Lisa M. Penney

Investigating individual differences among targets of workplace incivility.

The present study focused on individual differences in Big Five traits among targets of workplace incivility. The authors hypothesized a negative relation between agreeableness and incivility, a positive relation between neuroticism and incivility, and a negative relation between extraversion and incivility. The authors also hypothesized that provocative target behavior is the mediating force that drives these relations. Multisource data from a diverse sample of employees and their coworkers indicate that individuals low in agreeableness and those high in neuroticism experience more incivility than their counterparts. The mediation model was supported for agreeableness and neuroticism. Findings suggest that target traits are important components in incivility research, and should be considered in future research as well as in efforts to alleviate the consequences of incivility.

Can Counterproductive Work Behaviors Be Productive? CWB as Emotion-Focused Coping

The goal of our study was to determine whether some forms of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) may serve to benefit employees. Building on the stressor-strain 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.

The Downside of Goal-Focused Leadership: The Role of Personality in Subordinate Exhaustion

Exhaustion has a significant impact on employees and organizations, and leader behavior may affect it. We applied Conservation of Resources Theory to test propositions regarding the joint effects of goal-focused leadership (GFL) and personality on employee exhaustion. We proposed that the relationship between GFL and exhaustion depends on employees’ standing on both conscientiousness and emotional stability. Specifically, we expected that high-conscientiousness subordinates experience greater compatibility with a goal-focused leader because of their predisposition to direct resources toward achievement and goal-setting, resulting in lower exhaustion under such a leader than among low-conscientiousness employees. Furthermore, high emotional stability may compensate for GFL incompatibility among low-conscientiousness employees by providing additional resources to manage GFL. In contrast, employees low on both traits likely experience greater exhaustion under a goal-focused leader compared to other employees. Results revealed a three-way interaction in two independent samples and were generally supportive of our predictions. GFL was associated with heightened exhaustion among individuals in the low-emotional stability, low-conscientiousness group, but not among workers having any other trait combination.

The economy and absenteeism: a macro-level study.

Despite much speculation, little is known about the net effects of the economy on the employed workforce. To fill this gap, we used state-level data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to examine the effects of the condition of the economy, as indicated by the unemployment rate, on incidence rates of absence reportedly due to symptoms of illness and violent acts in the workplace for 43 states from 1992 to 2009. Our results suggest that the unemployment rate is positively associated with these indicators of absenteeism, and that these effects are delayed in time.

The Waiter Spit in My Soup! Antecedents of Customer-Directed Counterproductive Work Behavior

Although researchers have explored organizational and insider targets of counterproductive work behavior (CWB), no studies to date have examined customers as targets. The current study aimed to test a model of antecedents to CWB unique to service worker experiences, including customer stressors, emotional dissonance, and emotional exhaustion. We tested our model with 438 restaurant and bar employees. Results demonstrated that customer stressors were more strongly correlated with customer-directed CWB than with interpersonal or organizational CWB, and customer stressors had direct and indirect effects on customer-directed CWB through experiences of emotional dissonance and exhaustion.

Stress, Personality and Counterproductive Work Behaviour

Counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) by employees is an all too common occurrence in organizations. Studies have shown that 95 per cent of employees have engaged in some form of CWB at least once (e.g. Penney, 2002). The costs to American businesses associated with just one type of CWB, employee theft, have been estimated to be more than

The dimensionality of counterproductivity: Are all counterproductive behaviors created equal

200 billion annually (Govoni, 1992). Given the prevalence and economic impact of CWB, the attention given to CWB by organizational researchers is not surprising. Two major threads in organizational research on CWB have developed over the years. One identifies environmental conditions that may serve as antecedents to CWB, such as the presence of job stressors, while the other focuses on the role that individual personality plays in the likelihood that an individual will engage in CWB. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss recent organizational research linking both of these streams, job stressors and personality, to CWB. First, the CWB construct and research is discussed briefly. Next, a conceptual model illustrating the relationships among job stress, personality, and CWB is presented as an organizing framework. Finally, specific job stressors and personality variables and their relationships with CWB are discussed.