COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

BEHAVIOUR AND EMPLOYEE

DECIPLINE

Group 4
Social Science1
 COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOR AND
EMPLOYEE DISCIPLINE

This chapter reviews both Western and Philippine studies that

examine the array of counterproductive behaviors observed in
organizations. In doing so, it aims to clarify the differences between
the Western and Philippine understanding of these behaviors,
exploring ways these may be effectively dealt with and managed by
organizations.
 COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOR AND
EMPLOYEE DISCIPLINE

EMPLOYEES ARE IMPORTANT for the success of organizations. They

perform jobs as required of them, sometimes work beyond what is
expected to support institutional goals, and even actively seek ways of
improving systems and processes. However, there are times when
employees behave in ways that seem inappropriate or that go against the
goals of the organization. These actions may involve behaviors damaging
to inter-employee relationships, organizational productivity, efficiency, or
even company image. These may even include actions detrimental to
themselves.
 Defining Counterproductive Behaviors

Counterproductive behaviors have been defined as behaviors that explicitly run

counter to the goals of an organization.

The most commonly studied counterproductive behaviors are:

•Tardiness
•Absenteeism
•Their impact on organizational commitment
•Withdrawal
•Alcoholism
•relationship with increased absence from work
•The effect of substance abuse on work performance
•Increasing antagonistic behaviors.
 Defining Counterproductive Behaviors

Other forms of counterproductive behavior:

•Gambling in the workplace (such as using the internet to gamble)

•Financial,
•Legal
•Psychosocial consequences on the employee
•Adverse effects on the workplace
•As well as how employees plan
•Commit theft
•Gossiping and its impact on organizational influence
 Defining Counterproductive Behaviors

• Another is racial discrimination and how it affects supervisor satisfaction and the perceived
organizational tolerance of discrimination.Other topics related to counterproductive behaviors
include sexual harassment and how it is related to gender and ethnicity, favoritism and the
organization’s moral compass; workplace; and even how red tape alienates dysfunctional
managers.
 Counterproductive Behavior in Philippine
Organizations

Counterproductive Behavior in Philippine Organizations Much like in the West, the

Philippines is no exception to counterproductive behaviors. Like workers all over

the world, Filipino workers also exhibit behaviors that run against the organization’s
goals or against personal efficacy. How different are Filipinos’ counterproductive
behavior compared to those in the West?

Filipino anthropologist F. Landa Jocano (1999) explained that,

being in a collectivist society, Filipinos give higher importance
to interpersonal relations than Westerners. Employees
consider workmates as friends and that relationships go
beyond work to affect personal lives.
Likewise, suggested that
Filipinos tend to be more motivated and productive when
working in groups or teams with face-to-face interaction.
Given this collectivist culture,
counterproductive behaviors may involve interaction with
other people or may be motivated by social relationships.
 Counterproductive Behavior in Philippine
Organizations

• An example is the Filipino value of pakikisama, which means to be concerned about, to

be supportive of, and to concede to public opinion in social situations in order to achieve
group cohesion.

This value has two faces

one that allows smooth interpersonal may create groupthink or cohesion so strong
relationships to occur
 Employee turnover
According to the 2011 Labor, Turnover Survey conducted among 700 large enterprises in Metro
Manila, turnover rate across industries is at 8.5 percent. However, the story is different in the call
center industry where about 27 percent of call center agents leave their companies only after six
months to a year of service.

Employee turnover remains a fundamental

concern for organizations because of its costs.
Since an organization will have to rehire and
retrain new employees to fill in a position,
turnover costs include lost productivity—what
would have been productive time had the
employees not left the organization in the first
place. New employees will also need time to
adjust to their work and to meet organizational
standards and goals.
Predictors of Turnover

Although most organizations still assume that pay and

benefits are the keys to retaining employees, a local study
conducted in 2008 found that there are other factors that
Filipino employees look for in their companies and if those
factors are not complete or cannot have them;

There may be an

INTENSION TO QUIT!
8 predicted the intention to quit:

