Journal of Occupational Health Psychology

2010, Vol. 15, No. 2, 154 166

2010 American Psychological Association

1076-8998/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0018349

Can Counterproductive Work Behaviors Be Productive? CWB as

Emotion-Focused Coping
Mindy M. Krischer and Lisa M. Penney

Emily M. Hunter

University of Houston

Baylor University

The goal of our study was to determine whether some forms of counterproductive work behavior
(CWB) may serve to benefit employees. Building on the stressorstrain framework and theories
of coping, we investigated whether two forms of CWB, production deviance and withdrawal,
serve as a means of coping to mitigate the impact of low distributive and procedural justice on
emotional exhaustion. Results from a survey of 295 employed persons from around the United
States suggest that production deviance and withdrawal may benefit employees by reducing
emotional exhaustion in the face of low distributive justice but not necessarily low procedural
justice.
Keywords: counterproductive work behavior, coping, burnout, justice

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) refers to

willful behaviors by employees that have the potential to harm an organization, its members, or both
(Spector & Fox, 2005). The most well-known typology of CWB classifies behaviors according to
whether they target another person or the organization (Robinson & Bennett, 1995), although others
have made finer distinctions. For example, Spector et
al. (2006) proposed five categories of CWB: abuse
against others (e.g., ignoring or arguing with others),
sabotage (e.g., physically damaging organizational
property), theft, production deviance (e.g., intentionally working slowly, doing work incorrectly, or neglecting to follow procedures), and withdrawal (e.g.,
taking longer breaks than allowed, arriving late, leaving early).
CWB is estimated to cost organizations billions of
dollars each year (Bennett & Robinson, 2000) and is,
therefore, of considerable concern to organizations.
Accordingly, researchers have offered a number of
theories to better understand and ultimately control

Mindy M. Krischer and Lisa M. Penney, Department of

Psychology, University of Houston; Emily M. Hunter, Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Hankamer
School of Business, Baylor University.
Portions of this article were presented at the annual
meeting of the Academy of Management, Chicago, IL,
August 2009.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mindy M. Krischer, Department of Psychology,
University of Houston, Houston, TX 77024. E-mail:
mmkrischer@uh.edu

154

these costly behaviors. Most theories of CWB, including the stressor emotion model (Spector & Fox,
2005) and causal reasoning theory (Martinko, Gundlach, & Douglas, 2002), describe an affective event
process wherein an individuals subjective appraisal
of a workplace event results in a negative emotional
experience that in turn motivates an act of CWB.
Thus, these theories describe employee CWB as a
reaction to aversive environmental and emotional
experiences. Neuman and Baron (2005) present
CWB in a general aggression framework and argue
that employees perform acts of CWB either as a
reaction to a provocative event (i.e., hostile) or to
obtain some desired end (i.e., instrumental). Hostile
motives are consistent with affect-driven theories;
however, few studies have examined potential instrumental motives of CWB (notable exceptions include
Bies, Tripp, & Kramer, 1997; Folger & Skarlicki,
2005).
Diefendorff and Mehta (2007) argued that the neglect of individual motivation represents a serious
gap in CWB research. Whereas destructive at the
organizational level, individuals may experience
some benefit as a result of performing CWB that
encourages these behaviors. According to Penney
and Spector (2007), theories of emotion regulation
and coping provide an alternative perspective on the
instrumental use of CWB by suggesting that some
employee CWB may be performed as an attempt to
cope with stressful situations at work and reduce the
experience of negative emotions. Coping refers to the
cognitive and behavioral steps taken by individuals in
response to perceived demands or stressors (Lazarus

CWB AS EMOTION-FOCUSED COPING

& Folkman, 1984). Stressors typically result in employee strain (e.g., emotional exhaustion, Ito &
Brotheridge, 2003), and successful coping buffers the
negative impact of stressors and reduces strain. Although CWB has not been studied in relation to
coping, some coping behaviors could be considered
counterproductive from an organizations perspective. For example, employee withdrawal (e.g., taking
longer breaks than allowed) may reflect attempts by
employees to limit their exposure to stressful situations and prevent subsequent strain. Production deviance (e.g., intentionally working slowly) may serve
as a strategy to gain control over stressors and the
accompanying negative emotional reactions. In spite
of the similarities between some CWB and coping,
no studies to date have examined whether employees
use CWB as a coping mechanism to prevent strain
outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of the current study
was to examine CWB within a coping framework to
determine whether certain types of CWB mitigate the
impact of job stressors on a common psychological
strain: emotional exhaustion.

