Counterproductive Workplace Behaviors (CWBs): Antecedents and Outcomes

Abstract

Counterproductive workplace behaviors such as stealing, sabotage, fraud, sexual harrassment, etc are pervvasive in workplaces and deleterious to organizational functioning and effectiveness. Lately, the behaviors have attracted the interest of organizational researchers beacuse of its negative to organizational effectiveness. The behaviors which have cost organizations enormous financial losses (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007) tend to unermine the well-being of organizations and their members. Studies have shown that the behaviors constitute a serious threat to organizational functioning in many countries. In developing countries such as Nigeria where data many not be available, the losses to the behavior could be staggering and bewildering. For instance, Igbe (2017) reports that faculty members of Nigerian universities indulge in such counterproductive behaviors as corruption, incivility, extortion, selling of marks, sexual harrassment etc. The beviors are stressful to organizations; compromise the quality of organizational life and cause material damages and in the aggregate hurt the reputation of organizations.