Deviance in the workplace

Workplace deviance is voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both. The authors, implicitly and explicitly, regard deviance as a form of misconduct (Robinson and Bennett, 1995). In their study deviant behaviors are arranged along two dimensions, minor versus serious and interpersonal versus organizational, and fall into four categories: production deviance, property deviance, political deviance and personal aggression.

This is a widespread problem that causes enormous financial losses (Greenberg 1997; Murphy 1993; Vardi and Weitz 2004). Employees who are the targets of deviant behavior at work are more likely to change jobs, and they suffer from stress, declines in productivity, motivation and self-esteem, lost work time, greater fear and insecurity, and psychological and physical pain.

Researchers who study deviant behaviors have usually concentrated on the behaviors themselves. Robinson and Bennett's (1995) definition of deviance describes the behavior as a voluntary act. Griffin and Lopez (“Bad Behavior” in Organizations: A Review and Typology for Future Research, 2005) propose focusing on the intentions of the person identified as the actor of deviant behavior, analyzing motivation, complexity and transparency:

1. Motivational intent. What factors might motivate people to engage in deviant, aggressive, antisocial and/or violent behavior? Its origins may be pathological (mental or psychological illness), caused by stress, or related to a perceived injustice or to a need for revenge or retaliation. Bad behavior might also be motivated by a desire to help or otherwise benefit the organization or its employees.
2. Complexity of intent. A given behavior may have several intentions at once. These different intents may be uniformly positive, uniformly negative, or a combination of the two.
3. Transparency of intent. We need to consider the extent to which the intention is transparent or explicit to others in the organization. In many cases the distinction between constructive and destructive deviance may not be evident to observers. There may be an understanding within a group that a given behavior is deviant, yet the group's members may be unable to discern the real intent behind that behavior.

What are the consequences of bad behavior, and what are the implications of those consequences?

1. Successful execution of the intended behavior. The extent to which the individual successfully completes the behavior as intended. In some cases the act itself will be highly significant; in others the consequences may make the behavior irrelevant. An attempt at verbal aggression, for example, may provoke an even more aggressive response from the target. As a result, the outcome of the behavior carried out may be very different from the one desired.
2. Complexity of consequences. The consequences of deviant behavior can also be very complex, with numerous effects. An attempted physical assault in the workplace, for example, may lead to the dismissal of an aggressive, low-performing employee (the person who attempts the assault), the loss of a valued, high-performing employee who needs the psychological security of a new job (the intended victim), the introduction of a new emergency procedure within the organization and improvements in the techniques for selecting and evaluating employees.
3. Transparency of consequences. The extent to which the individuals responsible for the deviant behavior are able to recognize and understand the various consequences that follow from it.
4. Organizational and social responses. If, for example, a person engages in destructive and aggressive behavior and is not sanctioned, the message to others may be that such behavior is acceptable to the organization. Likewise, regardless of whether a deviant behavior is intended to be destructive or constructive, the extent to which the company tolerates or rejects it can have profound implications both for the actor and for the other members of the group.

Workplace deviance has important implications for employees as well as for organizations. Kiran Sakkar Sudha and Waheeda Khan conducted a study, on a sample of 60 software engineers in Delhi, that measures workplace deviance in relation to personality and motivational traits among public and private sector employees.

The results revealed that employees of public and private organizations differ significantly in their levels of workplace deviance (organizational and interpersonal deviance), which are higher in the private sector, as well as in openness to experience as a personality trait.

Public and private organizations differ in terms of work environment, company policy and procedures, availability of resources, work culture, and so on. In both organizational settings, however, neuroticism is the trait most strongly correlated with organizational deviance.

Moreover, motivational traits are correlated with workplace deviance (organizational and interpersonal deviance) in the private sector, but not in the public sector. Neuroticism was found to be strongly correlated with workplace deviance, and links were found among personality traits, motivational traits and workplace deviance (Kiran Sakkar Sudha and Waheeda Khan, 2013). On a broader basis, the meta-analysis by Berry, Ones and Sackett (2007) confirms the link between personality and deviance: among the traits, the strongest relationships, all negative, involve agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.

Muafi, in his 2011 study “Causes and Consequence Deviant Workplace Behavior” (http://www.ijimt.org/papers/117-M504.pdf), found that dissatisfaction, intent to quit and company contempt increase deviant behavior, and that deviant behavior in turn reduces individual performance. Company contempt, intent to quit and dissatisfaction were used to predict the behavior of deviant employees. Victims of interpersonal workplace deviance are more likely to suffer from stress-related problems, and they show reduced productivity, lost work time, a higher turnover rate and additional costs for the organization.

Job dissatisfaction, moreover, is an attitude that can foreshadow future behavior. If dissatisfied employees stay in the organization, they may engage in behaviors that reduce productivity, such as providing poor service, creating a negative atmosphere, committing theft and sabotaging equipment, and other counterproductive behaviors (such as absenteeism) that result in considerable financial costs.

Alberto Viotto