Emotional Exhaustion and the

StressorStrain Framework
Emotional exhaustion is one of the most widely
studied correlates of job stressors (R. T. Lee & Ashforth, 1996; Maslach & Jackson, 1984) and is considered an important psychological strain (Maslach &
Leiter, 2008; Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004). Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being overextended and generally worn down and is a key component of burnout (Maslach & Jackson, 1984). From
a conservation of resources perspective (Hobfoll,
1989), emotional exhaustion represents a depletion of
emotional resources and has been associated with
turnover (Wright & Cropanzano, 1998), cardiovascular and sleep problems (Saleh & Shapiro, 2008),
decreased motivation, and decreased task performance and citizenship behaviors (Halbesleben &
Bowler, 2007). Emotional exhaustion is also an antecedent to other dimensions of burnout, such as
depersonalization of others and reduced personal accomplishment (Maslach, 1982).
The stressorstrain framework is widely used to
explain how negative events lead to individual responses, including emotional exhaustion, CWB, and
coping (e.g., Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001; Grant &
Langan-Fox, 2006; Ito & Brotheridge, 2003). A key
assumption of this framework is that individuals ap-

155

praise events in their environment as threatening or

nonthreatening, especially with regard to cognitive,
emotional, or physical resources (Lazarus, 1991). In
the workplace, threatening events are referred to as
job stressors and include organizational constraints,
interpersonal conflict, role conflict, role ambiguity,
and perceptions of injustice (see Fox et al., 2001, for
a review). Job stressors can lead to strains, which are
defined as negative outcomes that result from stress
(Spector, 1998). Strains can be physical, psychological, or behavioral (Jex & Beehr, 1991). Physical
strains include health outcomes, such as tension
headaches and sleep disruption. Psychological strains
include negative emotional reactions, such as anger,
anxiety, frustration, and over time, emotional exhaustion and burnout. Consistent with the stressorstrain
framework, a number of job stressors have been
associated with emotional exhaustion including work
overload (Maslach & Goldberg, 1998), role conflict
(R. T. Lee & Ashforth, 1996), and perceived inequity
(Taris, Peeters, Le Blanc, Schreurs, & Schaufeli,
2001).
Behavioral strains reflect actions that an individual
performs as a result of experiencing stressors and
often include attempts at coping. According to Folkman, Lazarus, Dunkel-Schetter, Delongis, and Gruen
(1986), coping involves efforts to conserve emotional, cognitive, or physical resources either by addressing the stressor or the concomitant negative
emotion. Although many classifications of coping
have been proposed, the most widely used distinction
is between problem-focused and emotion-focused
coping (Skinner, Edge, Altman, & Sherwood, 2003).
Folkman and Lazarus (1980) define problem-focused
coping as efforts taken to directly address the source
of the problem to reduce or eliminate the stressor.
Examples of problem-focused coping include generating options to address the problem, evaluating each
option, and engaging in steps to solve the problem
(Baker & Berenbaum, 2007). In contrast, emotionfocused coping serves to reduce an individuals negative emotional response to a stressor, such as venting emotions, seeking out social support, positively
reinterpreting events, trying to distract oneself by
engaging in other activities, and increasing drug and
alcohol use (Baker & Berenbaum, 2007; Latack &
Havlovic, 1992). According to Lazarus (1996), the
primary distinction between emotion-focused and
problem-focused coping is the function of coping,
not necessarily the specific behavior or cognition.
Conceptualizations of coping also distinguish coping
from coping effectiveness (Latack & Havlovic,

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KRISCHER, PENNEY, AND HUNTER

1992). As coping reflects attempts by an individual to

manage stressors, coping is effective if it prevents,
avoids, or controls individual distress (Latack &
Havlovic, 1992, p. 483). Therefore, emotional exhaustion can be a key indicator of effective coping in
the workplace (Ito & Brotheridge, 2003).

