How Can Organisations Minimise Counterproductively - Essay Example

Introduction Counterproductive and work deviance is voluntary behavior, which contravenes organizational norms, and puts at risk the welfare of the organization as well as its members. Based on research findings, employee characteristics and attributes of the work environment have been found to function as precursors of negative as well as positive workplace behavior. As such, organizations and managers have an unrelenting responsibility to minimize or eliminate counterproductive and deviant behaviors. This paper reviews several factors, which directly or indirectly prompt counterproductive and deviant work behaviors, discuses effects of these factors, and pinpoints diagnostic techniques as well as potential approaches for negating these behaviors. Counterproductive and deviant behaviors are employee behaviors, which violate organizational goals, rules, and policies, among other aspects of an organization. These deviant behaviors may be deliberate or unintended, and rise from a variety of underlying motivations and causes. In organizations, deviant workplace behavior is a prevalent, costly phenomenon, and includes several negative acts that employees exhibit to harm the organization and co-workers. These negative outcomes affect production, relationships, and properties. Interactions among employees or between employees and workplace environment also cause counterproductive and work deviant behaviors. In view of this, an employee is likely to exhibit counterproductive and deviant behaviors because of his/her personality or traits. Corporate environment such as lax supervision and social context can also result in deviant and counterproductive behaviors. These behaviors include verbal and physical aggression, intentional improper work, absenteeism, theft, delays, and others. Organizations have the responsibility to counter these behaviors by use of appropriate strategies and techniques. Article Analysis Fodchuk (2007, p. 31) states that counterproductive work behaviors and organization citizenship behaviors are prompted by factors categorized into triggers, internal control, opportunity, and propensity. Triggers are external events, or perception of an individual concerning a particular event in an organization such as physical and emotional exhaustion, withdrawal behaviors, procedural justice, and supervisor abuse. Opportunities are circumstances or perceptions of situations that aid the exertion of counterproductive and work deviant behaviors by hindering desired outcomes, or rendering negative consequences relatively tolerable and less costly. These factors include job autonomy, job design, employee’s perception on conflicts, complexity of job and goals, among others. In internal control, counterproductive and work deviant behaviors are attributed to personality traits such as trait negative affectivity, self-control, and conscientiousness. Propensity concerns individuals’ internal stability, and emphasizes on motivating attributes of behavior and their associated outcomes. These factors relate intrinsically with the probability of significantly elevating counterproductive behaviors and work deviance in organizations. Furthermore, Fodchuk designed potential approaches for workplace diagnosis and interventions that can assist in negating counterproductive work behaviors, and fostering organization citizenship behaviors. One of these approaches is enhancing organizational impartiality and employees’ perceptions of equality regarding the workplace. Justice was also identified an imperative way of manipulating desired outcomes of employees’ behaviors. Jones (2009, p. 525) addressed various kinds of justice; informational and interpersonal justice that cause distinctive difference in counterproductive work behaviors experienced by supervisors. Procedural justice is associated with counterproductive work behavior directed to an organization. Employees may direct counterproductive work behaviors toward managers and organizations with perceived mistreatment. Some of the relationships in injustice and counterproductive work behaviors are associated with employees’ desires for revenge. In this sense, counterproductive work behavior can be minimized by promoting justice. Elevating procedural justice can reduce deviant behaviors directed towards an organization, while those directed towards managers by treating employees with respect and dignity as well as providing reasons for decisions affecting employees. To minimize counterproductive work behaviors related to perceived procedural or interpersonal injustice, managers should pacify desires for revenge. Moreover, causal accounts from managers can assist deflect blame and intentions for revenge by persuading employees that negative events were caused by things beyond their control and external causes, which alleviates alleged unfairness. However, managers should endeavor to foster different kinds of justice. It is necessary that organizations and managers should implement tools for addressing employees’ desires for revenge, particularly after perceptions of injustice. Managers and organizations acknowledging responsibility and expressing sincere guilt and remorse for their actions can minimize revenge-motivated behavior. This contributes towards the restoration of justice by implying an extent of self-punishment. According to Litzky, Eddleston, and Kidder (2006, p. 92), managers with stern leadership, or who emphasize on sales quotas may unknowingly facilitate deviant behaviors among their employees. They identified a number of triggers that are likely to involuntarily encourage employees to involve in political, property, or production