Workplace deviance is hidden and widespread, and can bring huge economic and psychological losses to an organization (Chen & Liang, 2017; Q. Wang et al., 2022). Building on research into constructive and positive deviance, Morrison (2006) put forward the concept of prosocial rule breaking, which refers to employees’ deliberate violation of an organization’s formal policies, rules, and regulations, or prohibitions used to protect the interests of the organization and its stakeholders (e.g., customers and colleagues). For example, employees may skip invalid steps in the service delivery process to save time and labor; that is, to better serve customers, employees break organizational rules without first obtaining their supervisor’s approval. In this example, individuals violate organizational policy by going forward without approval, but their intent is to increase productivity in the organization and serve the organization’s interests. Because of the pro-organizational nature of prosocial rule breaking, managers often ignore this behavior or encourage it. In the long run, however, the immoral nature of prosocial rule breaking is not conducive to the effective operation of an organization, and can even lead to organizational chaos and disorder (see, e.g., Dahling et al., 2012; Xu & Zhu, 2017). However, existing studies (see, e.g., He et al., 2021; Li et al., 2015; F. Wang & Shi, 2021; Waweru et al., 2017) have mainly explained employees’ prosocial rule-breaking behavior from the perspectives of individual characteristics (e.g., risk propensity and perception of psychological safety), job characteristics (e.g., autonomy and task complexity), and leadership style (e.g., inclusive leadership and benevolent leadership). Therefore, we examined the effect of idiosyncratic deals on core employees’ prosocial rule breaking from the perspective of employee–organization relations.

The 21st century has brought about the in-depth development of China’s reform and opening up. The labor market has become increasingly open and the employment negotiation ability of employees has significantly improved, which has led to a sharp change in the relationship between employees and organizations and a transformation in the organization’s role in employee career management from that of controller to that of developer and supporter. This, in turn, has increased the challenges that organizations face in retaining core employees. Idiosyncratic deals, which are personalized employment conditions for employees that are achieved through negotiation between employee and management for the benefit of both parties (Rousseau & Kim, 2006), emerged to meet the needs of employment negotiations between the organization and employees in key positions, such as those working in core technology and sales and management (Guerrero & Challiol-Jeanblanc, 2017). These deals are an important human resources incentive strategy for organizations to attract and retain core employees (Ng, 2017; Ng & Lucianetti, 2016). The most remarkable feature of idiosyncratic deals is that they can meet the interests of both parties at the same time, that is, core employees get personalized job placement, and the organization negotiates corresponding performance objectives (see, e.g., Las Heras et al., 2017; Luksyte & Spitzmueller, 2016). Thus, core employees are provided with the opportunity and power to manage and control their work flexibility and career development. Idiosyncratic deals are the embodiment of organizational goodwill, and the positive effects of these deals have been the subject of considerable attention in research. However the negative effects of idiosyncratic deals have received little attention (see, e.g., Hu et al., 2018; Liao et al., 2017).

Bandura (1977) put forward social cognitive theory (SCT) to describe the interaction between individuals’ cognition, environment, and behavior. SCT emphasizes the decisive role of subject cognition on individual behavior and proposes that many human behaviors are acquired by social or observational learning (Bandura, 1986). Core employees are key employees who have essential professional knowledge and skills, master the focal business in the organization, and largely determine the competitiveness and long-term development of the organization (Chowdhury et al., 2014; Yan et al., 2012). Core employees are scarce resources and pay close attention to their own career development (G.-M. Wang et al., 2020). According to SCT, core employees may engage in moral disengagement to achieve their performance objectives specified in the idiosyncratic deal, thus leading to prosocial rule breaking. Because most of the idiosyncratic deals signed between the organization and an employee have a nonpublic status, matched employee–supervisor/coworker surveys cannot be used. Therefore, to avoid the influence of common method bias, in this study we used two-time-point survey data. In this context, we used SCT to examine the influence of idiosyncratic deals on core employees’ prosocial rule breaking through the mediating role of moral disengagement from the perspective of the employee–organization relationship. Our aim was to provide guidance on how to reduce core employees’ prosocial rule breaking in the context of the practice of idiosyncratic deals management in Chinese organizations.

