Antecedents of Employees’ Unethical Behaviour at the Malaysian Workplace: the Moderating Effect of Code of Conduct Awareness

Lin, Veronique Xien Vern (2023) Antecedents of Employees’ Unethical Behaviour at the Malaysian Workplace: the Moderating Effect of Code of Conduct Awareness. Masters thesis, Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology.

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Abstract

Employees’ unethical behaviour at the workplace has long been the main reason for the occurrence of corporate fraud and scandals. Since decades ago, although ethical behaviour in organisations has gained substantial attention the past few decades, the prevalence of unethical behaviour in the workplace nowadays denotes a lack of understanding of the factors that contribute to the behaviour, especially in the Malaysian context, which drives this research study as controlling employees’ unethical behaviour at the workplace is crucial so as to protect organisational development from being jeopardised and reputation damage. This research study explores the antecedents of employees’ unethical behaviour at the Malaysian workplace such as performance pressure, cognitive moral development, perceived organisational support, and job insecurity. Moreover, this research study also examines the moderating effect of employees’ awareness towards the code of conduct. To fulfil the objectives of this research, a quantitative approach and cross-sectional method have been undertaken with 260 full-time employees in Malaysian organisations. The data acquired are then analysed via the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version 29.0 (SPSS). The research findings discover that cognitive moral development, perceived organisational support, and job insecurity are significant predictors of employees’ unethical behaviour at the Malaysian workplace, and code of conduct awareness has moderated the relationships between cognitive moral development, perceived organisational support, and employees’ unethical behaviour respectively. This research study contributes to the literature by highlighting the role of code of conduct awareness in mitigating employees’ unethical behaviour. From a practical standpoint, this study IV prompts organisations to conduct training on a regular basis to raise employees’ understanding of ethical behaviour, alert organisations on culture change, and drives the elevation of the performance management process in order to foster ethical behaviour and effectively manage employees’ unethical behaviour at the Malaysian workplace. Also, the limitations of this research study have been identified and recommendations are specified for future research studies.