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Journal of Management
Vol. 50 No. 5, May 2024 1643–1683

DOI: 10.1177/01492063231154845
https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063231154845
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Cleansing or Licensing? Corporate Social

Responsibility Reconciles the Competing Effects
of Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior on Moral
Self-Regulation
Zhenyu Liao
Northeastern University
Kai Chi Yam
National University of Singapore
Hun Whee Lee
Ohio State University
Russell E. Johnson
Michigan State University
Pok Man Tang
University of Georgia
Although emerging actor-centric research has revealed that performing morally laden behaviors
shapes how employees behave subsequently, less is known about what work behaviors may
emerge following employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB)—a unique behavior
with competing moral connotations. We integrate the moral self-regulation literature with
research on micro corporate social responsibility (CSR) to develop and test a theoretical frame-
work articulating how perceived CSR initiatives reconcile the morally paradoxical nature of
UPB and how people respond to such behavior. We propose that, given its dual moral nature,
Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Associate Editor Chia-Huei Wu and two anonymous reviewers for their
constructive feedback and guidance. We would also like to thank Dr. Scott Roeder for his great assistance with study
coordination in the Olin Behavioral Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. This research was partially supported
by funding from the Joseph G. Riesman Research Professorship and the Thomas E. Moore Faculty Fellow awarded
to the first author. An earlier version of this manuscript was selected for the finalist of the best paper award in the
Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division of the 79th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management,
Boston, 2019. All errors are our own.
Corresponding author: Zhenyu Liao, D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington
Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
E-mail: liaozhenyu@northeastern.edu
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performing UPB simultaneously increases feelings of moral deficit (which triggers moral cleans-
ing) and psychological entitlement (which triggers moral licensing). Importantly, perceived CSR
initiatives moderate these countervailing psychological experiences by strengthening feelings of
moral deficit while weakening psychological entitlement, which respectively result in increased
service-oriented helping behavior and decreased deviant behavior. Results from a scenario-
based lab study, an online experiment, and two field studies largely corroborate our proposi-
tions. This research provides a finer-grained understanding of the complex moral self-regulation
processes that employees experience at work and highlights why and how organizations’ CSR
initiatives affect employees’ moral mindsets and behaviors.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility; deviance; helping; moral self-regulation; unethical

pro-organizational behavior
Despite the commonly held assumption in behavioral ethics research that self-interest
drives the emergence of unethical acts (Treviño, Weaver, & Reynolds, 2006), employees
often engage in morally dubious behavior as a way to benefit their organization and its
members (Thau, Derfler-Rozin, Pitesa, Mitchell, & Pillutla, 2015; Umphress, Bingham, &
Mitchell, 2010). For example, to protect the company’s reputation or maximize its profitabil-
ity, a flight attendant may lie to passengers that a filthy cabin is due to the poor work of con-
tracted services, or a sales agent may upsell products and services without disclosing
information about the shortcomings. Scholars have theorized about this organizational phe-
nomenon under the rubric of unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB)—“actions that
are intended to promote the effective functioning of the organization or its members and
violate core societal values, mores, laws, or standards of proper conduct” (Umphress &
Bingham, 2011, p. 622)—with a conceptual discussion that this behavior may yield a possi-
ble, although not deliberate, byproduct of benefits to the actors themselves (Umphress et al.,
2010). Given its less obvious self-serving purpose, UPB has received much research attention
focusing on its precipitating causes, with accumulative empirical evidence revealing that UPB
largely derives from strong identification with the organization, utilitarian mental approaches
(e.g., moral decoupling or disengagement), and psychological needs for social inclusion (e.g.,
Thau et al., 2015; Umphress et al., 2020).
Although researchers have provided novel insights into the antecedents of this unique form
of unethical behavior, less is known about how employees subsequently respond to their own
acts of UPB (see recent reviews by Mishra, Ghosh, & Sharma, 2021; Mo, Lupoli, Newman, &
Umphress, 2022). This stands in sharp contrast to an extensive line of actor-centric behavioral
research recognizing that performing actions with conspicuous moral implications shapes
how actors view themselves and behave subsequently (Miller & Effron, 2010; Mullen &
Monin, 2016; Zhong, Liljenquist, & Cain, 2009). Grounded in the moral self-regulation lit-
erature, this stream of studies has separated two opposite types of responses to morally laden
behaviors. One argues that morally laudable deeds, such as helping the organization beyond
ascribed duties, boost the moral self-concept, thereby permitting the actor to subsequently
engage in immoral behavior (i.e., moral licensing; Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010; Yam,
Klotz, He, & Reynolds, 2017). The other posits that moral transgressions, such as lying or
inflicting harm on others, threaten the moral self-concept, impelling the actor to perform
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morally compensatory behaviors (i.e., moral cleansing; Liao, Yam, Johnson, Liu, & Song,
2018; Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000).
Although informative, each of the two separate moral self-regulation accounts may not
thoroughly capture how employees behave in the aftermath of performing UPB due to the
dual—yet competing—moral nature of this behavior. Whereas UPB causes harm to external
stakeholders, its pro-organizational purpose may nevertheless facilitate organizational func-
tioning (Umphress et al., 2010). The morally paradoxical nature of UPB muddies our under-
standing of employees’ ensuing reactions as to whether both licensing and cleansing effects
would simultaneously emerge, simply cancel each other out, or whether one effect would
supersede the other. Indeed, of the scarce studies examining actors’ reactions to UPB to
date, they have reached opposing conclusions that fail to resolve this theoretical puzzle.
On the one hand, Tang, Yam, and Koopman (2020) and Wang, Xiao, and Ren (2022)
found that UPB respectively triggers more helping (toward both external stakeholders and
the organization) and voice behaviors that are conducive to the organization. On the other
hand, Yang, Lin, Liao, and Xue (2022) documented that UPB decreases citizenship behaviors
and increases counterproductive work behaviors. These empirically divergent results prohibit
researchers from gaining coherent knowledge of actors’ responses to UPB, which may inad-
vertently reinforce managers’ illusionary belief that UPB is beneficial (Baker, Derfler-Rozin,
Pitesa, & Johnson, 2019) and thus encourage managers to allow such behavior to propagate
within their organization.
In this research, we pivot from what has been, to date, predominantly independent exam-
inations of moral cleansing and moral licensing effects and instead integrate them to account
for seemingly paradoxical responses that employees may display concurrently following acts
of UPB. We posit that the competing moral nature of UPB makes employees simultaneously
feel morally deficient and psychologically entitled (Mullen & Monin, 2016). Such intraper-
sonally conflicting moral experiences in turn trigger conceptually opposed work behaviors,
namely helping and deviant behaviors. On the one hand, the sense of moral deficit increases
service-oriented helping behavior toward external stakeholders (the same target category of
UPB) as a cleansing response. On the other hand, the sense of entitlement may nonetheless
license unethical and deviant work behavior.
The extent to which both moral responses (i.e., cleansing and licensing) emerge simulta-
neously, or that one prevails over the other, however, depends on employees’ interpretation of
the moral implications of their own UPB, which is shaped by the moral approach taken with
the same targets by upper-level leadership (Mullen & Monin, 2016; Treviño et al., 2006). We
hence propose that the level of external CSR initiatives that employees perceive their organi-
zation has exercised (“perceived CSR” hereafter) moderates the relative intensity of cleansing
and licensing responses to UPB. What sets perceived CSR apart from many other potential
boundary conditions is the inherent nature of this construct in defining the organization’s dis-
cretionary moral stance toward external stakeholders (Aguinis, 2011; Margolis & Walsh,
2003)—a target broadly shared by UPB. CSR initiatives are “discretionary corporate activi-
ties intended to further social welfare” (Barnett, 2007: 795) and, likewise, UPB entails work
behaviors toward external stakeholders that fall outside ascribed job responsibilities.
Moreover, CSR initiatives are commonly characterized as one specific type of organizational
moral behavior and are seen to attest to moral standards and goals that the organization
pursues in relation to the broader society (Gond, El Akremi, Swaen, & Babu, 2017; Jones,
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Figure 1
Cleansing and Entitling Paths of Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior
Newman, Shao, & Cooke, 2019). That is, perceived CSR enables a powerful moral reference
for employees to interpret their UPB morality. When perceived CSR is high, employees tend
to experience that their UPB neither conforms with the organization’s moral standards nor
facilitates the pursuit of organizational social goals, thereby strengthening the cleansing
response yet attenuating the licensing response. As a robust test of our hypotheses (see
Figure 1), we conducted four studies using methodologically complementary approaches.
Our research makes three important theoretical contributions. First, our work moves the
UPB literature forward by adopting a dual-morality perspective to study employees’ par-
adoxical responses to UPB. By documenting that contingent on perceived CSR, employees
vary the intensities of their moral cleansing and licensing responses, we provide more
nuanced insight into how employees react to their own UPB, which helps resolve incon-
sistent empirical findings from a limited set of studies. In doing so, our research not
only extends the knowledge of the consequences of performing UPB but also enriches
the ongoing dialogue on actor-centric behavioral research. Second, we complement and
extend the moral self-regulation literature by moving beyond the assumption that moral
cleansing and licensing processes occur separately (Liao et al., 2018; Monin & Miller,
2001; Yam et al., 2017) or sequentially (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). Instead, we
posit that they may emerge concurrently within the same individual owing to actions
with competing moral imperatives. Moreover, our work highlights that unethical behavior
in name of the third party—a behavior with a legitimate justification that may offset its
immorality (Moore, Detert, Klebe Treviño, Baker, & Mayer, 2012)—may elicit moral
cleansing responses. This expands the premise commonly held by past research that
moral cleansing primarily occurs after individuals act on unethical behavior driven by self-
interest (Zhong et al., 2010). Third, we contribute to the micro CSR literature by position-
ing perceived CSR as an important boundary condition that reconciles the competing
moral self-regulation responses to UPB. This is important because we empirically
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document that the moral connotations of CSR can spillover to determine how employees
interpret, evaluate, and act on their own morally ambiguous acts.
Theoretical Development and Hypotheses

