1. Deviant Workplace
Behaviour
Sinem Bulkan
Organisational Behaviour

2. Deviant Workplace Behaviour
(DWB)
• Workplace deviance is
o voluntary behaviour
o violates significant organizational norms
o threatens the well-being of the organization and/or its members
(Robinson and Bennett, 1995).
Example: Stealing, witholding effort, and acting rudely to co-workers.

3. Deviant Workplace Behaviour
(DWB)
•
Non-compliant behavior – Uyumsuz Davranış (Puffer, 1987),
•
Workplace aggression – İşyerinde Saldırganlık (Baron and Neuman, 1996),
•
Organization-motivated aggression – Örgüt Kaynaklı Saldırganlık (O’Leary- Kelly et al., 1996)
•
Organizational misbehavior – Örgütsel Kötü Davranış (Vardi and Wiener, 1996),
•
Antisocial behavior Anti-sosyal Davranış (Giacalone and Greenberg, 1997),
•
Employee vice – Çalışan ahlaksızlığı (Moberg, 1997),
•
Organizational retaliation behavior – Örgütsel Karşılık verme Davranışı (Skarlicki and Folger, 1997),
•
Dysfunctional behavior – İşlevsiz Davranış (Griffin et al., 1998),
•
Occupational deviance - Mesleki Sapma (Friedrichs, 2002),
•
Counterproductive behavior – Verimlilik Karşıtı Davranış (Marcus et al., 2002) are the names given to
deviant behaviors in the literature.

4. Workplace Deviance
• A study conducted by McGurn (1998) indicated that 75% of employees
will have a tendency to steal property from their employees at least once.
• 42% of women have suffered from sexual harassment at work (Robinson
and Greenberg, 1998).
• Workplace deviance studies conducted in the USA, indicates that the
companies’ loses exceeds $200 billion each year due to the employee
deviance.

5. Dimensions of Workplace Deviance
•
Perpetrator
o
o
Insider Perpetrator
Outside Perpetrator
•
Intention – Conscious act
•
Target – all organisational stakeholders.
•
Action
o
o
•
Direct/Indirect (verbally abusing a coworker as a result of anger-direct action;, In case where the
action would sabotage (target is the organization) work of this coworker with an intention of giving
harm to the coworker would be considered as an indirect action.
Active/Passive (harming coworker’s car (active), not taking safety precautions for workers (passive)
Consequences – Dysfunctional results

6. Typologies of Workplace Deviance

7. Typologies of Workplace Deviance
•
Production Deviance
Production deviance which is violating
organizational norms regarding the
quantity and quality of work performed is
minor and organization targeted.

8. Typologies of Workplace Deviance
•
Property Deviance
Property deviance which is acquiring or
damaging property belonging to one’s
employer is serious and organization
targeted deviance behavior.

9. Typologies of Workplace Deviance
•
Political Deviance
Political deviance which is engagement in
social interaction that outs other
individuals at a personal or political
disadvantage is minor and interpersonal

10. Typologies of Workplace Deviance
•
Personal Aggression
Personal aggression which is behaving in
an aggressive or hostile manner toward
other individuals is serious and
interpersonal.

11. Factors Effecting Workplace Deviance
(Robinson and Greenberg, 1998)
• Individual Factors
o Demographics (a much likely occurrence among young, newer, part-time
working, low-paid, having low-status employees)
o Personality (emotionally stable and having high conscientious people are less
likely to steal, withhold, on the other hand agreeable people are less likely to be
hostile to their coworkers.) Stress, Type A, aggreablenes, conscientousness

12. Factors Effecting Workplace Deviance
(Robinson and Greenberg, 1998)
• Social and Interpersonal Factors
o Unfair interpersonal Treatment (Importance of perceived fairness,
organisational justice)
o Norms (norms of illegal organisations, strike, bribe)

