THE EFFECTS OF POSITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARDS OLDER WORKERS ON CONSTRUCTIVE DEVIANCE IN THE WORKPLACE
(POSITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARDS OLDER WORKERS, ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTIFICATION AND CONSTRUCTIVE DEVIANCE)
Master thesis, MSc, specialization Human resource management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
January 19, 2014
WORD COUNT (body text): 4801 words
2 1.Abstract
3 2. Introduction
Over the past years, the issue of the ageing workforce has attracted more and more attention. In almost all sectors we see that the workforce is becoming older. There are two main reasons for this development. First of all, we see that the average life expectancy of citizens is growing. In most of the ‘developed countries’, citizens have access to social services in case of sickness or other inadequacies, which enlarges the average life expectancy. According to Statistics Netherlands (2008), life expectancy has dramatically risen, especially since 2002. Female life expectancy at birth was 82.3 years in 2007 compared to 79.4 in 1980. For men, this was 78.0 years compared to 72.6 in 1980 (Statistics Netherlands, 2008). In countries such as Spain and France, the life expectancy is even higher. For example, female life expectancy in Spain is 84.8 years and in France this is 84.6 years. These statistics show that the average life expectancy of society in these developed countries are rising rapidly.
4 early retirement possibilities. These two developments lead to an ageing workforce and this will have consequences for organizations.
2.1 Attitudes towards older workers in organizations
When workers are staying for a longer time at organizations the age range of the workforce will become wider. On the one hand, college graduates will enter organizations and on the other hand the ‘older workers’ will stay at the organizations until a higher age. Thus, the fact is that the workforce becomes more diverse regarding age. The question which arises now is whether it is desirable? To answer this question, it is important to look to the attitudes of workers towards this ageing workforce.
5 Foner (1988) younger workers show more (destructive) deviant workplace behavior because they become more frustrated by unresolved intergenerational concerns.
The social role theory (SRT) states that “viewing people in various social roles provides an important basis for beliefs about social groups” (Eagly, 1987). This theory explains how people create attitudes towards different social groups. As workers observe others, they will pay attention to the social roles they occupy. These observations are mostly biased, and result into the developments of stereotypic beliefs (Kite et al., 2005). Thus, SRT helps us to understand how attitudes are developed towards other age-groups and these attitudes do mostly not reflect the reality as a result of biased observations.
6 2.2 Deviant behavior
A distinction can be made between destructive deviance and constructive deviance. Destructive deviance can be described as: “… voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in so doing threatens the well-being of an organization, it members, or both” (Robinson & Bennett, 1995: 556). There are several minor forms of destructive deviance such as absenteeism, lateness, gossiping, and leaving the firm. But more serious forms of destructive deviance are theft, sabotage, aggression, and verbal abuse. Especially younger workers are more likely to behave aggressively or to be involved in interpersonal violence compared to older workers (Harris, 1996; Sugarman and Hotaling, 1989). Employers should provide an environment which stays far away from this kind of deviant behavior in the workplace, because it will destroy the well-being of the organization (Robinson & Bennett, 1995).
7 current operations in the organization, because unorthodox or deviant ways are used to break away from the current structure to create a new structure (Maidique, 1980).
A specific form of constructive deviance is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). According to Galperin (2002) OCB is shown by employees who define their roles more broadly and will view more activities as in-role. One employee will show more OCB than others. For example, it is more likely that employees who feel fairly treated by their executives and colleagues will engage in OCB, in contrast to people who do not feel fairly treated (Lee & Allen, 2002). As a result of an increasingly changing and competing business environment this type of deviant behavior is more important than ever before (Dean & Snell, 1991).
8 Borman & Lammlein, 2006). Thus, for both workers, young and old, it will be more likely that they behave in a constructive way when they have positive attitudes towards older workers. The younger workers, because of their willingness to cooperate with the older workers as a result of their positive attitudes towards older worker and the older workers because of the positive age climate which contributes their well-being. This will lead to the first hypothesis: Positive attitudes towards older workers are positively related towards Constructive deviance.
Now the question arises if positive attitudes towards older workers are enough to accomplish constructive deviance. When will workers behave in a constructive way and when not? This brings us to the concept of organizational identification.
