Workplace deviance, in group psychology, may be described as the deliberate (or intentional) desire to cause harm to an organization more specifically, a workplace. The concept has become an instrumental component in the field of organizational communication. Cyber technology has created new opportunities because it is much harder to find a person when they are doing harmful acts behind a computer compared to when they are in person and can be caught on a security camera for example. Another instance of workplace deviance is when an employee has been given too much access to files that should be hidden from them. This could potentially allow the employee to do more damage for a longer period of time before getting caught. Overall cyber technology has created more ways for work place deviance to occur and has also made it easier to do and makes it harder to get caught. Work place deviance will always occur in all types of work but cyber technology makes it easier to execute. Most lay people would claim that there is a moral standard widely accepted by society of which behaviors are right and wrong. However‚ the judgment of whether some behaviors are norm-violating or whether they are potentially harmful can be very subjective. The determination of what is and is not deviant workplace behavior depends on who is asked to make that assessment. During the past century‚ psychologists studied workplace deviance most often and social psychologists focused on behaviors such as theft‚ work-slowing‚ and sabotage among blue-collar‚ lower-level employees. The types of behaviors tended to be oriented toward plant floor behaviors rather than actions typical of the boardroom such as fraud‚ harassment‚ or embezzlement. Almost all conceptualizations of workplace deviance were limited to the actions of individuals rather than the deviant actions of groups‚ whole organizations‚ or even industries.
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