Antisocial behaviors at the workplace

Antisocial behaviors at the workplace

Antisocial behaviors at the workplace occurring in the form of physical and verbal assaults, threats, coercion, intimidation, if not arrested in its primary stage, can inconvenience an organization’s operations. Typically, workers engage in antisocial behavior for various reasons. Organizational competition, frustration (Spector, 1997), work urgency and specific job demands are some of the factors that heighten people’s emotions and trigger antisocial work behaviors (Giacalone, & Greenberg, 1997; Neuman, & Baron, 1997). Supervisors at healthcare facilities always wish to ensure timely work output. The need to guarantee timeliness in organizational operations may provoke the supervisor to put pressure on employers to get the job done before the stipulated time elapses (Neuman, & Baron, 1997). The role of a supervisor usually is to lead a group of employees towards a common goal set by an organization. This role, however, is encompassed by myriad challenges bearing in mind some of the negative traits of employees. Managing and controlling such employees with interpersonal attributes like psychological defects and emotional difficulties such as depression and frustrations at times, require aggressiveness.

To ensure the high productivity of an organization, both leaders and followers must demonstrate the capability to weed out antisocial behaviors such as aggression (Giacalone, & Greenberg, 1997), bullying, absenteeism, and general passive-aggressive behavior. Several research studies have been conducted to explore some of the antisocial behaviors and, more specifically, abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000; Tepper, 2007). When subjected to abusive supervision, workers who possess better social adaptability skills will experience moderate emotional exhaustion and job dissatisfaction as well as job tension (Tepper, Carr,  Breaux, Geider, Hu, & Hua, 2009). Youths of the millennial generation have been proved to be relatively hard to manage at workplaces. This is because this generation is associated with some antisocial behaviors ranging from disrespect, deceitfulness, failure to conform to laws and rules governing an organization, and other societal norms. Honesty and trust collaboratively play a critical role in defining what it takes to be a nurse or healthcare practitioner; thus, dishonesty can significantly affect healthcare operations (Shahriari, Mohammadi, Abbaszadeh, & Bahrami, 2013). A nurse is required to say or report things that make patients, their families, and the society at large trust them in the delivery of routine services (Shahriari, Mohammadi, Abbaszadeh, & Bahrami, 2013), only then a nurse can be reliable.

Absenteeism is one of the antisocial behaviors that breach the requirement for responsibility and autonomy among healthcare workers. Responsibility is a crucial trait that healthcare practitioners must have to ensure high-quality service delivery. Being responsible requires health personnel to perform his/her duties with self-drive at heart. Ethically, a nurse must prove to be considerate and put patients’ rights at priority in autonomously making a decision (Shahriari, Mohammadi, Abbaszadeh, & Bahrami, 2013; Manojlovich, & Ketefian, 2016). Nurses’ decisions should be personal and not caused by any pressure (Manojlovich, & Ketefian, 2016). At all times, reports and care offered by nurses should be evidence based and not just assumptions. In summary, a professionally competent nurse has to be responsible for patients’ well being and improvement of their health status (Shahriari, Mohammadi, Abbaszadeh, & Bahrami, 2013).

Since most antisocial behaviors are linked to upbringing, it is necessary to educate parents on the ways to counteract the emergence of such behaviors among youths. Training of supervisors can also help avert the development of antisocial behaviors at work. Aggressive supervision has deleterious effects in organizational operation employee productivity. An organization must in place measures that prevent aggressive supervision from taking place. Finally, organizations can also form a disciplinary committee to help deal with individuals involved in antisocial behaviors.

References

Giacalone, R. A., & Greenberg, J. (Eds.). (1997). Antisocial behavior in organizations. Sage.

Neuman, J. H., & Baron, R. A. (1997). Aggression in the workplace. Antisocial behavior in           organizations, 37, 67.

Manojlovich, M., & Ketefian, S. (2016). The effects of organizational culture on nursing   professionalism: Implications for health resource planning. Canadian Journal of Nursing      Research Archive, 33(4).

Mitchell, M. S., & Ambrose, M. L. (2007). Abusive supervision and workplace deviance and the  moderating effects of negative reciprocity beliefs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4),          1159.

Shahriari, M., Mohammadi, E., Abbaszadeh, A., & Bahrami, M. (2013). Nursing ethical values     and definitions: A literature review. Iranian journal of nursing and midwifery research,           18(1), 1.

Spector, P. E. (1997). The role of frustration in antisocial behavior at work. Antisocial behavior     in organizations, 1-17.

Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of management journal,       43(2), 178-190.

Tepper, B. J., Carr, J. C., Breaux, D. M., Geider, S., Hu, C., & Hua, W. (2009). Abusive   supervision, intentions to quit, and employees’ workplace deviance: A power/dependence      analysis. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 109(2), 156-167.

Tepper, B. J. (2007). Abusive supervision in work organizations: Review, synthesis, and research  agenda. Journal of management, 33(3), 261-289.