Counterproductive work behaviors

Searle, R. H. (2022) Counterproductive work behaviors. In: Braddick, O. (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190236557 (doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.880)

Abstract

Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) can be a significant activity within workplaces. Psychological study outlines different perspectives as to why these arise. Traditional views position CWB as an individual factor that enables their detection and nonselection. While deviance may emanate from one person, if left unchallenged it can rapidly spread throughout a workplace, altering the prevailing values, norms, and behaviors, and in the process becoming more enduring and toxic. Alternatively, the source of CWB can emerge outside the individual with a context that depletes the individual’s own regulatory resources. Those engaging in CWB can be unaware of their behaviors, with moral disengagement mechanisms used to reframe cognitions about their activities, which leads to more pervasive collective moral decline. Inhibiting CWB requires active processes of both individual self-reflection and self-regulation, which can be easily derailed in stress-inducing contexts, but are constrained through self-reflection and also social and legal sanctions. However, through the means of selecting and shaping their environments, fear of social sanction can be diminished, actively assisted by colluding networks of silence, that protect and even embolden instigators, further muting their targets, and driving those willing to report out of the organization. In these ways prevailing norms become distorted. Increasingly, a traditional binary notion of “good” and “bad” people is being challenged as oversimplistic, with research showing CWB as a complex process. Its antecedents can be individual, but they may also be situational, or the result of prior “good” deeds. The exploration of four distinct approaches offers very different insights into the antecedents, processes, and outcomes, and potential means to more effectively intervene, and inhibit their occurrence.

• Item Type: Book Sections (Encyclopaedia entry)
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Searle, Professor Rosalind
• Authors: Searle, R. H.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Management
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISBN: 9780190236557