CORRELATIVE STUDY BETWEEN MENTAL HEALTH, PHYSICAL HEALTH, PRO-ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIORS AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOURS IN A TELEPHONIC COMPANY FROM CHIŞINĂU, MOLDAVIA REPUBLIC CATABULGA CRISTINAURTAVERDE VLAD University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Psychology Abstract This research is focused on highlighting the correlation between self-perception of physical, mental, pro-organizational behavior and counterproductive behavior in a Chisinau, Moldova telephony organization. Method: Participants are a total of 30 employees, women (15) and men (15) aged between 25 and 55 years Instruments: CAPES Questionnaire (Anitei & Chraif, 2008) with the following dimensions: Mental health: to assess people's feelings and behavior, and how they are influenced by the tension they feel in their job; Physical health; Pro-organizational behavior; Counterproductive behaviors. Results: The research hypotheses were not confirmed (p > 0.05). Analyzing Table 1, the data are not statistically significant because (p > 0.05), so in conclusion it can be said that the distributions is normal and a statistical test of correlation parameters can be applied. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the variables: physical health, mental health, pro-organizational behaviors and counterproductive behaviors. Conclusions: Results may highlight on one hand that employees live in an organizational optimum production climate and on the other hand that employees avoid giving real results due to the idea that this may disadvantage them at work later one. Thus, in such situations investigation can continue with physiological methods such as blood pressure, pulse, GSR or medical tests. Keywords: physical health, mental health, counterproductive behaviors, proorganizational behaviors.
Corresponding author Burtaverde Vlad Email:
[email protected]
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1. THEORETHICAL FRAMEWORK After a long period characterized by the growing interest in analyzing and explaining positive attitudes and behaviors of employees, researchers concerned with the study of organizational behavior begun to focus on the negative and harmful aspects , revealing a new side of organizational reality. Counterproductive behavior in the workplace has been described and analyzed in various ways, but all have highlighted a bad character either on an impersonal level, for colleagues or clients, or on a organizational level, leading to significant loss for the organization. Pearson, Andersson and Porath (2005) indicate characteristics which distinguish counterproductive behaviors: 1. Intention to harm (which may be absent, present or ambiguous); 2. Behavior target (which can be represented by individuals, organizations or both); 3. Types of rules violations (related to organization, working group or none); 4. Persistence of behavior (single or repeated act in time); 5. Intensity and depth of behaviors exhibited. The first studies for analyzing and explaining this phenomenon focused on the types of actions deemed detrimental to the organization and its members as theft and absenteeism (Sims, 2003). Ethics, especially its absence was treated as the most important issue with which organizations are facing today. It is also one of the main criteria that defines how a company operates, enhancing or, conversely, destroying its reputation. Trevino (1986), followed by the same authors, directed studies to formulate models of the ethical and unethical determinants of behavior that is productive and counterproductive determinants. In general, these models indicate involvement of personal and organizational variables in its consolidation. It is almost impossible to make a complete list of counterproductive behaviors on one hand because it would be very long list and, on the other hand, because such a list would be never ending and incomplete. Analyzing studies on the subject and applying sorting techniques and factor analysis, Gruys and Sackett (2003) apud Chraif (2010) propose a number of 11 counterproductive behaviors 1. Theft and associated behaviors (stealing money, goods or services, misuse of returns) 2. Property damage or sabotage of production; 3. Misuse of information (disclosure to competition, falsification of records); 4. Misuse of work time and resources (time loss, carrying out personal activities during working hours, misuse of the computer);
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5. Risky behaviors (failure to learn safety procedures); 6. Poor working attendance (unexcused absences, delays, misuse of sick leave); 7. Poor quality of work (negligent breach of quality standards); 8. Alcohol abuse (drinking at work, working under the influence of alcohol); 9. Drug use (possession and use while at work, working under the influence of drugs); 10. Inappropriate verbal behavior (verbal aggression towards customers, colleagues or bosses); 11. Inappropriate physical behavior (physical aggression towards customers, colleagues or bosses, sexual harassment); Using multidimensional scaling method, this list of behaviors was reduced to two major dimensions: interpersonal-organizational counterproductive behavior and work related counterproductive