Antecedents of Workplace Deviance in the South African Farming Sector

Abstract

Employees are regarded as essential resources in organisations and are capable of building up or destroying the organisations through their behaviour. This paper explores the antecedents of various forms of workplace deviant behaviours that can influence the functioning of an organisation in both constructive and destructive ways. A qualitative research design in the form of a narrative approach to inquiry was adopted in order to understand the participants’ views and experiences in relation to farmworkers’ engagement in various forms of constructive and destructive deviant behaviours at their workplace. Semi-structured interviews, using a critical incident technique were employed in order to collect data from 39 participants. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected narrative data. The antecedents of workplace deviance were grouped into two broader themes, individual and organisational antecedents. The constructive individual antecedents reported are self-determination and self-protection while constructive organisational antecedents include organisational commitment, job or work commitment, job knowledge, skills and experience, collegial support and expectation of rewards. The destructive individual antecedents are personal circumstances, cravings and drinking over the weekend while the destructive organisational antecedents include exhaustion, turnover intentions, work-related clashes, ignorance of procedures, lack of commitment, lack of job knowledge and retaliation. An insight in relation to the antecedents of both constructive and destructive workplace deviance can enable management to devise strategies that would encourage workers’ engagement in constructive deviant behaviours and enhance organisation’s competitiveness, while discouraging workers’ engagement in destructive deviant behaviours that could result in organisational inefficiency.