Morally Paradoxical Responses to UPB
While the extent literature has been fruitful in understanding the antecedents of UPB, only
a very small body of work has commenced the exploration of the actor-centric consequences
of UPB. Using two experiencing sampling studies, Tang and colleagues (2020) found that
performing UPB triggered mixed feelings of both pride and guilt, which increased helping
behavior toward the organization and the customers, respectively. Wang and colleagues
(2022), in both experimental and field studies, found that performing UPB elicited voice
behavior due to engendered guilt. Nevertheless, other research by Yang and colleagues
(2022) revealed that engaging in UPB induced the experience of cognitive dissonance,
which prohibited employees from internalizing a moral identity and thus led to increased
counterproductive work behavior and decreased helping behavior. Although these studies
have paved the way for our initial understanding of employees’ responses to UPB, they
appear to be incompatible in their position regarding whether UPB begets more
pro-organizational behaviors that benefit the organization in different ways or, conversely,
elicit more unethical ones that otherwise hurt the organization.
We surmise that the inconsistency in the two above findings is largely due to the lack of
consideration of the dual yet competing moral nature of UPB that may trigger paradoxical
responses and contextual factors that constrain the relative intensity of those responses.
According to moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2011), the bases of morality are orga-
nized around two higher-order “individualizing” and “binding” foundations that broadly cor-
respond to individual- and group-based moral concerns, respectively. Individual-based moral
concerns focus on individuals as the loci of moral consideration, highlighting being caring
and fair and avoiding harm. Group-based moral concerns extend beyond individuals by
affording moral status to groups and institutions. Such concerns emphasize the protection
and preservation of groups and institutions, such as upholding loyalty, obligation, and hier-
archical responsibility, because doing so enhances collective well-being (Graham, Haidt, &
Nosek, 2009). Moral foundations theory suggests that both individualizing and binding
domains of morality function concurrently in shaping how people behave (Graham et al.,
2011). We suggest that performing UPB involves morally conflicting imperatives in these
two domains as it goes against individualizing concerns of being caring and fair yet fulfills
the binding concerns of being dutiful and loyal, thereby triggering intrapersonally contradic-
tory feelings of moral self-concept.
Moral deficit. UPB involves acts “either illegal or morally unacceptable” (Jones, 1991,
p. 367) to broader society and inflict harm on external stakeholders (Umphress et al.,
2010). It encompasses both acts of commission (e.g., exaggerating the truth about products
or services) and omission (e.g., withholding information about shortcomings or flaws).
These acts typically hurt customers and clients in the name of the organization, jeopardizing
the individual-based moral concerns of being caring, fair, and honest (Aquino & Reed, 2002;
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Kohlberg, 1971). For this reason, engaging in UPB can lead to a sense of moral deficit, which
refers to a shortfall of personal moral credits owing to one’s own unethical behavior (Merritt
et al., 2010; Zhong et al., 2009). In terms of moral foundations theory, this deficiency of moral
credits exists in the individual-based moral domain (Liao et al., 2018).
According to the moral cleansing framework, engaging in immoral deeds causes a discrep-
ancy between one’s actual and desired moral credits of individualizing concerns, making
people feel morally dampened (Zhong et al., 2009). Moral credits are analogous to the
savings in one’s moral bank account: morally laudable acts earn one moral credits that
serve to “pay” for subsequent immoral behaviors, whereas morally heinous acts lead to
moral debts that prompt future reparative actions (Lin, Ma, & Johnson, 2016; Sachdeva
et al., 2009). The amount of moral credits that employees have at a given time is reflective
of the extent to which their behavior demonstrates individualizing moral concerns.
Performing UPB incurs harm to clients and customers and thus causes moral debts related
to individualizing moral concerns. For example, hiding the flaws of products or overcharging
customers run counter to values such as honesty and fairness. Although these behaviors may
benefit the organization, they violate individual-based moral principles, thereby resulting in
moral deficit.
Hypothesis 1: Engaging in UPB is positively related to moral deficit.
Psychological entitlement. Beyond its violation of individual-based moral principles,

other defining elements of UPB entail its pro-organizational and discretionary nature. UPB
is primarily carried out to benefit the organization and it usually falls outside ascribed
work responsibilities or requirements from superiors (Umphress et al., 2010). Prototypical
UPBs, such as concealing damaging information about the organization from customers,
have the potential to increase organizational profits and functioning, thus boosting employ-
ees’ group-based moral sense of being dutiful, responsible, and loyal (Graham et al.,
2011). We suggest that engaging in UPB can lead to a sense of psychological entitlement
because the boosted group-based moral sense triggers employees to perceive that they are
more responsible and loyal to the organization and thus deserve more than other members
(Merritt et al., 2010).
Defined as a belief of deserving special or unique treatment relative to others, psycholog-
ical entitlement can be conceptualized as a stable individual difference that varies across indi-
viduals (Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004), or as a state-based construct
that varies within individuals1 (Vincent & Kouchaki, 2016; Zitek, Jordan, Monin, & Leach,
2010). The latter—a state-based construct—is relevant within a moral licensing framework.
According to moral licensing research, engaging in good deeds, either socially desirable or
instrumentally beneficial, leads to “a sense of entitlement to some moral laxity” (Zhong
et al., 2009: 78). Extant research has explicitly recognized the conceptual analogy between
the mechanism of moral surplus in moral licensing and psychological entitlement. For
example, scholars have elucidated that morally licensed employees are those who feel entitled
“to more than their share” (Sachdeva et al., 2009: 528). Performing UPB exemplifies that one
is fulfilling extra responsibilities and being loyal to the organization, and sometimes, even at
the expense of the self, one is incurring personal risks or costs to help the organization. For
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example, a sales agent may intentionally withhold the critical defect information of the com-
pany’s products and believe that they are doing much more than a typical employee to
enhance the profitability of the company (Umphress et al., 2010). The agent risks receiving
complaints from customers that would damage their standing in the organization. Thus, by
upholding organization-related moral concerns through UPB, employees can boost their
sense of entitlement.
Notably, UPB may produce immediate beneficial consequences but ultimately lead to det-
rimental effects. For example, profits may increase in the short run, but selling defective prod-
ucts may lead to long-term reputational costs. Moral licensing research, however, has
suggested that the momentary fluctuation of the moral sense is primarily driven by the imme-
diate outcomes rather than the long-term consequences (Miller & Effron, 2010). Employees
tend to develop an immediate sense of entitlement from the instantaneous benefits of UPB,
regardless of the potential long-term deleterious consequences. Prior studies have also docu-
mented that even contemplating intended good deeds to help others (in our case, the organi-
zation) can foster a sense of entitlement (e.g., Clot, Grolleau, & Ibanez, 2016). UPB may
often be carried out with a self-serving purpose or a possible byproduct of self-benefits
(Umphress & Bingham, 2011). Nonetheless, owing to the primary intention to benefit the
organization of UPB, self-serving motives or outcomes may not override its licensing
effects. Echoing our reasoning, Yam and colleagues (2017) demonstrated that helping behav-
ior driven by self-serving motives to avoid possible social sanctions from managers was more
likely to increase entitlement. Hence, regardless of its future consequences or possible self-
serving purpose, performing UPB makes employees feel entitled.
Hypothesis 2: Engaging in UPB is positively related to psychological entitlement.
Moderating Effects of Perceived CSR

Although employees paradoxically experience both moral deficit and psychological enti-
tlement following performing UPB, the relative strength of these opposing moral experiences
varies across employees depending on the social responsibility initiatives taken by the orga-
nization. CSR initiatives, as a core element of organizational strategies, represent context-
specific discretionary actions that go beyond the immediate interest of the organization to
enhance the common good (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012; Rupp & Mallory, 2015). Extant
research has conceptualized that perceived CSR is a multi-dimensional construct that encom-
passes both external- (e.g., CSR to environment, customers, and communities) and internal-
(e.g., CSR to employees) targeted initiatives (Farooq, Payaud, Merunka, & Valette-Florence,
2014, 2017; Turker, 2009). Considering our focus on the moral implications of CSR toward
external stakeholders, our conceptualization primarily revolves around external-targeted
CSR, which can be seen to attest to the organization’s moral concerns at both individualizing
and binding domains.
CSR first exemplifies the organization’s moral practices in the individualizing domain,
thus signaling its care, kindness, and justice toward external stakeholders (Aguilera, Rupp,
Williams, & Ganapathi, 2007; Ellemers & Chopova, 2021). Perceived CSR thus enhances
employee awareness of the moral purposes and principles of their work (Basu & Palazzo,
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2008; Frederiksen, 2010). For example, Burbano (2016) and Ong, Mayer, Tost, and Wellman
(2018) found that perceived CSR enhanced employees’ prosocial motives (e.g., helping others
and doing good for others). El Akremi, Perrigot, and Piot-Lepetit (2015) also demonstrated that
perceived CSR facilitated the development of ethical norms of being honest and fair at work.
Moreover, CSR showcases the organization’s moral goals and responsibilities for the broader
society that move beyond mere compliance to regulation and legislation—that is, binding
moral concerns (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012). For example, in highlighting the moral obligation
involved in CSR, Frederiksen (2010: 367) argued that CSR policies demonstrated the organiza-
tion’s “fiduciary duties toward shareholders.” Ng, Yam, and Aguinis (2019) suggested that CSR
assured employees that the organization was responsible for its stakeholders.
Perceived CSR shapes how employees process and respond to the dual moral elements of
UPB primarily through signaling and social information processing effects (Basu & Palazzo,
2008; Frederiksen, 2010; Gond et al., 2017). Employees tend to make sense of the process
through which the upper-level leadership navigates the role and responsibility of the organization
for the common good and formulate an understanding of how their work contributes to the broad
moral goals of the organization. CSR signals both individualizing and binding moral concerns that
the organization maintains for the broader stakeholders. By contemplating how their organization
morally approaches interactions and relationships with external stakeholders, employees may
discern moral expectations ascribed to individual employees, resulting in their strengthened atten-
tiveness to the moral implications of their work behavior (Reynolds & Yuthas, 2008).
We posit that perceived CSR strengthens the effect of UPB on moral deficit. Perceptions of
CSR lead employees to be more likely to attend to the individualizing moral implications of
work behaviors and to more frequently examine whether their behaviors are consistent with
moral standards endorsed by their organization. They are thus more likely to recognize and
reflect on the violation of individual-based moral principles due to their UPB, resulting in
a stronger deprived sense of individualizing moral self-concept. Prior research has found
that when employees are more attentive to the moral implications of work behavior, they
are more likely to engage in moral cleansing (Mullen & Monin, 2016). Liao and colleagues
(2018), for example, found that morally attentive leaders were more likely to feel morally
deprived and engaged in reparative behaviors after engaging in unethical behavior.
We posit that perceived CSR mitigates the relationship between UPB and psychological
entitlement. This is primarily because perceived CSR increases employees’ awareness of
the organization’s moral goals and responsibilities. As demonstrated by Beaudoin, Cianci,
Hannah, and Tsakumis (2019), perceived CSR drove employees’ attention toward the orga-
nization’s interests and goals, and away from their personal interests. As a result, employees
are more likely to perceive a moral discrepancy between their UPB and the organization’s
intended moral goals. That is, although the organization intends to help external stakeholders
by diverting resources from the pursuit of profitability and shareholder benefits to the interests
of the broader community, UPB runs counter to the moral attempts by siphoning resources
away from those external stakeholders. Such a discrepancy reduces employees’ sense that
their UPB contributes to the functioning and interest of the organization. Their perceived
insufficient fulfillment of responsibilities to the organization is likely to alleviate the UPB
effect on psychological entitlement. Paralleling this reasoning, Vincent and Kouchaki
(2016) documented that when employees perceived that creative efforts were less unique
and beneficial to their organization, they felt less entitled.
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Hypothesis 3: UPB interacts with perceived CSR initiatives to influence moral deficit, such
that employees are likely to feel more morally deficient owing to their UPB when perceived
CSR initiatives are higher (vs. lower).
Hypothesis 4: UPB interacts with perceived CSR initiatives to influence psychological

entitlement, such that employees are likely to feel more entitled owing to their UPB when
perceived CSR initiatives are lower (vs. higher).
Effects on Service-Oriented Helping Behavior and Deviance

