NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

Lead to deviant work place behaviours. Employee deviance-voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten the organization, its members, or both.

Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviours. Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes that people often engage in voluntary actions that violate established norms and threaten the organization, its members, or both. These actions are called employee deviance.They fall into categories such as production (leaving early, intentionally working slowly); property (stealing, sabotage); political (gossiping, blaming co-workers); and personal aggression (sexual harassment, verbal abuse).

Many of these deviant behaviours can be traced to negative emotions. For instance, envy is an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for having something that you don’t have but strongly desire. It can lead to malicious deviant behaviours. Envy, for example, has been found to be associated with hostility, “backstabbing,” and other forms of political behaviour, as well as with negatively distorting others’ successes and positively distorting one’s own accomplishments.