The Dark Side of Leadership as a Predictor of Employees Unethical Behavior in the Context of Thailand

Abstract

There are numerous factors that create unethical work behavior. These unethical work behaviors badly affect the organizations. Organization should make effort to recognize and mitigate the effect of factors that foster the sense of unethical work behavior among employees. For this reason, the purpose of the study is to measure the effect of moral justification and supervisor ostracism on unethical work behavior including the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and facades of conformity. The sample size was 180 from the service sector of Thailand. For data collection random sampling technique was used. The questionnaire was measured on five-point Likert scale. The findings of the study showed that emotional exhaustion have significant effect on unethical work behavior. The effect of facades of conformity on unethical work behavior is significant. The effect of MJ on unethical work behavior is significant. The effect of supervisor ostracism on emotional exhaustion is significant. The effect of supervisor ostracism on facades of conformity is significant. The full mediating effect of emotional exhaustion between supervisor ostracism and unethical work behavior is significant. The full mediating effect of FOF between SO and unethical work behavior is significant. The current study suggested that in future a moderator such as task-related relations need to be examined in order to get the more significant results in the literature of leadership and employee’s behaviors.