Researchers have long studied the precursors to the reporting of deviant workplace acts. Previous research has often relied on descriptive studies utilizing survey research and/or simplistic models with one or two narrowly defined antecedents and demographic proxy variables. Results of these studies have resulted in inconsistent and even conflicting findings. The current study aimed to examine the causal antecedents of deviant act reporting in a more holistic way. Policy capturing was utilized to study intentions to report workplace deviant acts. Policy capturing is an idiographic approach where scenarios are used to establish the differential weighting of cues in judgment formation or behavioral intentions. Three causal antecedents were investigated. The locus of aggression and seriousness of the offense antecedents were based on the Robinson and Bennett (1995) typology of deviant acts. The third antecedent was the manipulation of the workplace offender (e.g., supervisor or peer). Subfacets of the Big Five characteristics previously found to be correlated with deviant behaviors were chosen for inclusion. Participants were educators or administrators in higher education and were asked to rate how likely they would be to report a deviant incident via two different reporting options (e.g., internal vs. external). Each participant completed several demographic items, three subfacet personality inventories, and 32 hypothetical scenarios. Hierarchical linear model was utilized for the analyses. Results showed support for the hypotheses predicting that the three situational cues would affect intentions to report. For the internal model, the three situational cues and two-way interactions accounted for a 48.2% reduction in error variance; a 52.3% reduction for the external model. The minor/serious situational cue had the highest relative cue weight for both reporting avenues. Personality variables had little effect on reporting intentions. The only significant result was found in the internal model where more cooperative individuals were more likely to report an infraction. This study serves as a baseline for future research on deviant act reporting. By utilizing the Robinson and Bennett (1995) typology, this research took an innovative approach to examining the reporting of acts within a classification system as opposed to previous studies which only examined specific behaviors. / Doctor of Philosophy / The interest in understanding deviant act reporting stems from the fact that deviant incidents are high, there are negative effects on other employees, and organizations can incur substantial financial ramifications. However, these acts are often not reported by other employees and, subsequently, behaviors are never addressed or rectified. Research in the area of reporting deviant acts has been inconsistent and has often lead to contradictory findings. The current study examined workplace deviant act reporting more holistically. A technique called policy capturing was utilized to determine which aspects of deviant acts are most likely to impact reporting intentions. Three aspects of the deviant act were examined. The locus of aggression (interpersonally directed vs. organizationally directed) and seriousness of the offense (minor vs. serious) were based on a typology of deviance developed by Robinson and Bennett (1995). The third aspect of the deviant act to be examined was the manipulation of the offender (supervisor of the witness or a peer of the witness). In addition, the impact of three personality aspects (cooperation, dutifulness and assertiveness) were examined. Participants were educators or administrators in higher education and the scenarios were based on potential scenarios applicable to this setting. Participants were asked to rate the likelihood they would report the deviant act either internally or externally. Results showed that all three aspects of the deviant act played a role in reporting intentions via both reporting channels. By far, the seriousness of the offense was the most important aspects in individuals' decision to report. Personality variables had little effect on reporting intentions with cooperative individuals being more likely to report an infraction through internal channels. This study serves as a baseline for future research on workplace deviant act reporting.

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Organizations are increasingly devoting interest towards understanding the causes of workplace deviance behaviors, which include interpersonal aggression, theft, violence, vandalism and sabotage. These behaviors are particularly relevant to organizations, in that the yearly losses due to theft are estimated at over 40 billion dollars for U.S. businesses (Coffin, 2003), and acts of workplace deviance could cost as much as 200 billion dollars annually (Murphy, 1993).In this research, I integrated theoretical perspectives from psychology and organizational behavior with neurocognitive evidence in order to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on workplace deviance behavior. In particular, I argue that cognitive resource theories offer explanatory power for the proposed linkage between sleep loss and deviant behaviors. Specifically, sleep deprivation was expected to reduce cognitive capacity and self-regulatory ability, and as a result decrease individuals' self-control, increase hostility, and impair moral decisions, which would in turn increase workplace deviance. Finally, proposed methods are presented for two studies. The first study utilized a field sample of shiftworkers with irregular sleep schedules (i.e., nurses). The second study utilized a lab sample of university students who were subjected to sleep deprivation conditions in a controlled environment.Results largely supported the model in both samples, with the exception of moral reasoning, which was unrelated to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation affected self-control and hostility, which were in turn related to deviance, with the exception of self-control and interpersonal deviance in Study 2.

