How God Makes You Prosocial: A Fearing or a Merciful View of God and Its Impact on Ethical Intentions, and OCB with a Mediatory Role of Religiosity, and Supervisors’ and Co-Workers’ Ethical Behavior.

Abstract

There is a widespread acceptance of the link between religiosity and ethics although it is unclear how this influence occurs exactly. Building on social learning and social exchange theory, O’Keefe et. al. (2017) proposed that ethical leadership interacts with co-worker ethicality to predict personnel’s ethical intentions and organizational citizenship behavior directed toward both the individuals (OCBI) as well as Organization (OCBO). We modify this model by including religiosity as an antecedent of ethicality. We also explain how the view of God shapes both religiosity and ethicality, by applying Muslims’ Views of Allah (SMVA) Scale Developed by Alshehri et. al. (2017). The scale was classified as Hope and fear view. Empirical validity was established by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire. Data were collected from 200 respondents and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results showed that Co-Worker Ethical Behaviour was significantly and positively influenced by Fear View of God as well as Supervisor Ethical Behaviour (SEB). SEB also has a significant positive impact on both OCBI and OCBO. Co-Worker Ethical Behaviour has a significant and positive effect on OCBI, OCBO, and Ethical Intentions. Lastly, the Hope view of God has a positive and significant effect on religiosity. The findings suggested that hope view can make one more religious but not necessarily make one ethical. However, the Fear view does affect ethicality and OCB not directly but through increasing coworker Ethical Behaviour. Interestingly, SEB was not influenced by either view of God or by religiosity. Hence Fear of God is more effective in inducing prosocial behavior, whereas hope view makes one more religious but not necessarily prosocial.