How Organizational Transgressions Can Prompt Deviance and Helping Behaviour via Guilt: An Employee-centric Perspective

Even organizations that are generally ethical occasionally engage in unethical behaviours. It is, therefore, important to understand how employees respond in the wake of an organizational transgression. Using a lens of attribution theories of emotion, I argue that employees may experience vicarious guilt in response to their organization’s unethical actions. Guilt, in turn, may prompt employees to engage in helping behaviours targeted at external parties and deviant behaviours targeted at the organization. My hypotheses were supported across three empirical studies (i.e., two experiments and one multi-wave survey). Theoretically, this thesis provides insight into individual-level responses to organizational transgressions, advances our understanding of vicarious emotions, and identifies antecedents of helping and deviant behaviours. Practically, these insights are important to assist organizations in their recovery from a transgression.