Purpose Unethical pro-family behavior (UPFB) in the workplace has recently aroused academia’s increased concern, but little is known about how it would be shaped by work characteristics. This research aims to explore the relationship between overtime and UPFB from the perspective of social exchange. Design/methodology/approach A two-wave questionnaire survey with 225 employees and a vignette-based experiment with 1,000 working adults were conducted. Findings The relationship between overtime and UPFB will be positive when distributive justice of overtime rewards (DJOR) is low and will not exist or become negative when DJOR is high. Further, the interactive effect of overtime and DJOR on UPFB can be mediated by psychological entitlement and moderated by reasons for overtime. Originality/value This research not only enhances the current knowledge about how UPFB can be affected by work characteristics but also adds to the social exchange explanations of why UPFB occurs by taking negative reciprocity into account. Besides, by verifying the role of psychological entitlement, we enrich the understanding of the driving motivations of UPFB.
Cheng et al. (Fri,) studied this question.