conclusions about the relationship between them. For this, we propose one potential cause that the conceptual understanding of organizational identification is a fuzzy set which not only includes the core of identity (i.e., self-definition, importance and affect) but also includes the content of identity (e.g., values, beliefs and goals) while the narrowly-defined organizational identification scale only captures the core parts. To verify this conjecture, we draw on social identity theory and choose socially responsible human resource management as the identity cues related to the organizational morality to examine the moderating effect of socially responsible human resource management on the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior as well as the direct effect of socially responsible human resource management on unethical pro-organizational behavior. Multilevel and multisource data were obtained in a two-wave questionnaire survey conducted in the eastern coastal areas of China, namely Shanghai Municipality, Zhejiang Province and Shandong Province. At Time 1, 60 HR managers from 60 companies were invited to answer questions relating to socially responsible human resource management and to randomly selected 5 employees to participate in this survey. The 300 selected employees were invited to answer questions relating to organizational identification. We also measured some control variables at this time. After one month, at Time 2, employees who attended the Time-1 survey were invited to rate their willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior. The final valid sample included 60 companies and 277 employees (4.62 employees per company), with the response rates of 100% and 92.3%, respectively. Multilevel linear modeling technique was applied with Mplus7.4 to test the research hypotheses. In line with the theoretical arguments, results showed that socially responsible human resource management significantly moderated the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior. Specifically, when socially responsible human resource management was low, organizational identification was significantly and positively related to unethical pro-organizational behavior; when socially responsible human resource management was high, organizational identification negatively influenced unethical pro-organizational behavior though this effect was not significant. In addition, we found that socially responsible human resource management could directly inhibit unethical pro-organizational behavior. This study contributes to the literature in two aspects. Firstly, this study provides a new and in-depth interpretation for the inconsistent conclusions of the relationship between organizational identification and unethical pro-organizational behavior by choosing socially responsible human resource management as the organizational morality-related cues and examining the moderating role of socially responsible human resource management. Secondly, this study enriches the literature on the inhibitors of unethical pro-organizational behavior by verifying the negative effect of socially responsible human resource management on unethical pro-organizational behavior, considering that less attention has been paid to the inhibitors of unethical pro-organizational behavior in comparison with the inducers although the former might have greater practical value and that the majority of research on the inhibitors of unethical pro-organizational behavior focuses on the individual level rather than the organizational level. Managerial implications, research limitations and suggestions for future studies are also discussed.

Key words: organizational identification, unethical pro-organizational behavior, socially responsible human resource management, organizational morality