Idiosyncratic Deals and Core Employees’ Prosocial Rule Breaking

Idiosyncratic deals have opened new perspectives for the study of the relationship between employees and the organization. According to SCT, most human behaviors are goal oriented. When individuals achieve their goals, they become more motivated to complete their work not only via external material motivation factors, but also via internal self-motivation; in contrast, when individuals cannot achieve their goals, corresponding negative effects can occur (Bandura, 1986, 1991). According to SCT, because meeting performance objectives has become the key requirement of the organization for employees in an idiosyncratic deal (see, e.g., Rousseau et al., 2009; Rousseau & Kim, 2006; G.-M. Wang et al., 2020), when a performance goal set in an idiosyncratic deal cannot be achieved, the core employee will lose the support of management in the organization, or the managers may even cancel the deal. Therefore, to achieve the performance goals set out in their idiosyncratic deal, core employees are likely to engage in prosocial rule breaking to achieve a “win–win” situation for both the organization and the employee. Taking this into account, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Idiosyncratic deals will be positively related to core employees’ prosocial rule breaking.

The Mediating Effect of Moral Disengagement

Moral disengagement is a specific cognitive tendency that includes individuals redefining their own immoral behavior to reduce the harm that they perceive will be caused, including making the immoral behavior appear less visible, reducing their responsibility for the immoral behavior as much as possible, and disregarding the fact that immoral behavior brings pain to the injured party (Bandura, 2002). In the context of prosocial rule breaking, employees deliberately violate the organization’s formal policies, rules and regulations, or prohibitions, which may incur negative comments from leaders and coworkers or punishment from leaders (Dahling et al., 2012). Chen and Liang (2017) showed that the expectation of high performance will activate an employee’s moral disengagement mechanism to excuse subsequent unethical behavior. Moreover, SCT holds that an important underlying reason for individuals engaging in immoral behavior is that when their self-regulation and monitoring system is disrupted, their moral norms are weakened (Bandura, 2002). According to SCT, core employees will disrupt their self-regulation and monitoring system to meet the performance goals set in their personalized employment contract. They regard prosocial rule breaking as necessary to protect the interests of the organization, customers, and colleagues, which weakens their moral norms and primes them for moral disengagement, providing a reasonable explanation for their prosocial rule breaking (Moore et al., 2012), so as to reduce their responsibility for the immoral behavior as much as possible, and increase the moral acceptability of prosocial rule breaking. Taking this into account, we formed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Moral disengagement will play a mediating role in the relationship between idiosyncratic deals and core employees’ prosocial rule breaking.

Method

Participants and Procedure

Before commencing the survey, we applied for ethics approval from our institution. Participants were employees who held key positions in fields such as core technology, sales, management, marketing, and public relations in 15 enterprises in Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Changsha. Most of the idiosyncratic deals signed between the organization and employees had a nonpublic status; therefore, before distributing the survey, we first contacted the human resources management department of participants’ organizations, and then randomly selected from each of the 15 enterprises 30 employees who had signed an idiosyncratic deal. The survey team explained the purpose, significance, and content of the survey; asked the employees to respond anonymously; and told them that there were no right or wrong answers. To encourage them to answer truthfully according to their inner thoughts, participants were also told that the results would be used only for academic research purposes. The survey team recovered the completed forms on the spot.

To control for common method bias this study used a longitudinal data collection method by conducting the survey at two time points. Participants completed the items on idiosyncratic deals and moral disengagement at the first time point, and then filled in the Prosocial Rule Breaking Questionnaire at the second time point 2 weeks later.

At the first time point we distributed 530 surveys and recovered 484 valid forms (rate of response = 91.32%). At the second time point we distributed 450 surveys and recovered 395 valid forms (rate of response = 87.78%). There were 214 men and 181 women; 72 were aged under 30 years, 137 were aged between 31 and 35 years, 125 were aged between 36 and 45 years old, and 61 were aged over 45 years. Among the participants, 29 had an education level of senior high school or technical secondary school, 147 had attended junior college, 168 held a bachelor’s degree, and 51 held a master’s degree or higher academic qualification. As regards position held, there were 31 senior staff, 285 middle-level staff, and 79 grassroots staff. For work tenure, 37 participants had worked for the company for less than 5 years, 102 for 6–10 years, 128 for 11–15 years, 86 for 16–20 years, and 42 for more than 21 years.

Measures

Idiosyncratic Deals
Referring to the studies of Huo et al. (2014), Liu et al. (2014), and G.-M. Wang et al. (2020), we used the four-item scale developed by Rousseau and Kim (2006) to assess the extent to which employees had negotiated work arrangements differing from their colleagues’ arrangements via ex post idiosyncratic deals; categories included training opportunities, skill development opportunities, on-the-job activities, and career development opportunities. The items are “To what extent have you asked for and successfully negotiated for training opportunities?” “To what extent have you asked for and successfully negotiated for skill development opportunities?” “To what extent have you asked for and successfully negotiated for on-the-job activities?” and “To what extent have you asked for and successfully negotiated for career development opportunities?” Items are rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = not at all to 7 = to a very great extent.

