Structure of the Deviant Act

An Interview on Deviance Introduction

In looking at the structure of a deviant act one must put together somewhat of a puzzle by back tracking thoughts, motives, and environment. This paper will take an interview of a deviant act in a workplace and process it through deviant psychology. It is widely established that the Big Five personality traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability are antecedents to workplace deviance. (Berry, Ones, & Sackett, 2007) Keep in mind that this is a deviant’s sided version of the experience. Self-ratings are a measure of identity, which is the internal dynamics that impact the individual’s future behavior. Observer ratings, however, capture an individual’s reputation. Identity can be used to explain behavior and concerns why someone behaves a certain way, whereas reputation concerns what an individual does. (R. T. Hogan, 2007)

A Little Bit of History

We will begin with calling the interviewee “Suzy.” Suzy is a fifty-year-old woman now remembering back on a deviant act she experienced when she was about 40 years old. Suzy was an accountant that worked in payroll. Suzy is a person of high ethics and values. Honesty is something that Suzy holds in high regards in both her personal and professional life. At the age of 40, Suzy says she landed her dream job working for one of the largest law firms in San Francisco. She says she felt on top of the world. Suzy explained that she gave 110% into the job and was very happy. Looking back she said she would have never dreamed what happened to cause her to commit such a deviant act. She had established her reputation and relationships within the organization. Those high in conscientiousness seek to develop and maintain long-term relationships with their employing organization are rule abiding (Barrick, Mount, & Li, 2013), are concerned with the consequences of their actions (Tepper, Duffy, & Shaw, 2001), and choose words with care in interpersonal exchanges. (Goldberg, 1999) Therefore, they are less likely to lose their temper with others at work, thus avoiding interpersonal deviance (Taylor & Kluemper, 2012), and they are more likely to uphold the standards of workplace norms, thus avoiding organizational deviance. (Marcus & Schuler, 2004) This was Suzy’s identity before the deviant act.

Where It Began

It was the time of year where everyone got their reviews and the company supervisors decided on raises. Suzy said they were all told they would get at least a 3% raise for everyone in her department. Suzy worked in the payroll department when everyone started to notice a workplace love affair unfolding between her female supervisor and another female in the collections department. Things started to come across Suzy’s desk in regards to a certain real estate transaction. Basically, Suzy said, they were buying a house together. Then the day came when everyone got the notice that no one would be getting their raise that year. Suzy explained how much that hurt everyone that was counting on it, causing bad feelings and emotional instability in the department and the level of motivation decreased. If one is emotionally stable, calm, cool, and collected in the face of work stressors, then one tends not to overreact under stress, and that prevents unsocial behavior because overreactions are often somewhat antisocial (Kluemper, 2015), and that is what the work place had become, antisocial.

Stuck in the Middle

The last straw, Suzy said, was the order for the woman in collections to receive a $100,000 per year raise with a period of back pay to be paid in the next pay period. Suzy said she was shocked to disbelief. There she was staring at everyone’s 3% raise going to one person, the supervisor’s lover. The back pay equaled to the down payment of a house, the amount of the loan. Suzy was mortified. She was so angry that she did not care about her job anymore. She wanted everyone to know the truth where their raise went. Suzy said she made copies of the payroll sheet that showed the pay raise and the person’s name and circulated it to the employee’s. Suzy said that something got the best of her. She felt trapped inside a secret that she could not keep. It went against her morals and values and yet she went against a code of ethics in order to preserve her morals and speak the truth. Suzy actually went through the seven stages of a deviant identity career path. She got caught and publicly identified. Then a retrospective interpretation, to be recast differently, spoiled her identity and tarnished her reputation. As a consequence to being caught, the dynamics of exclusion by the group began to happen, while people that she had not even known saw her as a hero and gave her inclusion in their group. Suzy was treated differently.

In the End

The end result was that Suzy committed a deviant act and was ultimately looked at and labeled as a deviant that broke the rules of ethics in accounting under the confidentiality clause and was fired from her job. Even though she was a hero to some of her co-workers, the supervisors and others did not see it that way. Deviant identity may become a “master status,” rising to the top of the hierarchy, infusing people’s self-concept and others’ reactions, and taking precedence over all other statuses. (Adler, 2012) Disintegrative shaming rejects the person and disallows them to be a part of society. Braithwaite claims offenders that are prevented from bonding back to into society can only become more entrenched in crime as a result of being labeled as a criminal (Braithwaite, 1989). Suzy admitted that the jobs she had after that, she did not give 100%. The experience jaded her and she admitted that being labeled somewhat of a criminal. She ended up having to work for shady people and she stole money from them and justified it by saying he was a bad person. Suzy fell into the seventh deviant identity by internalizing the deviant label. Suzy said she eventually changed careers and built a whole new identity and regained her respectability in another field.

References

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