Managing diversity in the workplace is a challenging task for supervisors. Supervisors must punish negative behavior consistently, regardless their employees’ demographic characteristics. Some research suggests that negative workplace behaviors committed by lower status group members (e.g., Black people or women) are attributed to more internal factors and penalized more severely compared to higher status group members (e.g., White people or men; Duncan, 1979; Bowles & Gelfand, 2009; Luksyte, et al., 2013). However, recent evidence of pro-Black biases in judgments (Mendes & Koslov, 2013; Zigerell, 2018), challenge the perspective that evaluators are intentionally biased against Black people. If individuals deliberately compensate for pro-White biases by demonstrating pro-Black behaviors as some researchers suggest (Axt, et al., 2016), the negative workplace behaviors of Black employees may be punished less severely than white employees regardless of their gender or the reasons for their transgressions. The present research examined interactions between attribution, employee gender, and employee race when predicting punishment of negative workplace behaviors. In two studies, participants took the role of a supervisor and read descriptions of employees who violated workplace rules. In Study 1 participants read eight descriptions of workplace rule violations, then responded to attribution, punishment type, punishment severity, seriousness of offense, and responsibility measures. In Study 2 participants read eight descriptions of workplace rule violations attributed to internal and external causes and responded to punishment severity, seriousness of offense, and responsibility measures. Race and gender of the employees committing each offense were randomized within each participant so that they each rated all eight combinations of race, gender, and attribution (Study 2). Study 1 found support for the pro-Black bias, participants made more internal attributions for negative behavior committed by women and White employees and punished their negative workplace behaviors more severely. Unlike Study 1, participants in Study 2 did not make punishment decisions based on employee gender or race. Instead, participants punished behaviors based on their causal explanations; behaviors explained with internal causes were punished more severely than behaviors explained with external causes. Focusing on attribution reduced the propensity to discriminate in favor or against employees based on their demographic characteristics. While race and gender can impact punishments for workplace rule violations, learning more information about causal factors may reduce the likelihood of biased decisions.

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My dissertation examines how individuals respond to workplace social comparisons. I measure the explicit set of referent others that individuals compare themselves against in order to evaluate their own level of performance. I examine how the social context of these comparisons impact discretionary performance related behaviors by examining how an individual’s position within a social network and the structural characteristics of an individual’s reference group influences the experience of discrete emotions. Specifically, I examine how malicious envy and benign envy mediate the relationship between social comparison and workplace behavior in a field setting. Results indicate that social network structure plays a significant role in motivating both productive and counterproductive responses to social comparison. Whether or not an employee responds to upward social comparisons by increasing their own work effort or engaging in deviant behavior is influenced by the experience of benign and malicious envy, which is in turn influencedby the network structure of reference groups. Furthermore, social network position plays a moderating role in the occurrence of workplace deviance by either enhancing or limiting the opportunities an employee has to engage in deviant behavior.