•Quality of company vision/strategy

•Opportunity for growth
•Quality of compensation package
•Internal politics or bureaucracy
•The level of challenge in work
•The amount of job stress
•The clarity of the link between pay and
individual contributions
•Company’s responsiveness to employee
needs.
The results also showed that an employee’s age and position in the organization is an added factor in
staying or quitting—older Filipino employees tend to stay in the organization. Managers also tend to
stay longer than those in non-managerial roles. Interestingly, the results showed that top five retention
factors that make employees stay are:

* The level of cooperation within the organization

* Opportunities for growth and enhancement
* Quality of the relationship with their respective
supervisor or manager
* Quality of the compensation package
* Trust among employees.

Of these five, three are relational in nature: cooperation, supervisor or manager relationships, and
trust between employees. However, the study also shows that trust and cooperation are not enough to
retain employees. An employee’s intention to quit is also influenced by their perceived opportunities
for growth, advancement, and quality of compensation. The top five retention factors in this study were
organizational growth, compensation, company responsiveness to needs, work-life balance, and
challenging work. It was also mentioned that the less supportive an organization is perceived to be,
the more likely that the employees will intend to leave.
Burnout is defined as “a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and
reduced personal accomplishment. Intention to quit is high when employees feel too
exhausted or burnt out from labor. There are a number of variables found to influence
burnout. For example, a study done by Cera (2005) among 124 teachers found that
educators’ experiences of emotional exhaustion are negatively related to workload,
control, reward, community, fairness, and values. This means that these factors lead to
varying levels of job burnout or emotional exhaustion, which
influence the teachers’ intention to quit.
RELATIONAL
AGRRESSION
Aggression demonstrated between groups
or individuals with the intention of
destroying relationship structures in the
organization. It can take the form of verbal
or non-verbal action meant to utilize
sociability processes to create animosity. A
study done among college student trainees
from various universities in Manila showed
the prevalence of Rumors, Silent treatment,
and Backstabbing as counterproductive
relational behaviors
 Rumors
Spreading rumors can be either positive or negative. However, the majority of rumors
are typically negative, sometimes leaning on the offensive or the derogatory. These rumors
can range from valid and reliable facts, to false information aimed to destroy reputations.
The study affirmed that rumors can be a method of socialization into a particular social
environment. Rumors provide an avenue for members of groups to interact with each other.
The study found that the degree of social environment (familiarity of territory) and the
degree of friendship or camaraderie (familiarity of relationship) affect the likelihood of
rumors spreading. The more familiar one is with the social environment; the more likely
rumors will spread. Similarly, the more familiar people are with each other, the higher the
likelihood that rumors will occur. This is because of the principle that a rumor will have
credibility if it comes from someone the listener knows

Furthermore, rumors tend to be about acquaintances rather

than about friends—the less
familiar someone is to an in-group, the higher the risk that
rumors about that person will
spread. This may explain the propensity of employees to
spread initial impressions and
assumptions about a new employee.
 Silent Treatment
Another relational aggression behavior is
silent treatment, or the exclusion of one’s
rivals, making sure that they are “out of the
loop” and are thus less likely to influence
agenda. By undercutting individuals and
making sure that they are out of the group,
individuals affected by the silent treatment
are ousted in social environments and are
left to work on their own. In a collectivist
society such as the Philippines, this can be a
painful ordeal. According to the same study
by Filho et al, participants utilize silent
treatment depending on the type of social
environment and the presence of other
people.
Backstabbing
The study also looked at individuals who
were the subject of rumors. They were
reported to have low sociability scores that
may have led to little interaction with other
members of the organization.