Our theoretical framework thus far articulates how UPB affects moral deficit and psychological
entitlement, contingent on perceived CSR. The practical significance of these paradoxical expe-
riences, however, hinges on what downstream work behaviors may subsequently emerge. The
moral self-regulation literature suggests that a sense of moral deficit propels employees to
perform reparative actions whereas entitlement licenses unethical actions (Merritt et al.,
2010; Zhong et al., 2009). This literature further suggests that employees tend to engage in
within-domain moral balancing acts. They attempt to either eliminate the provoking moral
threat or scale back the inflated moral sense in the same domain where the moral self-concept
initially fluctuates (Mullen & Monin, 2016). We suggest that the feeling of moral deficit in the
individualizing moral domain drives employees to engage in service-oriented helping, whereas
the sense of entitlement due to the inflated self-concept in the binding moral domain licenses
them to deviate from normative work behaviors.
Service-oriented helping behavior. Service-oriented helping refers to discretionary

actions of employees that go beyond formal job requirements to help customers
(Bettencourt, Gwinner, & Meuter, 2001). Prototypical behaviors include serving a customer
even when one is not on duty or working extra hours to accommodate special requests from
customers. As a behavioral manifestation of being caring and fair to clients and customers,
service-oriented helping restores a threatened individualizing moral self-concept. For employ-
ees whose moral self-concept has been dampened by UPB, service-oriented behavior appears to
be one of the most direct, effective, moral cleansing strategies. Importantly, research in the
moral cleansing literature reveals that the recipients of such compensatory helping behavior
need not be the ones that one’s action has harmed (Zhong et al., 2009). Prototypical service-
oriented helping behaviors include working extra hours to accommodate special requests
from customers, and responding to customer problems with candid and transparent information
in a timely manner. Such behaviors help employees to rebuild their positive moral self-regard
(Payne & Webber, 2006; Simons & Roberson, 2003). Hence, when employees feel morally
deficient owing to prior UPB, they may increase service-oriented helping.
Hypothesis 5: Moral deficit is positively related to service-oriented helping behavior.
Integrating the above theoretical arguments with H1 and H3, we further propose the fol-
lowing moderated mediation relation concerning service-oriented helping behavior.
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Hypothesis 6: Perceived CSR moderates the indirect relation of UPB with service-oriented
helping behavior via moral deficit, such that the indirect relation is stronger when perceived
CSR is higher (vs. lower).
Deviant behavior. We further posit that psychological entitlement, owing to UPB, leads to
increased deviance. The sense of entitlement is a result of the inflated self-concept in group-based
moral concerns that licenses individuals with moral credits to be deviant at work (Miller & Effron,
2010). When employees feel entitled, they tend to perceive that they have sufficient licensed
moral credits that could be withdrawn to purchase their right to deviate from behavioral norms
at work (Merritt et al., 2010). Such deviant behavior could be voluntary violations against norma-
tive work-related expectations (e.g., performance overclaiming or harming an organization’
image) or interpersonal mistreatment toward organizational members (e.g., incivility and aggres-
sions; Bennett & Robinson, 2000). Although both UPB and deviant behavior are unethical, they
differ from one another. First, UPB violates societal norms, whereas deviant behavior only vio-
lates organizational norms but might not necessarily violate societal norms (Treviño, Den
Nieuwenboer, & Kish-Gephart, 2014). For example, working slowly, or tardiness at work, are
considered workplace deviances but are not unethical per se. In fact, this distinction has been high-
lighted by most behavioral ethics research in the past which we now included in our discussion
(Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Treviño, 2010). Second, and more importantly, although both UPB
and deviance are voluntary behaviors that violate norms, UPB is, in part, intended to benefit the
organization whereas deviant behavior is purposefully intended to benefit the self only, and often
jeopardizes the organization. They thus often stem from distinct organizational-related anteced-
ents such as high versus low organizational identification (Umphress & Bingham, 2010).
Prior studies have widely documented the relationship between entitlement and deviant
behavior. For example, Yam and colleagues (2017) found that performing citizenship behav-
ior at work boosted the sense of entitlement which, in turn, licensed employees to engage in
more deviance. Similarly, Vincent and Kouchaki (2016) argued that creative behavior that
facilitated organizational functioning would earn moral credits for employees to feel entitled,
thereby licensing them to display deviance. We hence propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 7: Psychological entitlement is positively related to deviant behavior.
Integrating the above theoretical arguments with H2 and H4, we further propose the fol-
lowing moderated mediation relation concerning deviant behavior:
Hypothesis 8: Perceived CSR moderates the indirect relation of UPB with deviant behavior
via psychological entitlement, such that the indirect relation is stronger when perceived CSR
is lower (vs. higher).
Research Overview
We first conducted a pretest to differentiate the proposed dual effect of UPB on moral self-
regulation from the separate effects of unethical (but not pro-organizational) work behavior
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and pro-organizational (but not unethical) behavior and to examine the proposed moderating
effects (see Appendix A for details). We then tested our hypotheses across four studies with
complementary methodological approaches. In Study 1, we conducted a scenario-based lab
study in which we manipulated perceived CSR and provided participants with an opportunity
to perform UPB using the Bullard Houses negotiation exercise (Karp, Gold, & Tan, 2006), a
widely used behavioral ethics exercise. In Study 2, we constructively replicated our initial
finding by conducting an online experiment, in which we manipulated both perceived CSR
and UPB using an adapted Bullard Houses negotiation exercise. To boost our ecological
and external validity, we conducted two field studies. In Study 3, we took an experience sam-
pling approach to survey sale agents’ daily UPB, psychological responses, and next-day work
behaviors in Indonesia. This design enabled us to capture within-person variation in study
variables with temporal sequencing. In Study 4, we used a multisource, weekly design to
survey sales representatives and their direct managers in Germany across 3 weeks. The set
of four studies with multi-cultural samples provides a robust test of the internal and external
validity of our theory.
Study 1
Participants and Design
We conducted a between-person scenario-based study using a simulated negotiation exer-
cise, which provided participants with an opportunity to engage in UPB. A power analysis
with G*Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) indicated a sample size of 52
required for the study to be powered at 80% with an estimated effect size of .20. We recruited
128 participants from a U.S. business school to complete a 1-hour face-to-face negotiation
exercise in exchange for course credit. Participants were randomly assigned to 64 buyer-seller
dyads to negotiate a deal on the Bullard Houses (Karp et al., 2006), a widely used case in
behavioral ethics research (Lee, Pitesa, Pillutla, & Thau, 2017). In this case, the buyer’s
agent, an employee from Jones & Jones (a fictitious company), negotiates with the seller’s
agent (an employee of Downtown) over a piece of historical real estate. Due to the conflict
of core priorities, the case was designed to create an impasse between the buyer’s and
seller’s agents—to facilitate closing a deal and thus to increase the profits of Jones & Jones,
the buyer’s agent may purposely deceive the seller’s agent in more than one way, providing
participants with an opportunity to engage in UPB. Two dyads (both in the control condition)
were dropped because participants who acted as the buyer’s agent failed to complete the post-
negotiation tasks. Given our focus on buyer agents’ UPB, analyses were based upon data from
62 participants in the corresponding role (33 in the experimental condition and 29 in the control
condition; average age = 19.03, SD = 1.11; 51.6% male, 66.1% Caucasian). We used a
between-person design to manipulate perceived CSR of the buyer’s agents.
Procedure and Materials

Participants initially spent 15 min reading the negotiation materials and learning the study
procedures. We manipulated perceived CSR in the background information of the buyer’s
agent. Participants next completed a 5-min pre-negotiation survey to answer task
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comprehension questions, manipulation checks (for the buyer’s agents), and demographics,
and then they were escorted to a private room to negotiate with the counterpart for up to
30 min. Following the negotiation, participants in the role of the buyer’s agent completed a
10-min task, including rating moral deficit, psychological entitlement, comprehension
checks, and performing behavioral tasks measuring deviance and service-oriented helping.
To maintain consistency in post-negotiation tasks and minimize unnecessary distractions, par-
ticipants in the role of the seller’s agent were asked to complete the same post-negotiation task.
Perceived CSR manipulation. Following Burbano (2016), we manipulated perceived CSR

by presenting the following information about the company of the buyer’s agent:
Jones & Jones cares about the well-being of people in general (i.e., the well-being of clients,
shareholders … and local community) and values achieving success in ways that honor moral
values. Jones & Jones prides itself on its Philanthropic Programs. They have a longstanding tra-
dition of giving back to the communities.… One of their philanthropic programs is Charitable
Giving Program. In 2018, they donated 3% of their profit to 5 charities, including the
American Red Cross.… In 2019, they will continue to identify nonprofit organizations that con-
tribute to the well-being of the broader community.
Participants were also asked to describe the background information of Jones & Jones.
This paragraph and the writing task were omitted in the control condition. As a manipulation
check, participants responded to four items adapted from Ong and colleagues (2018) on a
scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree (α = .92). These items are
“Jones & Jones is active in social responsibility/socially responsible/gives adequate contribu-
tions to charities/cares about the well-being of people in general.”
UPB measure. Rather than directly manipulating UPB, we captured a spontaneous emer-
gence of this behavior, which dovetails with the discretionary nature of UPB (Umphress &
Bingham, 2011). Notably, a direct behavioral manipulation might induce external motives
to perform UPB (participants might perceive that they were requested to do so by experiment-
ers). Prior research on discretionary behavior has revealed that when unethical behavior was
prompted by external motives, individuals were more likely to experience entitlement or
moral deficit (Yam et al., 2017). We thus asked participants to report whether they
engaged in UPB during the negotiation exercise. Considering that UPB consisted of both
acts of commission and omission, we measured this behavior using two items, including
“During the negotiation, did you misrepresent the facts about the buyer’s planned use of
the property in order to increase Jones & Jones’s profit?” and “Did you conceal information
of the planned use of the property in order to increase Jones & Jones’s profit?” The response
scale was 1 = Yes, I did and 0 = No, I did not. The UPB scores were ordinal, ranging from 0
(no item endorsed) to 2 (both items endorsed).
Moral deficit. We measured moral deficit with five items adapted from Liao and col-
leagues (2018; see Appendix B for measurement details). Participants indicated their level
of agreement with each item based upon their negotiation behavior on a scale ranging
from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree (α = .94).
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et al. \ Cleansing
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Psychological entitlement. We measured psychological entitlement with Campbell and

colleagues’ (2004) 9-item scale, following the negotiation excise. Participants indicated the
extent to which each item captured how they felt relative to other employees in the Jones
& Jones company on a scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree (α = .92).
Deviance. We measured deviance with a behavioral task in which participants were

assigned by the CEO of Jones & Jones to design a property construction structure. To com-
plete this task, participants needed to use their mouse as a pen to draw a provided construction
shape without lifting the pen from the page and tracing the same line more than once in 3 min
(adapted from Glass, Singer, & Friedman, 1969; see Appendix C for task details). Participants
were told that they would be given $5 USD reward (as a study bonus) on the behalf of the
CEO of Jones & Jones, should they successfully complete the task. Unbeknownst to the par-
ticipants, the task was unsolvable, which presented an opportunity for participants to falsify
their performance for additional compensation. Similar experimental paradigms have been
used to measure the falsification of a person’s performance for extra compensation, which
is considered a form of deviance (Vincent & Kouchaki, 2016; Yam et al., 2017). Prior to
the formal trial, participants engaged in a practice trial. To avoid accidental cheating, the
program automatically showed the line that participants had drawn in a green color. At the
end of the task, participants self-reported whether they had solved the task successfully
using a binary measure (1 = misreporting/deviance and 0 = accurate reporting). Overall,
22.6% of participants over-claimed their performance.
Service-Oriented helping. We adapted Gino, Kouchaki, and Galinsky’s (2015) approach

to measure service-oriented helping. At the conclusion of the study, participants were told that
their negotiation counterpart, the seller’s agent, had extra work and would appreciate their
help. If they decided to help, they would have to spend 10 extra minutes completing
another survey. If they decided not to help, the study would be over, and they would be
escorted to the debriefing room. Considering that the seller’s agent was the participants’
(the buyers) client, we deemed this to be an appropriate measure of service-oriented
helping behavior. It was a binary variable (1 = providing help and 0 = not providing help).
Overall, 41.9% of participants provided help.
Comprehension check. At the end of the study, before the service-oriented helping task,
participants in the role of the buyer’s agent answered two comprehension check items. Using
a scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, they indicated the extent to
which they agreed with “During the negotiation, the behavior that I just engaged in was con-
trary to the accepted norms of the society but beneficial to Jones & Jones” and “The behavior
that I just engaged in was unethical but beneficial to Jones & Jones” (α = .90).
Results and Discussion

