From Deception to Rejection: Unraveling the Impact of Workplace Cheating Behavior on Coworker Ostracism

Yijiao Ye, Long-Zeng Wu, Ho Kwong Kwan, Xinyu Liu

Journal of Business Ethics · 2025 · Volume 200 · Issue 1

Abstract

Given the prevalence of employees’ workplace cheating behavior (WCB) and its cost to organizations, considerable scholarly effort has been invested in identifying both its antecedents and intrapersonal consequences. However, its interpersonal repercussions, particularly how and when WCB influences coworker relationships, remain underexplored. Our paper enriches the WCB literature by using social information processing theory to examine the effect of employee WCB on coworker disliking and subsequent coworker ostracism. Through a field survey study and experimental studies, we found that coworker disliking mediates the positive relationship between WCB and coworker ostracism. Moreover, team ethical leadership strengthens the positive relationship between WCB and coworker disliking, and focal employees’ negative affectivity strengthens the positive relationship between coworker disliking and ostracism. Furthermore, team ethical leadership and focal employees’ negative affectivity strengthen the indirect effects of WCB on coworker ostracism via coworker disliking. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the literature on WCB.

Keywords

Workplace cheating behavior, Coworker disliking, Coworker ostracism, Team ethical leadership, Negative affectivity

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