Coping and CWB

From an organizations perspective, employee
coping behaviors can be productive or counterproductive (Spector, 1998). For example, an employee
who responds to a heavy workload by developing a
more efficient process for completing his or her work
contributes to organizational productivity. However,
an employee who responds to a heavy workload by
deliberately skipping crucial steps in the work process that could jeopardize product quality to complete work faster or who takes longer breaks to avoid
his or her workload detracts from organizational efficiency and productivity. We are not the first to
acknowledge that CWB may reflect employee coping. Spector and Fox (2002) suggested that CWB
often results from an emotional response and aims
either to actively attack the cause of the situation or
to passively and indirectly cope with the emotion
(p. 274). Similarly, Allen and Greenberger (1980)
suggested that individuals might engage in destructive or vengeful acts, including CWB, to increase
feelings of control over a stressful situation. In terms
of the stressorstrain framework, we suggest that
CWB can be performed as a manifestation of negative emotion associated with stressors, and it may
also serve an instrumental coping function that mitigates the negative effect of perceived stressors on
subsequent strain. That is, some forms of CWB may
reflect attempts at emotion-focused coping to prevent
or reduce emotional exhaustion.
According to Baker and Berenbaum (2007), problem-focused coping is more effective than emotionfocused coping. However, other researchers have
suggested that the wide range of emotion-focused
coping strategies and wide variety of stressful situations make any blanket statement of the effectiveness
of emotion-focused coping suspect (Austenfeld &
Stanton, 2004; Baker & Berenbaum, 2007). In particular, the literature on coping outcomes suggests
that emotion-focused coping is effective in situations
wherein one has little to no control over stressors
(Folkman & Lazarus, 1985; Goral, Kesimci, & Gencoz, 2006; Zakowski, Hall, Klein, & Baum, 2001).
Indeed, Folkman and Lazarus (1980) noted that although stressors can elicit both types of coping, prob-

lem-focused coping tends to occur when people feel

that they can effectively address the stressor, whereas
emotion-focused coping tends to occur when people
feel that the stressor is uncontrollable. In the stress
literature, perceived control over a stressor is said to
play an important role in diminishing the effects of
stressors on subsequent strain (Karasek, 1979). For
example, the negative effects of having to complete a
large amount of work can be reduced by giving
employees control over the specific tasks and pace of
work (Spector, 1998). However, not all sources of
perceived stress are subject to the control of employees. In particular, stressors are likely least subject to
employee control when the source is a more powerful
entity, such as the employing organization (Lind &
van den Bos, 2002).

Organizational Justice
The lack of organizational justice is one of the
most commonly researched workplace stressors and
one of the strongest predictors of CWB (Berry, Ones,
& Sackett, 2007). Organizational justice refers to the
perceived fairness of the interactions between individuals and organizations. Two of the most widely
studied forms of organizational justice are distributive and procedural justice. Distributive justice refers
to the perceived fairness of reward allocation (i.e., the
extent to which ones pay reflects the work that one
has completed), whereas procedural justice refers to
the perceived fairness of the processes by which
decisions are made (i.e., the extent to which decisions
are based on accurate information, made without
bias). Although other forms of justice are also discussed in the extant literature (e.g., interpersonal and
informational; Colquitt, 2001), we focus on perceptions of distributive and procedural justice because
these forms are often perceived as discretionary activities on the part of the organization as opposed to
individual supervisors (Fasolo, 1995; Moorman,
Blakely, & Niehoff, 1998; Shore & Shore, 1995) and
therefore are more likely to be perceived by employees as outside the scope of their direct influence. A
growing body of research has linked low levels of
justice with poor psychological and physiological
outcomes (e.g., Vermunt & Steensma, 2005), including emotional exhaustion (Tepper, 2000) and absenteeism (De Boer, Bakker, Syroit, & Schaufeli, 2002).
Therefore, in line with previous research evidence,
we propose the following hypothesis:

CWB AS EMOTION-FOCUSED COPING

Hypothesis 1: Perceptions of distributive and

procedural justice are negatively related to emotional exhaustion.
We further suggest that when faced with low distributive or procedural justice, stressors over which
one has little control, employees may engage in some
forms of CWB as emotion-focused coping to reduce
emotional exhaustion. We do not, however, expect all
forms of CWB to be effective coping strategies in
response to low justice. Because the source of perceived injustice is more powerful than the individual
(i.e., the organization), we expect that CWB will be
largely covert rather than overt (Aquino, Tripp, &
Bies, 2001; Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994). According to Baron and Neuman (1996), others generally perceive overt behaviors, such as destroying
property and yelling, as having a clear harmful intent.
Overt behaviors may not be effective coping strategies for reducing emotional exhaustion because they
come with the added stress of being identified and
suffering consequences (e.g., verbal or written reprimand, termination) that could lead to additional
strain. However, covert behaviors, such as purposely
working slowly or taking longer breaks than allowed,
may not be perceived by others as necessarily intending harm, and are therefore less likely to result in
negative consequences. Two such covert forms of
CWB are withdrawal and production deviance.
Withdrawal behaviors can buffer the impact of low
perceived justice and reduce emotional exhaustion by
helping employees replenish emotional resources.
When employees feel angry about a lack of distributive or procedural justice, leaving work early or
taking longer breaks enables them to temporarily
escape a situation that induces negative emotions
(Spector et al., 2006; Westman & Etzion, 2001).
While away, feelings of anger may dissipate and
emotional homeostasis can be restored. Our argument is consistent with two emotion regulation processes described by Gross (1998), situation selection
and response modulation. Situation selection refers to
deliberately engaging or avoiding certain people,
places, or situations to avoid things that might lead to
unwanted emotion. Response modulation occurs after
negative emotions have been aroused and consists of
actions taken to reduce the physiological, experiential, or behavioral aspects of emotional response
(Lord & Harvey, 2002, p. 136). For example, if
employees experience anger or other negative emotions because of unfair treatment, then taking time
away from work may reduce the experience or severity of those emotions and, by extension, their

