Ethics-Oriented HRM Systems, Moral Attentiveness, and Workplace Deviance: A Multilevel Investigation

Abstract

Deviant workplace behavior (DWB) causes enormous costs to organizations, which has sparked considerable interest among researchers and practitioners in identifying factors that may prevent such behavior. Drawing on the theory of moral development, we examine the role of ethics-oriented human resource management (HRM) systems in mitigating DWB as well as the mediating and moderating mechanisms of this relationship. Based on 232 employee-supervisor matched responses generated through a multi-source and multi-wave survey of 84 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan, our multilevel analysis found that ethics-oriented HRM systems relate negatively to employee’s DWB via the mediation of perceptual and reflective moral attentiveness. This indirect relationship is further moderated by two societal-inequality induced factors – employee gender and income level – such that the indirect effects of ethics-oriented HRM system on DWB through perceptual and reflective moral attentiveness were stronger among women and low-income employees.