The Interplay Between Islamic Work Ethic, Unethical Pro Behaviors, and Moral Identity Internalization: The Moderating Role of Religiosity

Abstract

Drawing on the emerging research on Islamic work ethic (IWE) and informed by the social cognitive theory (SCT), this study seeks to examine how IWE influences employees’ behaviors through employees’ moral identity internalization, with religiosity moderating the IWE-moral identity Internalization nexus. To examine this moderated mediation model, we collected time-lagged data (N = 427) from employees working in two public organisations in a Muslim majority country in the Middle East, e.g., Jordan. We used a partial least squares structural equation modelling to examine our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that IWE encourages employees’ moral identity internalization, which subsequently prompts refraining from unethical pro-organisational behaviors (UPOB) and unethical pro-family behaviors (UPFB). The findings also show that employee religiosity plays an important role in the relationship between IWE and employees’ moral identity suggesting that IWE is more prone to influence employee disengagement in UPOB and UPFB through moral identity internalization when employee religiosity is higher. At the end, implications for theory and practice are offered as well as suggestions for future research.

Keywords Islamic Work Ethic (IWE), Moral identity internalization, Religiosity ,Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior (UPOB), Unethical Pro-Family Behavior (UPFB)