earticle

영어

Individuals form various relationships and perceive expectations about them. Within an employment relationship, an employer and employee form expectations about each others’ inputs and outputs. Generally, the relationship should be perceived to be equitable and reciprocal as both the employer and employee fulfill their contributions and receive benefits from each other. However, relationships are not always equitable and reciprocal and can form feelings of entitlement. Entitlement tends to allow individuals to form inflated self-perceptions and unrealistic expectations about their employment relationship. For example, when employees have high expectations about what they should receive from their organization, they believe that they deserve more from their organizations such as higher salaries, bonuses, and promotions regardless of their contributions toward the organization. Subsequently, psychological entitlement has been found to be associated with numerous negative attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as aggression and conflict. As research has consistently found entitlement to result in detrimental outcomes, entitlement research has gained some academic attention. However, there has been limited empirical studies on entitlement, especially within organizational behavior. Within the literature, most of the studies have not been conducted at the workplace context; thus, creating a need to further research on how organizations can maintain and manage the detrimental effects of entitlement on workplace attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, entitlement research has yet to be empirically tested with performance behaviors such as deviant behaviors and include boundary conditions for psychological entitlement with its behavioral outcomes. Therefore, this study empirically tests the relationship between psychological entitlement and deviant behavior and the moderating effects of organizational justice and perceived organizational support. The study sampled 494 corporate employees in South Korea and found psychological entitlement to be positively associated with workplace deviant behavior. For the moderating variables, distributive, interactional justice, and perceived organizational support were found to moderate the relationship while procedural justice did not moderate the relationship. As hypothesized, distributive justice and perceived organizational support were found to mitigate the effects of entitlement on deviant behavior. However, interactional justice was unexpectedly found to moderate the relationship in the opposite direction. Therefore, the study suggests that psychological entitlement can increase the likelihood of employees engaging in workplace deviant behavior while organizational facets such as organizational justice and perceived organizational support can help organizations and managers to mitigate and manage entitlement perceptions toward workplace deviant behavior. Furthermore, due to the study results, this study further bridges the gap within entitlement literature.

한국어

특권의식은 직원들이 고용 관계에 대한 과대 인식과 고용 관계에 대한 비현실적인 기대를 형성하게 하는 경향이 있다. 예를 들어, 직원들이 자신의 조직에서 받을 것에 대한 기대가 크면 클수록, 보다 높은 급여, 보너스, 각종 프로모션 등을 당연히 받을 만 하다고 생각한다는 것이다. 결과적으로, 심리적 특권의식(psychological entitlement)은 수많은 직장에 대한 부정적인 태도 및 행동과 관련이 있는 것으로 밝혀졌다. 그런데 기존연구에서는 대부분의 연구들이 직장을 대상으로 이루어지지 않아, 특권의식이 직장에서의 태도와 행동에 미치는 영향에 대한 연구가 필요한 실정이다. 더욱이 특권의식에 관한 연구에 있어 직장 일탈행동과 성과와의 관계를 검증한 연구는 미흡하다. 이에 본 연구에서는 심리적 특권의식과 직장 일탈행동(deviant behavior) 간의 관계를 검증하고자 한다. 보다 구체적으로 심리적 특권의식과 일탈행동 간의 관계에 있어 조직 공정성(organizational justice)과 조직 지원 인식(perceived organizational support)의 조절효과를 검증하고자 한다. 대한민국의 494개 기업의 직원들을 대상으로 검증한 결과, 심리적 특권의식과 직장 일탈행동은 양의 관계를 갖는 것으로 나타났다. 조절효과에 있어서는 분배공정성(distributive justice), 상호작용공정성(interactional justice) 및 조직지원인식(perceived organizational support)의 효과는 유효했으나, 절차공정성(procedural justice)의 효과는 나타나지 않았다. 가설과 같이 분배공정성과 조직지원인식은 특권의식과 일탈행동을 완화시키는 것으로 나타났다. 그러나 상호작용공정성은 반대 방향으로 조절하는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구의 결과는 심리적 특권의식이 종업원의 일탈행동을 증가시킬 수 있으나, 조직공정성 및 조직지원과 같은 요인들이 직원들의 일탈행동을 완화시킬 수 있다는 것을 보여준다. 또한 본 연구의 결과는 특권의식에 관한 기존연구를 보완하고 있다.