The Effects of Social Networks on Individual Unethical Behavior: A Multilevel Network Perspective

Abstract

Considering individual unethical behavior as an inherently social phenomenon, we adopt a social network perspective to understand how individuals' connections within a team are predictive of unethical behavior. Drawing on social network perspective, we apply a multilevel social network approach to examine how team network density and individual network centrality affect individual unethical behavior. Analyses of multilevel social network data collected from 1,216 employees in 86 teams in Study 1 demonstrate that individual network centrality and team network density have disparate effects on unethical behavior. At the individual level, centrality in positive networks (i.e., advice and friendship networks) significantly decreases, whereas centrality in negative networks (i.e., avoidance and conflict networks) increases individual unethical behavior. At the team level, density of both team positive and negative networks was positively related to individual unethical behavior. Supporting a cross-level moderating effect, the density of team negative networks weakens the beneficial effects of centrality in positive networks and strengthens the deleterious effects of centrality in negative networks on individual unethical behavior. In Study 2, we replicate and check the robustness of the results of Study 1. Implications of these results for future research and management practice are discussed.