157

emotional exhaustion. Working slowly, a form of

production deviance, may also operate in the same
manner. A recent meta-analysis provides support for
the temporary benefit of withdrawal in response to
stressors in terms of physical symptoms of strain
(Darr & Johns, 2008). Indeed, there is growing evidence that absences from the workplace of any duration can lead to positive outcomes such as decreased perceptions of job stressors and burnout
(Etzion, Eden, & Lapidot, 1998), increased work
engagement, proactive behavior, and performance,
and self-reported well-being (Fritz & Sonnentag,
2005; Sonnentag, 2003).
Furthermore, research on retaliation provides support for production deviance as emotion-focused coping performed in response to injustice. According to
equity theory (Adams, 1963), when employees perceive their ratio of organizational outcomes (e.g.,
pay) to inputs (e.g., effort) to be smaller than the ratio
of others, they may become resentful and restore
equity by withholding inputs. Thus, production deviance may reflect coping in the form of situation
modification or efforts to directly modify the situation so as to alter its emotional impact (Gross, 1998,
p. 283). Therefore, by allowing employees to feel that
they are evening the score, production deviance,
such as intentionally working slowly, doing work
incorrectly, and deliberately ignoring procedures,
may increase employees perceptions of control in
the face of perceived injustice, thereby reducing emotional exhaustion. A number of studies have shown
that coping efforts that restore an individuals perceived sense of control are negatively associated
with emotional exhaustion (Ito & Brotheridge,
2003; Leiter, 1991; Meier, Semmer, Elfering, &
Jacobshagen, 2008). In addition, research in social
psychology and neuropsychology indicates that individuals believe that retaliation against offending
others will make them feel better (Bushman,
Baumeister, & Phillips, 2001; de Quervain et al.,
2004). Thus, we expect that when employees experience low levels of distributive or procedural
justice, production deviance and withdrawal may
serve as emotion-focused coping and reduce emotional exhaustion.
Hypothesis 2: Production deviance moderates
the relationship between perceptions of justice
and emotional exhaustion. The negative relationship between justice and emotional exhaustion is weaker when production deviance is frequent compared with infrequent.

158

KRISCHER, PENNEY, AND HUNTER

Hypothesis 3: Withdrawal moderates the relationship between perceptions of justice and

emotional exhaustion. The negative relationship
between justice and emotional exhaustion is
weaker when withdrawal is frequent compared
with infrequent.

Method
Participants and Procedure
We recruited participants through the StudyResponse Project (2004), an online research participant
panel with more than 95,000 participants. Researchers at Syracuse University designed this tool to provide social scientists with a means of conducting
Web-based surveys with large, diverse samples.
StudyResponse participants volunteer to be contacted
for participation (Stanton & Weiss, 2002), and samples collected with this tool have been used in several
recently published studies (e.g., Harris, Anseel, &
Lievens, 2008; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006).
Based on the participant requirements that we provided (e.g., full-time employed adults living in the
United States), StudyResponse e-mailed the initial
recruitment notice, which included a brief description
of the study, including time requirements, incentives
offered (entry into a random drawing to receive one
of 20 $50 gift certificates), and a link to the Webbased survey, followed by a reminder e-mail 1 week
later to a random sample of 988 individuals in their
participant pool; 522 individuals responded (52.8%).
However, we dropped 124 cases because of responses to two items designed to detect nonconscientious responding (e.g., This item for key purposes
only. Please select Agree.). We dropped an additional 103 cases because of substantial missing data,
leaving 295 usable cases.
Participants (44.5% men and 92% Caucasian)
worked in a wide variety of jobs in a broad range of
industries, including education, law enforcement,
technology, government, transportation, finance, and
health care. They ranged in age from 21 to 67 years
(M 40.6 years) and in job tenure from 2 months to
37 years (M 7.18 years); 16.0% had a high school
diploma, 35.8% had an associates degree or some
college, 26.2% had a bachelors degree, 3.4% had
completed some graduate work, 8.8% had a masters
degree, and 4.8% had an advanced degree (5% did
not respond to the question). Although we requested
that participants work full-time, 20.8% worked parttime (40 hr/week). We compared mean scores of
participants working full- versus part-time for each of

the measures using t tests for independent samples

and found no significant differences.

