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Tension at the interface: Exploring employee deviation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Monica Kennedy  and
Michael Corliss
Monica Kennedy
Affiliation:
Division of Business, Law and Information Sciences, University of Canberra, Canberra ACT, Australia
Michael Corliss
Affiliation:
Division of Business, Law and Information Sciences, University of Canberra, Canberra ACT, Australia
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Abstract

An exploratory study of workplace experience in the public sector investigated the tension that employees face in their attempts to meet both organisational and customer expectations. This paper provides an illustration of participant experience that describes: the sense of justice that drove their actions; the innovations that resulted from attempts to fulfil the psychological contract with the customer; and the protection of what employees perceived to be their own and their workmates' deviant behaviour. The ethic that emerged locally through employee–customer interaction and which framed employee decision-making in this study resulted from the role conflict that emerged when the organisation's focus on a consistent application of the rules confronted customers' diverse and pressing need for treatment as individual human beings at the organisational boundary.

Keywords

customer fairnessjusticeinnovationdeviancepsychological contractrole conflictpublic service
Type
Symposium on Deviance and Ethics in Services
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , September 2008 , pp. 424 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2008

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