DEVIANT BEHAVIOR AT WORKPLACE

Deviant Behavior at Workplace

Deviant Behavior at Workplace

Deviant behavior at workplace

On a daily basis, the media reports performances of hostility: a burglary at a gas station, an attack at a club, gunfire at a handiness store. These events depict a very aggressive workplace, one in which “going postal” has a generally understood connotation. However, workplace violence such as homicide is just the “tip of the iceberg”: the larger problem affecting organizations is workplace aggression in its broader sense. Although some Deviant incidents originate outside the workplace, our focus is on those Deviant acts that originate within the organization.

A sense making perspective will help us to understand and manage workplace aggression better. The idea that drives our sense making perspective is that employees' culture-specific interpretations of organizational events are the principal determinants of behavior. Leaders have an opportunity to influence these interpretations in order to discourage Deviant behavior at work. The sense making perspective helps us identify the triggers that provoke Deviant responses, the individual influences that affect the employee's interpretation of these events, and the organizational factors that influence the sense making process. Further, we propose that the full range of Deviant behaviors must be managed, ranging from subtle (refusal to return telephone calls) to extreme (physical violence).

The range of Deviant behaviors

Thoughts of Deviant behavior may bring back images of the school bully who was always at the center of a playground fight. There is more to workplace aggression than physical abuse; in fact, other forms of aggression are more prevalent and thus more costly to businesses (Neuman and Baron, 1998).

Two dimensions can be used to categorize Deviant behaviors - the severity of the behavior (from minor to serious aggression) and the target of the behavior (aggression directed at either the organization or the employee). Using this scheme, four categories of aggression emerge:

production deviance or minor organizational deviant behavior (e.g. leaving work early or not returning telephone calls);

political deviance or minor interpersonal deviant behavior (e.g. gossiping or name calling);

property deviance or serious organizational deviant behavior (e.g. sabotaging equipment or stealing from the organization); and

personal aggression or serious interpersonal deviant behavior (e.g. verbal or physical abuse) (Robinson and Bennett, 1995).

Leaders must understand that all types of Deviant behavior have negative repercussions in organizations. Incivility, a form of minor aggression, includes rude and discourteous behavior and is more harmful to the employees and organizations than leaders within these organizations may think (Pearson et al., 2000). Verbal abuse is common in many industries. In the health care industry, 97 percent of nurses said they had recently experienced verbal abuse. A total of 60 percent of retail workers reported being the victim of verbal abuse, while the rate among university faculty and staff was 23 percent (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2003). Employees who experience verbal abuse are much more likely to engage in absenteeism and turnover (Delbel, 2003).

The sense making process: interpreting the antecedents

Individuals must make sense of the organizational events and conditions they experience. Weick (1995) noted that sense making involves placing items in frameworks, ...