When and How Ingratiation Boosts Coworker-Directed Cooperative Behavior

Drawing on moral cleansing theory, this study adopts an actor-centered perspective to examine how ingratiation relates to employees’ moral rumination and subsequent coworker-directed cooperative behavior, thereby offering insights to help organizations to understand and guide such behaviors. Using a multi-wave survey design, this study collected data from 272 employees to examine a theoretical model investigating how employee ingratiation influences coworker-directed cooperative behavior through moral rumination, while also examining the moderating role of employee moral identity. The results indicate that employee ingratiation positively influences moral rumination, which in turn enhances coworker-directed cooperative behavior. Furthermore, the indirect effect of ingratiation on coworker-directed cooperative behavior via moral rumination is strengthened among employees with high moral identity. This study advances the literature by shifting the focus from targets and observers to actors themselves, examining how ingratiation shapes actors’ own moral perception and subsequent behavior. It further contributes by introducing moral rumination as a mediating mechanism and exploring the moderating effect of moral identity, as well as offering new insights into ingratiation in organizational contexts.