Workplace deviance behaviour has resulted in 20% of business failure and annual loss of $6-$200 billion in US organizations and it was found that 33% to 75% of employees engage in deviant activities like withdrawal, theft, production deviance, abuse of co-workers etc., (Coffin, 2003; Diefendorff & Mehta, 2007). In addition, several researchers have concentrated on constructive deviance that would benefit the organizations. Thus, deviance has been a topic of interest for many researchers. However, previous research on deviance behaviour has concentrated predominantly in the USA despite proof that Indian organizations are indeed affected by workplace deviance (Pradhan & Pradhan, 2014) and on destructive or constructive deviance. In addition, from the deviance perspective, surprisingly no study so far has examined the presence and effects of individualism and collectivism within the same culture at the individual level. To contribute towards the extant deviance literature and to fill in the aforementioned gaps, this PhD thesis develops and tests a model using social cognitive theory as a lens to determine the relationship between environment, personality and behavioural outcomes of an individual. It incorporates workplace destructive and constructive deviance in the same study with individualistic and collectivistic orientation of individuals as moderators in India and the USA. What is the relationship of organizational and individual determinants with workplace destructive and constructive deviance when individual cultural orientation acts as a moderator? For this purpose, this research first determines the various factors that will be considered in the model by reviewing previous research done on workplace deviance. It was found that organizational climate, though it contributes to deviance behaviour in the workplace, has not yet been extensively researched so, climate was one of the factors examined in the research. In addition and despite its importance, an individual witness perspective towards deviance is still in its infancy. What are the behavioural responses of an individual while being a witness to supervisor, organizational, co-worker involvement in workplace destructive deviance? Therefore, the present study extended, developed and validated a construct to define and measure the witness behaviour towards workplace deviance behaviour using the theory of planned behaviour as its theoretical lens. This construct formed the second factor to be included in the model. This research makes use of the multi-strategy research paradigm that consists of two main studies: Study 2, 3 and 4 involves the development and validation of the witness behaviour towards workplace deviance scale; Study 5 involves the development and testing of a theoretical framework. Study 2 to 4 made use of a mixed methods strategy and inductive approach where the results from analysing the qualitative one-to-one interviews conducted in India and the USA formed the basis of scale construction. The scale, after undergoing rigorous analysis by using the quantitative data collected from India and the USA, resulted in a two-dimensional self-serving and intervening behaviour 9-item measure that proved to be a universal construct. It was then validated for construct, discriminant and predictive validity to classify it within the nomological network. It was found to sit closer to the phenomenon of voluntary behaviours, thus contributing to deviance and scale development literature. Study 5 involved the development of a conceptual framework that was tested with the quantitative data collected from India and the USA. The results provided support that when an individual has high organizational climate experience as well as more self-serving and less intervening behaviour, he/she would be involved in more constructive and destructive deviance behaviour providing support that organizations should focus on these factors and a clear distinction should be made between negative and positive deviance accepted within the organization. The results also provided support that individualistic and collectivistic orientation of an individual did moderate the effect of organizational climate, self-serving and intervening behaviour with destructive and constructive deviance. Therefore, an individual's orientation to individualism and collectivism would influence the relationship of organizational climate and witness behaviour towards workplace deviance so that organizations may benefit from implementing the study findings and suggestions. This would then prevent individuals from becoming involved in destructive deviance and enhance their involvement in constructive deviance.

The current study analyzes the impact of ethical work climates (caring, law and code, rules, instrumental and independence climates) and perceptions of organizational justice (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) on workplace deviance (organizational and interpersonal deviance) which is associated with huge financial, social and psychological costs for the organizations and organizational members. The findings of the research are based on a quantitative survey conducted among 219 employees in a public organization. The results obtained after controlling the significant effect of demographic variables revealed that it was only the perceptions of procedural justice that had a significant negative impact on organizational deviance. Distributive and interactional justice predicted neither interpersonal nor organizational deviance. Among the ethical work climates, caring climate was found to be the only ethical climate type that predicted organizational deviance. The remaining types of ethical work climates had significant relationships with neither one of the interpersonal or organizational deviance. Results also showed that ethical work climate was a better predictor of organizational deviance than interpersonal deviance.

This research examined the effect of social class on the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace deviance. Within the social class literature we found conflicting theoretical arguments regarding the effect that social class would have on responses to abuse. To address this discordance we examined the effect of social class on responses to abusive supervision in four samples using multiple methods. Results confirmed that social class moderates the association between abusive supervision and workplace deviance. Specifically, the effect of abusive supervision on workplace deviance was stronger for higher social classes. In our laboratory research, the use of an abusive supervision prime and a subjective social class manipulation provided preliminary evidence for this effect. Our multi-wave field research provided evidence that these findings extend to actual employee behavior (i.e., interpersonal and organizational deviance). Implications for the abusive supervision literature are discussed.

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between abusive supervision, leader-member¡¦s exchange relationship, employee cynicism and workplace deviance behavior. The total valid sample consisted of 405 employees from Financial Services companies in Taiwan workplace. Moreover, the data from paired questionnaire reponsed by matched supervisors and subordinates (the 1¡G2 ratio) and was analyzed by factor analysis, reliability analysis with the SEM model to measure the relationship among the constructs. From the results, the Abusive supervision has a positive influence on Employee cynicism and Workplace deviance behavior. On the other hand, Abusive supervision has a negative influence on Leader-member¡¦s exchange relationship. In addition, Leader-member¡¦s exchange relationship also has negative influences on Workplace deviance behavior and Employee Cynicism. Furthermore, Leader-member¡¦s exchange relationship mediated the relationship between Abusive supervision and Workplace deviance behavior as well. Based on the results, the author suggests four proposals on the management practice. First of all, supervisors could take participative leadership. Secondly, supervisors can encourage or praise the subordinates, were considered out-group members, for their efforts. Thirdly, the enterprises could consider implementing the EAP (Employee Assistance Program) to console with those being abused employees. On the other hand, firms could launch the Assessment Center to select potential candidates who have possessed of participative leadership from the beginning.