Given that we manipulated perceived CSR prior to the negotiation task, we pretested
whether CSR manipulation shapes the tendency of performing UPB and subsequent out-
comes. Results of ANOVAs revealed that participants in the CSR and control conditions
did not differ in their likelihood of engaging in UPB (F [1, 60] = .797, η2 = .013, p = .376),
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Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Study 1 Variables
Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5
a
1. Perceived CSR .53 .50
2. UPBb 1.42 .62 .11
3. Moral Deficit 3.14 .95 .24 .39** (.94)
4. Psychological Entitlement 2.49 .80 −.11 .31* −.12 (.92)
5. Service-Oriented Helpingc .42 .50 .01 .22 .39** −.09
6. Devianced .23 .42 −.04 .14 −.06 .41** −.09
Note: N = 62. aDummy variable (1 = Perceived CSR condition, 0 = Control condition). bUPB is an ordinal variable
with scores ranged from 0 to 2. cDummy variable (1 = Helping, 0 = No helping). dDummy variable (1 = Deviance, 0
= Accurate reporting). Estimates of reliability are reported on the diagonal in parentheses.
*p < .05.
**p < .01 (two-tailed).
service-oriented helping behavior (F [1, 60] = .007, η2 = .000, p = .935), deviance (F [1, 60] =
.073, η2 = .01, p = .788), nor feeling entitled (F [1, 60] = .769, η2 = .013, p = .384). Participants
in the CSR condition reported a marginally higher moral deficit (M = 3.35, SD = .97) than those
in the control condition (M = 2.90, SD = .88, F [1,60] = 3.60, η2 = .06, p = .06).
Manipulation and comprehension checks. Participants in the CSR condition (M = 4.16,

SD = .69) reported a higher level of agreement with the statements that Jones & Jones was
socially responsible compared with those in the control condition (M = 2.55, SD = .57, F
[1, 60] = 98.07, η2 = .62, p < .01), suggesting that our CSR manipulation had an intended
effect. We also found that participants who engaged in more UPB (i.e., either misrepresented
or concealed or both) reported a higher level of agreement with statements that their behavior
was unethical but beneficial to Jones & Jones (b = 1.11, SE = .55, p < .01), corroborating that
participants understood whether or not they performed UPB.
Hypotheses testing. Table 1 reports means, standard deviations, and correlations among
Study 1 variables. Table 2 presents results of OLS regression analyses testing the hypothe-
sized effects. Results showed that UPB had positive effects on both moral deficit (b = .59,
p < .01) and psychological entitlement (b = .40, p = .015), supporting H1 and H2. UPB inter-
acted with perceived CSR to predict moral deficit (b = .75, p = .038). Simple slope analyses
(Figure 2A) revealed that UPB had a stronger positive relationship with moral deficit in the
perceived CSR condition (simple slope = 1.00, t = 13.44, p = .047; Mhigh UPB = 3.91, Mlow UPB
= 2.69), compared to that in the control condition (simple slope = .24, t = 6.27, p = .10; Mhigh
UPB = 3.08, Mlow UPB = 2.78). These results support H3. We also found a significant interac-
tive effect between UPB and perceived CSR on psychological entitlement (b = −.69, p =
.031). Simple slope analyses (Figure 2B) suggested that UPB had a significantly positive
effect on psychological entitlement in the control condition (simple slope = .71, t = 15.03,
p = .042; Mhigh UPB = 3.08, Mlow UPB = 2.20) but not in the perceived CSR condition
Table 2
Results of OLS and Logistic Regressions for Testing Main, Moderation, and Mediation Effects in Study 1
Moral Deficit Psychological Entitlement Service-Oriented Helpinga Devianceb
Variables M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10
Constant 3.14** (.11) 3.12** (.11) 2.50** (.10) 2.52** (.10) −.56 (.43) −.78 (.47) −.77 (.47) −1.32** (.44) −1.45** (.49) −1.45** (.49)
UPB .59** (.18) .62** (.18) .40* (.16) .37* (.16) 1.05* (.50) .61 (.55) .64 (.57) .70 (.67) .27 (.75) .35 (.83)
Perceived CSRc .37 (.22) −.24 (.19) .21 (.57) .58 (.63) .58 (.63) −.22 (.77) −.51 (.83) −.55 (.86)
UPB × Perceived .75* (.36) −.69* (.31) 2.07* (.99) 1.60 (1.04) 1.54 (1.09) −3.18* (1.38) −2.91 (1.51) −2.90 (1.51)
CSR
Moral Deficit .90* (.39) .88* (.40) −.11 (.46)
Psychological −.08 (.43) 1.26* (.51) 1.27* (.51)
Entitlement
Adjusted/ .13 .21 .08 .14 .16 .27 .27 .19 .33 .33
Nagelkerke R2
Δ R2 .06 .07 .09 .11 .00 .16 .14 .00
Note: N = 62. aDummy variable (1 = Helping, 0 = No helping). bDummy variable (1 = Deviance, 0 = Accurate reporting). cDummy variable (1 = Perceived CSR
condition, 0 = Control condition). Standard errors are reported in parentheses.
*p < .05.
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Figure 2
Mean Values of Moral Deficit (A) and Psychological Entitlement (B) by Unethical
Pro-Organizational Behavior and Perceived CSR Initiatives for Study 1
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et al. \ Cleansing
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(simple slope = .02, t = .16, p = .902; Mhigh UPB = 2.41, Mlow UPB = 2.39). These results are in
line with H4.
We conducted logistic regression analyses testing the moderated mediation effect on
two binary outcome variables following Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes’s (2007) procedures.
Results revealed that that moral deficit was positively related to service-oriented helping
behavior (b = .88, p = .028, eb = 2.41), supporting H5. The conditional indirect effect
testing using a bootstrap procedure with 10,000 samples in PROCESS macro (model 7;
Hayes, 2017) revealed that UPB had a significant positive indirect effect on service-
oriented helping via moral deficit in the perceived CSR condition (estimate = .84, 95%
CI [.11, 2.04]), but not in the control condition (estimate = .19, 95% CI [−.18, .80]).
The difference between the two conditional indirect effects was significant (index = .65,
SE = .53, 95% CI [.01, 2.03]). These results support H6. Psychological entitlement was
positively related to deviance (b = 1.27, p = .014, eb = 3.54), supporting H7. Moreover,
UPB had a significant indirect effect on deviant behavior via psychological entitlement
in the control condition (estimate = .99, 95% CI [.20, 2.40]) but not in the perceived
CSR condition (estimate = .06, 95% CI [−1.04, .97]). The difference between the two con-
ditional indirect effects was significant (index = −.93, 95% CI [−2.85, −.01]). These
results support H8.
Discussion. These results provide initial support for our hypotheses, yet Study 1 has three
limitations. First, we did not manipulate UPB; rather, we administrated a negotiation task to
capture participants’ spontaneous display of such behavior. Doing so presented high consis-
tency with the discretionary nature of UPB. However, this study procedure may skew esti-
mates of the effect size of UPB as the CSR manipulation might affect participants’
tendency to perform UPB. Although results from our initial pretest presented at the beginning
of this section documented that this was not the case, a more robust approach is to manipulate
both UPB and CSR. Second, research has suggested that individuals may engage in mental
activities to justify their unethical behavior afterward (i.e., post-doc moral disengagement;
Moore et al., 2012; Shu, Gino, & Bazerman, 2011). This alternative moral self-regulatory
response may confound with hypothesized mechanisms and it warrants being disentangled
in our testing. Third, although power analysis suggested that our study had adequate statistical
power, a more rigorous study with a larger sample size would give greater confidence in our
findings. We conducted an experiment to address these concerns.
Study 2
We conducted an online experiment using a 2 (perceived CSR vs. control) × 2 (UPB vs.
control) between-persons design. A power analysis using G*Power (Faul et al., 2007) indi-
cated a sample size of 199 required for the study to be powered at 80% with an estimated
effect size of .20. We recruited 248 working adults in North America from Prolific to partic-
ipate in an online negotiation exercise in exchange for $1.50 USD. We adapted the Bullard
Houses negotiation exercise used in Study 1 to manipulate UPB. Participants were assigned to
be the role of the buyer’s agent. Rather than requesting participants to engage in UPB, those in
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the experimental condition were prompted to consider acting in an unethical but

pro-organizational manner during the negotiation, whereas those in the control condition
were instructed to behave honestly. We used the same procedure as in Study 1 to manipulate
perceived CSR. Data from three participants were removed from analyses because they did
not draft the required negotiation email.2 Data analyses were conducted with the remaining
245 participants (average age = 31.19 years, SD = 12.17; 42.0% male; 73.5% Caucasian).
Experimental Procedure and Materials

Participants first read welcoming instructions informing them that they were randomly
assigned as a manager of Jones & Jones (i.e., the buyer’s agent) to negotiate a deal on the
Bullard property with another participant as a seller’s agent (a fictitious person). As in
Study 1, we manipulated perceived CSR in the background information of Jones & Jones.
Participants then followed the instructions corresponding to the assigned condition to complete
the negotiation. We then surveyed moral deficit, psychological entitlement, and post-hoc moral
disengagement, and measured service-oriented helping and deviance. In closing, participants
completed manipulation checks, and demographics, and were debriefed. We used the same pro-
cedure as in Study 1 to manipulate perceived CSR and verify the manipulation effect (α = .93);
we measured moral deficit using the same items as in Study 1 (α = .97).
UPB manipulation. Participants were instructed to engage in two rounds of negotiation

(through emails) with the seller’s agent (a fictitious counterpart) to make a deal on the
Bullard Houses. To minimize the possibility of perceiving external motives of UPB due to
the direct behavioral manipulation (Yam et al., 2017), which may cause potential confounds
for UPB effects, we followed prior research (e.g., Shin & Grant, 2021) to nudge participants
to engage in UPB. Participants in the experimental condition were suggested to “consider
withholding or covering up” the client’s intended “commercial use” of the property to facil-
itate closing a deal with their counterpart and thus achieve the best interest of the company.3
Participants in the control condition were encouraged to negotiate a deal but disclose the
client’s intended use of the property “transparently” and “honestly” when asked. In the
course of the negotiation, participants received two rounds of emails from their counterpart
(30–45 s following the initial emails sent out by participants). In the first round, participants
in both conditions were asked to confirm the intended use of the property. In the second
round, participants in the experimental condition were informed that their counterpart
agreed to close a deal with them due to their confirmation of a non-commercial use plan; par-
ticipants in the control condition were informed that the bargaining was stuck in an impasse
due to the planned commercial use of the property.
As manipulation checks, participants responded to the same two items (α = .88) as in
Study 1 to verify that those assigned to the experimental condition agreed that they
engaged in UPB during the negotiation. Additionally, two research assistants who were
blind to the conditions and research hypotheses coded whether the negotiation emails
drafted by participants were unethical but beneficial to Jones & Jones (1 = strongly disagree
to 5 = strongly agree).
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Psychological entitlement. We adapted five items from Campbell and colleagues (2004)
to measure state entitlement following the negotiation task. The five items4 (see Appendix
B) were selected for capturing state entitlement arising from negotiation behavior (Yam
et al., 2017). Participants indicated the extent to which they agreed with each statement rel-
ative to other employees in the Jones & Jones company (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly
agree; α = .90).
Behavioral outcomes. We used the same approaches as in Study 1 to measure deviance

and service-oriented helping. Overall, a total of 44.5% of participants provided help, and
20.4% over-claimed the performance.
Control variables. We controlled for post-hoc moral disengagement as it might affect

moral self-regulation in the aftermath of UPB. This variable was measured with a 7-item
scale adapted from Moore and colleagues (2012) and Shu and colleagues (2011; α = .82).
Analyses with and without this control yielded virtually identical results.

