THE EFFECT OF PERFORMANCE PRESSURE ON UNETHICAL PRO-ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR BASED ON THE PERSPECTIVE OF EGO DEPLETION THEORY
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Abstract
The main purpose of this study is to explore whether, how and when performance pressure affects the unethical pro-organizational behavior of employees. Based on the perspective of ego-depletion theory, we propose that ego depletion and moral identity are the mediator and moderator in the relationship between performance pressure and unethical pro-organizational behavior, respectively. In order to test the theoretical hypotheses, we distributed 400 questionnaires through the Questionnaire Star online survey tool. A total of 333 valid samples were collected, and SPSS 26.0 and MPLUS 8.0 were used for the corresponding data analysis, which primarily employed confirmatory factor analysis, descriptive statistical analysis and hypotheses testing. The data results supported the hypotheses and the following conclusions were drawn: there was a significant positive correlation between performance pressure and employee pro-organizational unethical behavior, ego depletion played a mediating role in the relationship between performance pressure and unethical pro-organizational behavior, and moral identity not only negatively moderated the direct effect of ego depletion on unethical pro-organizational behavior but also negatively moderated the indirect effect of performance pressure on unethical pro-organizational behavior via ego depletion.
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