13. Factors Effecting Workplace Deviance
(Robinson and Greenberg, 1998)
• Organisational Factors
o Organisational Structure (When size increases, the levels of supervision decrease,
employee theft)
o Organisational Culture (values and vision, not tolerating deviant behaviour)
o Leadership Style of Managers (Bullying, quickly blaming others, not setting priorities,
making mistakes over and over, worrying about short-term organizational success only,
and behaving unethically and illegally are further negative examples of leaders’
behaviors. Unsurprisingly, deviant behavior will take place more often in these
organisations)
o Pay systems
o Formal Policies and Codes of Ethics

14. Consequences of Deviant Behaviour
• Economic Costs – Decreased productivity, effectiveness and
performance
• Social Costs – Decreased reputation, reduced employee morale
• Sufferer – psychological problems, aggressive behaviours, anxiety
• Hostile working environment

15. Preventing Deviant Behaviour
•
Promoting an Ethical Organisational Culture
•
Ethical Leadership (role models)
•
Training Programs
•
Personnel Selection (background checks, honesty tests, interviews, polygraph
tests..)
•
Promoting Pro-social Behaviour (organisational ctizenship behaviour,
whistleblowing, corporate social responsibility)
•
Ethics courses

16. Predicting Workplace Deviance from the
Interaction Between Organisational Justice and
Personality
Christine A. Henle
Assistant Professor of Management
Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. XVII
No.2, Summer 2005, 247-263

17. Purpose
•
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the workplace deviance literature by
adopting an interactional approach to empirically examine how both person- and
situation-based variables interact to explain workplace deviance.
•
The article discuss the approaches for studying workplace deviance, the negative
relationship between organisational justice and workplace deviance, and two
personality traits that may moderate this relationship (socialization and
impulsivity).

18. Interactional Approach to Studying
Workplace Deviance
•
Situation based perspectives advocate that certain characteristics of the work environment
predispose organizations to employee deviance.
•
Certain organizational factors make companies more vulnerable to deviant behaviors by
employees such as job stressors (e.g.. Fox et al 2001), organizational frustration (e.g., Spector,
1975), lack of control over the work environment (e.g., Bennett, 1998), weak sanctions for
rule violations (e.g., Hollinger and Clark, 1983), and organizational changes such as
downsizing (e.g.. Baron and Neuman, 1996).
•
The second perspective uses person-based explanations to expound why employees vary in
their propensity to be deviant. According to this perspective, personality dictates how
individuals will behave irrespective of the enviroronment or situation they are in.
•
Indeed, acommonly-held belief is that there is a personal profile of someone likely to be
deviant. This profile might include personality traits such as sensation-seeking, risk-taking,
Type A personality, and negative affectivity.

19. Organisational Justice
•
Organizational justice refers to employees’ perceptions of fairness in the
workplace and represents a situation-based explanation of workplace
deviance.
•
Distributive Justice (Dağıtım Adaleti) refers to perceptions of fairness
associated with the distribution of outcomes employees receive (Adams. I965)
•
Procedural justice (İşlem Adaleti) refers to the fairness of the procedures used
to make decisions, which is determined by the presence of certain
characteristics like voice, consistency, bias suppression, and appeal processes
(Leventhal, 1980).
•
Interactional justice (Etkileşim Adaleti) involves the quality of interpersonal
treatment employees experience when procedures are enacted (Bies and
Moag,1986).

20. Socialization
• Socialization is the process of internalizing societal and cultural norms
(Gough, 1987).
• Asocial individuals are low in social maturity, integrity, righteousness, and
morality and are often perceived as rebellious, dissatisfied, and defensive
(Gough aud Peterson, 1952).
• Individuals high in socialization are considerate, dependable, wellbalanced, patient, tactful, and easily able to conform (Gough, 1987).

21. Socialization
• Socialization is expected to moderate the relationship between justice and
employee deviance because individuals low in socialization tend to lack
integrity and morality and can therefore be expected to violate
organizational rules and regulations (Collins and Rader, 1996)
• Conversely, those high in socialization have internalized generally-accepted
societal norms and tend to conform to them.

22. Hypothesis 1 :
• The relationship between organizational justice and workplace deviance
will be greater for individuals who are lower in socialization than those
who are higher.

