Culture at work. A study of the impact of culture on unethical employee behaviour

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in integrity and unethical employee behaviour (UEB), in the public as well as the private sector. Many organisations try to prevent UEB trough different policy interventions. Although the impact of organisational factors (e.g. autonomy, rules and procedures, competition, etc.) seems important, research into the general impact of these factors on different types of UEB is limited. Rather than focusing on several factors at the organisational level that might impact UEB separately, this study focused on one variable that attempts to bring them together: ‘organisational culture’. The central research question of the dissertation hence was: What is the impact of organisational culture on unethical employee behaviour?

The central hypothesis of this study, that organisational culture has an impact on UEB, is further developed using the grid-group cultural theory and typology (Douglas, 1970). The typology is based on two axes (‘grid’ and ‘group’) that together form four quadrants, and thus four types of organisational culture: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. This study not only used the four cultural types to conceptualize organisational culture, but also the four positions on the grid and group axes. This resulted in eight theoretical positions in the axis system defined by the grid and group axes (hierarchy, high-group, egalitarianism, low-grid, individualism, low-group, fatalism and high-grid). Using the literature on organisational culture and climate as well as on organisational ethics, these eights positions were further specified into eighteen cultural dimensions. To conceptualize UEB, the same axis system and the same eight theoretical positions were used. Using existing classifications of UEB these eight positions were further specified into twelve types of UEB.  

In the next step, specific hypotheses were formulated on the impact of the eighteen cultural dimensions on the twelve types of UEB. These specific hypotheses relied on central propositions of grid-group cultural theory, of which the ‘socio-cultural viability proposition’ is the most important one for this study. This proposition states that each cultural type has specific built-in weaknesses (e.g. blind spots) that might lead to excesses, unless they are compensated for by the strengths of the other cultural types. In this study UEB is considered such an excess. The hierarchical culture, for example, could result in ‘excessive obedience’ (over-conformity to laws, rules or orders that would be negatively evaluated by a majority within society), but the cultural type ‘individualism’ could compensate for this weakness with its emphasis on efficiency and as such protect employees from ‘excessive obedience’. In this study, it is hypothesized that the same dynamic applies not only to the four cultural types but to all eight positions in the grid-group axis-system. Specifically, two general hypotheses were formulated. The first one  hypothesizes that the cultural dimensions on one of the eight positions in the grid-group axis-system have a positive effect on the UEB-types that are situated on the same position in the axis-system as well as on the UEB-types on the immediately adjacent positions. For example, the four fatalistic cultural dimensions, ‘apathy’, ‘powerlessness’, ‘unpredictability’ and ‘unfairness’, were hypothesized to have a positive impact on the corresponding type of UEB, ‘insufficient effort’, as well as on the immediately adjacent types of UEB ‘disruptive and uncooperative behaviour’ and ‘rule-negation’. The second general hypothesis states that the same cultural dimensions have a negative or no effect on all of the other UEB-types. Thus, the four fatalistic dimensions mentioned above, are hypothesized to have a negative or no effect on all UEB-types except for the three types that were included in the first general hypothesis (i.e. ‘insufficient effort’, disruptive and uncooperative behaviour’ and ‘rule-negation’). These two general hypotheses were specified into 21 specific hypotheses.

These hypotheses were explored and tested by means of an online survey in 23 organisations of the Belgian federal government in 2013-2014. In these organisations, no sample was drawn; the entire population was invited to participate in the study. 9585 respondents (26,3%) answered at least one question, and 6136 respondents (16,8%) completed the entire questionnaire. This response rate is low, but not unseen in research on organisational ethics. Moreover, response rate was of relatively minor importance because the aim of the study was not so much to describe UEB, but to develop a theory to explain UEB and to develop new measurement instruments. Using confirmatory factor analyses, reliable scales were developed for the eighteen dimensions of culture and for the twelve UEB-types. Because the survey was distributed in different organisations, in both Dutch and French, attention was paid to the equivalence of the scales. The actual hypotheses were tested by means of multilevel analysis. Specifically, because of their skewed distribution, most UEB-types were analysed by means of multilevel Poisson analysis with robust estimator.

The statistical techniques described above did not allow for an estimate of the strength of the effects and the extent to which the variance in UEB can be explained by culture. They did allow, however, for testing the hypotheses based on grid-group cultural theory. Some of the hypotheses were indeed confirmed. Specifically, confirmation of a positive impact of a cultural dimension on the UEB-type on the same position was found for the UEB-types ‘insufficient effort’, ‘team-fetishism’, ‘organisation-fetishism’ and ‘excessive efficiency’. Likewise, confirmation of a positive impact of a cultural dimension on the UEB-types that are immediately adjacent to the same position was found for a number of hypotheses. For example, ‘focus on rules and procedures’ indeed had a positive impact on the UEB-type ‘excessive obedience’. Finally, confirmation was found for a number of hypotheses that claimed no effect or a negative effect of cultural dimensions on UEB-types. There were, however, also quite some findings that did not confirm the specific hypotheses of this study. For a number of cases, this was argued to be due to the fact that the operationalisation of UEB was possibly not precise enough. For a number of other cases it was argued that some cultural dimensions or UEB-types might have been erroneously conceptualized. Therefore, a thought-experiment was conducted to work out an adjusted version of the theory. Further research should of course explore whether there is any empirical ground for this adjusted version.

For more information see https://www.law.kuleuven.be/linc/english/research/AstudyoftheimpactofcultureonUEB.html