ABSTRACT Employees often face a dilemma between upholding ethical standards and meeting demanding business goals, especially under ethical leaders who enforce strict moral expectations. This tension highlights how employees' cognitive interpretations of ethical leadership (EL) shape their behaviors. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study examines how EL influences two contrasting pro‐organizational behaviors—organizational citizenship behavior for health, safety, and environment (OCBHSE), and unethical pro‐organizational behavior (UPB)—through employees' CSR attributions. Data were collected from 276 employees and 108 supervisors in Taiwanese service firms across three survey waves and analyzed using CB‐SEM and fsQCA. CB‐SEM results show that EL fosters OCBHSE while reducing UPB. Value‐ and stakeholder‐driven CSR attributions positively mediate EL's effect on OCBHSE, whereas egoistic‐driven attributions negatively mediate it. Strategic‐ and egoistic‐driven attributions positively mediate the EL–UPB relationship, whereas value‐driven attributions weaken it. FsQCA further reveals five configurations leading to high OCBHSE and three to high UPB. These results offer theoretical and managerial insights for designing policies to leverage EL and CSR strategies to manage OCBHSE and UPB effectively.
Tang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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