23. Impulsivity
• Impulsivity refers to the tendency to act with little forethought as to the
consequences of one's actions (Eysenck, 1967).
• Individuals scoring high on impulsivity measures are characterized as rash,
reckless, uninhibited, incautious, and foolhardy(Jackson, 1984).
• Those scoring lower on measures of impulsivity are thought to be selfdisciplined and able to control their emotions (Megargee, 1972).

24. Hypothesis 2:
• The relationship between organizational justice and workplace deviance
will be greater for individuals who are higher in impulsivity than those who
are lower.

25. Control Variables
• Gender (males tend to engage in more aggressive behavior at work..)
• Age (Older employees tend to be more honest than younger employees)
• Tenure (Employees with less tenure are more likely to commit property
deviance)

26. Method
• Sample and Procedures
•
•
•
•
•
•
272 employed undergraduate business and psychology students.
Response rate 78%.
Analyses were based on a sample of 151.
81 female
Ages from 18 to 44. Average 22.
Most participants worked in management 23%

27. Method
• Procedures
• A survey – describing their perceptions of justice at work, involvement in
deviant work behaviours and demographic characteristics.
• Measures
• Organisational Justice – Multidimensional measure developed by
Colquitt (2001).
• Socialization – Socialization subscale from the California Psychological
Inventory (Gough and Peterson, 1952). Coefficient alpha of .75
• Impulsivity – Impulsivity subscale of the Personality Research Form
(PRF; Jackson, 1984) Coefficient alpha of .85
• Workplace deviance – A scale developed by Bennett and Robinson
(2000). Coefficient alpha of .86.

28. Results

29. Results
• Gender and age were negatively related to workplace deviance (r = -.33, p
<.001, r = -.16, p < .05)
• Tenure was not significantly correlated.
• Distributive, procedural and interactional justice were negatively correlated
with deviance ( r= -.20, p < .01, r = -.15, p < .05, r = -.24, p < .01)
• Socialization was negatively correlated ( r = -.29, p < .001)
• Impulsivity was positively related ( r = .37, p < .001)

30. Results

31. Results
• Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses
• The only control variable that significantly predicted workplace deviance
was gender. Males are more likely to be deviant.
• Interactional justice was the only significant justice predictor.
• Impulsivity was the only significant personality variable suggesting that
impulsive employees are more likely to behave deviantly.

32. Results on Hypotheses 1 and 2
• H1 is partially supported. The interaction between interactional justice and
socialization was statistically significant. (Beta = .32, p < .05)

33. Results on Hypotheses 1 and 2
• H2 is partially supported. The interaction between interactional justice and
impulsivity was statistically significant. (Beta = -.24, p < .05)

34. Discussion
• Contrary to prediction, distributive and procedural justice did not interact
with either personality trait in the prediction of workplace deviance.
• This suggests that employees concentrate more on the fair treatment they
receive from their supervisors than the fairness of organisational procedures
and the outcomes.
•
•
•
•
Managerial implications
Measurement of personality tests during the recruitment.
Limitations
Most participants worked part time and were young.

35. Affective and Continuance Commitment and
Their Relations with Deviant Behaviors in
Korea
Harjinder Gill, John P. Meyer, Kibeom Lee,
Kang-Hyun Shin, Young Yoon
Asia Pac J. Manag, 2011, 28:595-607

36. Purpose
•
The purpose of the present study was to extend Dalal’s (2005) findings by
examining the relation between Meyer and Allen’s (1991, 1997) two forms of
commitment and negative workplace behaviors using Bennett and Robinson’s
(2000) measure of DWB as our criterion measure.
•
In his recent meta-analytic review, Dalal (2005) was able to locate 22 studies
(largely unpublished) reporting correlations between employee commitment and
counterproductive workplace behavious (CWB). He reported a corrected correlation
of −0.36 between commitment to the organization and CWB.

37. The Three-Component Model of
Commitment
•
Affective Commitment - affective attachment to the organization
•
Normative Commitment - obligation to remain in the organisation
•
Continuance Commitment - perceived cost of leaving
*** affective and normative commitment have similar relations with outcome
variables, although relations with affective commitment tend to be stronger.
Continuance commitment, on the other hand, has been found to have weak or negative
relations with important workplace outcomes (e.g., performance).

