The Link between Ethical Profiles of Employees and Workplace Deviant Behavior: An individual level Indicator for Productivity and Innovation

Abstract

Workplace deviant behaviors have gained more attention of researchers in recent years, than ever before. The business leaders are witnessing ever-increasing ethical concerns at one end; while dealing with organizational level workplace deviant behaviors which are not healthy for workplaces because they are syphoning off a lot of strength of organizations; which could else wise been utilized in facing the tough competition while presenting a good corporate image. Especially in the manufacturing sector where productivity, efficiency and innovation are key driving factors of success, workplace deviant behavior may play a very significant role in the overall success of the companies. Research shows that WDB is negatively correlated with Individual performances and productivity. There are a number of researchers who have conceptualized a link of workplace deviant behaviors to ethics. However, empirical studies linking both of them in the Indian context are limited. The paper attempts to draw a connection between the psychometric ethical profile of employees to workplace deviant behavior. In other words; the paper attempts to find if ethical profile of employees could predict the extent of workplace deviant behavior by an employee. Quantitative research has been done for purpose of testing the relationship between ethical profile of an employee to his likelihood in exhibiting workplace deviant behavior. Sample size included 141 employees with at least 3 years of working experience in design or technology sectors, so that they could comprehend ethical philosophy as well as comment upon various items presented in the workplace deviant behavior questionnaire. The respondents were requested to respond to a set of items on two scales; one being the Ethical Profile Scale developed by Forsyth (1980) [6] and the other being the Workplace Deviant behavior scale developed by Bennet et al (1997) [4]. Analysis of data was done using SPSS 16 which included Factor analysis, reliability tests and regression between the constructs. The study shows a strong evidence of direct relationship of relativism to likeliness of workplace deviant behavior and inverse relationship between idealism and likeliness of workplace deviant behavior.