Manipulation checks. Participants in the perceived CSR condition (M = 4.35, SD = .67)
indicated a higher level of agreement with the statements that Jones & Jones was socially
responsible than did participants in the control condition (M = 3.18, SD = .69, F[1, 243]
= 181.48, η2 = .43, p < .01), suggesting that our manipulation was successful. Participants
in the UPB condition (M = 3.66, SD = 1.11) reported a greater level of agreement that
their behavior during the negotiation was unethical but beneficial to Jones & Jones com-
pared to participants in the control condition (M = 1.94, SD = 1.07, F[1, 243] = 152.52,
η2 = .39, p < .01). Results from essay coding revealed a high level of agreement among
the two coders (rwg (j) = .77, ICC1 = .47, ICC2 = .64, p < .01), and these coders rated the
emails written by participants in the UPB condition (M = 3.34, SD = .93) to be more uneth-
ical but beneficial to the organization than those in the control condition (M = 1.84, SD =
.92; F[1. 243] = 162.84, η2 = .40, p < .01). These results verify that the UPB manipulation
was successful.
Hypothesis testing. Table 3 reports descriptive statistics and correlations among Study 2
variables. Table 4 presents OLS regression results testing the hypothesized effects. Results
showed that, after controlling for post-hoc moral disengagement, UPB had positive effects
on moral deficit (b = 1.41, p < .01) and psychological entitlement (b = .82, p < .01), supporting
H1 and H2. A significant interactive effect between UPB and perceived CSR was observed on
moral deficit (b = .57, p = .036). Simple slope analyses (Figure 3A) suggested that UPB had
a stronger relationship with moral deficit in the perceived CSR condition (simple slope = 1.70,
t = 8.83, p < .01; MUPB = 3.76, Mcontrol = 2.05), compared to the control condition (simple
slope = 1.14, t = 5.92, p < .01; MUPB = 3.29, Mcontrol = 2.14). These results support H3.
UPB interacted with perceived CSR to predict state entitlement (b = −.51, p = .013).
Simple slope analyses (Figure 3B) revealed that UPB had a stronger relationship with state
entitlement in the control condition (simple slope = 1.08, t = 7.39, p < .01; MUPB = 3.58,
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Table 3
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
a
1. Perceived CSR .50 .50
2. UPBb .49 .50 .004
3. Moral Deficit 2.82 1.27 .08 .56** (.97)
4. Psychological Entitlement 2.96 .96 −.09 .48** .34** (.90)
5. Post-Hoc Moral Disengagement 2.49 .77 −.03 .20** .14* .34** (.82)
6. Service-Oriented Helpingc .44 .50 .02 .17** .29** −.07 −.10
7. Devianced .20 .40 −.02 .09 .08 .30** .33** −.13*
Note: N = 245. aDummy variable (1 = Perceived CSR condition, 0 = Control condition). bDummy variable (1 = UPB
condition, 2 = Control condition). cDummy variable (1 = Helping, 0 = No helping). dDummy variable (1 = Deviance,
0 = Accurate reporting). Estimates of reliability are reported on the diagonal in parentheses.
*p < .05.
Mcontrol = 2.49) than that in the CSR condition (simple slope = .57, t = 3.87, p < .01; MUPB =
3.16, Mcontrol = 2.59), supporting H4.
UPB interacted with perceived CSR to predict service-oriented helping (b = 1.13, p = .03,
eb = 3.10) and that moral deficit mediated the interactive effect (b = .52, p < .01, eb = 1.70).
Results of the conditional indirect effect testing using a bootstrap procedure with 10,000
samples in PROCESS macro (Model 7; Hayes, 2017) revealed that UPB had a stronger pos-
itive indirect effect on service-oriented helping via moral deficit in the perceived CSR condi-
tion (estimate = .92, 95% CI [.43, 1.52]), compared to that in the control condition (estimate =
.61, 95% CI [.29, 1.07]). The two conditional indirect effects were significantly different
(index = .30, 95% CI [.03, .74]). These results support H5 and H6. UPB interacted with per-
ceived CSR to predict deviance (b = −1.88, p < .01, eb = .15) and that state entitlement medi-
ated the interactive effect (b = .73, p < .01, eb = 2.08). Results of the conditional indirect effect
test showed that UPB had a stronger positive indirect effect on deviance via state entitlement
in the control condition (estimate = 1.16, 95% CI [.62, 1.88]), compared to that in the per-
ceived CSR condition (estimate = .64, 95% CI [.31, 1.14]). The two conditional indirect
effects were significantly different (index = −.52, 95% CI [−1.14, −.09]). These results
support H7 and H8.
Discussion. Study 2 results replicated our prior findings with a more rigorous design to
establish causal inference. However, our measure of UPB and outcomes in both studies
largely hinged on the Bullard houses case setting, restricting the external and ecological valid-
ity. Specifically, UPB and service-oriented helping were targeted at the seller’s agent rather than
the buyer, who was the more direct client that participants attempted to serve. That said, the
seller’s agent was still the external stakeholder for participants and thus remained largely con-
sistent with the conceptual scope of each construct. The measure of deviance in both studies
only captured performance overclaiming for extra momentary incentives. Although it represents
the common approach to measuring deviance in a lab setting, we recognize that a more rigorous
measurement necessitates a thorough capture of different forms of deviant behavior. Further,
Table 4
Results of OLS and Logistic Regressions for Testing Main, Moderation, and Mediation Effects in Study 2
Moral Deficit Psychological Entitlement Service-Oriented Helpinga Devianceb
Variables M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 M9 M10
Constant 2.81** (.07) 2.81** (.07) 2.95** (.05) 2.95** (.05) −.24 (.13) −.25 (.14) −.25 (.14) −1.63** (.20) −1.71** (.21) −1.71** (.21)
Post-Hoc .04 (.09) .05 (.09) .32** (.07) .32** (.07) −.39* (.18) −.43* (.19) −.30 (.20) 1.14** (.24) .96** (.25) .96** (.25)
Moral
Engagement
UPBc 1.41** (.14) 1.41** (.14) .82** (.11) .82** (.11) .82** (.28) .19 (.33) .52 (.36) .18 (.36) −.46 (.42) −.51 (.45)
Perceived .21 (.13) −.16 (.10) .04 (.27) −.05 (.28) −.11 (.28) .08 (.36) .14 (.37) .13 (.37)
CSRd
UPB × .57* (.27) −.51* (.21) 1.13* (.53) .93 (.55) .72 (.56) −1.88** (.72) −1.52* (.74) −1.55* (.75)
Perceived
CSR
Moral Deficit .47** (.14) .53** (.14) .06 (.18)
Psychological −.47* (.19) .75** (.24) .73** (.25)
Entitlement
Adjusted/ .31 .32 .29 .31 .09 .15 .18 .21 .26 .26
Nagelkerke
R2
Δ R2 .30 .01 .18 .02 .09 .06 .03 .05 .05 .00
a b c
Note: N = 245. Dummy variable (1 = Helping, 0 = No helping). Dummy variable (1 = Deviance, 0 = Accurate reporting). Dummy variable (1 = UPB condition, 2 =
Control condition). dDummy variable (1 = Perceived CSR condition, 0 = Control condition). Standard errors are reported in parentheses.
*p < .05.
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Figure 3
Mean Values of Moral Deficit (A) and Psychological Entitlement (B) by Unethical
Pro-Organizational Behavior and Perceived CSR Initiatives for Study 2
Note. Each error bar represents 1 standard error from the mean.
extant research has hinted at the emotional mechanisms through which UPB shapes subsequent
work behavior (e.g., guilt and pride; Tang et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2022). Disentangling these
emotional mechanisms from the proposed moral balancing mechanisms helps ensure the
robustness of our findings. Finally, our theoretical arguments primarily focus on state-based
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et al. \ Cleansing
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psychological and behavioral responses right after performing UPB. A rigorous design neces-
sitates capturing the momentary effects of performing UPB on a daily basis (Liao et al., 2018,
2022). We conducted an experience sampling study with sales agents to address the above
limitations.
Study 3
We initially invited 120 sales agents working for a large food manufacturing company in
Indonesia to complete a daily survey study. Through professional networks, one of the
authors first approached the organization’s executives for research support. We then sought
assistance from the HR department in recruiting full-time sales employees who worked
with external stakeholders frequently on a daily basis, primarily with customers. Our prelim-
inary interviews with prospect participants revealed that those agents had a great deal of dis-
cretion in interacting with outside stakeholders (e.g., addressing clients’ requests, handling
complaints, and providing after-sales services). Our sample thus presents a proper context
for studying state-based responses to daily UPB. Participants were assured of the confidenti-
ality and voluntariness of their participation. We received valid surveys from 112 participants,
yielding a 93.3% response rate. Participants had an average age of 35.53 years (SD = 10.18),
their organizational tenure averaged 3.72 years (SD = 2.19), 75.9% of them were women, and
49.2% were college-educated.
The data collection encompassed a one-time entry survey and two daily surveys per day
over 10 workdays. Participants first completed an initial online survey assessing perceived
CSR, demographics, and between-person control variables (i.e., social desirability and
moral disengagement). Approximately 1 week after the initial survey, participants started
to complete daily online surveys over 2 weeks (Mondays to Fridays, 10 workdays). To
account for the temporal sequence among variables, we separated daily surveys at two
time points with the predictor and mediator variables reported at midday and outcome vari-
ables reported at the end of the workday. Participants completed the noon surveys during
work break (between 12 pm and 1 pm) assessing UPB, moral deficit, state entitlement, and
guilt and pride in the morning. At the end of workdays (between 6 pm and 7 pm), participants
completed afternoon surveys reporting service-oriented helping and deviance that afternoon.
Participants responded to a screening question5 at the beginning of daily surveys to ensure
that they had frequent contacts with clients or customers for answering the surveys (Liao,
Lee, Johnson, Song, & Liu, 2021). We time-stamped all daily responses to verify submission
time and match daily surveys. We received a total of 795 matched surveys, representing a
response rate of 71% (out of 1,120 possible surveys).
Measures
All measures were constructed in Indonesian, following the standard translation and back-
translation procedure to ensure meaning equivalence (Brislin, 1980). Please see Appendix B
for Study 3 measurements. We measured perceived CSR with Farooq, Rupp, and Farooq’s
(2017) 10-item scale, which captured external facets of CSR (i.e., environmental-,
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community-, and customer-targeted CSR). This scale has been documented with high reliabil-
ity and convergent validity in the South Asian context (Farooq et al., 2014, 2017).
Participants indicated the extent to which their company engaged in CSR activities on a
scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 5 = to a very large extent (α = .91). Morning UPB was
assessed with a 5-item scale adapted from Umphress and colleagues (2010).6 Participants
indicated their agreement with each statement based upon morning work behavior on a
scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree (within-person reliability ω
= .77). The momentary sense of moral deficit was measured with the same 5-item scale as
in Study 2 (ω = .82). Psychological entitlement was measured with an 8-item scale adapted
from Campbell and colleagues (2004, ω = .82).7 Participants indicated the extent to which
each item captured how they felt relative to others in the company at that moment of completing
the survey (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Afternoon service-oriented helping
behavior was measured with a 5-item scale adapted from Bettencourt and Brown (1997, ω =
.78) and deviance was measured with a 6-item scale from Dalal, Lam, Weiss, Welch, and
Hulin (2009, ω = .92). Participants indicated their agreement with which they engaged in the
described behaviors in the afternoon (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).
To rule out potential endogenous confounds and facilitate the estimate with causal
inference, we controlled for prior-day measures of mediating and outcome variables. As
in Study 2, we controlled for moral disengagement as an individual propensity, which
was measured with Moore and colleagues’ (2012) 8-item scale (α = .87). We also con-
trolled for social desirability via Reynolds’s (1982) 11-item scale (α = .86) to reduce
common method variance in reports of study variables. At the daily level, we controlled
for alternative emotional mechanisms because the moral self-regulation literature sug-
gested that performing UPB would elicit feelings of guilt and pride (Tang et al., 2020).
Guilt was measured with three items (ω = .73) from Tangney, Miller, Flicker, and
Barlow (1996) and pride was measured with four items (ω = .81) from Dunn and
Schweitzer (2005) and Tracy and Robins (2007). We conducted analyses with and
without control variables and obtained comparable results that did not alter study
conclusions.
Analytical Strategy
Given the multilevel data structure, we conducted a two-level path-analysis using the
random slope framework of multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM; Preacher,
Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010) in Mplus 7.0. To test the cross-level interactive effects, we estimated
an MSEM model that included perceived CSR (Level 2 moderator) as the predictor of within-
person random slopes of UPB with moral deficit and psychological entitlement, respectively
(Preacher, Zhang, & Zyphur, 2016). We grand-mean centered perceived CSR and within-
person centered morning UPB to eliminate between-person confounds and generate more
explicable parameter estimates (Enders & Tofighi, 2007). The proposed conditional indirect
effects were examined with a 95% CI using the Monte Carlo simulation procedure in R
(Preacher & Selig, 2012). We calculated values of pseudo-R2 to examine the amount of
within-person variance in mediating and outcome variables accounted for by the hypothe-
sized effects (Snijders & Bosker, 2011).8
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Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (MCFAs). We conducted a series of MCFAs to
verify the discriminant validity of daily variables. To obtain an optimal variable-to-sample-size
ratio and maintain parameter estimate stability (Bagozzi & Edwards, 1998; Little, Cunningham,
Shahar, & Widaman, 2002), we randomly created three-item parcels for psychological entitle-
ment and deviance. To take into account the nonnormality and nested structure of our data,
we used a maximum likelihood estimator with robust standard errors (i.e., the MLR estimator)
using a numerical integrational algorithm in Mplus 7.0 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2014) and
estimated Satorra-Bentler (S-B) scaled Chi-square differences in comparing model fit (Satorra
& Bentler, 2001). Results from a model specifying a five-factor baseline structure (i.e., UPB,
moral deficit, psychological entitlement, service-oriented helping, and deviance) at both
within- and between-person levels fit the data well (χ2 (358) = 828.69, p < .01, RMSEA = .041,
CFI = .90, TLI = .89, SRMR (within−person) = .05), and better than alternative models,9 corroborat-
ing the measurement distinctiveness of daily constructs.
Descriptive results and hypothesis testing. Table 5 reports the descriptive statistics and
correlations among the focal variables. We estimated the proportions of within-person vari-
ance in daily variables by separating the total variance into components at within- and
between-person levels. Results showed that all daily variables had considerable variance
residing at the within-person level: 75.98% for UPB, 66.34% for moral deficit, 65.10% for
psychological entitlement, 75.98% for guilt, 66.19% for pride, 53.02% for service-oriented
helping behavior, and 58.23% for deviance. These results corroborated that participants expe-
rienced significant fluctuations in daily UPB, moral deficit, and psychological entitlement.
Table 6 presents results testing our hypothesized effects. Results showed that, after con-
trolling for moral disengagement, social desirability, and prior day corresponding variables,
performing UPB was positively related to moral deficit (γ = .42, p < .01) and psychological
entitlement (γ = .16, p < .01), supporting H1 and H2.10 Perceived CSR was positively
related to the within-person random slope of UPB and moral deficit (γ = .15, p = .02). We
plotted the interactive effect on moral deficit at two conditional values of the moderator
(i.e., 1 SD above and below the mean; Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003). As illustrated
in Figure 4, the relationship between UPB and moral deficit was stronger when perceived
CSR was higher (simple slope = .53, t = 16.67, p < .01) than when perceived CSR was
lower (simple slope = .31, t = 9.78, p < .01). The interactive effect is consistent with H3.
The interactive effect on psychological entitlement was non-significant (γ = .05, p = .40).
H4 does not receive support.
Moral deficit at noon was positively related to afternoon service-oriented helping (γ = .29, p <
.01), supporting H5. The indirect effect of UPB on service-oriented helping behavior via moral
deficit was significantly stronger when perceived CSR was higher (estimate = .16, p < .01, 95%
CI [.09, .22]) compared to when perceived CSR was lower (estimate = .09, p < .01, 95% CI [.04,
.14]; difference = .06, p = .03, 95% CI [.01, .12]). These results support H6. Psychological enti-
tlement at noon was positively related to afternoon deviance (γ = .23, p < .01), supporting H7.
However, given the non-significant interactive effect of UPB and CSR on psychological entitle-
ment, the difference between two conditional indirect effects was not significant (difference =
.02, p = .40, 95% CI [−.02, .06]). These results do not support H6.
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Table 5
Means, Standard Deviations, Percentages of Within-Person Variance, and Correlations Study 3 Variables
Between-Person Within-Person Within-Person

