Nipping in the bud: How responsible leadership curtails unethical pro-organizational and counter-productive work behavior
List of Authors
  • Gul Afshan, B. , Samar Batool Shah, A.

Keyword
  • Responsible leadership, Moral disengagement, Counter-productive work behavior, Unethical pro-organizational behaviour, Higher Education Institutions

Abstract
  • Emphasizing the growing need to explore negative workplace behaviors, the current study investigates the effect of responsible leadership over counter-productive work behavior (CWB) and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) of employees based on social learning theory. Moreover, it investigates moral disengagement’s mediation between responsible leadership and the dependent variables. The quantitative data was collected through self-administered questionnaires from employees of the public sector Higher Education Institutions of Pakistan (HEIs). The results revealed that responsible leadership curtails CWB and UPB. Moreover, moral disengagement performs the mediation mechanism connecting responsible leadership with employees’ CWB. However, moral disengagement does not mediate the association of responsible leadership with employees’ UPB. The research explains importance of responsible leadership in Higher Education institutions. Moreover, the study offers several implications for understanding mechanism that may inhibit negative workplace behaviors. This research is novel in a way that it investigates responsible leadership role in inhibiting negative behaviors in HEIs.

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