38. Deviant Workplace Behaviour (DWB)
According to Robinson and Bennett (1995), DWB is a form of discretionary behavior
that is intended to have a detrimental effect for other individuals or the organization in
general.
•
•
•
•
High financial and social costs
Increased job stress and job dissatisfaction
Higher rates of absenteeism
Lower levels of performance

39. Organisational Commitment and DWB
Affective Commitment
Meyer and Allen (1997) - Employees with high affective commitment feel a strong
emotional attachment to their organizations and therefore have a greater desire to
remain and contribute to its success than do employees with low affective commitment.
This would be expected to include a greater reluctance to engage in harmful DWB.
Hypothesis 1 Affective commitment is negatively related to DWB.

40. Organisational Commitment and DWB
Continuance Commitment
•
Continuance commitment has been found to correlate positively with negative
affect and other indicators of stress (Meyer et al., 2002; Thoresen et al., 2003),
perhaps reflecting resentment at being “trapped” in the organization (Meyer &
Herscovitch, 2001).
Hypothesis 2 Continuance commitment is positively related to DWB.

41. Method
• Sample and Procedures
• 400 survey packages to 2 organisations in South Korea.
o A survey for the supervisor to rate subordinate workplace behaviours,
o Subordinate survey packet that each supervisor was asked to forward to his/her
subordinates.
• 218 surveys were returned, response rate of 55%.

42. Measures
• Organisational Commitment
Commitment was measured by the six affective and six continuance commitment scales
developed by Meyer, Allen, and Smith (1993).
• Deviant Workplace Behaviour
Supervisor ratings of employees’ deviant behavior were collected using Bennett and
Robinson’s (2000) 19-item DWB scale.

43. Results
•
(r = −0.32, p < 0.01, one-tailed), Affective commitment correlated negatively and
significantly.
•
(r = 0.15, p < 0.01, one-tailed), Continuance commitment correlated positively and
significantly.
•
Gender and type of organization correlated significantly with the commitment variables and
DWB.
•
When only gender was controlled, affective commitment (r = −0.27, p < 0.01, one-tailed) was
negatively and significantly correlated, and continuance commitment (r = 0.12, p < 0.05, onetailed) was positively and significantly correlated to supervisor ratings of DWB.
•
When only type of organization was controlled, affective commitment (r = −0.30, p < 0.01,
one-tailed) correlated negatively and significantly, but continuance commitment (r = 0.07, p =
0.12) correlated positively but not significantly with supervisor ratings of DWB.

45. Results
• H1 was supported. Negative relation between affective commitment and
supervisor ratings of DWB.
• H2 was partially supported for the hypothesized positive relation between
continuance commitment and supervisor ratings of DWB.

47. Discussions
• Future research will be required to examine the role of affect and other potential
mediating mechanisms to help explain why affectively committed employees
engage in less DWB.
• Finding that continuance commitment is positively related to DWB is consistent
with recent evidence linking it to higher levels of stress and burnout (e.g.,
Armstrong-Stassen, 2004; Irving & Coleman, 2003).
• The correlation between continuance commitment and DWB weakened and
became non-significant when type of organization was controlled.
o continuance commitment was greater among employees in the insurance company than
government social workers.
o For example, it is possible that the work conditions in the insurance company contributed to a
stronger continuance commitment and that this sense of entrapment was at least partially
responsible for the higher levels of DWB in this organization.

48. Limitations
•
It is not clear to what extent supervisors had an opportunity to observe
deviant behaviors.
• Another potential limitation is that some supervisors provided ratings for
multiple employees, which raises the problem of non-independence of
observations.
• The study was nonexperimental and therefore making causal inferences
from the findings is limited. It may be that DWB causes changes in
organizational commitment rather than the opposite.

49. Workplace Passion as a Moderator for
Workplace Deviant Behaviour – Job Satisfaction
Relationship: A Comparative Study between
Public Sector and Private Sector Managers
Shalini Srivastava
Asia-Pacific Journal of Management
Research and Innovation, 2012, 8:517-523

50. Purpose
•
The purpose of the research article was to understand the moderating role of
workplace passion on workplace deviant relationship on public and private sector
managers.
•
It further intends to know the gender and sectoral difference amongst the two
sectors.