Variables M SD SD Variance/Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Between-Person Level
1. Perceived CSR 3.90 .71 (.91)
2. Social Desirability 3.94 .61 −.08 (.86)
3. Moral 3.95 .68 −.10 .09 (.87)
Disengagement
Within-Person Level
4. Daily UPB 3.65 .39 .55 .35**/75.98% −.08 .05 .32** (.77) .41** .17** .16** .10** .16** .05
5. Moral Deficit 3.67 .48 .55 .34**/66.34% .03 .03 .21* .60** (.82) .18** .19** .04 .36** .02
6. Psychological 3.47 .48 .54 .33**/65.10% −.18 −.05 .32** .38** .35** (.82) .13** .04 .11** .19**
Entitlement
7. Guilt 3.69 .45 .59 .41**/75.98% −.01 −.14 .15 .38** .40** .51** (.73) .04 .15** .04
8. Pride 3.15 .60 .69 .55**/66.19% −.07 −.01 .18 .11 .07 .20* .13 (.81) −.01 .11**
9. Service-Oriented 3.59 .60 .53 .33**/53.02% .01 −.03 .36** .42** .65** .49** .37** .24* (.78) −.05
Helping
10. Deviance 2.62 .72 .70 .57**/58.23% −.02 .15 .06 .27** .28** .11 .14 .18 .15 (.92)
Note: Within-person, N = 795; between-person, N = 112. Estimates in the lower diagonal are correlations at the between-personal level and those in the upper diagonal are
correlations at the within-person level. Estimates of reliability are reported on the diagonal in parentheses. The component percentage of within-person variance was
computed as within-person variance (within-person variance + between-person variance).
*p < .05.
**p < .01 (two tailed).
Table 6
Unstandardized Coefficients of MSEMs for Testing Main, Moderation, and Mediation Effects in Study 3
Psychological Service-Oriented
Moral Deficit (Day t Entitlement (Day t Helping (Day t Deviance (Day t
Noon) Noon) Afternoon) Afternoon)
Variables Estimates SE Estimates SE Estimates SE Estimates SE
Intercept 3.65** .04 3.46** .04 2.41** .23 1.86** .25

Control Variables
Social Desirability .01 .07 −.10 .07 −.05 .07 .18 .12
Moral Disengagement .16* .06 .22** .05 .24** .07 −.04 .09
Moral Deficit on Day t – 1 −.04 .04
Psychological Entitlement on Day t – 1 −.11* .04
Service-Oriented Helping on Day t – 1 −.03 .04
Deviance on Day t – 1 .01 .04
Independent and Moderating Variables
UPB on Day t .42** .05 .16** .04 .03 .04 .001 .07
Perceived CSR .03 .07 −.09 .06 .03 .06 .03 .10
UPB × Perceived CSR .15* .07 .05 .06 .00 .06 −.01 .07
Mediating Variables
Moral Deficit on Day t .29** .05 −.01 .06
Psychological Entitlement on Day t .03 .05 .23** .05
Alternative Mediating Variables
Guilt on Day t .80† .04 .01 .05
Pride on Day t −.02 .03 .08* .04
Pseudo-R2 .27 .10 .20 .15
Note: Within-person level, N = 795; between-person level, N = 112.

†p < .10
*p < .05.
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Figure 4
The Hypothesized Cross-Level Interactive Effect on Moral Deficit in Study 3
Discussion. Study 3 results substantially boosted the external validity of our findings by
capturing employees’ cross-day effects of performing UPB. However, this study might bear
some limitations due to the use of single source data that were based in Asia. This may con-
strain the generalizability of study conclusions. Moreover, the measurement of moral deficit
in the first three studies was contextualized with the assumption that participants had engaged
in unethical behavior (e.g., “acting dishonestly decreased my account of moral credits”). This
may jeopardize measurement validity and reduce precision in capturing experienced moral
deficit. For example, participants who disagreed with those items might suggest either that
they simply did not engage in unethical behavior or that they disagreed that unethical behav-
ior performed by them reduced their moral credits. Further, we did not find a significant inter-
active effect on psychological entitlement in this study. One possible explanation could be
that the collectivist culture of the Asian sample might cancel out the potential negative mod-
erating effects of perceived CSR. Additionally, it could be due to our focus on daily within-
person effects, which might create the effect discrepancy as compared with our prior two
between-person studies. Given that our variables of interest remain state-related (George &
Jones, 2000), we conducted a multi-source, weekly survey study with a Western sample to
address these limitations.
Study 4
We invited 273 sales representatives and their direct managers to participate in this
study. All sales representatives were employed in a multinational European financial
Table 7
Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Perceived CSR 3.53 .69 (.84)

2. Social Desirability 3.79 .56 .39** (.92)
3. Moral Disengagement 3.12 .87 .16* .07 (.89)
4. UPB 3.41 .84 .20** .15* .20** (.92)
5. Moral Deficit 3.55 .71 .41** .38** .11 .27** (.76)
6. Psychological Entitlement 3.08 .75 .17** −.008 .13 .31** .16* (.82)
7. Guilt 3.39 .94 .03 .12 .19** .35** .01 .16* (.91)
8. Pride 3.33 .88 .39** .22** .13* .12 .45** .12 .09 (.77)
9. Service-Oriented Helping 3.98 .73 .15* .44** .06 .13 .34** −.08 .27** .29** (.88)
10. Deviance 2.56 .84 −.10 −.22** .24** .26** −.16* .35** .31** −.16* −.13* (.95)
Note: N = 238. Estimates of reliability are reported on the diagonal in parentheses.

*p < .05.
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Table 8
OLS Regression Results Testing Main, Moderation, and Mediation Effects in Study 4
Moral Deficit Psychological Entitlement Service-Oriented Helping Deviance
Variables M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6
Constant 3.55** (.04) 3.54** (.04) 3.08** (.05) 3.08** (.05) 4.00** (.04) 2.57** (.05)
Social Desirability .44** (.08) .32** (.08) −.08 (.08) −.15 (.09) .44** (.08) −.27** (.09)
Moral Disengagement .04 (.05) .000 (.05) .06 (.06) .04 (.06) −.01 (.05) .18** (.06)
UPB .18** (.05) .11* (.05) .28** (.06) .25** (.06) .005 (.06) .15* (.06)
Perceived CSR .28** (.06) .16* (.07) −.12 (.07) −.05 (.08)
UPB × Perceived CSR .15* (.06) .04 (.07) −.10 (.06) −.07 (.07)
Moral Deficit .23** (.07) −.13 (.08)
Psychological Entitlement −.14* (.06) .33** (.07)
Guilt .20** (.05) .20** (.05)
Pride .14** (.05) −.14* (.06)
Adjusted R2 .19 .26 .10 .26 .31 .34
Note: N = 238. Standard errors are reported in parentheses.