Measures
Justice. Distributive justice was assessed with
Price and Muellers (1986) six-item scale (e.g.,
Please rate the extent to which you are fairly rewarded considering the responsibilities that you
have) using a scale of 1 (very unfairly) to 5 (very
fairly; .94). Procedural justice was measured
with Moormans (1991) 12-item scale (e.g., When
decisions about other employees in general or you in
particular are made in this company, the decisions are
applied with consistency to the parties affected)
using a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly
agree; .95).
CWB. The Counterproductive Work Behavior
Checklist (CWB-C; Spector et al., 2006) contains
three items for production deviance (e.g., Purposely
did your work incorrectly; .66) and four items
for withdrawal (e.g., Came to work late without
permission; .69). The checklist uses a response
scale of 1 (never) to 5 (every day). Although the
coefficient alphas for these subscales are below accepted standards, the subscales of the CWB-C are
considered causal indicator scales in which individual items are not interchangeable indicators of the
underlying construct. Causal indicator scales, including measures of CWB and socioeconomic status,
often result in lower estimated reliabilities because
individual items define the construct rather than acting as a reflection of an underlying construct (Spector
et al., 2006).
Emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion
was assessed using six items from the Job-Related
Affective Well-Being Scale (JAWS; Van Katwyk,
Fox, Spector, & Kelloway, 2000). The JAWS assesses employees emotional reactions to their job by
presenting a list of emotions, both positive and negative, and asking respondents to indicate how frequently they have experienced each over the past 30
days using a 5-point scale of 1 (never) to 5 (always).
Because the JAWS is not typically used to assess
emotional exhaustion, we asked two subject-matter
experts (a PhD I/O psychologist and an advanced
graduate student in I/O psychology) to read a brief
description of emotional exhaustion, along with
items from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach,
Jackson, & Leiter, 1996) and identify items from the
JAWS that fit the construct definition of emotional

CWB AS EMOTION-FOCUSED COPING

159

Table 1
Scale Intercorrelations and Alpha Coefficient Reliabilities
Variable
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Distributive justice
Procedural justice
Production deviance
Withdrawal
Emotional exhaustion

(.94)
.62
.01
.00
.38

(.95)
.01
.03
.41

(.66)
.54
.27

(.69)
.13

(.90)

Note. N 295. Reliability coefficients are presented along the main diagonal.
p .05. p .01.

quent. To test these hypotheses, we used hierarchical

linear regression with two justice variables, distributive and procedural, and two types of CWB, productive deviance and withdrawal, as the main effects.
Therefore, we estimated four hierarchical linear regression models predicting emotional exhaustion.
We mean-centered all variables prior to conducting
our analyses. For each model, we first entered four
control variables: tenure, hours worked per week,
age, and gender. At the second step, we entered the
main effect terms. At the third step, we entered the
interaction terms (see Table 2). We found significant
interactions between distributive justice and withdrawal behaviors ( 0.60, R2 .02, p .01),
distributive justice and production deviance (
0.50, R2 .01, p .05), and procedural justice and
withdrawal ( 0.42, R2 .01, p .05). However, the interaction between procedural justice and

exhaustion. Working independently, the two raters

achieved 100% agreement and identified the same six
items from the original 30-item scale: depressed,
discouraged, frustrated, gloomy, fatigued, and miserable ( .90).

Results
Intercorrelations and descriptive statistics of study
variables are presented in Table 1. Hypothesis 1 was
supported as both distributive and procedural justice
were negatively correlated with emotional exhaustion
(rs .38 and .41, respectively, ps .01). Hypotheses 2 and 3 predicted that production deviance
and withdrawal, respectively, would moderate the
relationship between justice perceptions and emotional exhaustion such that the relationships are
weaker when CWB is frequent compared with infre-

Table 2
Hierarchical Regression Results
Variable
Age
Gender
Tenure
Hours per week
Production deviance
Withdrawal
Distributive justice
Procedural justice
R2
Distributive Justice Production Deviance
Procedural Justice Production Deviance
Distributive Justice Withdrawal
Procedural Justice Withdrawal
R2
Change in R2

Model I

.11
.07
.02
.11
.10

.67
.25
.50

Model II

.11
.03
.03
.12
.07

.53
.25
.24

.26
.01

.25
.00

Note. Standardized regression coefficients are presented from Step 3 in each model.

p .05. p .01.

