Organizational Citizenship Behavior - Relationship With CWB

Relationship With CWB

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is defined as “intentional employee behavior that is harmful to the legitimate interests of an organization” (Dalal, 2005). When considering the definitions of OCB and CWB, it seems logical to assume that these constructs are opposites; one harms the organization and the other helps. Individuals might further assume that by engaging in one of these types of behaviors, an individual will not tend to engage in the other. However, a recent meta-analysis, Dalal (2005), found that this is not the case. The results of this analysis indicate that these constructs only shared a little to moderate negative correlation and furthermore showed differences in magnitude and pattern of relationships between various antecedents and the two constructs. These results indicate that CWB and OCB are two separate constructs and should be conceptualized as thus.