To fight, sabotage or steal: are all forms of employee misbehaviour created equal?

Abstract

Purpose The endless manifestation of employee misbehaviours can be classified according to Robinson and Bennett’s (1995) employee deviance typology. Using this typology, the purpose of this paper is to examine the level of “judicial” tolerance for offences committed by employees across Australian workplaces that culminated in an arbitration hearing before the country’s federal industrial tribunal. Design/methodology/approach A content analysis was performed on 565 misbehaviour related, unfair dismissal arbitration decisions made by Australia’s federal industrial tribunal between July 2000 and July 2010. Using the count data that resulted, a logistic regression model was developed to determine which unfair dismissal claim characteristics influenced whether or not a dismissal was deemed to be an appropriate course of disciplinary action. Findings The results suggest that an arbitrator’s gender, experience and background have influence on his or her decision. Significance tests also verified that personal aggression, production deviance, political deviance and property deviance were all considered unacceptable in Australian workplaces. Importantly, the results enable the ordering of the range of tolerance. From this ordering, a picture emerged as to what factor may be framing the extremities of the arbitrators’ tolerance for the misbehaviours: the target (or victim) of the behaviour. Research limitations/implications Unfair dismissal claims that are settled through private conciliation, as they occur off the public record, could not be included in the analysis. Practical implications Society’s implicit stakeholder interest in what constitutes appropriate workplace behaviour is further testament to the HRM obligation to facilitate sustainable workforces. Management should consider whether dismissing a misbehaving employee is a reactionary approach to broader organisational issues associated with employee well-being and cultural norms. In order to contribute to sustainable workforces, HRM policies and actions should focus on limiting triggers that drive misbehaviour, particularly behaviours that result in harm to individuals as a matter of priority, followed closely by triggers to behaviours that result in harm to organisational profitability. Originality/value This paper presents new insights about the degrees to which various forms of employee misbehaviour are accepted in the workplace.

The Moderating Role of Employability in the Hospitality Industry: Undesired Job Outcomes

“…Therefore, the risk of service sabotage behaviors by employees is higher. Our results were supported and are also in line with earlier findings in the field of job insecurity (Berntson et al, 2010;De Cuyper, Notelaers et al, 2009;Kang et al, 2012;Silla et al, 2009;Southey & Southey, 2016;Tian et al, 2014). Therefore, our hypothesis H1 was supported.…”

The Impact of Environmental Stimuli on Hotel Service Employees’ Service Sabotage—Mediation Role of Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Dissonance

“…Managers should also pay attention that SS is not a uniform behavior, meaning that different service employees will apply different ways to sabotage their services during the service encounter. Service sabotage can take place in different forms by deferent employees including Thrill Seekers, Apathetic, Customer Revengers, and Money Grabbers [7,80]. Managers need to be aware that what constitutes sabotage in the workplace is not in isolation from workplace characteristics therefore, understanding and acknowledging it can contribute to the sustainability of the organization.…”

Examining the dark side of human resource analytics: an empirical investigation using the privacy calculus approach

“…Another dark side of HR analytics includes employees misusing organizational IT resources due to their naïve and unstructured behavior. Moreover, there are ample opportunities for HR analytics to misuse employee and customer data, endangering privacy and security (Southey, 2016; Son et al , 2018). Thus, HR analytics offers organizations beneficial factors and other factors that could cause them harm.…”