deviance and personal aggression. These managerial triggers include social pressures; reward or compensation structure; untrusting or negative attitudes; unfair treatment; job performance related ambiguity; and violating employee trust. It is apparent that high competition in corporate world forces managers to emphasize on employees performance and customer satisfaction. Consequently, they regularly unintentionally enhance deviant behaviors by forcing employees to achieve sales quotas, execute ambiguous job duties, and adapt to group norms. However, managers can execute several strategies or alternatives to inhibit workplace deviance. These strategies include nurturing relationships founded on respect and mutual trust, establishing an ethical corporate environment, and employing reward systems and rules founded on justice and equity principles. Organizations and managers who establish ethical corporate climate, implement rational workplace rules or punishment/reward policies, and treat their employees with respect and trust can relatively minimize deviant behaviors (Litzky, Eddleston, & Kidder, 2006, p. 100). Robinson and Oleary-Kelly, (1998, p. 659) studied the relationship between an individual’s antisocial behaviors and those of his or her coworkers. They identified an agreeing relationship between an individual’s antisocial behavior and extent of antisocial behavior demonstrated by coworkers. Based on their findings, antisocial behavior is a resultant of social interactions rather than an individual-level occurrence. It is apparent that the work group’s social context has a significant influence on employees’ likelihood to act in antisocial ways in the workplace. As such, social interactions can be considered strong contributors or influencers of counterproductive and work deviant behaviors. It elevates prevalent and contagious deviant behaviors such as antisocial behaviors in the workplace. Furthermore, research findings suggested several valuable factors and strategies for moderating this relationship and minimizing employees’ antisocial behaviors. In the context of organizations’ operation, managers have the responsibility and ability to minimize or eliminate antisocial behaviors, particularly by modeling effective workgroup dynamics. By encouraging positive relationships between employees, it is possible to reduce antisocial behaviors in workplaces. Moreover, individuals’ dissatisfaction with coworkers was found to be higher when they exhibited inferior antisocial behavior to their coworkers. According to Skarlicki et al, the issue of injustice makes employees engage in deviant behavior. When employees are treated unfairly by the managers, they usually tend to pay back by being less productive and doing unsatisfactory work. Managers on the other hand react to such deviant behavior by lying off the affected employees. Consequently, layoff increases perceptions of unfairness towards managers by employees. The issue of injustice strongly influences the counterproductive and deviant behavior. This is because; when employees are laid off, they lose their sense of belonging to the organization. These employees will revenge to the organization through passing bad information about the organization to the clients, seeking legal assistance to ensure that justice prevails, and causing interruptions or violence against the organization or its representatives. In order to deal with the problem of injustice, managers should employ information sharing. This allows managers to identify the problem and deal with it on time while employees are able to accept their mistakes and timely correct them. It boosts integrity within the organization and employees’ devotion to the organization. As a result, employees’ devotion will enable them to ensure that they work hard to meet the organization’s requirements increasing their productivity and organizational growth (Skarlicki1, Barclay, & Pugh, 2005, p.126). Smithikrai et al asserts that various factors influence counterproductive and deviant behavior such as personality traits. Since individuals differ in terms of their personalities, their reactions to a situation will also differ. In order to avoid counterproductive and deviant behaviors, managers should understand the cross-cultural personality traits. In addition, situation strength is a factor that affects counterproductive and deviant behavior. Employees linked to deviant behavior will pose an adverse effect to the organization because of their strong counterproductive and deviant behavior. Group norms also affect counterproductive and deviant behavior, since an individuals is required to behave in a manner acceptable by group members. They strongly affect the performance of the organization because it is harder to handle a group of deviant employees than dealing with an individual. Besides, performance monitoring influences counterproductive and deviant behavior. Supervision of employees leads to better performance in the organization. It leads to efficiency and customer satisfaction that leads to high profitability. Proper employee supervision will result to lower counterproductive and deviant behavior. Managers should embrace proper employee supervision that will enable them to understand the employees’ behaviors and know how to deal with them in case of a problem (Smithikrai & Mai, 2008, 255). Tepper et al assert that abusive supervision and lack of commitment to the organization influences counterproductive and deviant behavior. Since the employees are major determinants of the performance of the organization, if they are poorly supervised, it will make them lose the moral to work, thus lowering their commitment to the organization. The aspect