Moral Disengagement
We measured moral disengagement using the eight-item scale developed by Moore et al. (2012). A sample item is “It is okay to spread rumors to defend those you care about.” Items are rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.

Prosocial Rule Breaking
We measured prosocial rule breaking using the characteristics identified by Dahling et al. (2012) in their nine-item scale. Five characteristics refer to efficiency, and four to coworker assistance. A sample item for efficiency is “I break organizational rules or policies to do my job more efficiently” and a sample item for coworker assistance is “I break organizational rules if my coworkers need help with their duties.” Items are rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree.

Control Variables
We controlled for five demographic variables that have been identified as being strongly related to prosocial rule breaking (see, e.g., Dahling et al., 2012; Waweru et al., 2017). Age was measured in years, and was recorded as the length of time a person had been alive from birth to the time of calculation. Gender was measured as a dichotomous variable coded as 1 for men and 2 for women. Level of education was recorded as the number of years of post-high school education. Work tenure was recorded as the number of years the employee had been with the company. Position was recorded as the position currently held in the organization according to tasks performed.

Data Analysis

First, we performed a correlation analysis of the relationships between all variables, and analyzed the reliability of idiosyncratic deals, moral disengagement, and prosocial rule breaking. Second, we performed an analysis to examine the intercorrelations among all the variables included in the study. Third, we performed a multiple regression analysis following the procedure recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986), using the SPSS 24.0 PROCESS macro to test the mediating effect of moral disengagement in the relationship between idiosyncratic deals and employees’ prosocial rule breaking.

Results

Common Method Bias

We used a self-report survey to measure the four variables. Therefore, we collected data at two time points and used exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis to test for common method bias. First, the three factors of idiosyncratic deals, moral disengagement, and prosocial rule breaking were packaged for exploratory factor analysis. The results show that the model had a clear three-factor structure, and the first factor explained 31.45% of the total variance. Second, we performed a confirmatory factory analysis using the fit indices of chi square/degrees of freedom (χ²/df), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker–Lewis index (TLI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) to test the convergent and discriminant validity. We compared the fit of the hypothesized three-factor model to that of a single-factor model in which all three variables were merged into one factor. The results show that the three-factor model achieved a better model fit, χ²/df = 1.68, CFI = .98, TLI = .98, RMSEA = .055, compared to the single-factor model, χ²/df = 6.57, CFI = .69, TLI = .74, RMSEA = .132. Therefore, common method bias was not a serious problem in this research. The composite reliability value was greater than .70, and the average variance extracted was higher than .50, showing good convergent and discriminant validity.

Correlation Analysis and Reliability Analysis

The correlations and reliabilities for the variables are presented in Table 2. There were significant correlations between core employees’ idiosyncratic deals, moral disengagement, and prosocial rule breaking (p < .01); the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency reliability coefficients for the four scales were in the range of .75–.89, all of which are higher than the recommended minimum value of .70.

The Mediating Effect of Moral Disengagement

Using the method recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986), we analyzed the mediating effect of moral disengagement in the relationship between idiosyncratic deals and core employees’ prosocial rule breaking. The multiple regression results presented in Table 2 show (Model 3) that before adding moral disengagement, the regression coefficient for effect of idiosyncratic deals on core employees’ prosocial rule breaking was .42 (p < .01), thus supporting Hypothesis 1. After adding moral disengagement, the regression coefficient of idiosyncratic deals affecting core employees’ prosocial rule breaking changed from .42 to .33 (p < .01), which indicates that moral disengagement had a partial mediating effect in the relationship between idiosyncratic deals and core employees’ prosocial rule breaking.

Although Baron and Kenny’s (1986) analysis methods are widely used, they inevitably have some shortcomings; thus, we further conducted a bootstrapping analysis with the SPSS 24.0 PROCESS macro (5,000 resamples). The results show that the asymmetric estimation interval of the indirect effect value of moral disengagement was 95% confidence interval [0.04, 0.48], thus supporting Hypothesis 2.

Discussion

We constructed a theoretical mediated moderation model based on SCT to explore the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions within which idiosyncratic deals influence core employees’ prosocial rule breaking.

