Productive Org Productive and Counter-Productive Work Behaviors

Productive Org

Productive and Counter-Productive Work Behaviors

Organizational success is predicated on the abilities and efforts demonstrated by personnel. With respect to matters such as job performance and productivity, a company's long-term prospects will rest significantly on the shoulders of day-to-day employees. This denotes the importance of identifying behaviors that promote productivity and eliminating those which are counterproductive. The discussion hereafter offers a concise consideration of how to achieve this balance.

Productive and Counterproductive Behavior:

The text by White (2010) offers some basic definitions that help to assign meanings to productive and counterproductive behaviors within the context of the workplace. White identifies productive behavior as anything that helps to further the goals for the organization, that works to actively improve the company culture or that contributes to adherence with the company's mission. White reports that "some of the most constructive forms of productive behavior in organizations are innovation, job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)" (White, p. 1) This denotes that productive behavior describes a general pattern of orientation amongst personnel that leads to desirable ends for the individual's job performance or for the perfomance of the organization in general.

This contrasts counterproductive behavior, which itself can take myriad forms, perhaps even more unpredictable in their range and variation than are productive behaviors. This type of behavior might be any action or pattern of actions that detracts from the ability of the individual, other personnel or the organization as a whole from achieving its stated objectives. Mondrow identifies these as 'counterproductive work behaviors' (CWB) and indicates that this type of behavior is often associated with occupational burnout, poor suitability to one's assigned tasks or a poor compatability with an organization's culture. According to Mondrow (2011), "Spector et al. (2006) has suggested that there are five categories of CWBs including: abuse towards others, sabotage, theft, production deviance (i.e. working slowly), and withdrawal (i.e. taking longer breaks)." (Mondrow, p. 1)

Impact on Performance:

One of the simplest ways to identify the distinction between productive and counterproductive behaviors is to recognize the pointed differential which such behaviors have on performance outcomes. Without question, the manner of behavior exhibited by the employee will be a chief determinant of his or her ability to perform the job functions demanded or to excel within the scope of a position, a work team or the company at large. According to White, there is an inextricable link between the nature of one's behavior in the workplace and the success of one's performance. The text by White argues that job performance is in fact defined at least partially by the balance of productive and counterproductive behaviors displayed by employees. Positive job performance will inherently overlap with certain traits of productivity. White identifies such traits in the category of organizational citizenship as being courtesy, altruism, civic virtue, sportsmanship, and conscientiousness. (White, p. 1) Such qualities will often be present in the job performance evaluation of the productive individual.

By contrast, the counterproductive individual or one prone to counterproductive behaviors is likely to endure negative job performance ratings. Significant effectors of job performance such as employee absenteeism or the engagement of hostility with coworkers are generally damaging both to the ability of the individual to work to a satisfactory level and to the ultimate job performance rating warranted by the individual in question.

Strategies for Intervention:

The section above denotes that perhaps central among measures for intervening with counterproductive work behaviors is the achievement of effective evaluating tools where job performance is concerned. The proportional relationship between productive work behavior and positive job performance denotes that a measurement of the latter should yield actionable conclusions concerning the former. White notes that there are emergent technologies which might facilitate this type of assessment. White notes that ""organizations have many ways of evaluating and attempting to improve employee effectiveness. Electronic performance monitoring can sometimes call attention to areas where improvement is needed and a training intervention program or on-the-job coaching may be implemented to address an issue." (White, p. 2)