Deviance in the Workplace Overview

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Literature Review
Methodology
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

A 1992 article in the New York Times presented an interesting insight into the drug problem in organizations (Noble, 1992) the article stated in relation to testing of drug abuse in organizations, “Workplace testing is a search for deviance, not dysfunction” (Noble, 1992). Workplace deviance is thus any form of misconduct in an organization that is an outcome of deviance on part of the employee. This takes the form of theft, sabotage, absenteeism, drug abuse, or violence at the workplace (Henle, 2005; Lawrence & Robinson, 2007 ).

According to the US Department of Justice, 70 percent of the reported workplace violence is due to robbery and 60 percent is due to aggravated assault (Warchol, 1998). This deviance has an incidence cost on the organization as well as the individual. It has attached financial cost (Henle, 2005) as well as results increases attrition, stress level, foregone work time, low morale, and decline in productivity. The results on the victims are more psychological wherein the victims lose self-esteem, an increase of fear and insecurity at work. These problems definitely call the attention of researchers to find out the reasons, predictors, and preventive measures of such deviance.

Aim and Objective

The main aim of the paper is to ascertain the reasons that lead to such workplace deviance. The reasons which lead to such acts of deviance are important to solve the problem from its roots. This will help employers to identify the causes of deviance and take countermeasures to prevent them. Negative behavior has not been widely studied in the organizational behavior literature as compared to positive behaviors like organizational citizenship (Baron, 2004).

It is also believed that the previous researchers are not completely adequate to answer questions regarding workplace aggression and so it is important to undertake a study of workplace deviance and ascertain the reasons which instigate such behavior and its effect on the organization. Given the high cost associated with workplace deviance, it is important to understand the organizational factors that instigate workplace deviance.

Literature Review

What is workplace deviation? Robinson and Bennett presented a comprehensive definition of workplace deviation “voluntary behavior of organizational members that violates significant organizational norms, and in so doing, threatens the well-being of the organization and/or its members” (1995, p. 556) thus, this is an act that has negative reaction to the organization. Previous researchers in deviance have been based on three areas:

deviance and its relation to workplace experience,
deviance and the personality of the individual, and
deviance as a mode of social adaptation at work (Bennett & Robinson, 2003).

So a person’s interactions and environment at work has a strong influence on the deviant acts of the employee.

In the first category of researches, researchers have shown that deviance is positively related to job dissatisfaction (Bennett & Robinson, 2003). Deviance is found to have a strong positive correlation with anger and hostility (Lee & Allen, 2002). And the third area of research has shown that the employee’s perception of interpersonal justice will have a strong effect on deviance (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007 ).

Henle (2005) studied the effect of organizational justice and its effect on deviance behavior. The research showed that employees who perceive of an occurrence of organizational injustice and do not socialize regularly are more likely to enact deviant activities against the organization. Further, the study also showed that employees high on impulsivity were more likely to be deviant. So he suggests that the personality of the employee and his attitude towards the organization must be considered to reduce workplace deviance.

Scott and Ilies (2006) studied the effect of workplace emotion and attitude at work on workplace deviance. They conducted a survey daily for 3 weeks on employees’ job satisfaction, alleged interpersonal treatment, and deviance. Their study showed that these deviances were mainly momentary and in most cases remains within the employees. But they form the employee’s perception of job satisfaction, hostility, and interpersonal justice. Further, the study also showed a person who has a strong trait of hostility in his personality is more likely to be hostile when there is a perceived injustice. Thus, the study showed that a person who is intrinsically hostile is more likely to be violent in case of injustice.

Beugre (2005 ) argues that the employee perception of injustice is a necessary condition to prompt aggressive behavior but not a sufficient condition for the same. it is the retaliatory actions after the act of injustice which instigates aggression. But the paper fails to answer the question regarding the relevance of power or organizational structure as an instigator of aggression.

From the following studies, it is clear that deviance at workplace occurs due to the dissatisfaction that the employee experiences at work. As more stress is laid on the personality of employees and their act of hostility, it is also important to understand the instigative acts or injustice acts which may lead to hostility. Here it must be noted that violence and aggression are different. According to Baron (2004) aggression is an act of defiance, while violence is perpetrated against another individual. So it is important to understand the difference while doing an analysis of workplace deviance. But many of the literature on workplace e violence and deviance seem to have intermingled both.

Though research in the area has concentrated on the effect of personality and work environment of deviance, little work has been done on the relation between power and workplace defiance. This paper demonstrates a relationship between organizational factors like power used by superiors play in organization and workplace deviance.

