Here is an excerpt from an article by Charn P. McAllister, Jeremy D. Mackey, B. Parker Ellen III, and Katherine C. Alexander for the MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
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Before they can address workplace deviance, leaders need to recognize the role they may be playing.
Our research suggests that surprisingly often, this view of workplace deviance is misguided. We’ve found that leaders have a strong effect on whether employees engage in deviant behaviors. Thus, when employees act badly, their leaders would be wise to take a step back and consider whether and how they may be complicit in that behavior.
Some leaders dismiss workplace deviance as an unavoidable side effect of apathetic or rebellious employees who either don’t care for or actively dislike their colleagues or employers. These bad apples do exist. Research shows that employees low in the personality traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness are more prone to workplace deviance. So are employees who exhibit socially malevolent personality markers referred to as the dark triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
Given these findings, it’s easy to conclude that the “bad apple” argument makes sense. The problem is, research into the role of personality in workplace deviance does not consider the role that leaders play in employee behavior.
Getting to the Root of the Problem
To investigate the predictors of workplace deviance more broadly, we conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of workplace deviance research. Our study drew on data from 235 individual studies with a total of 66,990 respondents to examine the multitude of relationships researchers have identified between workplace deviance and various contributing factors. We were able to use this data to assess the effects of both personality and leadership behaviors to better understand how well each predicts workplace deviance.
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Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Charn P. McAllister (@charnmcallister) is the director of Northern Arizona University’s Institute for Public and Professional Ethics in Leadership and an assistant professor of management in the W.A. Franke College of Business. Jeremy D. Mackey is an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship in the Harbert College of Business at Auburn University. B. Parker Ellen III (@bpellen3) is an assistant professor of management in the College of Business at Mississippi State University. Katherine C. Alexander is an assistant professor of management in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.
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