2.3 Identification.
9 membership is devalued by an older worker, he or she suffers from a negative social identity. In order to address negative identity, social identity theory distinguishes two strategies, namely: individual strategies, which will benefit the status of the individual him/herself and group strategies which will benefit the status of the group as a whole (Desmette & Gaillard, 2008). Attention should be paid by employers to focus on these strategies to avoid destructively deviant behavior by employees. In sum, all these definitions of OI imply that members of an organization link their membership to their self-concept, this can be emotionally (proud to be a member), cognitively (feelings of an employee that he or she is part of the organization, internalize the values of the organization), or both (Riketta, 2005).
10 time. There is scope for intervention, for instance in the form of training of students in universities.
11 2.4 The present research
First of all this research will examine whether positive attitudes towards older workers will lead to constructive deviance, and whether this relationship is moderated by organizational identification. Thus, the model is as follows:
The hypotheses which will be tested in this research are:
Hypothesis 1
H1: Positive Attitudes towards older workers are positively related towards Constructive Deviance
Hypothesis 2
12 3. Method
In this research the relation between positive attitudes towards older workers and constructive deviance, as well as the effect of organizational identification on this relationship has been investigated with a survey study. This research has been conducted at the municipality of Stadskanaal. The survey has been sent by e-mail to all of the 200 employees working at the municipality. The employees could fill in the survey by opening the link in the e-mail. The language which is used in the survey was Dutch. 80 of the 200 respondents did respond the e-mail, yielding a respond rate of 40%. The sample consisted out of 29 (36%) males and 39 (49%) females, with an average age of 48 years old (M= 48.52, SD=10.46). There were 12 (15%) respondents who did not fill in their sex and 16 (20%) respondents who did not fill in their age. The average job tenure of the respondents was 27 years (M= 27.27, SD= 10.58). The average organizational tenure, which is the average time that the respondents are working for the municipality of Stadskanaal, was 16 years (M=16.75, SD= 11.43). The average amount of working hours per week of the respondents was 32 hours per week (M=32.14, SD=7.03).
13 3.1 Measuring positive attitudes towards older workers
The positive attitudes towards older workers were measured with the scale provided by Noack, (2009). The questionnaire is presented in Appendix 8.1. There were twelve different questions that measured the positive attitudes towards older workers. Each question could be answered with a five-point scale ranging from 1, “strongly disagree” to 5, “strongly agree”. The Cronbach Alpha of this variable was .93. The mean and standard deviation were as follows: M=3.3, SD=0.55.
3.2 Measuring constructive deviance
For testing constructive deviance the scale provided by Galperin (2002) was used. The questionnaire is presented in Appendix 8.2. There were five different questions that measured constructive deviance (e.g., “Developed creative solutions to problems”). Each question could be answered with a five-point scale ranging from 1, “never” to 5, “daily”. The Cronbach Alpha of this variable was .83. The mean and standard deviation were as follows: M=3.25, SD=0.57.
3.3 Measuring organizational identification
14 4. Results
In this section the results of the survey will be published. Different analyses are used to test both hypotheses. First of all, the correlations are shown. After that a regression analysis is shown.
4.1 Correlations.
The constructs organizational identification and constructive deviance had a positive significant correlation, r=.29, p<.05. Thus, the stronger a worker is identified with the organization, the more constructive behavior he or she will show and vice versa. Because of gender differences in general it was interesting to see if these correlations differ for men and women. When the sample was divided by gender, it was shown that this relation was stronger for men namely, r=.41, p<.05, whereas for women this correlation was nonsignificant, r=.16, p=.32.
For men the correlation between positive attitudes towards older workers and organizational identification was marginally significant, r=.34, p<.1.
For women the correlation between positive attitudes towards older workers and constructive deviance was marginally significant, r=-.27, p<.1.
There were no other significant results between the constructs of the model .
15 4.2 Moderation analysis
The moderation hypothesis (H2) was tested by means of a regression analysis. There was one dependent variable; constructive deviance and three independent variables namely: Positive attitudes towards older workers, organizational identification and the corresponding interaction. This regression analysis was tested separately for men and women, because of the different correlations between the construct for men and women.
First of all, hypothesis 1 is tested for both sexes, before the moderation analysis was conducted. The regression model for women was marginally significant (R²=.07, F (1, 38) =2.88, p<.1). This model has shown that the positive attitudes towards older workers were negatively related to constructive deviance for women (β = -.30, p<.1). Hypothesis 1 stated that attitudes towards older workers are positive related to constructive deviance. The regression model, however, has shown that this relationship has a negative beta. This means that a female worker with positive attitudes towards older works will show less constructive behavior. Hypothesis 1 has to be rejected for women. The regression model for men was not significant, so no conclusions can be drawn about them.
