Family matters! Antecedents and boundary conditions of unethical pro-family behaviors

While unethical pro-family behaviors may negatively affect organizations, the causes of such behaviors remain largely unclear. We focus on work-to-family conflict as an antecedent to these negative behaviors and draw upon social cognitive theory by considering the role of employees’ psychological states. We investigate the mediating and moderating roles of work-to-family guilt, moral disengagement and moral identity in the relationship between work-to-family conflict and unethical pro-family behaviors. Specifically, we build a model where employees’ work-to-family conflict is positively related to their unethical pro-family behaviors, where their feelings of guilt and their moral disengagement sequentially mediate this relationship and where employees’ moral identity weakens this positive relationship. By utilizing multiple studies and varied methods (a cross-sectional survey, a time-lagged survey and two scenario-based experiments) conducted in the Chinese context, we investigate these proposed relationships. We discuss our findings’ theoretical contributions and managerial implications.