Model III

Model IV

.14
.04
.01
.09

.13
.002
.02
.11

.30
.77

.19

.19
.60
.21
.02

.64
.21

.42
.22
.01

160

KRISCHER, PENNEY, AND HUNTER

1.5

Emotional Exhaustion

1
Low
Production
Deviance
Med
Production
Deviance
High
Production
Deviance

0.5
0
-0.5
-1
-1.5

Low

High
Distributive Justice

Figure 1. The effect of perceptions of distributive justice on emotional exhaustion displayed

by level of production deviance.

production deviance ( 0.24, R2 .00, ns) was

nonsignificant.
To explore the nature of the interactions, we plotted three lines using values of the moderator at the
mean and 1 standard deviation above and below the
mean (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006). As shown
in Figure 1, the relationship between distributive
justice and emotional exhaustion was weaker among
employees who engaged in high levels of production
deviance ( 0.17, ns) compared with those who
engaged in low levels ( 1.17, p .01). Thus,
Hypothesis 2 was partially supported. As displayed
in Figures 2 and 3, withdrawal moderated the relationships between perceptions of low distributive and
procedural justice and emotional exhaustion such that

the relationships were weaker among employees who

engaged in high levels of withdrawal (s 0.17,
ns, and 0.22, p .05, respectively) compared with
those who engaged in low levels of withdrawal,
(s 1.37 and 1.06, ps .01, respectively).
Thus, Hypothesis 3 was fully supported.

Discussion
Leveraging the stressorstrain model and theories
of coping, we investigated whether two forms of
CWB, production deviance and withdrawal, mitigate
the impact of low perceived justice on employee
emotional exhaustion. We replicated past research
indicating that individuals who experience low jus-

Emotional Exhaustion

2
1.5
Low
Withdrawal
Med
Withdrawal
High
Withdrawal

1
0.5
0
-0.5
-1
-1.5

Low

High
Distributive Justice

Figure 2. The effect of perceptions of distributive justice on emotional exhaustion displayed

by level of withdrawal deviance.

CWB AS EMOTION-FOCUSED COPING

161

Emotional Exhaustion

1.5
1
Low
Withdrawal
Med
Withdrawal
High
Withdrawal

0.5
0
-0.5
-1
-1.00
Low

High1.00
Procedural Justice

Figure 3. The effect of perceptions of procedural justice on emotional exhaustion displayed

by level of withdrawal deviance.

tice tend to experience more emotional exhaustion

(Kausto, Elo, Lipponen, & Elovainio, 2005). This
finding suggests that improving justice levels in the
workplace will enhance worker well-being and reduce the need for workers to cope with stressful
situations at work. In addition, although the idea that
CWB may function as a form of coping has been
raised before (Allen & Greenberger, 1980; Penney &
Spector, 2007), ours is one of the first empirical
studies to examine whether performing certain types
of CWB is associated with lower levels of an important psychological strain. In doing so, we contribute
to the literature by investigating a potential instrumental use of CWB and answer Diefendorff and
Mehtas (2007) concerns regarding the lack of research on motivations of employee CWB. Specifically, we confirmed our expectations that employees
may engage in production deviance and withdrawal
CWB as an attempt to cope with low perceptions of
justice, and this coping was successful under conditions of low distributive justice and, to some extent,
low procedural justice. Although we did not capture
causal direction or ordering, our results suggest that
employees may engage in some CWB to actively
shape their emotional experience at work rather than
simply to react to affective events. We do not suggest, however, that this perspective should replace
event-driven theories, but rather complements them
and provides a broader view of employee behavior.
We argued that withdrawal behaviors function as
emotion-focused coping strategies to reduce emotional exhaustion by allowing employees to escape
aversive situations and replenish emotional re-

sources. Our results support our assertions and indicate that the relationships between both distributive
and procedural justice and emotional exhaustion are
weaker among employees who engage in high as
opposed to low levels of withdrawal. Thus, withdrawal behaviors, by minimizing employees exposure to unjust treatment by their employing organization, may protect employees from the strain of
emotional exhaustion.
We expected production deviance to function as
emotion-focused coping to reduce emotional exhaustion by increasing employees perceived control by
evening the score in the face of injustice (Adams,
1963), thereby reducing psychological strain. However, our hypothesis was only supported for distributive justice. When employees feel that the rewards
and outcomes they receive are distributed unfairly,
deliberately performing work slowly or incorrectly
may enable them to reduce their inputs to restore
equity, thereby reducing the negative emotions associated with low distributive justice.
Unexpectedly, our results suggest that production
deviance may not be an effective coping mechanism
with respect to procedural justice. One possible explanation is that employees may derive perceptions
of distributive justice from bonuses or pay raises,
which are generally discrete events that occur on an
annual basis. Thus, reducing inputs via acts of production deviance may be sufficient to restore the
inequity resulting from these relatively discrete
events, as well as restore employees sense of control. However, procedural justice perceptions may
not be based on discrete events. According to Lev-

