Workplace Deviance: Generation Y Employees a Necessary Evil - Essay Example

? Workplace Deviance: Generation Y employees a necessary evil. and Introduction A number studies have been initiated to unravel the mystery behind generation Y employees. Consequently, many modern organizations’ Human Resource Departments have more questions than answers to the emerging generation of employees who seem to defy the organizational structures that perfectly contain generation X employees. Belief it or not, more and more younger employees have developed strong generation Y DNAs, and to many conservative Human Resources Organizations, they are looked upon as trouble makers, organizational culture deviant (more and more demanders), respecters of no organizational boundaries, and problem children within the laid out organizational structures. It is no longer unusual to see an employee making personal calls in an office setting, intentionally going slow on work, using office resources such as internet to chat with friend on the social media and even sabotaging the seniors in an organizational setting. The aforementioned behaviors perfectly fit Anwar et al. (2010) definition of deviance as they threaten the organizational order. A quick scan on the term “Production Deviance” with the help of Google search engine reveals millions of hits and there are numerous credible sites that are viably of help in my project. There are at least ten credible journals and articles available to help me satisfy the minimum articles requirements to be reviewed, analyzed, and reported for the purpose of this literature review project. Summary of articles Appelbaum et al (2005) in their article “The relationship of ethical climate to deviant workplace behavior” delves into the causes and implications of how the ethical climate within an organization in due course affects the occurrence of workplace deviance. Their research evaluates issues of ethical contexts and climates within organizations and their possible implications in the daily work lives of participants, the causes of unethical behavior, which include but not limited to; presence of behaviors antagonistic to organizational norms, internal environment of the organization, and commitment of an organization in fostering friendly work environment among others. Their research investigates current trends in preventing workplace deviance and further recommends future researches on these trendy workplace behaviors. Dunlop and Kibeom (2004) researches on the effect of workplace deviance behaviors and organizational citizenship behavior on the overall organizational performance - they analyzes the influence of organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviant behavior on the performance of business units, the research also analyses the contagiousness of WDB and OCB. From their research, they conclude that there is indeed a very strong correlation between the business unit performance, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, and Workplace Deviance Behaviors. In a weighing balance, Workplace Deviant Behaviors have a significantly higher negative impact on the overall business unit performance as compared to the negative impact of Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Does gender play a part in workplace deviance? Anwar et al (2011) delved into the likely relationship between workplace deviant behaviors and gender, and if there is any difference between organizational deviance and interpersonal deviance. Their research yielded that male staffs in their university expressed workplace deviance behaviors more than their female counterparts, and those incidences of organizational deviance was higher than incidences of interpersonal deviance behaviors. Literature Review Introduction In the modern era, managing generation Y employees has become one of the greatest challenges to both for profit and non-profit organization. Levels of workplace deviance are on the increase and greatly do have a direct negative impact on the overall organization performance. Robinson and Bennet (2000) define workplace deviance as a voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well being of the organization or its members, or both. Anwar et al. (2010) qualifies acts that are different enough to be perceived by society as threatening to social or organizational order as deviance. Most organizations have basic regulations and norms that govern their employees’ actions, practices and behaviors. They seek to provide a minimum benchmark on how one should conduct his/her business within the organizational norms framework. Any significant variation from this code of behaviors is deemed to be deviance. Workplace deviance behaviors can be categorized into two; Interpersonal and Organization deviance. But for the sake of this research, I will in details focus on organizational deviance in relation to generation Y employees and how this affects the organizational performance in turn. With gradual extinction of generation X employees in many organizations and the emergence of newer generation born and raised in the era of advanced technology, well versed with employee rights as entrenched in many labor laws, overambitious in nature and less loyal; behaviors once considered unethical have cropped in many organizations. Cyber slaking, sabotage, incivility, slow working, unjustifiable absenteeism and engaging in workplace politics have emerged to be newer norms in most organization. But how productive are they to the overall organizational performance? Workplace deviance and overall organization performance Shockingly researches indicate that well over 75% of employees participate in workplace deviance behaviors; this is an unacceptable reality and it is greatly detrimental to the attainment of organizational goals. Campbell et al (1990) defines performance as actions and behaviors vested in an individual and have a say to the goals of the organization. These actions are within the control of an individual and affect the attainment of the overall organizational goals, either positively or negatively. When applied within the stipulated organizational benchmarks, they result in a positive contribution to the attainment of the organizational goals, and when defiantly applied, they are counterproductive and greatly detrimental to goal attainment (Campbell & McHenry 1990). Cyber slacking Unless authorized and for the good of the organization, time spent by employees browsing and chatting on the internet for their personal good is valuable time and money wasted by an organization. Generation Y employees are well known for this; well over 60% of their time is spent on the lucrative Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, name