Organizational Citizenship and Counter-Productive Work Behaviors

This chapter evaluates contemporary research perspectives on organizational citizenship and counter-productive work behaviors. Organizational citizenship and counter-productive work behaviors are two seemingly opposite types of active and volitional employee behaviors, which are classically studied by organizational behavior (OB) researchers. The latter, which might harm the organization, and the former, which might be beneficial, are often studied separately and are usually treated as opposites with respect to determinants and consequences within the traditional literature. Some studies on the relationships between positive and negative citizenship behavior, including counter-productive work behaviors, have been published in recent years; however, the results remain inconclusive. Although organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and counter-productive work behaviors (CPWBs) seem to be opposite in nature, emerging research has suggested that the relationships between these two categories of behavior might be more complex than initially assumed. Further, recent developments suggest that even counter-productive behaviors may be perceived as ‘constructive deviations’ that can potentially have beneficial consequences for organizational effectiveness. Such developments within research are assessed in this chapter and gaps are also highlighted.