The Impact of the Quality of Interpersonal Relationships between Employees on Counterproductive Work Behavior: A Study of Employees in Poland

Dawid Szostek
Additional contact information
Dawid Szostek: Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management, University of Nicolaus Copernicus in Torun, Gagarina 13a, 87-100 Torun, Poland

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 21, 1-33

Abstract: The purpose of the article is to determine how the quality of interpersonal relationships at work (QIRW) affects the extent of counterproductive work behavior (CWB), and whether this impact is moderated by employees’ demographic features (education, age, sex, length of service and type of work). These questions are particularly important for organizations that want to function sustainably, because counterproductive behavior also includes wasting resources, polluting the environment and using environmentally unfriendly products. The research objectives were met using a survey conducted in 2018 among 1488 professionally active people in Poland. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the empirical data. The proposed theoretical model was intended to determine how particular categories of relationship quality affect dimensions of CWB (which included taking into account employees’ aforementioned demographic features). I determined that relationship quality has an inverse relationship with counterproductive behavior of employees (the higher the quality, the lower the propensity for CWB), but there are also many paradoxes that I discuss in detail. Moreover, this impact is significantly moderated by employees’ demographic features (mainly education, type of work, length of service and sex). I also discuss the theoretical contributions, practical implications and limitations of this study, and directions for future research.

Keywords: quality of relationships at work; counterproductive work behaviors; counterproductive sustainability behaviors; demographic features (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/5916/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/5916/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:21:p:5916-:d:279928

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().