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Although most research on workplace behavior has focused on factors that lead to effective employee functioning, ineffective and even destructive actions are ubiquitous in the modern work organization. Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) consists of volitional acts that harm or are intended to harm organizations or people in organizations. Included are acts of aggression, hostility, sabotage, theft, and withdrawal. These behaviors can arise from a number of precipitating conditions in the perpetrator and situation. In this chapter we discuss a model of CWB as the joint result of personality and stressful job conditions. It complements the other chapters in this book that either focus on other underlying mechanisms or provide alternative theoretical explanations.

Prior research linking job stressors to psychological strains has been limited to a small number of emotional reactions. This article describes research linking job stressors to a wide range of affective states at work. In Study 1, a multidimensional scaling procedure was used on a matrix of similarity judgments by 51 employees of 56 job-related affective statements to support a 2-dimensional view of affective well-being. In Study 2, ratings of the affect statements by 100 employees further supported the contention that the dimensions were pleasure-displeasure and degree of arousal. In Study 3, 114 full-time university employees responded to the Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale, which was found to be related to measures of job stressors as well as job satisfaction and physical symptoms.

The current study was designed to investigate the situational, dispositional, and affective antecedents of counterproductive work behaviors. A model based on the organizational frustration–aggression work of Spector and colleagues was tested using structural equation modeling and zero‐order correlational analysis. As expected, a positive relationship was found between employees' experience of situational constraints (events frustrating their achievement of organizational and personal goals) and counterproductive behavioral responses to frustration (personal and organizational aggression), mediated by affective reactions to frustration. In addition, personality (trait anger and trait anxiety), control beliefs (Work Locus of Control), and estimation of likelihood of punishment were strongly associated with affective and behavioral responses. In particular, strong direct relationships were found between affective response variables and anxiety and locus of control, while direct relationships were found between behavioral response variables and anger and punishment. Finally, differentiated relationships between two facets of trait anger (angry temperament and angry reaction) and four categories of counterproductive behaviors (serious and minor deviance directed at organizational and personal targets) were explored. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.