Research Question

Workplace deviance needs to be understood from a different perspective. As Baron has argued that aggression and frustration as a deviance act are different, so their instigators will also be different. So it is important to understand what causes the aggression or frustration at work which lead to workplace violence. Thus, the research question is: What are the organizational factors that lead to the act of deviance?

Another question that the literature does not look into is the profile of the perpetrator of aggression. The researchers do not try to draw a profile of the people who can commit the act of deviances. So this paper tries to answer the following question: Who can be the perpetrator of an act of deviance?

The third questions that the paper will deal with are the areas related to the nature of different form of deviances. The question that will be answered is ‘What are the acts of deviances that the employee must be aware of?’

Methodology

The method used to study workplace deviance is based on previous studies and organizational behavior theories. This paper looks at the theories related to power, organizational structure, and culture as the main measures for deviance in workplace. The victim’s profile is drawn from the US Department of Justice data on workplace violence. And then the paper demonstrates the kind of deviances that occur and if there are any new form of deviance that have gained precedence in the workplace. Thus, research methodology is primarily qualitative in nature with stress on organizational theories and government data.

Workplace Deviance and Organizational Factors

Many researchers posit that workplace deviance is a reaction of hostility to organizational injustice of injustice (Henle, 2005). Theory of equity does postulate that an increase in the favor to the referent other increases a sense of inequity in individuals. So it is applicable in case of distributive fairness of equity. As organizational justice relates to the employee’s perception of fairness, it is important to understand an act which is perceived to be unfair by the employee will trigger defiant acts. Further, other intrinsic reasons are related to the employee’s personality traits or his perception of justice or job satisfaction. But this paper tries to ascertain the necessary conditions (Lee & Allen, 2002) for workplace deviance, which are the organizational or macro factors.

Another reason for deviant activity in the organization (which is essentially an organizational factor) is culture. Organizational culture according to Hofstede’s model of culture can be divided into five dimensions: power distance, masculinity, long-term orientation, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1993). So a culture which has a high power distance implies that the organizational culture entails a culture which is more centralized and non-democratic.

This implies that the frustration of employees will be higher in a culture which has high degree of power distance, as there will more rules and regulations to follow or where the level of legitimate power in the hand of superior is stronger. This increases the level of frustration of employees who seldom like to be subjugated under others and as a result looses their autonomy. This loss of autonomy increases their dissatisfaction and their need to achieve. So this frustration leads to two kind of deviance or resistance: one against the organization and the other against the immediate boss who has more power and applies it on the subordinate.

High level of masculinity is also a source of deviance in workplace. Masculinity according to Hofstede is the male of female values of the society. The essential male characters are ambition, competitiveness, and assertiveness. So when there is a high masculinity there evolves a lot of employees who are highly competitive and ambitious. High masculinity will lead to higher assertiveness which becomes a cause of frustration for many. So in this case, deviance will occur. But due to level of frustration due to this may be low and mild, will lead to only not too dangerous workplace deviance. But here it must be noted that the nature of the employee’s deviance will depend on his personality.

High degree of individualism may also become a cause of deviance due to the high degree of self-centeredness of the culture. The lack of group behavior and understanding as well as organizational citizenship will lead to frustration which outbursts as deviance. Uncertainty avoidance or risk aversion attitude in organizational culture may lead to employee frustration when employees are not allowed take decision on his or her own due to the fear of breaking the system of loss. This reduces employee autonomy and increases frustration over organizational policies and systems. Thus, a deviant act is perpetrated against the organization.

Here it must be noted that the above discussion on organizational culture and workplace deviance is moderated by different national cultures as these traits may differ in different places. So the application of the theory in different culture will have different effects as the frustration as an outcome of the dimensions will vary. For instance, low individualism may be a source of frustration in the United States while it is the norm in Japan or Chine. Thus, it must be understood that effect of culture on workplace deviance if affected by national culture (Hofstede, 1984).

Use of power in organizations has the ability to provoke an individual to perform workplace deviance. As deviance is actually a resistance to the organization, power prorogated deviance is actually resistance to organizational structure, culture, and norms. Resistance instigates the performance of an action, inaction, or stream of processes. When individuals emerge in a power struggle there emerges instances of frustration or opposition or organizational resistance.

All organizations are seats of power struggle from within. The structure, culture, and systems of the organization act as the impetus for power and are the essence for power struggle in organizations. Organizational structures provide a system of flow of information through the hierarchy and thus provide legitimacy to power and authority. Organizational culture and systems provide employees with rewards or punishment through which the dissemination of the right and acceptable are discoursed. Culture helps to establish the way in which organizational members should operate. Culture and systems allows power struggle to take place through its institutionalization of policies and rules.

