Organisational Mischief. Organisational Behaviour vs. Misbehaviour - Literature review Example

? Organisational Mischief---Joke Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Critical Literature Review 4 Organisational Behaviour vs. Misbehaviour 4 Joking-Mischief 7 Effect of Bad Jokes on the Employees 10 Theoretical Framework 10 Future Research Directions 11 Conclusion 12 Reference 13 Bibliography 15 Introduction Organisational mischief is defined as activities which occur within the workplace which according to official structure, rules, culture and the procedure of the organisation which should not take place in the organisation. Much of mischief which occurs in informal or unofficial under life for an organisation challenges the order in an indirect way. AN employee might falsely take a day off from the office stating his bad health but actually they might simply want to take off the pressure on a Monday morning. Such type of behaviour is it become regular would hamper the culture of the organisation. A key element of the contract that exists between the employer and the employee is the input of employee compliance, and the acceptance of degree of managerial control. In order to defend their sense of self, employees often engage in activities such as burning down the workplace or stealing a pencil, circulating rude cartoons in the office to playing jokes or pranks on their co employees. Such activities do not deny that employees at work often joke at each other only because of the sake of enjoying the joke. Organisational mischief involves a mixture of psychological self defence. Some form of mischief is individualistic whereas some are formed in groups. Individual mischief includes like individual act of being absent, inattentiveness of the employee usually by chatting with colleagues or day dreaming, no or less compliance with the given instruction by the company, trying to keep information to oneself, bullying other employees, sexual harassment, breaking of equipment out of frustration and also leaving organisation at an inconvenient time. Some social mischief’s which happens in the organisation are such as organised fiddles, using the work place for discussing the non work things, workplace games, practical jokes, wind-ups, piss takes, harassment and bullying. In such types of organisational mischief’s people try to protect the material aspect of implicit contract (Tony, 2006, p.143). The research topic chosen is organisational mischief especially in the category of joke. Joke are practised in the organisation sometimes just for the sake of making a joke. The organisational misbehaviour or mischief remains a further paper to research as it gives an area to find out more about the misbehaviour by the employees and the need to issue some ethical code of conduct with respect to the mischiefs in the work place. The paper starts with the literature review of the topic which takes into consideration the critical review of workplace mischief, the major issues and concepts which are used in such type of mischief. Critical Literature Review Organisational Behaviour vs. Misbehaviour In an organisation there are many forms of behaviour as well as misbehaviour which are not stock in trade of any required discipline but they might be very common. These forms of behaviour might scant attention from the textbooks and are not regarded as an important feature of the organisation. Factors such as bullying, practical joking, sexual harassment also includes rituals and also rites of passage. Different forms of misbehaviour are connected with each other. Both the management and the social scientists have overlooked the organisational misbehaviour despite of the fact that they know misbehaviour exists in the organisation, this action is seen as inessential by the management. Sometimes there is complicity with the other members of the organisation about misbehaviour. Employees are not official allowed to exhibit their respective behaviour. Therefore there is a substantial agreement that until and unless such types of behaviour interferes with organisational purpose it is most likely to pass unnoticed by the management. Therefore the role of a specialist discipline becomes much more responsible in showing how these forms of behaviour might have an effect on the culture of the organisation (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p.14). Katz & Kahn (1978) and Williams & Anderson (1991) have suggested that behaviours which are prescribed by organisation mainly falls under two main categories. The first category is described as behaviour within the job description. The concept which is used to refer dimension are in role and the core task behaviour. And the second dimension usually refers to acts or behaviour which is performed beyond the job requirements. One of the important differences between the two dimensions is that the first dimension is linked to rewards and punishment whereas the latter one is not tied with the two factors. It is possible to view misbehaviour as opposite of organisational behaviour, which tends to make it the bad side of behaviour. Misbehaviour is a complex matter and is subject to debate as well as disagreement amongst the scholars (Shamsudin, 2004, p.58). In exploring the subject on misbehaviour authors have tried to distinguish between the appropriations of time, product work and identity. The appropriation of identity is usually varies between the identification of goal, which are sometimes considered to be positive such as subcultures, joking and also tensions related to gender (Soeters, 1999). Organizational misbehaviour according to Vandekerckhove (2006) is a situation where one shifts one’s behavioural style while dealing with other organizational members from the said rules of mission, vision and other ethical rules laid down in the company. Moreover an employee identified as misbehaving in the organisation is also found to shift from the parameters of business loyalty. Organizational misbehaviour of an employee or groups of employees thus tends to disturb the organizational fabric within the concern and thereby affects the motivation of the people in the concern (Vandekerckhove, 2006, p.132). Robbins and Coulter (2008) also state in this regard that defiance of organizational rules and values by either managers or employees in the realm of their operational pursuits happens to create a negative environment in the concern. This negative work atmosphere in turn dampens the productivity of the people in the concern (Robbins and Coulter, 2008, p.389). Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson (2008) observe in this regard that as employees the managers are also highly related to misbehaving activities in which the people are bent on using sarcastic languages, bullying and shaming their subordinates in public. These tools are used by the managers in order to render active control over the people so as to make them work more in fear (Ivancevich, Konopaske and Matteson, 2008, p.250-255). The issue of managers getting involved in misbehaving activities requires further scrutiny. Erickson (2009) et al states in this regard that managers tend to reflect a sense of misbehaviour in that they tend to curb the growing demands of workers in issues like pay scales reflecting on the organizational norms. However activities like behaviour of a manager aimed at sexually, emotionally or physically harming the subordinates are considered a mass defiance of ethical conducts and thereby can be held as misbehaviours (Erickson, 2009, p.188). Tony (2006) observes that employees within organizations in regards to the misbehaving activities conducted by the managers upon them tend to revolt through other sets of misbehaving activities on their part. These people are reported to largely take resort to activities like spontaneous absenteeism especially in times when staffing is greatly needed by the managers to help in meeting auditing requirements. Again these people are also found in disturbing the activities of others through activities like chatting. The employees also reflect vast defiance of organisational norms and rules and also engage in activities like embezzlement, using the office hours for private needs and also in largely disregarding the office timings. In another type of misbehaving attitude the employees can tend to keep potential information with them that would be needed to share amongst others in the concern. These activities taken by the employees largely constitute the organizational misbehaviours in regards to the employees of the concern (Tony, 2006, p.142-143). The above discussion focuses on the concepts of organizational misbehaviour that occurs within the concern but does not specifically focuses on the different types of misbehaving practices that are reflected by the managers to disgrace and punish their subordinates. Joking-Mischief Organisations are experiencing a significant change and innovation and can be understood in the form and content of misbehaviour which is expressed by the employee. Joking is one of the most common misbehaviour practiced in an organisation. But workplace humour and joking in relationships have been seen as significant behaviour. Collinson (1988) had noted about 15 papers which had described joking behaviour in a wide variety in a workplace. In order to analyse the industry as cultural system, Turner pointed out that joking is important in the organisation. Almost all study conducted towards organisational work and behaviour, joking practices and joking relationship are important. Joking is not a proclivity which has taken place in the organisation in overnight but joking has acquired a new significance in the organisations. Joking is acceptable in circumstances when employees can raise their voice to unacceptable and dissenting points of view. Joking is termed as the mode of discourse which stands in contradiction to some serious discourse and is often executed from normal conventions. Therefore for such a reason, joking is appropriate when a certain group with power is creating a willingness to get intimate but incapable to admit the inequality. Therefore in this kind of situation, joking becomes useful (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999, p. 102). Playing jokes in organizations takes a serious turn when such is involved in portraying and distinguishing sexuality. Alvesson and Billing (2009) state in this regard that organizations reflecting dominance of male culture groups reflect the increased victimisation of the female class in regards to jokes and pranks played on them. It is observed that masculine groups within organizations to reassert their masculinity in the organization and to render increased dominance over the over the female class take resort to jokes. Such examples integrally reflect mass defiance of organizational rules and ethics and hence should be rightly condemned (Alvesson and Billing, 2009, p.140-141). Hearn and Parkin (1995) states in this regard that the idea of sexuality gets super imposed in the organizational context with the significant and prominent division of organizational task among the different sexual groups. The portrayal of feminine features thus moves ahead from not only creating picture jokes based on the physiological architecture of the class but also in relation to the nature of work performed by them in the concern. Suppression and the alienation of the women class in organizations is further enhanced through the reflection of duality in the workplace such that the women folk tend to become the focus of idle sexual discussions (Hearn and Parkin, 1995, p.15-16). Wilson (2003) notes in this regard that segregation of organizational task and relationships tends to enhance the parameter of culture and sexual stereotyping in the organizational context. Such cultural and organizational stereotyping thus creates different perception elements of the bi-polar gender groups working in the concern. Sexual stereotyping in turn gives rise to the elements of organizational joking in cases where the male class is superseded and dominated by the female class. Pictorial jokes are often rendered in the print media where the male class is threatened by the dominating female class in the concern. This type of organizational jokes thus tends to enhance the vulnerability of the relationships between the two sex groups in the concern and thereby can disturb the performance level of the people in the concern (Wilson, 2003, p.43-45). Herrick (2003) observes that cracking of jokes within an organization generally takes place based on different combination levels. These combination levels tend to render the reflection that whether the joke made was against the public element in the concern