Social Concern as a Means of Understanding the Risk of Workplace Deviance

ABSTRACT

Agnew recently conceptualized social concern theory has started to gain empirical attention. However, none of the previous tests have applied social concern theory to deviance unique to the workplace. This dearth in the literature is likely partly due to the comprehensive nature of the theory and lack of concise measurement tools. The current study sought to help fill these gaps in the literature by using a modified version of Shadmanfaat et al.’s recent social concern scale to test the utility of social concern theory for explaining work deviance. Original data was collected from a sample of 301 employees of private banks in Rasht, Iran. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and regression analysis were used to test the direct, indirect, conditioning, and mediating effects of social concern on work deviance. Results generally support the propositions derived from social concern theory for work deviance by showing that all four components of social concern (e.g., conformity to others) are significantly associated with work deviance and that social concern can mediate and moderate the relationships between other causes (e.g., low self-control) and work deviance. Theoretical implications are discussed within.

Note

1. The initial sampling frame included information regarding staff members’ first names, surnames, and contact numbers. Still, we did not have access to the demographic information needed to compare our sample and the target population fully. Also, the 29 cases dropped from the analysis did not include enough information to conclude whether they are distinguishable from the remaining sample. However, we believe that the random sampling method we used helped ensure our findings’ overall validity.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julak Lee

Author Biographies

Kabiri earned his master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Guillan (2012) and also earned his Ph.D. degree in social problems of Iran at the University of Mazandaran (2017). He has published several papers about the sociology and criminology of sports. His current research interests involve sports criminology.

Jaeyong Choi, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at West Chester University (PA). His research interests include cybercrime, immigration and criminal justice, cross-national research, and perceptions of crime and justice.

Nathan E. Kruis, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Pennsylvania State University—Altoona. His research interests include criminological theory, corrections, desistance from crime, stigma of offenders, drug policy, substance abuse, and treatment.

Shadmanfaat earned her master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Guillan (2016) has published several papers about sociology and criminology of sport with a focus on gender differences. Her current research interests involve gender sports criminology.

Julak Lee, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Security at Chung-Ang University. His research interests lie in the area of security management, comparative criminal justice, and policing.