Bad for what purpose? An investigation of motives for counterproductive work behavior

Mindy K. Shoss, Katherine Ciarlante, Xinyue Zhao and Larissa K. Barber

Chapter 25 in Handbook of Counterproductive Work Behavior, 2025, pp 444-466 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Why do employees engage in such counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) as withholding effort, purposely failing to follow rules, and behaving rudely towards others? Researchers have proposed a range of motivations for CWB: retaliation, social regulation, emotion-focused coping, problem awareness, collective action, excitement, conserve effort, social conformity, achieving a task-related goal, helping, power, and pursuing a need/want-based goal. Yet, because these motives are discussed in separate studies and separate streams of the CWB literature, we do not know whether they are distinguishable or differentially linked to targets of CWB (people versus organization). These questions have important implications for promoting parsimony in CWB-motive discussions and facilitating a motivational perspective on these behaviors. Using survey data from workers in a variety of industries, we found support for the distinctiveness of many CWB motives. Additionally, CWB motives had distinct patterns of relationships with interpersonal versus organizational CWB.

Keywords: Counterproductive work behavior; Aggression; Deviance; Motivation; Retaliation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035306664
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