or was made to create a congenial work atmosphere in the concern. It is found that jokes generally cracked by the supervisor or the manager over the staff involved a level of sarcastic note and hence are not entertained by the people in the concern. Some concerns are identified as such where the managers tend to crack jokes on their staffs thus simply annoying them and thereby dampens their desire to work productively in the concern. Similarly in other companies the employees being suppressed in the initial stage also tend to joke about their managers in the concern and thereby disturb the hierarchy in the concern. Organizational joking studied in the above two contexts reflects a sense of mischievousness activity conducted in the organizational pursuit. However such joking activities when form an integral element of a firm’s culture such that where both the employer and the employee along with the customers get involved in jokes the same is considered to improve different relationships. The employees start feeling a high sense of belongingness in the concern for being able to share joke with their superiors while customers also get largely entertained by such activities (Herrick, 2003, p.121). Effect of Bad Jokes on the Employees Linstead (2004) embark that employees on being continuously bombarded by the managers through illicit remarks made in the form of bad jokes tend to distance them from the superior hierarchies. They tend to switch over to other concerns that tend to increase the attrition rates in the concern and also spread a bad word-of-mouth to the society about the company (Linstead, 2004, p.23). Cameron and Spreitzer (2011) state that managers that tend to speak out wrong jokes in public in regards to the physique or communication styles of their workers happens to disturb the professional relationship they tend to share with the employees. Employees start feeling annoyed about the behaviour of their managers and thus tend to render less of honour to their managers (Cameron and Spreitzer, 2011, p.478-479). Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework that is vastly employed in the paper mainly focuses on reviewing secondary elements like books and journals. The use of books and journals for the conduct of the paper focusing on organizational misconducts in the realm of organizational behaviour help in getting a thorough understanding of the reflections posed by several authors. A comparison drawn between the same broadens the level of understanding of the different types of misbehaviours that are conducted by both the managers and the employees in regards to each other and the effects of such on the concern’s productivity (Kramer and Tyler, 1996, p.148). Searching for books and journals helps in enhancing the authenticity of the data collected in that the paper tends to focus more on the event of jokes conducted in the organizational context. Further the use of secondary research items also helps the researcher in gaining access to large volumes of data in a much faster manner than in regards to other cases (McKenna, 2000, p.21; Dozier, Grunig and Grunig, 1995, p.135). Future Research Directions Future research directions in the field of organisational behaviour can be taken in two specific manners. In the first case the secondary research activities taken for the paper can be coupled with primary research conducts. Primary research activities entail firstly taking hold of a sample population pertaining to different employees and managers in organizations that can be interviewed in regards to organizational misconducts pertaining to joking. These people belonging to the target population framed would be interviewed based on the development of questionnaires aimed at gaining insights in regards to the above case. However it must be understood that such activities would require extended time period by the researcher. Again such activities must be supported by secondary research initiatives in order to render authenticity to the raw findings gained from the conduct of interviews. It is held that primary research initiatives would help in enhancing the practicality of the inferences drawn through research (Robbins, 2009, p.4; Acs and Audretsch, 2010, p.4-5). Similarly the enhancing of the research directives can be gained through focusing on case study based research. Case study based research helps the researcher to focus on the issue, joking as an organizational mischief in question based on a certain organisation. Narrowing down of the research avenue helps in getting potential inferences through analysis of the situation based on different angles. Further the case study based research also helps the researcher in citing probable solutions for the problem in question and thereby helps in enhancing the effectiveness of the same. These research directions in view would certainly help in enhancement of the research objective (Knights and Willmott, 2006, p.166; Stewart, Goldrick, and Watson, 2001, p.127-130). Conclusion The above paper initially focuses on the different types of misconducts or misbehaviours that take place in an organizational setting. In that the paper endeavours to understand how the managers tend to deface the employees for not being able to gain on the productivity parameters and how the employees in turn retaliate to such events. The paper in this conduct tends to review a lot of books written by eminent authors to help in understanding the concept of organizational misbehaviour. It also tends to focus on the idea of joking that takes place in a concern and in how both the managers and employees take part in the dirty habit and thus endeavour to disturb the organizational fabric. However the paper suffers from a serious gap in that it fails to highlight on the several solutions that needs to be recommended in order to solve the situation. Future directions of the paper are heightened where primary and case study based research activities are emphasized to help in rendering probable solutions to the menace. Reference Tony, W. (2006). Organising and Managing Work, 2/E. Pearson Education India. Ackroyd, S. & Thompson, P. (1999). Organizational misbehaviour. SAGE. Shamsudin, F. M. (2004). Organisational Misbehaviour. [Pdf]. Available at: http://www.ukm.my/penerbit/akademika/ACROBATAKADEMIKA69/akademika69[04].pdf. 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