Locus of control, Moral Competence, Job Satisfaction and Unethical Workplace Behaviors

From the Causal Reasoning Model of Counterproductive Work behaviors, unethical workplace behaviors are a function of cognitive processes. Organizations cannot effectively prevent unethical employee behaviors without knowledge of cognitive antecedents of such behaviors. Towards this end, this dataset focuses on some of the cognitive variables that might play a role in unethical workplace behavior. The data specifically focuses on the facets of locus of control (LOC), moral potency, job satisfaction, and counterproductive work behavior. The data shows that job satisfaction mediates the negative effects of both internal and external LOC on counterproductive work behavior. Moral potency seems to strengthen the negative effects of internal LOC and buffers against the positive effects of facets of external LOC on counterproductive work behavior. The resulting paper is under consideration for publication in the journal of International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology.