1. Introduction
The detrimental effects of unethical behavior have been documented extensively and include detrimental effects on individual wellbeing, future careers, and organization survival. In general, it is believed among organizational researchers and managers that unethical behavior is excessively destructive or entirely driven by self-interest. Nevertheless, scholars have discovered that employees may perform unethical behavior for the interest of their company, such as lying to clients or hiding information from the public. To understand these unique phenomena, Umphress et al. proposed the construct of unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), which refers to activities conducted to potentially enhance the operation of the company, leaders, or members, yet breaches critical social values and damages the interests of external stakeholders [
1]. Given the prevalence and negative consequences of this behavior, it is significant to understand when and why employees engage in UPB. Researchers have conducted studies on the antecedents of UPB based on social identity theory, social exchange theory, and social learning theory [
2,
3,
4]. These researchers argued that UPB is significantly associated with leadership style [
5,
6,
7], individual differences [
8,
9], personality, and values [
10], as well as job characteristics [
11]. Among these factors, leadership plays a crucial role in employees’ UPB. For instance, Graham et al. argued that leaders’ style and frames are significant factors in employees’ UPB [
7]. Therefore, researchers have explored why various leadership styles play different roles in UPB. Notably, recent empirical findings implicating charismatic leadership suggest that unethical behavior may be invoked by leadership styles, which creates more risks and uncertainty in work environments [
12]. Indeed, despite charismatic leadership being capable of producing strong positive effects on followers’ behavior in companies, it can also lead to adverse consequences [
13]. Charismatic leadership is regarded as a dominant style of leadership in enterprises as a result of its signal values-based, symbolic, and emotion-laden style. Charismatic leadership is known to cope with cognitive and emotional challenges to produce positive outcomes in the workplace [
14]. Fragouli (2018) proposed that the bright side of charismatic leadership can be eclipsed by its dark side, which causes detriment to the company [
15]. Charismatic leaders are likely to build an egalitarian, non-exploitative, and altruistic organizational culture. Nevertheless, the behavior of charismatic leaders can increase the risk levels of the organization by introducing instability and uncertainty into decision-making processes [
16]. Charismatic leaders inspire followers to take risks and motivate followers to achieve high corporate objectives [
17,
18,
19]. As a result of being manipulated by charismatic leaders, staff members can be driven to perform an organizational mission or breach the ethical bottom line [
20].
As such, this study concentrated on how charismatic leadership relates to UPB. Unfortunately, previous research related to the correlation between particular leadership and UPB has yielded conflicting outcomes and failed to clarify how charismatic leadership may lead to UPB in the workplace. As argued by Dang et al., a pressing issue in research is to determine how leadership facilitates UPB [
21]. Moreover, this research will further contribute to theoretical knowledge by exploring the underlying psychological process of UPB, rather than exploring one single antecedent factor of UPB [
1]. While social identification, social learning, and social exchange theory have been applied to account for the relationship between specific leadership and UPB [
3,
22,
23], prior studies have failed to adequately explain why psychological safety is considered a form of interplay between leadership and unethical behavior. Therefore, drawing on social information processing, we provide a new perspective on UPB by examining the effect of charismatic leadership on motivating UPB through employees’ psychological safety. After controlling a set of control variables that would affect the variables of interest and their relationship, this study answers the call to examine a comprehensive model linking charismatic leadership to unethical behavior. Besides, we suggest that performance pressure can be a crucial factor in calibrating followers’ reactions toward leader influences. Specifically, the more performance pressure, the more a charismatic leadership will stimulate followers’ psychological safety, which will be positively associated with UPB; in contrast, the less performance pressure, the less a charismatic leadership will stimulate followers’ psychological safety, which will be positively associated with UPB. A model of hypothesized relationships is shown in
Figure 1.
By applying social information processing to the context of UPB, we try to examine the mediated link between charismatic leadership and employee cognition and behaviors, aiming to make at least four notable contributions. First, we contribute to the UPB literature by identifying more antecedent factors of UPB. Through exploring the dark side of charismatic leadership, our research offers an alternative perspective on the antecedents of UPB. We suggest that employees are motivated to engage in UPB when they perceive that it is safe to take risks. Understanding charismatic leadership related to specific unethical behaviors provides precious insights into the cognitive processes underlying the motivation of ambivalent behaviors that have both unethical and good-intention elements.
Second, this research helps unpack the intricacies of UPB. Psychological safety explains the link between charismatic leadership and followers’ UPB, which complements the social information processing perspective. We invoke psychological safety as one reason why charismatic leadership may lead to followers’ UPB. Previous theory has limitations in predicting why and when employees may engage in unethical behaviors that benefit the company under the supervision of a charismatic leader; thus, we use theoretical perspectives on social information processes to advance understandings of the triggers of UPB.
Third, we develop hypotheses implicating performance pressure as an essential characteristic that can strengthen or attenuate the effects of charismatic leadership on UPB. Our results contribute to understanding the UPB phenomenon by exploring the roles of performance pressure in a field study. Collectively, this work provides significant evidence to suggest that followers engage in UPB as a function of the psychological safety conveyed by charismatic leaders, which is more likely to be felt among followers with high performance pressure.
Finally, our focus on the harmful effects of charismatic leadership on UPB provides a new perspective on charismatic leadership literature. To date, scholars have exclusively examined charismatic leadership effects on followers’ positive behavior, yet have not investigated how charismatic leadership may influence subordinate UPB. We thus answered the call from Bratton by highlighting that great leadership does not always lead to good outcomes [
24]. Therefore, this study aimed to rely on social information process theory to advance theoretical knowledge by exploring the underlying mechanism linking charismatic leadership to UPB.
