Pages: 3

The literature on management and organizational research is replete with concepts relating to the positive side of human beings such as positive organizational climate, psychological contract, commitment, citizenship, work satisfaction, team synergy, cohesiveness, solidarity and altruism. All these popular concepts are based on an optimistic assumption that human nature is compatible with and may easily be shaped by external behavioral adjustments. The field of organizational behavior (OB) is still dominated by studying positive aspects of the business life. However, it is not possible to isolate organizational participants from negative emotions like hostility, dislike, hate, jealousy, rage and revenge. The current OB literature is far from making an intellectual distinction between the facts and the assumptions about the forces governing human behaviors due to optimistic viewpoints and constructions. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.

Pages: 28

New perspectives on affective and emotional experience at work have recently been ascendant in the organizational literature. Earlier studies neglected the importance of emotions in organizational settings and associated emotional expressions with unprofessional work behavior and even a sign of weakness. Post–World War II theories in organizational studies relied heavily on cognition and behavior. Emotions were recognized as biased social judgments, leading to irrational decision-making. The view that emotions are separate from reason and should not have any effect in organizational processes and decision-making has its roots in the ancient European philosophy and religion and has held a remarkable bearing on organizational behavior research for a long time. Positive emotions, such as satisfaction, caring, passion, eagerness, optimism, hope and enthusiasm, and negative emotions, such as envy, jealousy, anxiety, anger, disappointment, insecurity and loneliness, are the outcomes of positive and negative experience in organizational environments; and this chapter specifically focuses on negative emotions at work settings.

Pages: 22

Over the past four decades, the network perspective enriched organizational researchers’ understanding of social relations at individual, group and organizational levels, and led to an explosion of social network studies in the extant literature. Its well-grounded arguments and assumptions put forward by early social network researchers continue to inspire practitioners and scholars from various fields of study. In the organizational realm, there is a large body of continuing work on the relational and structural contexts of network ties at work. The chapter integrates relevant insights from theory and research, and provides a comprehensive review of network perspective to the dark side of interpersonal relationships in work organizations, namely who-dislikes-whom networks. It includes conceptual-theoretical models and attitudinal aspects related to negative social links, as well as personal and structural antecedents and consequences that may lead to the formation of negative networks. In its final part, the chapter presents suggestions for future work.

Pages: 19

In the organizational behavior literature, organizational cynicism, because of its detrimental effects, is generally considered to be conceptually distinct from the other organizational outcomes. In recent years, organizational cynicism, for its negative effects on human resources and capital, has become very popular. Despite such popularity, there is still a lack of a more exclusive understanding of cynicism. Since organizations expect and demand more and more from their employees and really provide little in return, employee cynicism seems inevitable. This chapter has reviewed the literature on cynicism to define and classify cynicism; summarize its theoretical foundations, antecedents and consequences; and advise ways to alleviate its effects for the sake of personal and organizational efficiency and performance. The main focus is to understand why employees turn cynical toward their organizations, and what triggers their cynical attitudes and behaviors, and what the consequences of their cynicism are.

Pages: 32

Diversity, which contains race/color, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy, disability, religion, genetic information and so forth has long been an important issue in today’s organizations. Mismanagement of diversity triggers discrimination at work, leading to many negative work outcomes. To deal with this issue, it is crucial to understand the nature of the discrimination concept. For this purpose, this chapter sets out the concept of discrimination from different theoretical perspectives to explore why people discriminate. Moreover, it takes a look at different types of discrimination at work by presenting practical evidence. This chapter ends with the possible consequences of discrimination at work as well as the combating strategies to eliminate it.

Pages: 21

Toxic leadership, a dark side of leadership, has recently been attracting more research interest in organizations. It is essential to study this aspect of leadership because, with the benefit of hindsight, organizations and leaders can learn from the toxic treatment, whether toxic behavior of a leader may serve as an impetus or a constraint for positive or negative personal and organizational transformation. This kind of leadership has been discussed in the literature but not clearly defined (Labrague et al., 2020). This chapter will present the theoretical context of toxic leadership focusing on toxic leadership characteristics, factors, and behaviors. As this kind of leader affects the loyalty, productivity, motivation, health and well-being of employees, the subordinate or follower perceptions as to whether their leader is considered toxic or not will also be addressed. Additionally, since leader toxicity presents both challenges and opportunities for organizational development, these two positive and negative aspects also will be emphasized. For this purpose, general phenomenological definitions of the term are explained first then, how toxic leadership relates to the context in which it appears is connected.

Pages: 23

With the increasing interest in positive organizational scholarship in recent years, there have been concerns and questions about a balanced view of these kinds of positive movements. This chapter highlights the dark side of citizenship behaviors by taking a more balanced view on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Reviewing conceptual and empirical studies that contradict the idea of OCBs are positive by nature, this chapter tries to develop an understanding that OCBs do more harm than good.

Pages: 25

Power has intrigued researchers from various disciplines for centuries, researchers of organizational studies being no exception to its allure. Having been identified as a central element of leadership and management, power has been defined in various ways incorporating soft and hard aspects. This chapter attempts to explore negative aspects of power in the context of organization studies and identify some of the salient organizational repercussions. Following an overview of the conceptual roots of the study of power, the chapter offers a discussion on the most frequently employed power bases by extrapolating their potential implications for the workplace. Later, the chapter offers a general evaluation on power pathologies like hubris syndrome, the abuse of power and resistance as well as how these former associates with bases of power. A systematic discussion on different facades of power will always be relevant and up to date so long as organizations and human societies exist.

Pages: 19

Through order and discipline, we expect to have better functioning organizations. However, even though some strong sanctions are placed against those who do not obey workplace norms, rules and regulations, some employees, individually or in groups, may still attempt to commit deviant acts. With Hawthorne studies, we had come to realize that individuals in the workplace may show deviant behaviors that do not serve organizational goals. Even though some studies reveal that not all deviant behaviors are negative, such as organizational citizenship behavior, the outcomes of negative deviance in organizations bring serious costs to the effectiveness and competitiveness of organizations. This chapter of the book will give an overview of deviant behaviors in organizations, reviewing the related literature (performing a meta-analysis) in order to identify and classify the types of deviant behaviors. Additionally, the chapter aims at presenting their antecedents (common reasons, if any) and consequences, as well as discussing how to reduce deviant behaviors and their costs, or when to ignore specific deviances, and specifically how to deal with the negative organizational behaviors presented.