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KRISCHER, PENNEY, AND HUNTER

enthal, Karuza, and Fry (1980), procedures will be

perceived as fair to the extent that decisions are
enacted in a manner that is without bias, based on
accurate information, correctable, representative of
the interests of all involved, and ethical. To the extent
that procedural justice perceptions are based on a
collection of events or decisions (e.g., decisions that
determine pay raises, work schedules, vacation times,
promotions, overtime, work assignments), acts of
production deviance may not effectively restore employees sense of control and therefore may have
little impact on emotional exhaustion.
Alternatively, production deviance may be emotionally exhausting in and of itself. Compared with
withdrawal behaviors that are passive, production
deviance involves both active and passive behaviors
(e.g., deliberately performing work incorrectly vs.
working slowly).1 Because active forms of CWB
may require investing more emotional energy, they
may be emotionally exhausting. For example, production deviance was more strongly correlated with
emotional exhaustion (r .27, p .01), compared
with withdrawal (r .13, t(273) 2.51, p .01).
Thus, although production deviance may be helpful
in reducing ones emotional response to discrete
events associated with distributive justice, the emotional cost may counteract the benefit for responding
to longer term events (i.e., procedural justice).

Implications for Practice

This study presents a unique perspective on the
motivations for engaging in CWB. We suggest that
employees engage in some CWB because doing so is
rewarding in terms of reducing emotional exhaustion.
This presents an interesting paradox to practitioners.
On the one hand, CWB has traditionally been considered harmful to organizations. On the other hand,
CWB may be beneficial for employees, particularly in
situations of low distributive justice. Therefore, increasing perceptions of distributive justice, which is also
associated with increased citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and commitment (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson,
Porter, & Ng, 2001), should benefit both organizations
and employees.
The current research also suggests that organizations aiming to reduce production deviance and withdrawal behaviors should consider the motivations
that drive these behaviors. If organizations provide
employees with other ways to cope with injustice,
then employees may refrain from these forms of
CWB. For example, organizations can provide employees with more control by developing a fair griev-

ance system. Providing an outlet for employees to

reduce the negative physiological arousal associated
with perceived stressors, such as access to exercise
programs or facilities, as well as opportunities and
encouragement to use these resources, may also reduce CWB. Organizations could also encourage employees to take breaks if they feel that they are
becoming overwhelmed and distressed. Although
breaks are typically considered CWB and a threat to
productivity, our research suggests that breaks may
actually have an indirect benefit to the organization
by reducing employees emotional exhaustion. However, additional research is needed to determine
whether or not providing such outlets for employees
mitigates the impact of low perceived justice on
emotional exhaustion.

Limitations and Directions for

Future Research
One limitation of our study is the cross-sectional
nature of our data. Because emotional exhaustion and
perceptions of injustice tend to build over time, longitudinal study designs would be better able to assess
the directionality of the justiceCWB emotional exhaustion relationship. Moreover, qualitative studies
may help better discern the specific motivations behind the performance of CWB.
In addition, all study variables were assessed via
self-report; therefore, common method variance may
have artificially inflated the observed relationships.
However, several models of stress (e.g., Lazarus &
Folkman, 1984; Spector & Fox, 2005) emphasize the
importance of the perception of events, as opposed to
the events themselves, in precipitating strain outcomes. Also, emotional exhaustion is unlikely to be
accurately assessed through other sources (e.g., peer
report). Therefore, self-report is likely the best source
of information regarding perceived stressors and the
experience of emotional exhaustion. Regarding the
use of self-reported measures of CWB, the Berry et
al. (2007) meta-analysis reported that self- and non
self-reported deviance were correlated .89, and the
relationship between deviance and its correlates did
not differ greatly when nonself-report was used.
Finally, according to Spector (2006), commonmethod variance may be the exception rather than the
rule. Thus, using self-report may not have significantly affected our results. In fact, obtaining selfreport data through StudyResponse may have helped
1