behavior. The above list serves as a guide and does not claim to exhaust all behaviors with negative effects on personal effectiveness at work. For example, the case of a faking an injury so as to avoid work is not mentioned and neither is sexual harassment, even if the latter is not a threat to the productivity objectives of the organization, but to the rules of moral conduit. Another common taxonomy of deviant behaviors at work is the one proposed by Robinson and Bennett (1995) apud Chraif (2010), which distinguishes between two main categories: interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance. The two dimensions explaining the model are characterized by two labels: organizational / interpersonal and minor / major. On this basis, there are four quadrants associated to behaviors. Difficulty in building a list of counterproductive behavior is outweighed by the difficulty of measuring them. Besides the usual problems encountered by any method of assessing human behavior, this particular case has one more: employees are directly interested in concealing counterproductive behaviors. Truth be said, some behaviors are public (delays or absences, which may be registered in surveillance systems). The main sources are counterproductive behavior assessment: • Objective recording systems; • self-reporting; • Assessment of others (supervisors). Obviously, no method is perfect. If certain types of behaviors can be easily detected by any method, other types are easily noticed by using other methods. It is often advisable to seek a multidimensional approach. Research conducted on the effects caused by the adoption of counterproductive behaviors in an organization has indicated the following (Frederick, 1999)
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a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h)
affects efficiency; harms sales; decreases productivity because employees no longer trust each other; lowers morale and increases stress levels; decreases the communication level; affects retention and recruitment; increase employee absenteeism; lowers employee performance;
Previous research focused on counterproductive behaviors in Romania indicate the relationship between them and professional satisfaction (Stan and Chraif, 2008), the economic crisis effects on counterproductive behaviors in a chain of fast food restaurants in Romania (Chraif & Anitei, 2011 ), predictors of counterproductive behavior in organizations (Chraif, 2008).
2. OBJECTIVE AND HYPOTHESES 2.1. OBJECTIVE • The study of the relationship between physical, mental and counterproductive behaviors. • Investigation of employees’ self-perception on their health and possible counterproductive behavior in the Chisinau telephony organization in Moldova. 2.2. HYPOTHESES
There is a correlation between physical and counterproductive behaviors among employees in the studied organization. There is a correlation between mental health and counterproductive behaviors among employees in the studied organization.
3. METHOD 3.1. PARTICIPANTS/SUBJECTS Participants are a total of 30 employees of a Chisinau telephony organization in the Republic of Moldova, which were randomly selected. Data processing response came from a total of 30 employees. Subjects, women (15) and men (15) are between 25 and 55 years old.
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3.2. INSTRUMENTS CAPES Questionnaire (Anitei & Chraif, 2008) with the following dimensions: Mental health: to assess people's feelings and behavior, and how they are influenced by the tension they feel in their job; it contains 12 items to which subjects can respond on a six steps Likert scale: 1 - Never to 6 - Frequency; Physical health: to assess specifically the frequency of physical problems manifested and includes 6 items that subjects can respond on a six steps Likert scale: 1 - Never to 6 - Frequently. Pro-organizational behavior: to assess how people behave at work and contains 20 items to which subjects can respond on a five step Likert scale: 1 never to 5 - every day; Counterproductive behaviors: assessing human behavior at the workplace and it includes 15 items to which subjects can respond on a seven steps Likert scale 1 strongly disagree to 7 - strongly agree.
3.3. PROCEDURE Organization employees were informed about the research and data anonymity. After consent certificates were signed instruments were applied. The questionnaires were conducted with the approval of company, in a meeting room of headquarters, both in an individual and collective manner, depending on the time subjects were available. The training was done in an environment with optimal light, without disturbing noises. They were told to respond frankly, subjects had to choose the answer that best suits them, without fear, because there are no answers good or bad. The time the questionnaire was applied was between 8 and 11 am (on different days) since timing is a very important when talking about concentration, attention, physical and mental state in which the subject is tested.
3.4. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Dependent variables are responses to structured instruments applied in four dimensions: physical health, mental health, pro-organizational behaviors and counterproductive behaviors.
