Unpacking the Relationship Between Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Counterproductive Work Behavior: Moral Licensing and Temporal Focus

Traditionally, scientific- and practitioner-oriented publications tend to categorize employees in groups of either “good” or “bad” employees, thereby omitting that one category of employees might engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB-O) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB-O). In this study, we concurrently examine the mediating role of moral credits and credentials, as well as the moderating role of subjective temporal focus. Specifically, we argue that when employees enact OCB-O, they obtain moral credits and credentials, which in turn might make employees more likely to enact CWB-O. Moreover, we argue that the latter relationships depend on an employee’s subjective temporal focus, resulting in an OCB-O—CWB-O relationship that is (1) positive for a past temporal focus, (2) negative for a future temporal focus, and (3) non-significant for a present temporal focus. We examined these hypotheses by means of a multilevel weekly survey study and largely found support for our hypotheses, especially with regard to the role of moral credentials as the mediating mechanism and the aggravating versus attenuating effect of past versus future temporal focus, respectively. We end with a discussion on implications, suggestions for future research, and recommendations for practice.