Workplace deviance occurs through provocation (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). The deviance is a result of the perception of current, ideal, and desired state which leads to frustration (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). The frustration created through this instigation acts as a motivator for individuals to act defiantly. The organizational legitimate power can create three forms of disparity which are (a) difference in the need for autonomy and the experience of the loss of freedom, (b) the difference between an individual’s social identity and the threat of the power to that identity, and (c) the encounter of injustice when expecting fairness.

As power used to entrench superiority on individuals, there are different dimension of power that has to be considered which can be related to influence, force, discipline, and domination (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007 ). As deviance can be segregated as political, personal, production and property (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007 ), it can be said that the prior mentioned power dimensions have an effect on the kind of deviance to be used. The idea is based in organizational theory. When influencing is used, it is used as a non-objectifying power, which is directed towards another person to make him do something that he would otherwise not.

Thus, such power can provoke frustration in the target, which may lead to deviant behavior. As the nature of the frustration is low, so the severity of the deviance will also be less. Force is used as power when organizational members are treated as objects. One such form of force is firing an employee. As force creates a greater loss, and is usually perceived by the target that the perpetrator is responsible for the wrongdoing, a personal grievance usually arises (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007 ).

This leads to the targets use of personal deviance, targeted against the person who applied force on him. Disciplining involves setting rules and routines into place. This being a part of the regular organizational work, when used as power, brings in a frustration against the routine processes and rules, which leads to the deviance of the production process.

This has been termed as production deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). Domination is a part of discipline making and setting routine works in place, as in case of assembly line work. So use of domination strips the employees with their sense of autonomy and independence. This leads to a feeling of procedural unfairness and so the frustration arising due to dominance, is targeted at the whole organization. This leads to property deviance (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). From the above discussion, it is clear that the acts of deviance may be of four primary types’ viz. political deviance, property deviance, production deviance, and personal deviance.

The profile of the perpetrator is derived from the study of U.S. Department of Justice. According to this study, the profile of the offender will be the following: “Those who committed workplace violence were predominately male, white, and older than 21 …Among workplace crimes for which victims reported just one perpetrator, more than 80% of the offenders were males, 58% were white, and 47% were over age 30.” (Warchol, 1998, p. 5). Further, the survey tells that most of the robberies or assaults are conducted by more than one offender, which implies that the frustration cannot be related to an individual and must be towards the organization.

Conclusion

Workplace deviance is a problem that is caused by both reasons whciha re intrinsic as well as depended on external environment of organization or society. It is an important problem that organizations face today due to the increase in the cost of deviance. So the organizational factors which have been discussed in the paper can be moderated or changed which become the necessary conditions for deviance. The other more intrinsic reasons cannot be changed as they are related to the personality of the organization and is not in the hand of the organization to change. So identification of the organizational factors will help companies to eliminate the reasons which become the primary cause of frustration which leads to deviance.

Works Cited

Baron, R. A. (2004). Workplace Aggression and Workplace Violence. In R. W. Griffin, A. O’Leary-Kelly, & R. D. Pritchard, The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior (pp. 23-61). San Frnacisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons.

Bennett, R. J., & Robinson, S. L. (2003). The past, present and future of workplace deviance research. In J. G. (Ed.), Organizational behavior: The state of the science (2nd ed.) (pp. 247–281). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Beugre, C. D. (2005 ). Understanding injustice-related aggression in organizations: a cognitive model. International Journal of Human Resource Management 16(7) , 1120-1136.

Henle, C. A. (2005). Predicting Workplace Deviance from the Interaction between Organizational Justice and Personality. Journal of Management Issues Vol. XVIl No. 2 , 247-263.

Hofstede, G. (1993). Cultural constrains in management theories. Academy of Management Executive 7(1), 82-97.

Hofstede, G. (1984). Culture’s consequences:International differences in work-related values. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Lawrence, T. B., & Robinson, S. L. (2007 ). Ain’t Misbehavin: Workplace Deviance as Organizational Resistance. Journal of Management Vol. 33 No. 3 , 378-394.

Lee, K., & Allen, N. J. (2002). Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: The role of affect and cognitions. Journal of Applied Psychology 87 , 131–142.

Noble, B. P. (1992). At Work; Testing Employees for Drugs. Web.

Robinson, S. L., & Bennett, R. J. (1995). A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: A multidimensional scaling study. Academy of Management Journal vol. 38 , 555–572.

Scott, T. A., & Ilies, R. (2006). Hostility, Job Attitudes, and Workplace Deviance: Test of a Multilevel Model. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 91 No. 1 , 126–138.

Warchol, G. (1998). Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Workplace Violence, 1992-96. Web.

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