5. Discussion
In this study, SIP was applied to investigate when and why employees perform unethical behavior for the interests of their company. Departing from prior research examining the heroic aspects of charismatic leadership, we explored why and when charismatic leadership leads to adverse outcomes, such as UPB. Our predictions revealed that charismatic leadership might provide psychological safety to subordinates and lead to UPB. We also explored the possibility that some followers with intense performance pressure may have a higher likelihood of engaging with UPB.
5.1. Theoretical Implications
This research has several necessary implications for leadership and ethical literature. First, we have underscored the role of charismatic leadership in boosting unethical behavior for the benefits of the organization. Psychological safety was proposed as one of the fundamental mechanisms connecting charismatic leadership and UPB. Our findings confirmed the theory that charismatic leadership enhances psychological safety, which results in the stamina required for UPB. It is significant to understand that charismatic leadership does not necessarily lead to positive outcomes [
77]. Charisma is not a God-given characteristic and may be used for wrong and tragic ends. In particular, charismatic leadership can enhance the psychological safety of followers and inspire them to achieve organizational goals by taking risks, such as conducting unethical behavior for the benefit of the organization. As such, charismatic leadership is not necessarily good and does not necessarily lead to positive outcomes.
Second, our study has revealed the critical preconditions of the relationship between charismatic leadership and UPB through psychological safety, with our outcomes demonstrating that a substantial performance pressure amplifies this positive relationship. A psychologically safe environment is supposed to enhance employees’ wellbeing. Previous research has suggested that psychological safety facilitates positive appraisals of work and life and plays a decisive role in wellbeing [
78]. This finding suggests that leaders’ charisma mainly exerts influence on unethical behavior for the benefits of the organization when followers experience high performance pressure and do not fear taking risks, which is accounted for by the fact that, in this circumstance, followers are motivated by their leader’s charismatic capabilities to endeavor to achieve organizational goals.
Third, we considered why a relationship might exist between charismatic leadership and UPB through SIP. Prior research has typically been reliant on fundamental tenets from social learning theory [
79] or social exchange theory [
80] to examine the antecedents of UPB. While admitting that these theories may explain the increase of UPB, we held the view that the effects of charismatic leadership on UPB will be more significant and enduring when psychological safety is formed through interpreting information from leaders and the environment.
5.2. Practical Implications
Our findings have several implications for organizations and practitioners. UPB is undertaken with good intentions, yet it is detrimental in the workplace. Our findings provide evidence that performance pressure can reinforce the relationship between charismatic leadership and UPB through psychological safety. Therefore, decision-makers requiring employees to achieve high performance should be aware of this dilemma and the management of employee UPB. Perhaps it is impractical to alleviate performance as organizations seek to maintain competitive advantage; however, managers can carefully consider how to uphold performance requirements while emphasizing the importance of ethical values. For instance, performance anticipation should be fulfilled with moral standards as the bottom line for how performance is achieved. Moreover, the infrastructure that staff members navigate in their performance must be linked to the company’s moral practices [
57,
70]. Leaders act as a crucial driver of employee ethical behavior and can adapt activities to promote ethical values and information to followers and reduce employees’ UPB.
5.3. Limitations and Future Directions
Despite the research contributions, this research also involved some limitations. First, we assessed all our hypotheses with self-reporting measures and raised concerns about common method bias. Future research can be conducted on how to reduce common method bias by adopting experimental, longitudinal, or quasi-experimental designs and including data from other sources, such as the assessments of UPB by leaders or coworkers. Second, charismatic leadership has two dimensions; we measured global charismatic leadership in this study. Future studies could focus on the effects of the two types of charismatic leadership on UPB to improve the research design and offer a more comprehensive understanding of charismatic leadership functions.
Despite these limitations, our research provides the basis for further study. The results suggest charismatic leadership as a means through which organizations can increase psychological safety in taking risks, thus reinforcing employees’ UPB. Researchers could consider other clues that may influence staff members’ motivation to participate in UPB. For instance, researchers have found that particular emotions may motivate unethical behavior. It would be useful for researchers to consider the effect of charismatic leadership from various perspectives. While our research focused on charismatic leadership from the perspective of individuals, it may be informative to evaluate charismatic leadership at the team level. A further study exploring the diverse nature of charismatic leadership may help account for how companies mitigate the harmful effects of charismatic leadership for enterprises.
We collected the data from a single industry and a single cultural context. The study was collected in China and may limit the generalizability of our findings. Previous studies have demonstrated that, traditionally, the Chinese have a strong spirit of sacrifice for the sake of collective interests [
81]. The Chinese may treat UPB as a more appropriate way to repay their supervisors in response to charismatic leadership. Thus, the relationship between charismatic leaders and UPB may be stronger in Chinese firms than in Western companies. Therefore, we suggest that future studies verify the relationship between charismatic leadership and UPB in non-Chinese culture. Although our findings might probably be repeated in other industries, given the similarity of sale and service jobs in different industries, we cannot completely ensure the generalizability of our results to other industries. Future research may investigate more industries to ascertain the generalizability of our findings.
Finally, though our findings shed light on the role of charismatic leadership, the broader role of leadership and organizational culture remains unclear. Further research is needed to focus on the effects of other types of leadership in the organization on UPB. This might contribute to a more comprehensive knowledge about the functioning of leadership. Similarly, it may be worthwhile to consider additional mediating mechanisms that may transfer the effects of leadership on UPB. Our results showed that social information processing translated charismatic leadership’s effects into UPB. We did not consider the joint effects of leadership and moral judgments on UPB, and future research should consider how these relationships and moral cognition jointly contribute to the motivation to engage in UPB. Although we relied on theory to present directional hypotheses, field study is not ideal for establishing causal direction. Future research should use a combination of experimental research and repeated-measures longitudinal designs to establish the robustness of the effects.