Creating Sustainable Work Environments by Developing Cultures that Diminish Deviance

Abstract

Sustainable work environment creation seeks the development of a healthy environment that diminishes all forms of deviant organizational and interpersonal workplace behavior. This paper explores the role of organizational culture and values of organizational culture that help to create a sustainable work environment where the presence of deviant workplace behavior is least present. Using Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework and FOCUS questionnaires as the grounds for the taxonomy of organizational culture and Robinson and Bennett typology of deviant workplace behavior, this paper analyzed the effects of different organizational cultures and their dominant values on the level of occurrence of different forms of deviant workplace behavior. Empirical analysis was done on a sample of 251 employees, belonging to 11 organizations. The research results imply that an emphasis on market and hierarchy culture can be related with occurrence of deviant behaviors. Emphasizing market culture value “job clarity” can reduce deviant behavior, unlike an emphasis on market culture value “efficiency” that could increase the level of deviant behavior. The research results are compared with previous similar studies and discussed in terms of creating a sustainable work environment.