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Analysing the Effects of Unethical Culture and Organizational Commitment on Employees’ and Managers’ Unethical Behaviours: Evidence from Turkish Insurance Industry

A successful business is dependent on the trust of all types of stakeholders within an organization—employees, managers, executives, customers, and suppliers. Today, ongoing changes in consumer expectations, human relations in task environment, and technological advancements continue to affect the dynamics of service industry. Ethical conduct, in this sense, has become a major component of doing business. A company’s ethics helps to shape the behaviour of its employees, since leaders at the top of organizations are the key role models for establishing and improving the ethical climate. Employees’ work-related attitudes and behaviours are sensitive to the climate they are engaged. Whether it is for organizational, legal, or personal reasons, ethics cannot be ignored, and this is particularly true for the insurance industry. Recent scandals have demonstrated that unethical behaviour can be costly to the company. The study aims to examine the relation between organizational commitment, unethical culture, and the unethical behaviour of employees and managers working in the insurance industry. A survey was conducted to test these hypotheses. The sample of the survey represents white-collar workers (N = 250) who work in various branches in insurance companies in Istanbul. The findings reveal that there is a positive relation between unethical culture and managerial unethical behaviour and employee unethical behaviour. However, organizational commitment has no effect on employee unethical behaviour, while it affects employees’ unethical behaviour.