Counterproductive work behavior
Counterproductive work behavior is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.
Some researchers use the CWB term to subsume related constructs that are distinct:
- Workplace deviance is behavior at work that violates norms for appropriate behavior.
- Retaliation consists of harmful behaviors done by employees to get back at someone who has treated them unfairly.
- Workplace revenge are behaviors by employees intended to hurt another person who has done something harmful to them.
- Workplace aggression consists of harmful acts that harm others in organizations.
Dimensional models
Using the term deviance, Robinson and Bennett created a four-class typology of CWBs, dividing them into the following dimensions:
- production deviance, involving behaviors like leaving early, intentionally working slowly, or taking long breaks;
- property deviance, involving sabotage of equipment, theft of property, and taking kickbacks;
- political deviance, involving showing favoritism, revenge, gossiping, or blaming others;
- personal aggression, involving harassment, verbal abuse, and endangerment
- abuse against others
- production deviance
- sabotage
- theft
- withdrawal
- theft of property
- destruction of property
- misuse of information
- misuse of time and resources
- unsafe behavior
- poor attendance
- poor quality of work
- alcohol use
- drug use
- inappropriate verbal action
- inappropriate physical action
Assessment
CWB is generally assessed with questionnaires completed by the target employee or by another source, such as a coworker or a supervisor. Several scales have been developed to assess overall CWB as well as subdimensions. The two most often used are the Bennett and Robinson deviance scale that assesses organization-directed and person-directed deviance and the Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist, CWB-C that can assess the five dimensions noted above.Dimensions
Absenteeism
Absenteeism is typically measured by time lost measures and frequency measures. It is weakly linked to affective predictors such as job satisfaction and commitment. Absences fit into two types of categories. Excused absences are those due to personal or family illness; unexcused absences include an employee who does not come to work in order to do another preferred activity or neglects to call in to a supervisor. Absence can be linked to job dissatisfaction. Major determinants of employee absence include employee affect, demographic characteristics, organizational absence culture, and organization absence policies. Absence due to non-work obligations is related to external features of a job with respect to dissatisfaction with role conflict, role ambiguity, and feelings of tension. Absences due to stress and illness are related to internal and external features of the job, fatigue and gender. Research has found that women are more likely to be absent than men, and that the absence-control policies and culture of an organization will predict absenteeism.Abuse against others
Physical acts of aggression by members of an organization, committed in organizational settings are considered as workplace violence. While most researchers examine overall workplace aggression, there is a line of research that separates workplace aggression according to its targets, whether interpersonal or organizational. In this model of workplace aggression, trait anger and interpersonal conflict have been found to be significant predictors of interpersonal aggression, while interpersonal conflict, situational constraints, and organizational constraints have been found to be predictors of organizational aggression. Other factors significantly linked to aggression are sex and trait anger, with men and individuals with higher levels of trait anger showing more aggressive behaviors.Bullying
Workplace bullying consists of progressive and systematic mistreatment of one employee by another. It may include verbal abuse, gossiping, social exclusion, or the spreading of rumors. The terms "bullying" and "mobbing" are sometimes used interchangeably, but "bullying" is more often used to refer to lower levels of antisocial behavior that do not include workgroup participation. The costs of bullying include losses in productivity, higher absenteeism, higher turnover rates, and legal fees when the victims of bullying sue the organization. Reported incidence of bullying is ambiguous with rates being reported from under 3% to over 37% depending on the method used to gather incidence statistics. The strongest factor predicting bullying behavior seems to be exposure to incidents of bullying. This suggests that bullying is a cascading problem that needs to be curtailed in its earliest stages. In addition to exposure to incidents of bullying, being male also seems to increase the likelihood that one will engage in bullying behavior. It is proposed that the human resources function can provide guidance in the mitigation of bullying behavior by taking an active role in identifying and stopping the behaviors.Cyber loafing
Cyber loafing can be defined as surfing the web in any form of non-job-related tasks performed by the employee. Cyber loafing has emerged as more and more people use computers at work. One survey showed that 64% of US workers use the Internet for personal tasks at work. It has been suggested that cyber-loafing is responsible for a 30–40% decrease in employee productivity and was estimated to have cost US businesses $5.3 billion in 1999.Incivility
is disrespectful and rude behavior in violation of workplace norms for respect." The effects of incivility include increased competitiveness, increases in sadistic behavior, and inattentiveness. A study of cyber incivility showed that higher levels of incivility are associated with lower job satisfaction, lower organizational commitment, and higher turnover rates. Two factors that seem to be associated with becoming a victim of incivility are low levels of agreeableness and high levels of neuroticism. The affective events theory suggests that individuals who experience more incidents of incivility may be more sensitive to these behaviors and therefore more likely to report them.Counterproductive knowledge behavior
Counterproductive knowledge behavior refers to employees' actions impeding organizational knowledge flows. Seven categories of counterproductive knowledge behaviors have been recognized: disengagement from knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing ignorance, partial knowledge sharing, knowledge hoarding, counter-knowledge sharing, knowledge hiding and knowledge sabotage. Categories differ in terms of their negative impact on an organization.Counter-knowledge sharing
Counter-knowledge sharing is employee behavior, where employees share disinformation and misconceptions based on unverified information. Some examples of this unverified information include rumors, gossip, false beliefs, and unsupportable explanations and justifications. Employees may acquire counter-knowledge unwittingly.Knowledge hoarding
Knowledge hoarding is the accumulation of knowledge by employees while concealing the fact that they possess this knowledge.In other words, it means the accumulation of knowledge that may or may not be shared later, but usually is not. Knowledge hoarding can also happen when someone collects information for themselves but does not think that others could benefit from it. Thus, knowledge hoarding is not necessarily intentional, but it may cause the risk of counterproductive behaviour.
Knowledge hoarding is a problem when the transfer and integration of knowledge would create value for the organisation, but individuals prefer to pursue self-interested outcomes through hoarding. Even when the knowledge acquired during working belongs to the organisation rather than the worker, some individuals perceive it as their personal property. That usually takes place due to "knowledge is power" syndrome in organisations.
Knowledge hoarding reduces the worth of the knowledge asset by preventing its widest utilisation. Therefore, it is usually associated with negative organisational outcomes, such as weakened unit performance and work-related interactions. For example, when knowledge hoarding is perceived by colleagues as uncooperative, it may lead to difficult relationships in the workplace. It may also impair employees' equal access to that resource, which causes injustice.
On the other hand, knowledge hoarding may be due to there being no proper platform for information sharing. Therefore, the managerial level and knowledge management should attempt to break the hoarding cycle by creating new models for interaction and knowledge sharing. Also, a friendly and cooperative work environment could potentially reduce knowledge hoarding as counterproductive work behaviour and even contribute to knowledge sharing.