16 Figure 1. The influence of organizational identification on the relationship between Positive attitudes towards older workers and Constructive deviance for men.
The graph show that in case of high organizational identification less positive attitudes towards older workers are associated with more constructive deviance. When the attitudes towards older workers are ‘high positive’ (i.e. positive), workers will behave to a lesser extent in a constructive way.
When employees have positive attitudes towards older workers, no impact of organizational identification on constructive deviance is evident. By contrast when employees do not held positive attitudes towards older workers (left side of figure 1). Organizational identification has a strong impact on constructive deviance, such that strongly identified employees show much higher levels of constructive deviance than weakly identified employees.
18
5. Discussion
The purpose of this study was to see if there is an existing relationship between positive attitudes towards older workers and constructive deviance, and the effect of organizational identification on this relationship.
19 relationship between these two groups. Women care more about interpersonal relationships than men. Thus, when female workers have positive attitudes towards older workers, it is more likely to be that they will act in the same way as older workers do. They might not behave in a constructive way to maintain the good relationship between them and the older workers. This could be an explanation for the negative correlation between positive attitudes towards older workers and constructive deviance.
Men do not have such strong concern for interpersonal relationships and might only behave in a constructive way as they are more identified with the organization. The results showed that organizational identification had a strong impact on constructive deviance, such that strongly identified employees show much higher levels of constructive deviance than weakly identified employees. This relationship was only evident for employees who do not have positive attitudes towards older workers. What could be an explanation for this observation?
20 constructive deviance to overcome or compensate these ‘weak links’ in the organization. Thus, a situation where there are highly identified workers, who do not hold positive attitudes towards older workers could lead to constructive deviance of those highly identified workers.
Constructive behavior in public organizations.
This research was conducted at the municipality of Stadskanaal, a public organization. The question is if there are possibilities for constructive behavior in public organizations. According to Nair and Bhatnagar (2011) there may be limited room for deviance in non-profit organizations. Municipalities are the only suppliers of goods like passports, driver licenses, permits, social services and so on. There is no need for them to compete with other suppliers, because they have a monopoly in these areas. In addition, research has stated that workers in the public sector are more risk averse compared to workers in the private sector (Bellante & Link, 1981). Thus, it is less likely to be that workers of the municipality will work beyond their job requirements to avoid risk. The reason behind this risk aversion is that the municipality is working on behalf of the citizens and is using tax money. They must be accountable and transparent to their citizens and that is why they cannot take large amounts of risk and thereby do not show that much deviant behavior.
21 this will benefit the organization as a whole. In the future more room must be created in the ‘conservative’ municipalities for discrepant behavior to advance organization’s interest.
Limitations and recommendations
- The sample size was really small, namely 80 respondents. It was difficult to find significant relationships, because of this small sample size. It is less reliable to generalize the results found in this study. Moreover, not all questions were answered by the respondents, which lowers the reliability of the results as well.
- The average age of the respondents was 48 years old, which is high. It is more likely that the attitudes are positive towards older workers when the majority is an older worker. It is not sure if the same results are found in an organization with more younger workers. It will be interesting to see how the attitudes towards older workers are in a organization where the balance between the amount of younger and older workers is more equal. - Stadskanaal lies in a region where the average age is old. All the ‘younger’ people are moving to the bigger cities in the environment. This municipality could give us a biased image of the reality.
22 6. Conclusion
23 7. References
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28 8. Appendices
8.1 Attitudes towards older workers [1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly disagree] “In my company older workers are seen as ...”
o Cooperative o Reliable o Resilient o Open minded o Productive o Creative o Risk-loving o Competent o Flexible o Motivated o Effective o Goal oriented 8.2 Constructive deviance [ 1 = “never”; 7 = “daily”]
o “Developed creative solutions to problems”
29 o “ Departed from the accepted tradition to solve problems”
o “ Introduced a change to improve the performance of your work group”
8.3 Organizational identification
[ 1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree]
o When someone criticizes (name of company), it feels like a personal insult. o I am very interested in what others think about (name of company).
o When I talk about this company, I usually use the words ‘we’ rather than ‘they’. o This company successes are my successes.
o When someone praises this company, it feels like a personal compliment. o If a story in the media criticized the company, I would feel embarrassed.
8.4 Correlation tables.
30 Table 2. Correlations for men