The participants also reported that they

would engage more in backstabbing
individuals with high sociability. Since they
cannot spread rumors because of
the lack of people who will listen, they end up
demonstrating behaviors meant to sabotage
tasks or duties of the in-group. These
behaviors can range from demeaning
actions to spreading of rumors to produce
public shame.
Sexual Harassment
Considered one of the severe forms of counterproductive
behavior, sexual harassment
takes on various forms: it can begin as cracking
sexual jokes, sexual statements such as
sharing one’s sexual activities, passing notes with
sexual innuendo, and can move on to
making sexual advances, asking for sexual favors,
or even the extreme of touching oneself
sexually in front of the one being harassed.
It not only affects the harasser, whose efforts to
harass another equates to lost productivity at work,
but more importantly, it affects the
person harassed on all aspects

A study revealed that three-fourths of Philippine organizations do not have policies

regarding sexual harassment; among companies that have policies, not all
employees are
aware of the policies’ existence. However, the Republic Act 7877
of 1995 clearly stipulated that:
 Republic Act 7877
of 1995

Sexual harassment is committed in the hiring or in

the employment, re-employment, or continued
employment of said individual, or in granting said
individual favorable compensation, terms of
conditions, promotions or privileges; or the refusal
to grant the sexual favors resulting in
limiting, segregating, or classifying the employee
which in any way would discriminate, deprive
or diminish employment opportunities or otherwise
adversely affect said employee… impairing
rights or privileges under existing labor laws… or
resulting in an intimidating, hostile or offensive
environment for the employee.
Discrimination
Discrimination is defined as “the applied
prejudice in which negative social
definitions are translated into action”.
Those perceived to have less influence,
power or authority in a social setting
tend to be more prone to discrimination.

Discriminated individuals or groups may

find restrictions to their privileges and
rights.
Although there are numerous types of
discrimination (such as race, gender,
age, religion, disability), the most
common in the Philippine workplace
appears to be related to gender,
gender identity, and school
discrimination.
 GENDER DISCRIMINATION

For instance, according to Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics released in 2011, the
rate of unemployment for women in 2010 is lower on the average compared to men. The labor
market also continues to be segmented, with more women working for wholesale and retail of
household goods, hotels and restaurants, financial intermediation organizations, in education,
in health and social work, and in private household keeping with employed persons.
 School descrimination

Applicants from the prestigious schools tend to perform better in selection interviews
and tests. Organizations want the best employees, and those who top the
pre-employment exams tend to come from the abovementioned schools.

Although employers do have the right to choose their employees,

the bigger picture is that such stereotyping results in the rejection of
thousands of graduates year after year simply because they
did not graduate from the Big schools.
Prevalent Counterproductive Behaviors in the
Philippine Workplace

Tardi
n es s
Internet
Use
Absenteeism
Goss ri t i s m
ipingFa v o
Tardine
ss
The most prevalent
counterproductive behavior
 GOSSIPIN
G
This is rooted from the societal
and collectivist nature of the
Filipino, as described earlier in
this chapter.
 Internet Use

Though most would consider this a way of

de-stressing during work breaks, this eats
away at company time.
BUT!
When an employee gets too engrossed in accessing a site, this causes
prolonged breaks. Some employees deliberately access such social websites even during
regular work hours, resulting in lowered productivity. They also confessed that they access
social networking sites because it is more discreet compared to gossiping, which is easier to
spot (a group of people huddled and talking together during a break). The participants also
admitted that downloading materials from the internet is a common counterproductive
behavior. These can include videos, songs, flash games, and documents from various
websites. Though some of these materials maybe needed for work, the majority of files
downloaded are for personal use or pleasure.

* This causes prolonged breaks

* resulting in lowered productivity
* more discreet compared to gossiping (which is easier to spot)
* majority of files downloaded are for personal use or pleasure.
Absenteeism

This is related to

Tardiness,
where the employee may need
time away from work to deal with
family affairs or care for young
children. The employees
admitted that their reasons for
absenteeism are similar to what
they observe from their
officemates
 Favoritism
This is particularly evident when employees struggle for the same or for limited positions
within an organization. By playing favorites with their bosses, they, at the very least, become
familiar to their superiors, and at most are considered during succession planning. This gives
them the advantage of being at their boss’s “top-of-mind.” However, being the favorite
comes at a price. They can become criticized by other members of their organization and
may even feel isolated because of their actions