From Creative Performance Pressure to Deviance: Understanding the Role of Moral Disengagement and Supervisor Bottom Line Mentality

Abstract

This study argues that many renowned organizations depend on their employees' creativity for top industry performance and meeting customer expectations in the current business era of hyper-competition. This study aims to understand the dark side of creative performance pressure (CPP) in the workplace through the lens of moral disengagement theory (MDT). We specifically argue that CPP results in organizational deviance (discretionary behavior that violates organizational norms and threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both). Further, we have identified employee moral disengagement (the ability to separate oneself morally from a wrong behavior by cognitively altering the perception of the situation and, therefore, not feeling negative about it) as an underlying mechanism of CPP—organizational deviance relationship and supervisor bottom-line mentality as the boundary condition of this mediated relationship. The data for the study were collected using a self-administered questionnaire through a time-lagged design from full-time employees working in the IT industry in Pakistan. A total of 254 completed responses were used to test the model through confirmatory factor analysis (in AMOS 23) and SPSS Process Macro. The results of the analysis supported the theoretical arguments of MDT and the existing evidence. The results highlighted that CPP leads employees toward organizational deviance through the underlying psychological mechanism of moral disengagement, and this impact is further enhanced in the presence of supervisors who are high in bottom-line mentality. The study makes significant theoretical contributions and suggests policy implications for organizations related to the code of ethics, incentivizing ethical behavior, and open communication.