Abstract: Unethical pro-organizational behavior goes contrary to the vision of sustainable development and may bring losses to both the reputation and interests of an organization. Therefore, exploring its formation mechanism and influencing factors in the context of Chinese culture can effectively prevent such behavior and contribute to the long-term development of Chinese organizations. Based on the self-classification theory, 52 family-managed private Start-ups are used as a sample to explore the impact of employee-organizational family-like exchange relationship in Chinese organizations on the unethical pro-organizational behavior, and explore the mechanism and boundary conditions. The empirical results show that the employee-organizational family-like exchange relationship has a positive impact on the unethical pro-organizational behavior. Employees' cognition of insiders' status plays a partial intermediary role in the relationship between family-like exchange relationship and unethical pro-organizational behavior. The degree of differential leadership positively adjusts the mediating role of internal identity recognition. The research conclusions expand the antecedent variables of unethical pro-organizational behavior in the Chinese culture background, and have certain enlightenment for guiding the Chinese organizations to correctly manage the unethical pro-organizational behavior of their employees.

Key words: family-like exchange relationship, unethical pro-organizational behavior, cognition of insiders' status, differential leadership