Tag Archives: workplace deviance

Is Bad Behavior from an Employee the Consequence of an Unfulfilled Organizational Promise?

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Topic: Counter-Productive Work Behavior, Fairness, Trust, Workplace Deviance
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (WINTER 2010)
Article: Psychological contracts and counterproductive work behaviors: employee responses to transactional and relational breach
Authors: J.M. Jensen, R.A. Opland, and A.M. Ryan
Reviewed By: Allison B. Siminovsky

Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) are those actions undertaken by the employee that are detrimental to the overall work environment.  The reasons for engaging in such behaviors and the means of expressing them differ from situation to situation, and as a result it can be difficult for organizations to pinpoint exactly what the causes of CWBs may be.  This article seeks to find antecedents for CWBs in organizational breaches of the psychological contract, or the employee’s inherent expectations about how the reciprocal relationship between employer and employee ought to be.   In other words, does deviant workplace behavior result from perceived organizational injustices and mistreatment?

The current study examines the possibility of numerous types of CWBs occurring as the result of a perceived breach of the psychological contract and achieved several significant findings.  For example, it was found that when employees are moved to retaliate to feeling a lost sense of their employers caring about them, they are most likely to engage in abuse behaviors, which include threatening and undermining one’s co-workers. 

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Dealing With An Abusive Supervisor? Will Distributive Justice Help? Nope…It Will Make It Worse!!

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Topics: Workplace Deviance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2010)
Article: Self-Gain or Self-Regulation Impairment? Tests of Competing Explanations of the Supervisor Abuse and Employee Deviance Relationship Through Perceptions of Distributive Justice
Authors: Stefan Thau and Marie S. Mitchell
Reviewed by: Mary Alice Crowe-Taylor 

A common research finding is that there is a clear relationship between supervisor abusiveness and deviant employee behavior. More abuse, more deviance. Why do employees who are abused by their supervisors engage in behavior that is harmful to their organizations or its members? One explanation is self-gain theory which assumes rational behavioral choices are made to even out the social exchange with the boss (a quid pro quo view “The boss hurts me so I hurt back either by harming the boss or the organization”). A second explanation is self-regulation impairment, which is not as rational. Rather, the employee’s attention and willpower are drained by trying to deal with the abuse, so they aren’t rationally assessing the consequences of their actions and don’t self-regulate well. Deviant behavior results. 

Some theorists have proposed that distributive justice (like fair compensation) might lessen the negative effects of supervisory abuse. Likewise, many people kid themselves into thinking that they can stand working for an awful boss if the pay is good. This research shows that, contrary to this urban myth, distributive justice results in a stronger relationship between supervisory abuse and employee deviance, not a weaker one. Attempting to deal with the inconsistent messages of “You are a valuable, well paid employee” and “You are a rotten #$%&* employee” results in more occurrences of employee deviance, not less.

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It’s Easier to Deceive via e-Mail

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Topic: Workplace Deviance, Ethics
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (MAR 2010)
Article: The finer points of lying online: E-mail versus pen and paper
Authors: C.E. Naquin, T.R. Kurtzberg, and L.Y. Belkin
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

While lying and deception may come easily to some (certain politicians come to mind…), research suggests that generally, people find face-to-face deception to be more difficult than deception through a communication medium (telephone, letter, etc.).

In a recent article on the topic, Naquin, Kurtzberg, and Belkin (2010) hypothesized that deception (lying) may be even more likely via email than pen and paper communication.  In their series of 3 studies, Naquin et al. showed that although deception occurred quite frequently for participants using both (e-mail vs. pen and paper) communication mediums, deception was indeed more common through email and the extent of deception (how big the lie was) tended to be greater via email.

The authors further demonstrated that this was due to people finding it easier to justify deception when communicating via email. Importantly, however, the first two studies utilized an artificial game with no “real” consequences for deception, as would certainly not be the case in a work setting (e.g., IRS audit).  Thus, Naquin and colleagues conducted a third study with full-time managers working on a more realistic (albeit not real) simulation.

In this study, deception was revealed to others, thus, providing real consequences to the deceiver.  Nevertheless, the results were largely the same for all three studies, suggesting that even in the face of consequences; people tend to engage in more deception via email to promote self-interests. 

Unfortunately, Naquin and colleagues’ paper highlights a dark side of human nature and suggests that the media through which employees communicate can impact their propensity to lie and engage in deception.  The authors suggest that their findings may also point to a general tendency for people to more easily justify unethical behavior via online media.  These findings are perhaps even more disturbing when we consider the frequency with which business is conducted online.

Now…what expenses can I think of to write-off this year?

Naquin, C.E., Kurtzberg, T.R., & Belkin, L.Y. (2010). The finer points of lying online: E-mail versus pen and paper. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(2), 387-394.