SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE Ethical employee behaviors in the consensus taxonomy of counterproductive work behaviors Brenton M. Wiernik 1,2 | Deniz S. Ones 3 1 Ghent University, Gent, Belgium 2 Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 3 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Correspondence Brenton M. Wiernik, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. Email: brenton@wiernik.org OR Deniz S. Ones, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Email: onesx001@umn.edu Funding information Belgian American Educational Foundation through a fellowship to B. M. Wiernik Employee ethical behaviors are a frequent topic of business research and a critical criterion for organizations seeking to implement socially responsible, ethical business practices. They, alongside organizational citizenship behaviors and employee green behaviors, reflect one of the three major domains of employee responsible behaviors through which organizations realize corporate social responsibility goals. In this article, we present a critical review of theoretical conceptualizations, taxonomies, and assessment of employee ethical and unethical behaviors. We consider definitional issues and situate the construct of (un)ethical employee behaviors within the current Consensus Taxonomy of Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CT-CWB). We describe the structure and major dimensions of employee ethical behaviors and evaluate the construct coverage, psychometric properties, and shortcomings of major available ethical behavior measures. We provide a brief summary of individual differences determinants of ethical behaviors. We identify important direc- tions for future research and the critical need for more adequate measurement of (un)ethical behaviors. 1 | INTRODUCTION Societies and governments increasingly demand responsible organiza- tions. Managers and employees increasingly understand the inherent and business value of operating businesses in a responsible manner. Thus, organizations are increasingly embedding sustainability, social responsibility, and ethics into their core business strategies and prac- tices (Aguinis & Glavas, 2013; Dilchert & Ones, 2012; Set o-Pamies & Papaoikonomou, 2016). All organizational behavior is a function of employees’ behavior (Ones & Dilchert, 2012b; Wiernik, R€ uger, & Ones, 2018). Corporate social responsibility is no exception. Employee responsible behaviors are individual-level employee actions that contribute to or detract from corporate social, ethical, and environmental performance. Applied psychological and organizational research has considered three broad domains of employee responsible behaviors that parallel the tripartite division of corporate social responsibility at the organizational level— employee ethical behaviors, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB; sometimes called employee prosocial behaviors; Brief & Motowidlo, 1986; Chiaburu, Oh, Berry, Li, & Gardner, 2011), and employee green behaviors (Ones & Dilchert, 2012a; Ones, Dilchert, Wiernik, & Klein, 2018). In this article, we focus on ethical behaviors. The interested reader should consult Wiernik and Ones (2018) for a parallel discussion of organizational citizenship behaviors and Wiernik, Ones, Dilchert, and Klein (2018) for a discussion of the employee green behaviors domain. For ethical behaviors, our goal is to provide a critical review and analysis of the conceptualization and assessment of this domain. In that endeavor, we address definitional issues, position the construct within well-accepted models of counterproductive work behaviors, describe ethical behavior’s proposed structure and major dimensions, highlight available measures, and provide a brief summary of individual differences determinants. It is our hope that the propositions and critiques offered in this article will clarify lingering confusions and ambiguities that have hindered research progress and indeed damaged applicability of ethical behavior research for organizational practice. In doing so, we hope also to push theoretical thinking forward and contribute to better measurement of the critically important construct of employee ethical behaviors. 2 | DEFINITION OF EMPLOYEE ETHICAL BEHAVIORS Employee ethical behaviors are the individual-level actions that instanti- ate organization-level ethical business practices. Research on employee ethical behaviors has suffered from a great deal of conceptual and defi- nitional murkiness. Many researchers use the terms ‘ethical behavior’ Received: 16 January 2018 | Accepted: 16 January 2018 DOI: 10.1111/ijsa.12199 Int J Select Assess. 2018;26:1–13. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijsa VC 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd | 1