Introduction to the Special Issue on Counterproductive Behaviors at Work

Employees can engage in a wide spectrum of counterproductive, disruptive, antisocial, and deviant behaviors at work. Counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) include, but are not limited to, theft, white collar crime, absenteeism, tardiness, drug and alcohol abuse, disciplinary problems, accidents, sabotage, sexual harassment, and violence. Such counterproductivity costs employers billions of dollars annually worldwide. Additional resources are spent on attempts to forecast such undesirable on-the-job behaviors at the time of hire, sometimes using questionable methods. The objective in this special issue of the International Journal of Selection and Assessment (IJSA) was to publish papers that explore the prevalence, causes and consequences of CWB in organizations. To this end, papers that enhance our understanding of CWB and meaningfully contribute to personnel selection and assessment practices in organizations were sought. Papers that focused on the determinants of and co-variation among various CWB so that effective selection and assessment techniques can be developed and utilized were particularly welcome. The Call for Papers included further specification of the domain. It stated `Specific topics for the special issue may include: theories of workplace deviance, theft at work, white collar crime, absenteeism and tardiness as dysfunctional behaviors, substance abuse at work, workplace violence, sexual harassment, the role of individual differences in disruptive behaviors at work, integrity testing in organizations, and the role of stress in counterproductivity at work. Papers on legal and ethical dimensions of counterproductivity and applicant and other stakeholder reactions to organizational use of selection systems to curb counterproductivity are also invited. Submission of theoretical work that synthesizes and expands the existing literature as well as manuscripts that provide empirical investigations on measurement and prediction are desired. Consistent with the major aim of IJSA to promote international and cross-cultural research of excellence on personnel selection, we especially welcome papers that explore cultural influences on workplace counterproductivity.' It is quite unfortunate that much of the literature on CWB is quite fragmented. There are a multitude of behaviors that are considered counterproductive. These include workplace deviance, theft at work, white collar crime, corruption, bullying, absenteeism and tardiness, substance abuse, workplace violence, and sexual harassment. Researchers tend to specialize in a particular counterproductive behavior. The consequence of such specialization is theory building that is specific to specific counterproductive behaviors, often ignoring relevant developments from other areas. The area also suffers from perhaps too much armchair hypothesizing and too little basic, empirical work. Indeed, many books on CWB suffer from too much qualitative review and unsubstantiated hypotheses and too few primary studies to fuel theory building efforts. For the special issue, I was sensitive to these special needs in the literature, and therefore aimed to accept a broad spectrum of high quality papers, including strong empirical and substantiated theoretical contributions as well as papers geared toward practitioners. This special issue includes 9 empirical articles (reporting over two dozen primary studies), 2 meta-analyses, 3 papers presenting theoretical advances based on empirical data from the literature and 2 papers addressing specific issues of concern for practitioners. Twelve of these papers are presented as feature articles, 2 as short notes, and 2 as practitioner forum papers. True to the international nature of this journal, authors represent multiple countries, including Canada, Germany, Spain, and the USA. The empirical research presented also has been carried out in multiple countries: Argentina, Canada, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, and the USA. The call for papers for the special issue received a total of 27 submissions for consideration. Each paper was reviewed by 2±5 external reviewers who were blind to the identity of the authors. In the review process, double-