We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

CWB AS EMOTION-FOCUSED COPING

alleviate other problems, such as underreporting

CWB (R. M. Lee, 1993), given that responses were
completely anonymous.
Another limitation of our study is that we used six
items from the JAWS (Van Katwyk et al., 2000) to
measure emotional exhaustion instead of a more established and validated scale. Although two independent raters achieved perfect agreement in identifying
JAWS items that fit the construct definition of emotional exhaustion, research has not directly assessed
the validity of this subscale for assessing emotional
exhaustion. Therefore, our criterion variable may be
more reflective of a narrow set of negative emotional
experiences than of emotional exhaustion.
We did not assess personality in our study, although some traits are associated with the performance of CWB (e.g., negative affectivity, conscientiousness, agreeableness; Berry et al., 2007). In
addition, Connor-Smith and Flachsbarts (2007) recent meta-analysis suggests that personality may play
a role in determining an individuals coping style.
Therefore, the use of CWB as emotion-focused coping may vary depending on employees personality
traits. Further research is needed to examine this
possibility.
We found no evidence in our sample that engaging
in CWB is rewarding under conditions of moderate to
high perceptions of justice, which begs the question,
Why do individuals engage in CWB in these conditions? Perhaps employees learn that CWB can be
rewarding in situations of low perceived justice and
then continue to engage in these behaviors even after
a situation is rectified. More research is needed to
address the reasons why individuals engage in CWB
in high justice conditions. We also focused on distributive and procedural justice as stressors that employees may perceive to be beyond their control.
However, additional research is needed to investigate
whether the impact of other uncontrollable stressors
(e.g., customers, crowding, downsizing) may also be
mitigated by production deviance or withdrawal.
We also recognize that other forms of CWB may
serve an instrumental purpose as well as an emotional
one (Spector et al., 2006). For instance, an employee
may yell at a coworker to work harder or faster, and
this may clue management in to a problem or result in
improved coworker performance. As Lazarus (1996)
noted, the distinction between problem- and emotionfocused coping is not always clear, as attempts to
directly reduce a stressor (i.e., problem-focused coping) may also help an individual reduce his or her
negative emotions. We encourage researchers to consider the instrumental use of other forms of CWB

163

(e.g., abuse against others), as well as other potential

positive effects of CWB on the individual (e.g., decreased negative emotion, improved performance)
and the organization (e.g., increased productivity).
One of the strengths of this study is that participants were employed in a wide range of industries
and jobs. Hence, our results may be more generalizable than studies that are limited to employees in a
single organization or occupation. However, we had
to drop a number of cases because of either nonconscientious responding or excessive missing data. Perhaps because respondents participated to be entered
into a random drawing to receive one of 20 $50
incentives, some may have chosen to respond to few
questions or respond nonconscientiously simply to be
entered into the drawing. Given the growing popularity of online research tools such as StudyResponse,
more research may be needed to understand the nonconscientious responding and missing data issues that
may occur with the use of these tools.
Finally, an important qualification of our argument
needs to be made. CWB occurs in the context of a
person organization interaction (Spector & Fox,
2005). The unfolding nature of this interaction may
affect the degree to which CWB can reduce emotional exhaustion. For instance, if employees continuously perform work slowly or incorrectly, take more
breaks than allowed, or arrive to work late, they may
be reprimanded by the organization or even fired. In
addition, these behaviors may anger coworkers, causing more stress for the focal employee. Furthermore,
to the extent that performance and attendance are
associated with financial rewards, employees may
hurt themselves by decreasing their productivity or
withdrawing. From a cost-benefit perspective, the
coping benefit of performing these CWB over the
long-term may be outweighed by the cost. Therefore,
although we suggest that CWB can be beneficial to
individuals, we recognize that there may be more
boundary conditions to this argument than we have
set.

Conclusion
This study served as an initial investigation into
the possible instrumental use of engaging in certain
CWB as a means of coping with job stressors. Although additional research is needed to replicate our
findings, withdrawal and production deviance appear
to reduce employee emotional exhaustion when employees are faced with an uncontrollable stressor (i.e.,
low justice). Because emotional exhaustion has been
linked to lowered employee motivation, engagement,

164

KRISCHER, PENNEY, AND HUNTER

and job performance (Halbesleben & Bowler, 2007),

these forms of CWB may actually benefit rather than
harm organizations (Wright & Cropanzano, 1998).
We encourage future research to address this counterintuitive implication.

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Received June 3, 2009

Revision received September 11, 2009
Accepted October 18, 2009 y