First, we showed that idiosyncratic deals were positively related to prosocial rule breaking among Chinese core employees. Idiosyncratic deals are achieved through negotiations between the employee and the management of an organization for the benefit of both parties (Rousseau & Kim, 2006). According to the principle of reciprocity, to gain a personalized job placement, core employees engage in spontaneous behaviors that are beneficial to the organization to achieve corresponding performance objectives set by idiosyncratic deals (see, e.g., Anand et al., 2018; Las Heras et al., 2017; Liao et al., 2017; Luksyte & Spitzmueller, 2016). Morrison (2006) reported that prosocial rule breaking is a spontaneous behavior used to safeguard the interests of the organization, customers, and colleagues. Therefore, based on the principle of reciprocity, idiosyncratic deals might cause core employees to engage in prosocial rule breaking to repay the organization for the special working conditions created for them. Thus, in the practice of idiosyncratic deals, managers should consider the personalized needs of employees, and make the idiosyncratic deals transparent and flexible, to eliminate or reduce as much as possible prosocial rule breaking.

Second, we found that participants’ prosocial rule breaking was influenced by idiosyncratic deals through their moral disengagement, which played a partial mediating role. This could be because an idiosyncratic deal is a personalized job placement that is customized by the management of the organization for a core employee, which means that such employees have a high social status in the organization (Xiong et al., 2018). To maintain this sense of superiority, core employees not only expect more praise and higher remuneration for their work, but they also benefit the organization, which further encourages them to engage in moral disengagement and prosocial rule breaking. Therefore, in the recruitment and selection of core employees, a psychometric scale could be used to eliminate candidates with high moral disengagement. Second, in the aspects of training and development, performance evaluation and management, salary management, and incentives, managers should strengthen core employees’ cognition of moral disengagement as a means to effectively reduce the negative impact of idiosyncratic deals.

Theoretical and Managerial Implications

In recent years, with the exposure of such events as the Enron Incident, Ponzi schemes, accounting fraud at WorldCom, the Volkswagen emission manipulation scandal, and steel fraud at Japanese Kobe Steel, Ltd., enterprises’ moral crises have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners. In analyzing the reasons for the occurrence of these events, employees’ unethical behavior was often noted (Tan et al., 2012; G.-M. Wang et al., 2020). Although unethical behavior in the workplace has been extensively studied over the past 30 years, little attention has been paid to altruistic unethical behavior. Additionally, idiosyncratic deals have not only improved employees’ innovative behavior, job performance, and job satisfaction, but have also had negative effects on the core employees who have negotiated these deals. Using SCT, this study examined the relationship between idiosyncratic deals and core employees’ prosocial rule breaking, as well as the role of moral disengagement from the employee–organization relationship perspective.

This study has both theoretical and practical significance. First, although the positive effects of idiosyncratic deals have been receiving more attention, few scholars have examined whether these deals also have negative impacts, such as immoral behavior among core employees. We found that having an idiosyncratic deal was positively related to core employees’ prosocial rule breaking, which not only enriches the theoretical discussion of idiosyncratic deals, but also provides insight for scientific intervention in the practice of idiosyncratic deals management of core employees’ prosocial rule breaking in Chinese organizations. Second, the existing research has mainly explained prosocial rule breaking from the perspective of employees’ individual characteristics, work characteristics, and leadership behavior (see, e.g., He et al., 2021; Li et al., 2015; F. Wang & Shi, 2021; Waweru et al., 2017). Focusing on the perspective of the employee–organization relationship, this study showed that core employees’ moral disengagement played a partial mediating role in the relationship of idiosyncratic deals with core employees’ prosocial rule breaking, which not only expands existing knowledge of employees’ prosocial rule breaking, and enriches SCT, but also provides a theoretical basis for organizations to intervene in the idiosyncratic deals management practice of core employees’ moral disengagement.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

There are several suggestions for future research. First, we applied SCT to examine the relationship between idiosyncratic deals and core employees’ prosocial rule breaking. Future researchers could explore the effect of different elements of traits of core employees, such as ex ante idiosyncratic deals and ex post idiosyncratic deals (Rosen et al., 2008), flexible idiosyncratic deals, and developmental idiosyncratic deals (Rousseau & Kim, 2006), on their prosocial rule breaking from the perspective of social exchange theory (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Second, we discussed the mediating effect of only moral disengagement. Future researchers could explore the mediating effects of social cognitive variables, such as psychological privilege and moral identity, by applying regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997). Finally, the focus in most prior idiosyncratic deals research has been on the perspective of employees, and exploration from the perspective of organizational managers has been scarce, especially from the perspective of middle-level managers, who are both the grantor and the grantee of idiosyncratic deals. How their dual role affects prosocial rule breaking needs to be further explored.

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This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (20BGL144).

Guomeng Wang, Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal University, No. 36 Lushan South Road, Changsha, People’s Republic of China, 410081. Email: [email protected]