Counterproductive Leader Behavior

1. Counterproductive Leader Behavior Hannah L. Jackson & Deniz S. Ones

2. Counterproductive Leader Behavior • Intentional behavior enacted by leaders that involves misuse of position or authority for personal and/or organizational benefit • Leader behavior may be acceptable by the organization’s standards but violate societal norms

3. Counterproductive Workplace Behavior (CWB) • CWB is intentional/volitional behavior enacted by employees and viewed by the organization as contrary to its legitimate interests

4. CWB and Leaders • Researchers have tended to treat leaders and their behaviors as essentially distinct from those considered in existing CWB theories and models

5. The Prevalence of CWB • CWB has been recorded for workers of all types of organizations and for employees at all levels within them, whether they be salaried professionals or nonprofessionals, managers or non-supervisory employees

6. Why Examine Leaders and CWB? • Opportunities for serious misconduct are at least as great among managers and executives • A handful of leaders engaging in CWB can do as much if not more damage than a large number of front-line workers

7. Leaders and Ethics • Ethical issues are ever present for leaders, who must continually face conflicting stakeholders, interests, and values

8. Transformational Leadership • Communicating a collective vision and inspiring their followers to look beyond self-interests and perform for the good of the group

9. Transactional Leadership • Controlling followers’ behaviors and handling problems by engaging in some transaction between the leader and subordinate

10. What Makes an Unethical Leader? • Frequently operate with egotistic intent • Employ controlling versus empowering strategies to influence followers • Fail to abstain from vices

11. Taking a Broad View of CWB • Allows researchers to generalize to unstudied but related behavior • The possibility of a unified concept or dimension of CWB • The possibility of finding common antecedents

12. One View of CWB • CWB can be grouped into broad categories: • Property Deviance - acquisition or damage of employer assets • Production Deviance - violation of norms specifying the quality and quantity of work to be accomplished • Interpersonal CWB – Sexual harassment and verbal abuse

13. A Recent Model of CWB • CWB can be distinguished between behaviors targeted at the organization and behaviors targeted at organization members • Further divided by behaviors directly related to job performance and behaviors not related to job performance

14. What About Leaders? • It seems likely that misconduct by leaders has elements in common with misconduct by others • If leadership behavior is different, this represents an opportunity to expand the CWB construct

15. Antecedents of CWB • Considering both personality and environmental antecedents will be essential for a complete understanding of CWB

16. Individual Difference as Antecedents • Problems in socialization • Attitudes regarding deviance and theft • Problems with authority • Excitement seeking • Social influence • Unstable upbringing • Unmet needs

17. Situational Influences as Antecedents • Inflexible policies • Organizational injustice • Competitive environment • Economic conditions • Reward systems • Adverse working conditions • Organizational culture

18. Environmental Factors • Leaders have some control over the situational factors that might influence CWB therefore it is worth considering individual differences

19. Individual Differences, Leadership, and CWB • Integrity tests substantially predict CWB • The big five personality variables of agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability are associated with CWB

20. Perpetrators’ Explanations for Their CWB • Denial of harm • Unnecessary or unjust laws • Achievement vital to economic goals or even survival • Expectations and pressure from others • Everybody else is doing it

21. Guidelines for HR • Train employees to reflect upon a proposed action or decision from another perspective

22. Guidelines for HR Continued • Consider some form of performance evaluation approach to enable others to focus not only on the numbers/financials produced by leaders, but also how they were met

23. Guidelines for HR Continued • Foster an ethical environment through: • Mechanisms for reporting and discussing perceived ethical issues/problems without fear of retribution • Verification procedures for code-compliance during key activities

24. Guidelines for HR Continued • Senior leaders should be encouraged to share information publicly about important organizational decisions • Senior officials should signal support for ethical values

25. Reversing CWB • External change agents are likely to be the most successful because: • They signal a break with the past and an intention to change for the future • They bring with them a different perspective that promotes questions about long held practices

26. Summary • This chapter examined: • The construct of CWB • Antecedents to CWB • Leadership and CWB • Environmental factors and CWB • Guidelines to prevent CWB