51. Job Satisfaction and WDB
•
Mowday, Koberg and McArthur (1984) who found that greater job satisfaction is
generally related to reduced intent to leave the organisation and also with reduced
rates of absenteeism (Porter & Steers, 1973).
•
A study by O’Leary-Kelly, Griffin and Glew (1996) also reflects that employees
who are targets of workplace deviance are more likely to quit, have stress-related
problems, decreased productivity, low morale, lost work time or low self-esteem,
increased fear and insecurity at work and discomfort.
•
When employees are not satisfied with their jobs, they would display more
workplace deviant behaviour. Job dissatisfaction may result in low performance,
less communication, high turnover and lower productivity. Dissatisfied employees
may engage in deviant behaviour as a cathartic means of restoring control over the
job.

52. Gender/Sector Difference and Job
Satisfaction
•
Many studies show that women are overall more satisfied then men. This implies
that there is a relationship between gender and satisfaction (Carmel, 1985).
•
The study done by Rainey (1979) concluded that private sector managers scored
higher in job satisfaction than their public sector counterparts.
•
Kumar and Achamamba (1993), in their study of 300 employees from public and
private industries (workers and administrative staff) derived that public sector
administrative staff have greater job satisfaction than private sector administrative
staff.

53. Hypotheses Development
•
H1: Interpersonal deviance and job satisfaction have a significant relationship.
•
H2: Organisational deviance and job satisfaction have a significant relationship.

54. Hypotheses Development
•
H3: Workplace passion and job satisfaction have a significant relationship

55. Hypotheses Development
•
•
•
•
•
H4: Female managers are more satisfied with their jobs as compared to their male
counterparts.
H5: Female managers are more passionate towards their work than male managers.
H6: Public sector managers are more satisfied with their jobs as compared to
private sector managers.
H7: Private sector managers are more passionate towards their work compared to
public sector managers.
H8: Workplace passion is negatively related to interpersonal deviant and
organisational deviant behaviour (Figure 3 )

56. Hypotheses Development
•
•
H9: Workplace passion will significantly moderate the relationship between
interpersonal deviance and job satisfaction.
H10: Workplace passion will significantly moderate the relationship between
organisational deviance and job satisfaction.

57. Method
• Sample
• The sample consisted of 124 public sector and 156 private sector managers.

58. Measures
•
Job Satisfaction Survey
The scale was developed by Paul E. Spector (1985). It is a 36-item, nine-facet scale to assess
employee attitudes about the job and aspects of the job. Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.80
•
Workplace Passion Scale
The questionnaire was designed with the help of studies done in the past and experts’ advice.
•
Workplace Deviant Behaviour
Workplace deviance was assessed with Bennett and Robinson’s (2003) measure.

59. Results
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Hypothesis 1 – rejected.
Hypothesis 2 – accepted.
Hypothesis 3 – accepted.
Hypothesis 4 – rejected.
Hypothesis 5 – accepted.
Hypothesis 6 – accepted.
Hypothesis 7 – rejected.
Hypothesis 8 – accepted.
Hypothesis 9 – rejected. (R² change = 4 per cent)
Hypothesis 10 – accepted. (R² change = 12 per cent)

60. Results

61. Results

62. Results

63. Results

64. Discussion and Conclusion
• The study shows that there is a significant level of job satisfaction in both the
sectors, but public sector managers are comparatively more satisfied than private
sector managers. This result is in contrast with the study done in the past which
inferred that private sector managers scored higher in job satisfaction than their
public sector counterparts (Rainey, 1979).
• The study is focused on difference in perception between male and female
employees and secondly, the difference in perception between the employees of
public and private sectors. However, many other important variables are
determinants of job satisfaction. Nowadays, it has been observed that length of
service and monotonous work tends to reduce the creativity of the employees,
resulting in low performance and subsequently job dissatisfaction.

65. THANK YOU