Abstract
In this research the effects of personality and organizational characteristics on workplace delinquency were investigated. In a sample of 455 respondents from a wide variety of organizations, two personality traits, HEXACO Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness, and two organizational characteristics, ethical culture and employee surveillance, explained a significant amount of variance in workplace delinquency. No interaction effects between personality and organizational practices in the explanation of workplace delinquency were found. Results are discussed in light of the role of personality and Routine Activity Theory in predicting unethical behaviors, delinquency, and/or occupational crime in organizations.
6. Conclusions and discussion
The outcomes of this research show that workplace delinquency is mainly predicted by the personality variables Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness and by the organizational variables ethical culture and employee surveillance. Together, these four variables explained 15.8% (74.4% of 21.2%) of the variance in workplace delinquency. The findings on personality are in line with earlier research showing the importance of Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness in the prediction of counterproductive behaviors (e.g., Lee, Ashton and De Vries, 2005 and Zettler and Hilbig, 2010). The findings on ethical culture and employee surveillance are in line with Routine Activity Theory. A review of research on the Routine Activity Theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979) shows that surveillance (or: guardianship) interventions reduce crime (Hollis-Peel, Reynald, van Bavel, Elffers, & Welsh, 2011). The present study adds to a small but growing body of research that shows the effectiveness of surveillance.
Routine Activity Theory also predicts that criminal activities are more likely to occur when motivated offenders, suitable targets, and lack of guardianship converge in time and space (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Workplace delinquency then should be more likely to take place when people low in Honesty–Humility (i.e., high motivation for crime) are part of a work setting that lacks an ethical culture and which is characterized by low levels of employee surveillance. No such effect was found in our study, indicating that personality and organizational characteristics appear to act separately on workplace delinquency. That is, people low on Honesty–Humility are not more likely to commit workplace delinquency when norms are lax (e.g., in an unethical organizational culture) and/or when opportunities for workplace delinquency abound (e.g., with less employee surveillance).
This is somewhat in contrast with findings of Zettler and Hilbig (2010) and Wiltshire et al. (2014), who found an interaction between Honesty–Humility and perceptions of organizational politics in the prediction of counterproductive work behavior. One possible explanation of the difference in findings is that perceptions of organizational politics items mainly focus on negative organizational behaviors (see Kacmar and Carlson (1997) for the items) whereas the ethical culture items mainly focus on positive organizational behaviors. One of the ethical culture facets—Feasibility—actually focuses on negative (or unethical) aspects of the organizational culture and we conducted a separate moderated regression analysis to find out whether an interaction was present for Feasibility, but none (β = − .01, p = .91) was observed. Future research might like to further investigate possible interaction effects by combining ethical culture, employee surveillance, and perceptions of organizational politics in one research design.
One of the main limitations of our study is that the variables were all self-reported. However, care was taken to separate the personality predictors (T1) from the organizational characteristics and workplace delinquency predictors (T2 and a combination of T2 and T3, respectively), which reduces common method bias. Furthermore, workplace delinquency was found to have high levels of convergent validity with unethical decisions in six organizational scenarios. Although common method biases can attenuate interaction effects (Siemsen, Roth, & Oliveira, 2010), Ashton and Lee (2010) have shown that source common method factors associated with self-rated HEXACO personality are relatively weak when compared to trait factors. Furthermore, the two organizational characteristics, which were measured more closely in time to workplace delinquency, were entirely unrelated to each other (r = − .01, p = .88), making it less likely that common method biases in both variables have influenced the relations found.
One of the reasons that there is not much literature on the interaction between personality and unethical culture may be that these interaction effects are often absent in field studies (however, see Zettler and Hilbig (2010) and Wiltshire et al. (2014)). Apart from the fact that this makes it particularly important that these null findings get reported (i.e., to prevent researchers from investing in research that is unlikely to bear fruit), there may be a number of substantive reasons for this absence: 1) shifting norms (as exemplified by either high or low ethical culture and surveillance) may lead to shifting expectations of what is deemed unethical or not. That is, (mis-)use of goods in organizations may be deemed acceptable or at least not unethical in one department or organization, whereas it may be deemed unacceptable and unethical in another department/organization. These shifting norms may result in a general shift of behaviors, both of people low and high in Honesty–Humility resulting in a lack of interaction; and 2) even in organizational contexts with more surveillance and a higher ethical culture, opportunities for crime may still abound. Their drive for material gain and status may therefore lead people low in Honesty–Humility to seek out self-enriching opportunities even when the situational context is not conducive of crime.
To conclude, our research provides evidence for the importance of Honesty–Humility, Conscientiousness, ethical culture, and employee surveillance in the prediction of workplace delinquency. Especially in companies in which workplace delinquency carries large costs, employers may be advised to select on Honesty–Humility and Conscientiousness, to create an ethical culture which is clear, congruent, and feasible, and which is openly supported, discussed, and enforced by its members, and to make sure that proper surveillance mechanisms are in place for employees who have access to valuable material and financial organizational means.
