Reinforcing or Slackening the Spiral of Deviance: The Role of the Personal Norm of Reciprocity

Based on the importance of philosophical and theoretical paradigms to explain negative organizational behaviors, the contribution will analyze detrimental organizational phenomena through the lens of the norm of reciprocity. By considering reciprocity as a personal norm and an individual orientation, it is interesting to note that people who have a strong tendency to reciprocate benefits may not have the same willingness to reciprocate harmful behaviors and vice versa. The work will focus on three constructs, namely (i) psychological contract violation, (ii) incivility, and (iii) organizational workplace deviance (WD-O). By using the reciprocity perspective, the analysis will explain the possible presence of an interactive mechanism between these three phenomena. Specifically, the psychological contract violation could bring to the start of the incivility spiral that, in turn, could escalate to WD-O. Based on this consideration, the main contribution of the study will be to show that the personal belief in reciprocity could influence the relationship between these three phenomena. Specifically, the link between cited phenomena could be slackened or reinforced by the personal belief in reciprocity. Framing negative organizational phenomena under the norm of reciprocity could help academics and practitioners to prevent and contrast the escalating process of negative organizational behaviors by considering personal differences in reciprocity belief.