*p < .05.
Figure 5
The Hypothesized Interactive Effect on Moral Deficit in Study 4
service firm based in Germany and frequently worked with customers and clients to par-
ticipate in our three-wave weekly survey study. We sought research support from the
firm’s executives through one of the authors’ professional contacts. Participants were
recruited with assistance from the HR department and assured confidentiality. We sent
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online surveys through the firm’s internal portal at the end of the week (i.e., Friday after-
noons). In the first wave, sales representatives rated perceived CSR, social desirability, and
moral disengagement. In the second wave, they rated UPB, moral deficit, psychological
entitlement, and two alternative emotional mechanisms (guilt and pride). In the third
wave, managers rated service-oriented helping and deviance of the sales representatives.
We received valid surveys from 238 manager-sales representative dyads, yielding an
87% response rate. The average age and tenure with the firm of sales representatives
were 35.83 (SD = 7.71) and 2.39 (SD = 1.16), respectively; 53% of them were women,
and 33.61% were college-educated. The average age and tenure of the firm of managers
were 45.80 (SD = 7.42) and 4.88 (SD = 2.09), respectively, 57% of them were women,
and 44.54% were college-educated. Most representatives (71%) and managers (77%)
were Caucasian.
Measures
We measured perceived CSR with Farooq and colleagues’ (2017) 10-item external CSR
scale used in Study 3 (α = .84). UPB was measured with Umphress and colleagues’ (2010)
6-item scale. Participants indicated their agreement based on their work behavior over the
past week (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree, α = .92). Moral deficit was measured
with a 5-item scale adapted from Liao and colleagues (2018; α = .76). These five items
squarely described the loss of moral credits at work without referring to the engagement of
unethical behavior (e.g., “I’ve felt a reduction in my moral credits at work over the past
week”). Psychological entitlement was measured with Campbell and colleagues’(2004, α =
.82) 9-item scale. Participants indicated their agreement with each statement based on their
psychological experience over the past week (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).
Service-oriented helping was assessed with a 5-item scale (α = .88) and deviance was mea-
sured with a 6-item scale (α = .95) used in Study 3. Participants indicated their agreement
with which they engaged in the described behaviors over the past week (1 = strongly disagree
to 5 = strongly agree). As in Study 3, we controlled for social desirability (α = .92), moral dis-
engagement (α = .89), guilt (α = .91), and pride (α = .77). These four variables were measured
with the same items used in Study 3 (see Appendix B for the study measures). Analyses with
and without control variables yielded identical results that did not alter study conclusions.
Results
Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs). We conducted a series of CFAs to examine the dis-
criminant validity of core study variables using the maximum likelihood estimation (i.e., the ML
estimator). To enable an optimal variable-to-sample-size ratio and ensure parameter estimate
stability (Bagozzi & Edwards, 1998), we randomly created three-item parcels for UPB, deviance,
and psychological entitlement. Results showed that our five-factor baseline model fit the data well
(χ2 (124) = 441.91, p < .01, RMSEA = .09, CFI = .90, TLI = .88, SRMR = .09), and better than
alternative models,11 corroborating the distinctiveness of study variables.
Hypothesis testing. Table 7 reports the means, standard deviations, and inter-correlations
among Study 4 variables. Table 8 presents the results of OLS regression analysis testing the
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hypothesized main and interactive effects. Results showed that after controlling for social
desirability and moral disengagement, UPB was positively related to moral deficit (b = .18, p
< .01) and psychological entitlement (b = .28, p < .01), supporting H1 and H2. The UPB by per-
ceived CSR interaction term was positively related to moral deficit (b = .15, p = .011) but not to
psychological entitlement (b = .04, p = .586). We plotted the interactive effect on moral deficit
at two conditional values of the moderator (i.e., 1 SD above and below the mean; Cohen et al.,
2003). As illustrated in Figure 5, UPB had a stronger relationship with moral deficit when per-
ceived CSR was higher (simple slope = .22, t = 3.92, p < .01) versus lower (simple slope = .007,
t = .10, p = .923). These results provide support for H3 but not H4.
After controlling for social desirability, moral disengagement, pride, and guilt,12 moral
deficit mediated the hypothesized interactive effect on service-oriented helping (b = .23, p
< .01). Conditional indirect effect analyses using the bootstrap procedure with 10, 000
samples in PROCESS macro (Model 7; Hayes, 2017) revealed that UPB had a significant
indirect relation with service-oriented helping when perceived CSR was higher (estimate =
.06, SE = .02, 95% CI [.020, .112]) but not when perceived CSR was lower (estimate =
.01, SE = .02, 95% CI [−.024, .066]). The difference between two indirect effects was signif-
icant (index = .04, SE = .02, 95% CI [.004, .084]). These results support H5 and H6.
Although psychological entitlement was positively related to deviance (b = .33, p < .01),
given the non-significant interactive effect on psychological entitlement, the difference
between two indirect effects was non-significant (index = .01, SE = .03, 95% CI [−.049,
.074]). These results provide support for H7 but not H8.
General Discussion
Integrating the moral self-regulation literature with micro-CSR research, we examined
morally paradoxical responses toward performing UPB with perceived CSR as a boundary
condition. Results from four studies largely supported our propositions. Our multiple
studies with complementary methodologies added to establishing causal inference and captur-
ing the state-based nature of our proposed relations.
Theoretical Implications
Our research moves the UPB literature forward by using a moral self-regulation lens to
study its competing consequences for actors. Grounded in the theoretical lenses of social
exchange and social identity, prior studies have primarily examined antecedents of UPB,
resulting in our scant knowledge of the consequences of unethical behavior in the name of
the organization (Mishra et al., 2021; Mo et al., 2022). Our research, together with few
recent studies (Tang et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2022), fills this critical gap by taking an actor-
centric perspective to examine morally competing cognitive and behavioral consequences of
UPB. Our findings suggest that, due to its dual-morality nature, UPB may engender both
moral cleansing and moral licensing responses. These findings move beyond the unilateral
theoretical inquiry as to whether UPB begets more negative work behavior or shifts to
yield more constructive work behavior. More importantly, our results revealed that, contin-
gent on perceived CSR initiatives, employees varied their likelihood of presenting these
two distinct responses. Higher perceived CSR intensified the moral cleansing path while
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tempering the moral licensing path. This set of findings reconciles the tension between two
current studies about their conclusions of how employees would respond to UPB (Tang
et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2021). Further, our research dispels the illusion about the possible
benefits of UPB by documenting its cost for both employees (deprived self-concept in the
individualizing moral domain) and the organization (increased deviance). This represents a
solid step to enhancing the theoretical clarity of how unethical behavior in the name of the
organization ultimately affects the intended target.
Intriguingly, although results from the first two studies supported the moderating effects
of perceived CSR on both cleansing and licensing paths, we only found a significant mod-
erating effect on the former in the two field studies. The non-significant moderating effect
might be due to the contextual effects on employees’ processing of the signal of moral con-
cerns in the binding domain related to CSR initiatives. As documented by Ellen, Webb, and
Mohr (2006) and Vlachos, Theotokis, Pramatari, and Vrechopoulos (2010), employees may
attribute CSR to the organization’s distinct motives, such as being values-, stakeholder-,
egoistic-, or strategic-driven. Compared to participants in the pure experimental setting, organi-
zational employees have broader information access to understanding what drives CSR. They
may interpret CSR as part of the strategy to serve the interests of the organization. Such an inter-
pretation may conflate or even supersede that of the organization’s moral obligation to benefit
external stakeholders. Indeed, research has suggested that employees tend to first assume CSR
as having instrumental, strategic actions (Ellemers & Chopova, 2021). That said, regardless of
the organization’s underlying motives, exercising CSR demonstrates the organization’s care,
kindness, and fairness to external stakeholders (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012; Rupp & Mallory,
2015), directly speaking to employees’ immorality regarding UPB in the individualizing
domain.
Our research extends and complements the extant moral self-regulation literature, which
assumes that by following morally heinous or laudable actions, employees exclusively
display the opposite action to balance their moral self-concept (Miller & Effron, 2010;
Zhong et al., 2009). We refine this assumption by considering the competing nature of
UPB in the individualizing and binding moral domains and by revealing that such behavior
evokes both cleansing and licensing reactions simultaneously. This simultaneous experience
of both moral cleaning and moral licensing is unique to UPB, which goes beyond prior works
that have focused on the cyclical effects of moral cleaning and moral licensing, providing
more nuances regarding the complex balancing processes of moral self-regulation that
employees may experience. Taken together, our findings suggest that moral concerns in dif-
ferent domains should be taken into account when studying moral self-regulation. This is
important because employees are often caught in moral dilemmas where they need to
concede one moral imperative (e.g., behaving honestly to customers) to satisfy another
(i.e., being loyal to the employer).
Our research enhances the richness of the micro-CSR literature by studying the moderating
effects of perceived CSR on employees’ moral self-regulation. The rise of micro-CSR
research has greatly expanded our knowledge of how organizational-level managerial prac-
tices toward external stakeholders could affect individual employees’ work experience and
behavior (Aguinis & Glavas, 2012; Jones, Willness, & Glavas, 2017). Despite the extant
advancement, much research has focused on how perceived CSR affects individual work out-
comes, revealing that perceived CSR could enhance commitment, citizenship behavior, and
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retention by increasing organizational identification, justice, trust, and pride (Rupp &
Mallory, 2015). Departing from this stream of work, our research highlights that perceived
CSR may shape employees’ cognitive processing of the morality of work behaviors and
nudge them toward more constructive moral self-regulation. In other words, perceived
CSR provides a powerful situational context for employees to interpret and respond to
morality-infused organizational phenomena. Those phenomena could be morally conflicting
actions of their own, their colleagues, or their organization. In doing so, we initiate a theoret-
ical spin of micro-CSR research toward more nuances of the role of CSR in constructing
employees’ moral thinking and behaviors, thereby suggesting a potential avenue for future
work to further enlarge the scope of CSR studies.
Practical Implications
Our research yields important practical implications for managers and policymakers.
Due to its intention to benefit the organization, UPB has received less attention from managers,
compared to self-interested unethical acts (Umphress et al., 2010). Managers might even have
illusions that UPB would yield benefits for the company, resulting in little effort to eliminate
such behavior. Our findings suggest that UPB indeed can impede organizational functioning
both externally and internally. In addition to the repercussion of social sanctions and stock
plunges suggested by prior research (Baker et al., 2019), our research reveals that performing
UPB makes employees feel entitled to engage in more deviant behavior, which increases man-
agerial costs and hurts organizational functioning. Although our research suggests that UPB
begets increased service-oriented helping, this does not endorse the notion that UPB might
yield constructive consequences, because employees are not intrinsically motivated to
perform such behavior sustainably but, rather, they are compelled to do so due to a deprived
moral self-concept. Such helping behavior would ultimately be scaled back once employees
restore their moral self-concept. Managers should thus take actions to reduce UPB, such as
imposing disciplinary responses to such behavior and highlighting the potential harm to the
organization.
The upshot of our findings suggests that perceived CSR shapes employees’ moral
self-regulation reactions. Thus, managers could leverage CSR to nudge employees to
integrate moral considerations into their work (Rozin, 1999). However, this managerial
practice is contingent on employees’ perceptions of the organization’s actual CSR
efforts. Thus, managers should be aware that employees may not be equally sensitive
to those efforts, potentially suppressing the positive effects of CSR initiatives.
Therefore, organizations should learn to communicate CSR efforts appropriately to
increase employees’ attentiveness and thus boost the constructive effects on internal
stakeholders.
Limitations and Future Research

