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Antisocial Behavior In Organizations
ROBERT GIACALONE and JERALD GREENBERG (eds). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, ISBN 0-8039-7325-0
This short volume is an important contribution to a growing area of management literature. In nine very readable chapters, Giacalone and Greenberg have brought together authors who address a variety of `antisocial behavior' present in complex organizations. Some of these behaviors include: frustration, revenge, aggression, lying, stealing, and sabotage. Other chapters discuss the negative side of whistleblowing, litigation, and the factors that contribute to counter-productive organizational behaviors generally.
Paul Spector, a well-respected psychologist of these issues, begins the volume with a theoretical model of frustration and reports his findings of a meta-analysis that links workplace frustration to a variety of other work variables. He concludes by suggesting several possible interventions that can be used to ameliorate these 'frustrators'.
Spector's individual-level model is followed by a chapter by Robert Bies, Thomas Tripp and Roderick Kramer who posit a `thermodynamics of revenge' model that does an insightful job of highlighting the cognitive and social dynamics of this fundamental antisocial organizational behavior. They counter-intuitively argue, however, that revenge may have many constructive and prosocial elements to it. This chapter is, in my opinion, one of the best of the volume because it challenges the reader to rethink what constitutes 'antisocial' behavior in organizations.
After a thorough literature review on workplace aggression, Joel Neuman and Robert Baron develop an integrated model of aggression that addresses several biological, individual, cognitive, social, situational, and environmental factors. Beyond their rather exhaustive model, these authors do a nice job of contextualizing workplace aggression by connecting it to the `leaner and meaner' environments of today's...