A Comparative Study of Counterproductive Work Behaviour and Moral Disengagement amongst Police Personnel and Middle Level Industrial Managers

Abstract

Counterproductive workplace behaviour amid employees is a global issue faced by majority of organizations. It is the type of behaviour that is intentional and violates organizational norms and behaviour such as decreased productivity, job dissatisfaction, high turnover, rumour-mongering- all of which effects work performance and precipitates financial loss to the organization. To neutralize the harmful effects of counterproductivity and its propensity to morally disengage and to neutralize the effect of unethical behaviour at workplace, it is essential to observe and monitor it closely. The objective of this paper is to assess and report counterproductive dispositions and moral disengagement between two different organizations, namely police personnel and industrial employees. To screen counterproductivity 32-items counterproductive work behaviour –Checklist by Spector and Fox et al., (2006) and propensity to morally disengage by Celia Moore et al., (2012) has been utilized. CWB is a multidimensional objective self-report 5-point Likert tool that measures dimensions such as abuse, production deviance sabotage, theft and withdrawal and propensity for Moral Disengagement is an objective 16-item multidimensional 7-point Likert tool. For research purpose, the sample has been divided into two groups, namely policemen in officer rank (N=200) and industrial employees at managerial level (N=50) and for analysis descriptive statistics and unequal independent t-ratio has been applied to study the differences in counterproductivity level and PMD at different dimensions. The results suggest that although, both groups scored low on all counterproductive dimensions yet except for sabotage significant differences were found in all other dimensions, including overall score of CWB. Consequently, the results suggest that police personnel were more likely to indulge in counterproductive work behaviour in the terms of abuse, production deviance, employee theft, withdrawal and overall scores for CWB as compared to industrial managers. Also, the results regarding PMD imply that police personnel have higher tendency to morally disengage in terms of diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame and moral justification than industrial managers.