Duty orientation: Theoretical development and preliminary construct testing

•A construct of duty orientation is theoretically developed and tested across five studies.•Duty orientation is reflected in three dimensions: members, missions, and codes.•Duty orientation is positively related to ethical and transformational leadership.•Duty orientation is positively related to ethical behavior.•Duty orientation is negatively related to deviant behavior.

We develop and test the construct of duty orientation that we propose is valuable to advancing knowledge about ethical behavior in organizations. Duty orientation represents an individual’s volitional orientation to loyally serve and faithfully support other members of the group, to strive and sacrifice to accomplish the tasks and missions of the group, and to honor its codes and principles. We test the construct validity and predictive validity of a measure of duty orientation across five studies and six samples. Consistent with the conceptualization of duty orientation as a malleable construct, we found in separate field studies that duty orientation mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and ethical and unethical behaviors, and between transformational leadership and ethical behavior. In predicting ethical and unethical behavior, duty orientation demonstrated incremental predictive validity beyond the effects of affective organizational commitment, organizational identification, experienced job responsibility, collective self-construal, and organizational values congruence.