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4. RESULTS In the first phase of the analysis we conducted an exploratory analysis of data obtained from the questionnaires. For this we applied Kolmogrov-Smirnov test for variables dimensions of questionnaires. Table 1. Kolmogorv-smirnov test for variables: mental health, physical health, organizational behavior, counterproductive behavior
Normal Parametersa,b
Most Extreme Differences
Mean
Mental health 19.23
Std. Deviation Absolute Positive Negative
3.94 .094 .094 -.187 .514
Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)
.954
Physical health 46.2 6 6.58 .184 .070 -.184 1.007 .263
Productive behavior 51.3 0 3.48 .179 .179 -.081 1.00 7 .263
Counterpro ductive behavior 106.66 13.29 .084 .084 -087 .979 .293
Analyzing Table 1 values are statistically significant because (p> 0.05), so in conclusion it can be said that the distributions is normal and a statistical test of correlation parameters can be applied. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics for the variables: physical health, mental health, pro-organizational behaviors and counterproductive behaviors. Table 2. The Descriptive statistics for the independent and dependent variables (MODEL) Variable 1. Perceived mental health 2. Perceived physical health 3. organizational behavior 9. Counterproductive behavior
Mean 20.26 19.23 51.30 20,18
Std. Deviation 9.12 11.50 50.00 10.75
Table 3 shows the bivariate correlation matrix between variable dimensions: physical health, mental health, organizational productive behavior and counterproductive behavior. Table 3. The correlation matrix of the variables physical health, mental health, productive behavior and counterproductive behavior Health Health Counterpr Productive state state oductive behavior (behavior) (somatic) behavior -,152 -,229 -,143 Health state (behavior) -,152 ,170 -,206 Health state (somatic) -,229 ,170 -,272 Counterproductive behavior -,143 -,206 -,272 Productive behavior
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It can be noted that there no statistically significant correlation between the fallowing dimensions: physical health, mental health, organizational productive behavior and counterproductive behavior. As the results show that there is no statistically significant correlation between these variables, it can be seen that in this case the null hypothesis is confirmed first, that the dimension task of organizational climate dose not significantly influence organizational behavior and employees’ health and rejects the first statistical hypothesis. 5. CONCLUSIONS The fact that the responses to questionnaires led to such a result shows that the telephone company has no problems at this level involving counterproductive behaviors regarding physical and mental health deterioration. On the other hand, given that the questionnaire responses represent employees self-perception on these issues they may record answers desirable to provide a positive image of the organization. This investigation should be continued using psychological and psycho-physiological research methods: measuring blood pressure, pulse, GSR (Anitei, 2007), medical methods such as medical monitoring and systematic observation method over a longer period of time (Anitei , 2007; Anitei, Trifu & Chraif, 2010). Received at: 15.07.2012, Accepted for publication on: 15.08.2012
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REFERENCES
Aniţei, M. (2007). Psihologie experimentală, Iaşi: Polirom. Chraif (2008). Predictori ai comportamentului contraproductiv în organizaţii specializate în producerea şi comercializarea produselor alimentare de tip fast-food, teză de dizertaţie publicată partial (prezentată în iunie 2008). Chraif, M. & Aniţei, M. (2011). The impact of economic crisis on occupational stress and counterproductive behavior in a food and beverage restaurant chain from Romania, In Proceedings of the 2nd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance” Elsevier, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 30, 2011, Pages 2644-2650. Gabriel Stan, Mihaela Chraif (2008) The relationship between professional satisfaction and counterproductive behaviour, The Journal of Organizational Psychology, nr 3-4, 2008. Chraif, M. (2010). The counterproductive behavior. Bucharest, Romania: Editura Universitară. Bennett, R.J., Robinson, S.L. (2000). Development of a measure of workplace deviance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85 (3), 349-360. Pearson, C.M., Andersson, L.M., Porath, C.L. (200 ). or place incivility. n . ox şi P.E. Spector. Counterproductive work behavior. Investigations of actors and targets (pp. 177-200). Washington: American Psychology Association.
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