Monkey See Monkey Do: The Influence of Work Groups on the Antisocial Behavior of Employees - Speech or Presentation Example

The article is about the antisocial attitudes of employees that are shaped by the antisocial attitudes of their coworkers. In the research article, the writers have taken support of three theoretical perspectives that are “the attraction-selection attrition perspective”, “social information processing theory” and “social learning theory”.

 The attraction-selection attrition theory states that people working in an organization set their behaviors according to the working environment of their organizations. This theory was supportive for Robinson and O'Leary-Kelly’s (1998) study as an environment is formed because of people of an organization and their attitudes affect the attitudes of their coworkers, so, this theory underlies the study.

The second theory used in the study as a support for the study is social information processing theory that is people of an organization utilize information attained from their organizations for evaluating the happenings within an organization and to construct their behaviors and the outcomes of their behaviors.

The third theory is a social learning theory that deals with the concept of the presence of role models in an organization. The role models set a trend for others to follow and if the role models practice antisocial attitudes, their coworkers will positively follow them. This theory was also supportive of the study.

This article is very significant for organizations as organizations can understand the reasons behind the occurrence of negative happenings in their setups. The organizational management can evaluate the antisocial behaviors of their employees by taking support of the article. The writers of the study have taken the help of certain theories to inform about the efficacy of antisocial behaviors of employees on their coworkers. According to the writers, the attitudes of employees of an organization are interconnected and they affect each other’s roles. As is the case with prosocial behavior that employees each others’ performance, similarly antisocial behaviors are also delivered from one person to another.

This study is effective for organizational structures as the administration of an organization can keep a check on the negative attitudes of its workers based on the overall environment present in the organization. The administration can also find the source of the spread of antisocial behaviors in an organization after which, it can control its workers’ performance and actions within an organizational setup. By going through the article, the organizational management can know that antisocial behaviors shown by workers are not the outcome of an individual activity but a group activity.

The study showed positive results to the writers of the study as their hypothesis of the occurrence of a relationship between an individual’s antisocial behavior and his coworkers’ antisocial behavior proved to be right. The organizations by noticing this relationship can know where they have to implement precautionary measures for controlling antisocial behaviors of their employees.