Counterproductive work behaviour
Voluntary behaviour that harms the organisation or the people in it: theft, sabotage, deliberate slowness, absenteeism, lying, gossip, incivility, bullying. It runs from minor to serious and from targeting the organisation to targeting individuals.
What drives it
It restores a sense of fairness or control after perceived injustice, discharges frustration that cannot be expressed directly, or simply serves self-interest in people low on honesty-humility and conscientiousness. Situation and personality both predict it.
How it shows
Work
In a leader: expense padding, leaking to the press, undermining a rival executive, cutting corners on compliance. In a team: long breaks, working slowly on purpose, ‘losing’ files, malicious gossip, small thefts that are framed as compensation (“they owe me”), incivility towards one target. Often rises after layoffs, pay cuts or an unfair promotion. As the leader: when CWB spreads, look at justice and stressors before personalities; when it is concentrated in one person regardless of conditions, look at the person.
Relationships
The same mix of retaliation and self-justification appears in families: the sibling who quietly takes from the business because they feel underpaid, the relative who gossips to the staff. It is often framed as fairness.
Self
A sense of entitlement to small liberties after feeling wronged (“after everything I’ve done”), a pleasure in someone else’s project failing, and telling yourself it does not really count.
What tells it apart
Passive aggression: Passive aggression is an indirect relational style aimed at a person; CWB includes deliberate concrete acts such as theft or sabotage, and can be committed without any interpersonal hostility.
Disengagement and quiet quitting: Disengagement withholds extra effort but does no harm; CWB actively damages.
Moral licensing: Moral licensing follows a good deed and permits a lapse; CWB more often follows a perceived wrong and serves to retaliate or even the score.
A test
Map incidents against recent changes in pay, workload or fairness; a rise after a perceived injustice points to situational CWB, a constant level in one person points to disposition.
Questions to carry
- Set against recent changes in pay, workload or fairness, when did the incidents start and rise?
- After I felt treated unfairly at work, what small thing did I do to even the score?
How strong the research is
strong
Where it comes from
Sandra Robinson and Rebecca Bennett, 1995 (typology of workplace deviance); Paul Sackett and Cynthia DeVore, 2001; Paul Spector and Suzy Fox, 2005 (stressor-emotion model)