Management-Supervision as a cause of deviant behavior in organisations

Management-Supervision as a cause of deviant behavior in organisations

Another key factor that encourages CWB and deviance is abusive supervision and unfair treatment or organizational injustice. Supervisors and managers  who inflict various forms of non-physical hostility  to their  subordinates like loud outbursts, abusive language, threats, belittling and undermining them cause psychological distress and indisposition to work among employees.

Unfair treatment comes in when employees feel that the rules that have been established to increase efficiency and service quality are unjust and especially if they impede their abilities to do their jobs.

Employees can perceive organizational justice in two ways: interpersonal justice that influences the degree to which the organizations treat employees with understanding, respect and dignity and informational justice referring to the apparent sufficiency of explanations managements give about measures and outcomes that have an effect on employees. If employees perceive injustice of any of the two they may resolve to CWB to diminish their supportive behaviours to evade exploitation.( Bennett, Robinson 2000).

When managers violate trust in their employees, they are likely to do the exact opposite of the instructions of the manager when he goes out. Some managers think that workers cannot be dependable to act morally or in the top interest of the business.

Lack of trust is displayed in incidences like when managers harshly reprimand employees in the face of clients or colleagues and the employee feels  humiliated  for  being scolded in public,. In such cases the trust existing between the managers and his workers is broken, and collegiality dwindles. Employees feel that their manager could not have confidence in them to perform their jobs appropriately.

Trust between employees and the managers is a double-edged sword: the existence of trust can improve the connection and raise performance, however when violated it may also lead to worse cases of deviant behaviours (Litzky, Eddleston, Kidder 2006).