Predicting workplace deviance from the interaction between organizational justice and personality.

Workplace deviance refers to voluntary behaviors by employees that violate significant company norms, policies, or rules and threaten the well-being of the organization and/or its members (Robinson and Bennett, 1995). Examples of workplace deviance include both behaviors directed at organizations (e.g., theft, sabotage, coming to work late, putting little effort into work) and individuals in the workplace, such as supervisors or coworkers (e.g., making fun of others, playing mean pranks, acting rudely, arguing). Until recently, workplace deviance has been a neglected topic in organizational research (e.g., Greenberg and Scott, 1996). Instead, researchers emphasize behaviors such as organizational citizenship behavior or contextual performance that result in positive outcomes for organizations. However, attention is turning to the study of behaviors at the other end of the spectrum be cause of their increasing prevalence and detrimental effects on organizations. Employee theft and fraud is the fastest growing type of crime in the U.S. (Coffin, 2003). It has been estimated that three quarters of employees steal at least once from their employer (Coffin, 2003) and that 95% of all organizations experience employee theft (Case, 2000). The prevalence of deviant employee behaviors is especially disturbing when the costs to both affected organizations and individuals are considered. For instance, the financial costs associated with theft by employees in the U.S. have been estimated at $50 billion annually (Coffin, 2003). Further, employees who are targets of workplace deviance are more likely to quit, have stress-related problems, decreased productivity, low morale, lost work time (O'Leary-Kelly et al., 1996), damaged self-esteem, increased fear and insecurity at work, and psychological and physical pain (Griffin el al., 1998). Research regarding workplace deviance often investigates personal (e.g., Douglas and Martinko, 2001; Salgado, 2002) or situational (e.g., Greenberg, 1990; Skarlicki and Fob get, 1997) predictors while neglecting the interaction between the two. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the workplace deviance literature by adopting an interactional approach to empirically examine how both person- and situation-based variables interact to explain workplace deviance. Specifically, organizational justice and employee personality are hypothesized to interact in the prediction of workplace deviance after controlling for demographics known to influence participation in deviant work behaviors. The following sections discuss the approaches for studying workplace deviance, the negative relationship between organizational justice and workplace deviance, and two personality traits that may moderate this relationship (socialization and impulsivity). INTERACTIONAL APPROACH TO STUDYING WORKPLACE DEVIANCE Two perspectives have emerged to predict workplace deviance. The first, situation-based, advocates that certain characteristics of the work environment predispose organizations to employee deviance. That is, workplace deviance is solely a product of the organization in which employees work. Empirical research demonstrates that certain organizational factors make companies more vulnerable to deviant behaviors by employees such as job stressors (e.g., Fox et al., 2001), organizational frustration (e.g., Spector, 1975), lack of control over the work environment (e.g., Bennett, 1998), weak sanctions for rule violations (e.g., Hollinger and Clark, 1983), and organizational changes such as downsizing (e.g., Baron and Neuman, 1996). Thus, according to this perspective, employees will commit deviant acts at work depending on the work environment they are in regardless of their individual characteristics. The second perspective uses person-based explanations to expound why employees vary in their propensity to be deviant. According to this perspective, personality dictates how individuals will behave irrespective of the environment or situation they are in. …