Surname 1

Name of Student

Instructor’s Name

Course Name

Date

Article Critique: Envy and Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Moderation Role of

Leadership in Public and Private Organizations

González-Navarro et al. focused on public and private organizations in an attempt to

study how contextual factors such as leadership and ownership influences envy and the

consequences of the same. The authors’ highlighted that the current research focus on envy is not

as informative to address the issues most leaders or managers face when trying to manage their

employees’ emotions. The authors were interested in envy because it contributes to “the quality

of the relationship between leaders and followers” (González-Navarro et al. 2). The authors

considered this an important area since leaders and managers can have low- and high-quality

relationships with subordinates. Both low- and high-quality relationships are important in the

place of work as they have their own advantages in terms of completing the day-to-day business

operations.

Specifically, research has been interested in the role of leadership in realizing positive

employee behaviors but there has been a little focus on negative employee behaviors including

envy. Hence, the authors needed to fill this gap so as to understand the underlying dynamics

when it comes to the relationship between counterproductive work behavior and envy in the

workplace. In their study, the authors found that when employees are envious they may involve

themselves in counterproductive work behavior (CWB), which may affect the performance of a

company significantly. The present study used a cross-sectional design approach where they
 Surname 2

collected data from around 225 Spanish employees who work in both private and public

organizations. The data collected was analyzed using the path analysis techniques where they

found that envy positively relates to counterproductive work behavior. Further, the authors found

that leader member exchange significantly moderates the relationship between counterproductive

work behavior and envy in public companies, but not in private organizations.

To arrive at these findings and conclusions, González-Navarro et al. made use of

different statistical analysis techniques. First of all, the authors developed different hypotheses to

guide the whole research process. Three hypothesis were developed including:

“(i) Envy will be positively related to counterproductive work behaviors; (ii) Leader-member

exchange will moderate the relationship between envy and CWB; (iii) Leader-member exchange

will moderate the relationship between envy and CWB in public organizations. In private

organizations, this relationship will be attenuated or non-significant. In any case, the

occurrence of CWB will be lower when envious employees report higher levels of LMX”

(González-Navarro et al. 3 - 6).

The researchers used incidental purposive sampling so as to be able to select nearly the

same number of participants working in private (N = 121) and public (N = 104) companies. As a

result, the total number of participants was N = 225, where 52% were women and 48% were

men. The data was collected between 2015 and 2016 using self-report questionnaires that

comprised of 5 items that were rated on a five-point Likert scale. As such, the authors calculated

a combination of inferential and descriptive statistics using SPSS version 22 and AMOS version

22. Hence, they first evaluated the internal consistency (reliability) of the items in the

questionnaire using Cronbach’s alpha. Moreover, in the beginning of the analysis, the mean age
 Surname 3

of the participants (M = 37.87, SD = 10.9) was determined as well as the means and standard

deviations of the other variables being studied.

Furthermore, apart from initial descriptive statistics, the researchers performed bivariate

correlations (Pearson) between all the variables being tested, they performed t-tests and carried

out an analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, to test the hypotheses that were developed, the

researchers made use of path analysis using the maximum likelihood method. This included

performing path analysis (regression analysis) on the whole sample, then on the sample

representing public organizations and finally, they conducted a multi-group analysis to determine

the difference between private and public organizations. Therefore, the results were reported

using the different goodness of-fit indices (Chi-square) to check for model fit. Some of the

indices reported in the study included CFI, NFI, and RMSEA, which helped show that the

relations they hypothesized were possible. Accordingly, different test statistics were reported

including beta coefficients, p-values, effect size, standard error and t-statistic among other

statistical analysis elements.

González-Navarro et al. arrived at interesting conclusions using these statistical

techniques, which showed they were adequate for the current study. However, by choosing to

use self-report measures, the authors ran the risk of common error bias and may be subject to

validity issues. Additionally, the study did not mitigate or control for common method bias,

hence the bias introduced by the measuring instrument (self-report) was not evaluated and the

implication it may have on the study results. Moreover, an important view that the study could

have looked at is the difference between males and females as relates to the issue being studied.

This is important because leaders need to understand how envy contributes to counterproductive
 Surname 4

work behavior for males and females and how to create work environments that do not lead to

envy.
 Surname 5

Works Cited

González-Navarro, Pilar et al. "Envy And Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Moderation

Role Of Leadership In Public And Private Organizations". International Journal Of

Environmental Research And Public Health, vol 15, no. 7, 2018, p. 1455. MDPI AG,

doi:10.3390/ijerph15071455. Accessed 4 Aug 2019.