them. This translates to nearly proportional counter-productivity to the organization. Employees spend organization’s valuable internet resource to send personal e-mails, download and listen to music; do new job hunting, make online shopping and many other crazy things. In the long-run, this set of behavior proves costly to the organization in terms of energy and time apportioned to personal matters. Sabotage Cases of employees leaking organizations’ internal secrets, destroying organizations’ property, and even more damagingly data are on the increase. Whether reasons for their actions are justifiable is another topic of discussion. Generation Y employees consider themselves to be all-sufficient and need not be closely monitored, supervised or even be controlled. Any attempt to put restrictions and curtailing boundaries on them breeds resentment and agitating thirst to revenge; sadly enough the result of this has not been sweet rose for many of their seniors. Especially in a more-result oriented department like sales and marketing, employees may conspire and slow their work, resulting in almost zero performance and when the hammer falls, the supervisor or manager finds himself or herself holding the shorter end of the stick and on the receiving end. This is a classic example of people sabotaging and is aimed at destroying one’s career, progress and reputation (Campbell & McHenry 1990). Incivility Respect is a never-miss word in any organization that values an ethical work climate, which is a very important factor in organizational unity and cohesiveness. It is rather one of the common virtues and values that most organizations spell out in their codes of conducts. Any negative variation from this norm qualifies to be called incivility, a form of workplace deviant behavior. Incivility within an organization can be manifested in so many forms, acting rude, demeaning other people or acting less of courteous towards seniors and even fellow workmates and so on. Acting disrespectful hurts not only to people to whom it is directed, but also rather highly cancerous and contentious and spreads like wild-fire. Intentional slow working This is another form of workplace deviance behavior that has very close relationship with generation Y employees. With advancement in technology, work that should have taken a week when doing manually is now expected to take much lesser time. Amazingly, untrue to this hypothesis, even with advanced technology, they take much longer time than if they were to be done manually. Irritation, boredom, and job dissatisfaction are among the factors that may explain this trend. Most researchers have strongly stated, better a single satisfied employee than having ten dissatisfied, bored and irritated employees within an organization. There is constructive power in positive energy, but negative energies within an organization have far much reaching negative consequences (Campbell & McHenry 1990). Breaking organization’s rules and regulations Rules in any organizational set up govern what is to be done, when and where it should be done, how and why an activity should be done and finally, who should do it. Rules bring order and decorum to the organization’s operations. Organizations have laws and rules such as when to report to work, when to leave from work and so on. Adept following of the laid down rules results in harmony and smooth flow of activities within an organization, whereas failure to follow the laid down rules and regulations adversely affect performance of any organization. Non-compliance to organizational rules and regulations is a trendy workplace deviance and is common in many organizations. Sadly though, it begins with the very top individuals who are bound to honor them, but they do not know that organizational discipline is very instrumental in organizational success. Without rules being followed, no success can be achieved and hence dismal organizational performance (Campbell & McHenry 1990). Promoting an ethical climate Workplace deviance is a reality that organizations should be prepared to encounter. The degree of an organization to positively counter its negative impact on the organizational performance depends on a number of interlinked factors, but primary among them is the preparedness state of the organization to the reality. One of the better ways to mitigate workplace deviance is for an organization to enhance an ethical environment /climate within the organization, including a climate that fosters understanding, fair-playing ground, mutual respect, positive challenge, just to mention but a few. It is not enough to create an enabling culture within an organization; the culture must be shared and valued by all organizational stakeholders. It is one thing to create a positive culture and another to have it fully embraced by the stakeholders. Conclusion In conclusion, therefore, workplace deviance behaviors are a reality always and always economically hurts overall organizational performance. These behaviors are avoidable and less adverse if and when detected early enough. This trend and relatively new challenge of workplace deviance behavior in the wake of generation Y employees may serves as wake up call to organizations’ top leadership, alerting them that those ages of leading with an iron rod on one hand is all but gone, and there is need to embrace transformational leadership, where they lead with and not over their employees. Generation Y employees are a necessary evil to organizations; they may outwardly seem overambitious, status quo challenging, greater demanders, and sometimes may seem demeaning, but they have a lot of potential. To harness and maximally benefit from these employees, an organization should be prepared to meet them half-way and match their expectations. References Anwar, D. N., Muhammad, S., Riffat-un-Nisa, A., & Muhammad, A. (2011). Gender differences in Workplace Deviant Behavior of University Teachers and Modification Techniques. International Education Studies Journal, 4(1), 193-197 Appelbaum S. H, Kyle J. D., & Mathieu, L. (2005). The relationship of ethical climate to deviant workplace behavior. Corporate Governance Journal, 5(4), 43-45 Robinson, S. L., & Bennett, R. J. (2000). Development of a measure of workplace deviance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 349–360. Campbell, J. P., McHenry, J. J., & Wise, L. L. (1990). Modeling job performance in a population of jobs. Personnel Psychology, 43, 313–333. Dunlop, P. D., & Kibeom, L. (2004). Workplace deviance, organizational citizenship behavior, and business unit performance: the bad apples do spoil the whole barrel. Organizational Behavior Journal, 25(1), 67–80 . Read More