Research co-authored by the associate professor of management examines organizational policies of off-duty deviance (ODD) and strategies to reduce ODD.
Brian D. Lyons, associate professor of management in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, co-authored the article “Off-Duty Deviance: Organizational Policies and Evidence for Two Prevention Strategies,” which appears in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Lyons and his co-authors Brian J. Hoffman, University of Georgia, William H. Bommer, California State University-Fresno, Colby L. Kennedy, University of Georgia, and Andrea L. Hetrick, University of Georgia, explored the relevance of employee off-duty deviance (ODD) to modern organizations and the potential approaches to reduce the incidence of ODD.
The article’s abstract reads:
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that organizations are increasingly concerned with employee off-duty deviance (ODD), yet management research has rarely investigated this type of deviant behavior. We define ODD as behaviors committed outside the workplace or when off-duty that are deviant by organizational and/or societal standards, jeopardize the employee’s status within the organization, and threaten the interests and well-being of the organization and its stakeholders. Three studies are presented to better understand the relevance of ODD to modern organizations and then to understand potential approaches to reduce the incidence of ODD. The first study provides a qualitative review of publicly available ODD policies within the Fortune 500; the results showed that 13.4% of the Fortune 500 had a publicly available ODD policy, with the majority prohibiting criminal forms of ODD to protect the firm’s reputation. The next 2 studies examine the efficacy of different approaches to reduce criminal ODD: policy adoption and personnel selection. In the second study, a longitudinal, quasi-experimental design showed a significant—albeit modest—reduction in criminal ODD following the adoption of a conduct policy. In the third and final study, a criterion-related validity design supported the predictive validity of general mental ability and prior deviance in predicting criminal ODD. This compendium of studies provides an initial empirical investigation into ODD and offers implications relevant to the deviance literature, policy development, and personnel selection.”
The Journal of Applied Psychology is a peer-reviewed academic journal (5-year impact factor = 7.753) published by the American Psychological Association. It emphasizes the publication of original investigations that contribute new knowledge and understanding to fields of applied psychology.