Citizenship and Counterproductive Behavior: Clarifying Relations Between the Two Domains

Competing viewpoints exist as to whether organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) are best viewed as behaviors located on a single continuum or as distinct constructs. Reliable and established measures of OCB, CWB, and the Big Five were administered to a large and diverse employee sample. Confirmatory factor analysis supports differentiating between facets of OCB and CWB. In addition, OCB and CWB were moderately negatively correlated and had a number of different personality correlates. This lends support to OCB and CWB representing two distinct constructs instead of a single continuum.