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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1–9Cite as

Personality and Counterproductive Work Behavior

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Synonyms

Workplace deviance

Definition

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) comprises “any intentional behavior on the part of an organization member viewed by the organization as contrary to its legitimate interests” (Gruys and Sackett 2003, p. 30).

Introduction

Personality characteristics have been found useful to describe, understand, and explain a broad array of work-related behavior and processes. One of the most important work-related constructs is employees’ job performance, defined as “the total expected value to the organization of the discrete behavioral episodes that an individual carries out over a standard period of time” (Motowidlo and Kell 2013, p. 82). Job performance is considered to encompass three broad domains, namely, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior (or contextual performance), and counterproductive work behavior (CWB; Rotundo and Sackett 2002). CWB can harm the well-being of others (e.g., co-workers) and can result in very considerable...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Ingo Zettler

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  1. Ingo Zettler
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Correspondence to Ingo Zettler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Julie Schermer

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Zettler, I. (2017). Personality and Counterproductive Work Behavior. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_789-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_789-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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