of abusive supervision poses an adverse effect to the organization. This is because; it will lead to high counterproductive and deviant behavior, which will lead to poor work output, thus poor performance of the organization. In order to reduce counterproductive and deviant behavior, the organizations must ensure proper supervision of the employees. While supervising the employees, the managers must use the right approaches when addressing the employees. Managers should hold regular meetings with the employees in order to increase their interaction, which will boost the decision- making process. This will enable the organization to identify problems and timely deal with them; thus, increasing productivity. In addressing the issue of commitment, the management team should embrace high levels of integrity by involving the employees in all the organizational activities. This will increase their trust and commitment to the organization (Tepper, Henle, Lambert, Giacalone, & Duffy, 2008, 745). Wilkerson et al assert that the attitude of the employees towards the organization influence counterproductive and deviant behavior. When the employees have a bad attitude towards an organization, it will lead to a strong counterproductive and deviant behavior. Bad attitude will facilitates the engagement of the employees in deviant activities like bad mouthing. This will tarnish the public image of the organization and lower the organization’s market opportunities. Due to poor market situation, there will be poor returns to the organization. The writers make a concrete point when they assert that, organizational cynicism has an impact on the performance of the organization. This is because it entails the beliefs, impacts and behavior of the employees. Various factors affect the behavior of employees. Some of the issues might be linked to layoffs, poor supervision, as well as lack of commitment to the organization. These aspects have a strong influence to the organization because; they lower the job satisfaction, which leads to low productivity and poor performance (Wilkerson, Evans, & Davis, 2008, p.2274). In order to deal with these problems, the managers should ensure that recognize employees as important members of the organization. This can be achieved through motivation and embracing teamwork. Conclusion Counterproductive and deviant behaviors strongly affect performance of an organization. Based on articles analysis, it is evident that poor supervision of employees contributes to counterproductive and deviant behavior since it creates a bad attitude towards the organization, thus leading to poor performance. Using abusive language when dealing with employees promotes counterproductive and deviant behavior, since it lowers employees’ dignity making them crave for revenge against the organization. Lack of information sharing also has a very strong influence on counterproductive and deviant behavior. When the managers fail to involve the employees in the organizational programs, many problems arise due to information barrier. The factors that will lower counterproductive and deviant behavior include, information sharing. This will make it easy for the managers to identify problems within the organization, and deal with them on time. Use of proper language while addressing the employees will enable the employees to have a high self-esteem. This will improve their loyalty to the organization, hence boosting their performance. The management should have proper supervision procedures, in order to ensure accountability of all the stakeholders. By so doing, organizations will minimize or eliminate counterproductive and deviant behaviors. Reference list Fodchuk, KM 2007, ‘Work Environments That Negate Counterproductive Behaviors and Foster Organizational Citizenship’, Research-Based Recommendations for Managers, The psychologist-manager journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 27–46. Griffin, RW, & OLeary-Kelly, A 2004, The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior. : Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Jones, DA 2009, ‘Getting even with one’s supervisor and one’s organization: relationships among types of injustice, desires for revenge, and counterproductive work behaviors’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 525–542. Litzky, BE, Eddleston, KA, & Kidder, DL 2006, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Misguided: How Managers Inadvertently Encourage Deviant Behaviors’, Academy of Management Perspectives, vol. 30, pp. 91-103. Nelson, DL& Campbell, J 2008, Understanding Organizational Behavior. Thomson/South-Western,Mason. Robinson, SL, & Oleary-Kelly, AM 1998, ‘Monkey see, monkey do: The influence of work groups on the antisocial behavior of employees’, Academy of Management journal, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 658-672. Skarlicki1, D P, Barclay, L J, & Pugh, SD 2005, ‘When explanations for layoffs are not enough: Employer’s integrity as a moderator of the relationship between informational justice and retaliation’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology , pp 123-146. Smithikrai, C, & Mai, C 2008, ‘Moderating effect of situational strength on the relationshipbetween personality traits and counterproductive work behaviour’, Asian Journal of Social Psychology , pp 253-263. Tepper, BJ, Henle, CA, Lambert, LS, Giacalone, RA, & Duffy, MK 2008, ‘ Abusive Supervision and Subordinates’ Organization Deviance’, Journal of Applied Psychology , pp, 721-730. Wilkerson, JM, Evans, WR & Davis, WD 2008, ‘A Test of Coworkers’ Influence on Organizational Cynicism,Badmouthing, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology , pp. 2273–2292. Read More