Time-related work stress and counterproductive work behavior. Invigorating roles of deviant personality traits
| Published date | 04 November 2019 |
| Date | 04 November 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2018-0241 |
| Pages | 1756-1781 |
| Author | Dirk De Clercq,Inam Ul Haq,Muhammad Umer Azeem |
| Subject Matter | Hr & organizational behaviour,Global hrm |
Time-related work stress and
counterproductive work behavior
Invigorating roles of deviant personality traits
Dirk De Clercq
Goodman School of Business, Brock University, St Catharines, Canada
Inam Ul Haq
Lahore Business School, University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan, and
Muhammad Umer Azeem
School of Business and Economics,
University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
Purpose –With a basis inthe conservation of resourcestheory, the purpose of this paper isto investigate the
relationship between employees’experience of time-related work stress and their engagement in
counterproductive work behavior (CWB), as well as the invigorating roles that different deviant personality
traits might play in this process.
Design/methodology/approach –Two-wave survey data with a time lag of three weeks were collected
from 127 employees in Pakistani organizations.
Findings –Employees’sense that they have insufficient time to do their job tasks spurs their CWB, and this
effect is particularly strong if they have strong Machiavellian, narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies.
Originality/value –This study adds to extant research by identifying employees’time-related work stress
as an understudied driver of their CWB and the three personality traits that constitute the dark triad as
triggers of the translation of time-related work stress into CWB.
Keywords Quantitative, Conservation of resources theory, Counterproductive work behaviour,
Dark triad, Time stress
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Exposure to adverse, resource-draining work conditions represents an important challenge
for employees because these conditions cause them to feel unhappy about their current job
situation and concerned about their future career prospects (Abbas et al., 2014; Eschleman
et al., 2015; Hobfoll, 1989; Johnson et al., 2006). A notable source of workplace adversity is the
experience of time-related work stress, which reflects employees’sense that they have
insufficient time to complete job-related tasks, due to excessive demands imposed on them
by their work environment (Bouckenooghe et al., 2017; Parker and DeCotiis, 1983). Such
time-related work stress essentially originates from within the work domain and represents
a critical challenge for organizations that function in competitive, fast-paced market
environments; accordingly, the issue has become endemic (Avery et al., 2010; Elfering et al.,
2013). Excessive time pressures can be manifest, for example, in employees’feelings that
they have too many job responsibilities and insufficient time to fulfill them, never have off
time during their work hours or must devote so much energy to work-related issues that
there is nothing left for activities outside work (Bouckenooghe et al., 2017; Burton et al., 2012;
Gärling et al., 2016).
This experience of time-related work stress is upsetting for employees because it leaves them
frustrated with how their employer treats them (Gärling et al., 2016; Parker and DeCotiis, 1983),
which can evoke negative work outcomes such as reduced organizational citizenship behavior
(Paillé, 2011), creativity (Chen et al., 2015) and innovative behavior (De Clercq et al., 2016). As its
Personnel Review
Vol. 48 No. 7, 2019
pp. 1756-1781
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-07-2018-0241
Received 6 July 2018
Revised 17 November 2018
26 January 2019
13 March 2019
Accepted 22 April 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
1756
PR
48,7
central premise, this study predicts that employees also may respond to the experience of time-
related work stress by engaging in counterproductive work behaviors (CWB), in their effort to
cope with the resource loss that they experience in the presence of this adverse work situation
(Eschleman et al., 2015; Hobfoll, 2001; Spector and Fox, 2005; Taylor et al., 2017). That is,
employees may seek to release the frustration that they feel in work conditions that put
excessive pressures on their daily work (Diefendorff and Mehta, 2007; Krischer et al., 2010) by
causing harm, either directly to their organization or indirectly by targeting individual members
of that organization, such as supervisors or coworkers (Skarlicki and Folger, 1997; Townsend
et al., 2000). As Taylor and colleagues (2017, p. 158) note, “the enactment of CWB is frequently
an attempt to cope with a feeling of overtaxation –the sense that work demands exceed the
resources available to invest.”Employees thus may respond to organizational adversity by
engaging in deviant activities, such as damaging company resources or wasting company
materials, as well as by talking back to supervisors or refusing to share valuable information
with coworkers (Mackey et al., 2017; Skarlicki et al., 1999). Similarly, undertaking CWB may
function as a coping mechanism that employees use to diminish the negative impact of
time-related work stress on their personal well-being (Taylor et al., 2017)[1].
The extent to which employees partake in CWB can have negative consequences for
both their organization and the employees themselves. For example, negative work
behaviors disrupt the organization’s internal functioning and generate significant costs, due
to productivity losses and diminished morale among the targets (Berry et al., 2012; Cohen,
2016; Galperin and Burke, 2006; Moore et al., 2012). But when employees undertake actions
that harm their organization, they may also suffer, in that their performance appraisals and
career prospects often are based on how they contribute to rather than undermine
organizational effectiveness (Lievens et al., 2008, Martinko et al., 2002). In turn, there is a
continued need to understand the factors that might spur employees’propensity to engage
in negative work behaviors, despite their negative outcomes (Debusscher et al., 2016; Marcus
et al., 2016; Zheng et al., 2017).
Negative work behaviors may stem from both contextual and individual factors.
Contextual determinants include dysfunctional leadership (Schyns and Schilling, 2013),
organizational unfairness (Hershcovis et al., 2007), workplace harassment (Bowling and
Beehr, 2006, or a Machiavellian corporate culture (Zheng et al., 2017). All these factors evoke
significant frustration among employees, who struggle to execute their job tasks
successfully in such environments (Eschleman et al., 2015; Greenidge and Coyne, 2014).
The individual determinants of negative work behaviors include gender (Bowling and
Burns, 2015), Big Five personality characteristics (Berry et al., 2007), core self-evaluations
(Debusscher et al., 2016), workaholism (Galperin and Burke, 2006) and deviant personality
traits (Zagenczyk et al., 2014). Notably, the influences of these contextual and individual
factors cannot be seen in isolation; the extent to which exposure to adverse work conditions
may escalate into negative work behaviors is greater, for example, among employees who
score high on negative affectivity (Skarlicki et al., 1999) and irritability (Fida et al., 2014) or
low on emotional intelligence (Greenidge and Coyne, 2014), agreeableness (Skarlicki et al.,
1999) and honesty-humility (Chirumbolo, 2015).
To extend this research stream, the current study addresses the possible translation of
employees’experience of time-related work stress (Bouckenooghe et al., 2017) into CWB and,
particularly, the roles of negative personality traits in triggering this translation. The
theoretical arguments for this interactive effect stem from the conservation of resources
(COR) theory, which predicts that employees’work behaviors reflect their motivations to
avoid resource losses and achieve resource gains (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). First, as an important
principle, the COR theory asserts that “when their resources are outstretched or exhausted,
individuals enter a defensive mode to preserve the self that is often aggressive and may
become irrational”(Hobfoll et al., 2018, p. 10.4). That is, the COR logic suggests that
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