The emergence of deviant behaviors in the physical work environment

Pablo Zoghbi-Manrique- de-Lara and Maryamsadat Sharifiatashgah

International Journal of Manpower, 2019, vol. 40, issue 5, 1012-1026

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, the relationship between crowding perceptions (i.e. employees’ perceptions of insufficient personal space due to offices’ physical constraints) and deviant workplace behaviors (DWBs) directed at both the organization as a whole (DWB-O) and individuals (DWB-I); and second, privacy invasion from supervisors and peers as a mediator. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected from 299 respondents working in open-plan offices at four medium-to-large sized IT-based companies. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the paper suggests that under crowding conditions employees can perceive the physical workspace as a space-related resource that is threatened leading them to engage in DWBs out of a conservation strategy. Findings - Structural equation modeling results significantly supported main effects of employees’ crowding perceptions on the two types of DWBs, with privacy invasion from supervisors and peers as full mediator. Research limitations/implications - The study could suffer from mono-method/source bias, and specificities of the studied IT-based companies and their work can raise concerns about the generalizability of the results. Practical implications - The findings indicate that a proper physical office arrangement can be a useful tool for managers in combating employee DWB. Originality/value - To date, the origin of workplace deviance has mainly been investigated in terms of the psychosocial work environment; however, the physical labor conditions (i.e. the layout of buildings, furniture, workspace, air conditioning, workplace density, etc.) have received little systematic attention.

Keywords: Workplace deviance; Open-plan office; Physical work environment; Crowding perceptions; DWBs; Privacy invasion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:ijmpps:ijm-09-2018-0307

DOI: 10.1108/IJM-09-2018-0307

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Manpower is currently edited by Professor Adrian Ziderman

More articles in International Journal of Manpower from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().