Dealing with Guilt: Unethical Behavior and the Mediating Role of Guilt on Subsequent Behaviors

Employee engagement in unethical behavior at work continues to be an area of interest as real-world business scandals persist. While current ethics research concentrates mainly on studying antecedents of unethical behavior, there is a need to examine the personal consequences of unethical behavior. In conjunction with growing interest in the role of emotions at work, we integrate a study of the consequences of unethical behavior with the emotions literature. Using appraisal theory (Lazarus, 1991) and compensatory ethics we examine the relationship between employee engagement in unethical behavior and subsequent compensatory behavior (e.g. exemplification behaviors) with the moral emotion of guilt serving as a mediator. We further elucidate this relationship by examining the moderating role of ethical leadership. Results from a series of studies show that unethical behavior influences feelings of guilt and compensatory behaviors, and high ethical leadership strengthens the likelihood of engagement in exemplification behaviors that