Our research has some limitations that may temper our contributions but offer infor-
mative opportunities for future research. The first limitation concerns our study variable
operationalizations across four studies. First, our operationalization of UPB used a spon-
taneous behavioral emergence in Study 1 and less direct behavioral manipulation in
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Study 2. As alluded to previously, these two approaches were intended to maintain the
discretionary nature of this construct and minimize the confounds caused by participants’
possible external motives to perform UPB. We acknowledge that they might skew our
estimate of UPB effects. Moreover, our measurements of psychological entitlement
(see the scale validation in Footnote 8), service-oriented helping, and deviance, due to
being embedded in the negotiation scenario, might lack external validity. Nonetheless,
results from two field studies may verify the robustness of our findings. Further, although
we used both self and supervisor reports of outcomes in two field studies as complemen-
tary designs, they might still not be empirically ideal due to the self-serving bias of
employees, or supervisors’ lack of observation opportunities (Carpenter, Rangel, Jeon,
& Cottrell, 2017). We encourage future research to adopt more creative approaches
(e.g., event-based observations; Liao, Liu, Li, & Song, 2019) to examine the moral
cleansing and moral licensing effects of UPB.
Second, future research could explore other potential boundary conditions that reconcile
employees’ paradoxical responses toward UPB. Research suggests that organizational
HRM policies, ethical climates/norms, or managers’ ethical leadership might affect moral
mindsets and behaviors (Martin & Cullen, 2006) and thus it is meaningful to study how
other situational factors affect how employees might respond to UPB. The intensity of
moral cleansing and licensing responses might also be contingent on employees’ moral char-
acters, such as moral attentiveness or moral courage. We thus encourage future research to
delve into how individual moral characters modify the strength of moral self-regulation fol-
lowing UPB.
Finally, our research focuses on the moderating effects of perceived CSR. The extent
literature, however, has suggested that employees and other stakeholders, such as custom-
ers and clients, tend to have relatively low levels of CSR awareness (Jones et al., 2019).
Moreover, those employees who attend to organizations’ CSR initiatives often invoke heu-
ristic thinking to make sense of organizations’ CSR (Peloza, Loock, Cerruti, & Muyot,
2012). Their interpretations of the moral purpose of CSR may vary substantially across
organizational industries due to social stigma (Fassin & Buelens, 2011). Employees in
certain industries, such as oil and gas, tobacco, or mining, may often attribute CSR as
part of the “greenwashing” strategy. These two issues would constrain the validity of
our findings by skewing empirical results in our field studies, thus undermining the
value of the practical guidance of our research. We encourage future work to delve into
the approaches that may help increase employees’ CSR awareness and reduce their percep-
tion bias.
Conclusion
Building upon research on moral self-regulation and the micro-CSR literature, our research
has investigated why and how performing UPB yields morally paradoxical responses from
employees, and how perceived CSR, as a boundary condition, reconciles such contradicted
responses. Our research offers new insight into how organizations’ broad managerial prac-
tices affect employees’ moral self-regulatory response to their acts of UPB. We encourage
future research to continue the exploration of the complexity of moral self-regulation as
well as the role of CSR in employee moralization.
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ORCID iDs
Zhenyu Liao https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3498-2623
Kai Chi Yam https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-8039
Hun Whee Lee https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3599-0732
Notes
1. An increasing stream of research has recognized that entitlement is a malleable psychological state that
varies across specific situations (Edershile & Wright, 2021). Indeed, earlier work by Lerner (1987) and Major
(1994) has recognized that psychological entitlement would be driven by changing situational and individual
factors, such as work effort and social comparisons, suggesting that the same individual might experience ebbs
and flows of felt entitlement. We thus approach this construct as a momentary, state-based construct.
2. Participants who failed attention checks, spent less than 3 min, or wrote non-corresponding emails were
removed from analyses. Participants, on average, spent 29.0 min (SD = 8.25) on the task and they received an
extra $2.00 bonus given that the averaged completion time appeared longer than the estimated experimental time.
3. Two participants in the experimental condition were excluded from the analyses because they chose not to
follow the instructions but instead disclosed the intended use of the property (i.e., not engaging in UPB).
4. We conducted a scale validation study with 253 full-time working adults on Prolific by measuring both the
five items used in Study 2 and Campbell and colleagues’ (2004) nine items of psychological entitlement. Results
revealed that two measurements were highly correlated (r = .65, p < .001). Study details are available from the
author team.
5. Participants rated “how many direct contacts did you have with external stakeholders such as clients, cus-
tomers, or the local community this morning/afternoon?” using a 5-point scale (1 = none, 2 = few, 3 = a moderate
amount, 4 = quite a bit, and 5 = a high amount of interactions). Following prior research (Liao et al., 2018), we
only included daily surveys with an answer of 3 or more to this question.
6. We removed one item from the original scale (“I gave a good recommendation on the behalf of an incom-
petent employee in the hope that the person would become another organization’s problem instead of my own”)
because the specific behavior is unlikely to occur among sales agents on a daily basis.
7. The item stating “If I were on the Titanic, I would deserve to be on the first lifeboat” was excluded from our
measure because it involved specific cultural references that might not apply to our sample.
8. Considering our focus on within-person daily effects of engaging in UPB, we estimated pseudo-R2 values
by estimating the proportion of reduction of variance at the within-person level due to the inclusion of daily predictors
(i.e., 1—within-person residual variance of the hypothesized model/within-person variance of the null model).
9. Alternative models included a four-factor model in which indicators of UPB and psychological entitlement
were set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (8) = 618.86, S-B scaled Δχ2 = 316.68, p < .01, RMSEA = .06, CFI = .77, TLI =
.74, SRMR (within-person) = .08), a four-factor model in which indicators of UPB and moral deficit were set to load on
one factor (Δχ2 (8) = 369.35, S-B scaled Δχ2 = 183.35, p < .01, RMSEA = .05, CFI = .83, TLI = .80, SRMR
(within-person) = .07), a three-factor model in which indicators of UPB, psychological entitlement, and deviance were
set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (14) = 1,741.21, S-B scaled Δχ2 = 942.30, p < .01, RMSEA = .09, CFI = .55, TLI =
.49, SRMR (within-person) = .11), and a three-factor model in which indicators of UPB, moral deficit, and service
oriented-helping were set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (14) = 752.71, S-B Δχ2 = 360.50, p < .01, RMSEA = .06, CFI
= .75, TLI = .72, SRMR (within-person) = .08).
10. Prior research has suggested that psychological entitlement increased the tendency to perform UPB (Lee
et al., 2019). We thus followed Preacher and colleagues (2010) to examine the model fit by comparing the values
of Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) between our hypothesized
model and the alternative model (Kline, 2011). According to Kline (2011), smaller values indicate better model fit
and a higher possibility for replication. Results showed that the fit indices for our hypothesized model (AIC =
7,800.02, BIC = 8,113.47, sample-size adjusted BIC = 7,900.71) were better than the reverse causal model in
which entitlement was set to predict UPB and then the downstream behavior of deviance (AIC = 7,862.65, BIC =
8,176.10, Sample-size adjusted BIC = 7,963.34). Compared to alternative models, the hypothesized model fit the
data better.
Liao
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11. Alternative models included a four-factor model in which indicators of UPB and psychological entitle-
ment were set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (4) = 166.59, p < .01, RMSEA = .12, CFI = .84, TLI = .81, SRMR =
.11), a four-factor model in which indicators of UPB and moral deficit were set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (4) =
544.34, p < .01, RMSEA = .16, CFI = .71, TLI = .66, SRMR = .14), a three-factor model in which indicators of
UPB, psychological entitlement, and deviance were set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (7) = 673.75, RMSEA = .17,
CFI = .67, TLI = .62, SRMR = .15), and a three-factor model in which indicators of UPB, moral deficit, and
service oriented-helping were set to load on one factor (Δχ2 (8) = 968.16, p < .01, RMSEA = .19, CFI = .57, TLI
= .50, SRMR = .17).
12. The relational patterns of two proposed mechanisms with two emotional mechanisms appeared different. In
Study 3, guilt had stronger relations with moral deficit and psychological entitlement (between-person: rs = .40 and
.51, ps < .01, respectively; within-person: rs = .19 and .13, ps < .01, respectively), compared with those of pride
(between-person: rs = .07, ns and .20, p < .05, respectively; within-person: rs = .04 and .04, ns, respectively).
Conversely, in Study 4, the relations of pride with two proposed mechanisms (rs = .45, p < .01 and .12, ns, respec-
tively) trended more strongly than those of guilt (rs = .01, ns and .16, p < .05, respectively). This discrepancy might be
partially due to the different timeframes between two studies. Guilt is an emotion triggered by specific events or
behaviors. It was thus likely to be strongly related to cognitive experiences right after performing UPB on a daily
basis in Study 3. Pride is an emotion attached to the general self and may fluctuate less substantially based on
daily work behaviors (Tracy & Robins, 2007). This discrepancy may also derive from the cross-cultural difference
between two samples regarding the emotional responses toward performing morally conflicting behaviors (Tangney,
Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007).
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Journal of Management

Vol. 50 No. 5, May 2024 1643­–1683

Cleansing or Licensing? Corporate Social

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; deviance; helping; moral self-regulation; unethical

Theoretical Development and Hypotheses

Hypothesis 1: Engaging in UPB is positively related to moral deﬁcit.

Psychological entitlement. Beyond its violation of individual-based moral principles,

Hypothesis 2: Engaging in UPB is positively related to psychological entitlement.

Moderating Effects of Perceived CSR

Hypothesis 4: UPB interacts with perceived CSR initiatives to inﬂuence psychological

Effects on Service-Oriented Helping Behavior and Deviance

Service-oriented helping behavior. Service-oriented helping refers to discretionary

Hypothesis 5: Moral deﬁcit is positively related to service-oriented helping behavior.

Hypothesis 7: Psychological entitlement is positively related to deviant behavior.

Procedure and Materials

Perceived CSR manipulation. Following Burbano (2016), we manipulated perceived CSR

Psychological entitlement. We measured psychological entitlement with Campbell and

Deviance. We measured deviance with a behavioral task in which participants were

Service-Oriented helping. We adapted Gino, Kouchaki, and Galinsky’s (2015) approach

Results and Discussion

Manipulation and comprehension checks. Participants in the CSR condition (M = 4.16,

Moral Deﬁcit Psychological Entitlement Service-Oriented Helpinga Devianceb

the experimental condition were prompted to consider acting in an unethical but

Experimental Procedure and Materials

UPB manipulation. Participants were instructed to engage in two rounds of negotiation

Behavioral outcomes. We used the same approaches as in Study 1 to measure deviance

Control variables. We controlled for post-hoc moral disengagement as it might affect

Results and Discussion

Moral Deﬁcit Psychological Entitlement Service-Oriented Helpinga Devianceb

Results and Discussion

Between-Person Within-Person Within-Person

Variables Estimates SE Estimates SE Estimates SE Estimates SE

Intercept 3.65** .04 3.46** .04 2.41** .23 1.86** .25

Note: Within-person level, N = 795; between-person level, N = 112.

1. Perceived CSR 3.53 .69 (.84)

Note: N = 238. Estimates of reliability are reported on the diagonal in parentheses.

Moral Deﬁcit Psychological Entitlement Service-Oriented Helping Deviance

Note: N = 238. Standard errors are reported in parentheses.

Limitations and Future Research

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Vol. 50 No. 5, May 2024 1643–1683

Intercept 3.65 .04 3.46 .04 2.41 .23 1.86 .25