Human Resource Management Practices, Work Intensity, and Workplace Deviance: Exploring the Moderating Role of Core Self-Evaluations

Drawing on social exchange, conservation of resources, and self-verification theories, I conduct two studies to examine the impact of perceived human resource management (HRM) practices on workplace deviance. The first study hypothesizes that perceived maintenance and development HRM bundles have a negative indirect effect on deviance via work intensity. Using a two-wave research design (n = 69), the results demonstrated that both HRM bundles were negatively related to deviance via work intensity. The post-hoc analyses revealed that both HRM bundles had an indirect negative effect on organizational deviance, but were not indirectly related to interpersonal deviance.

The second study hypothesizes two moderated mediated models to understand some key moderating effects in the HRM practices and organizational deviance relationship. I first examine a three-way interaction between work intensity, core self-evaluations (CSE), and identity threat on organizational deviance. Afterwards, I hypothesize that this three-way interaction shapes the negative indirect effect of both perceived HRM bundles on organizational deviance via work intensity. Using a cross-sectional research design (n = 125), the results revealed a significant three-way interaction between work intensity, CSE, and identity threat on organizational deviance. The results further revealed that this three-way interaction moderated the indirect effect of perceived development HRM practices (but not perceived maintenance HRM practices) on organizational deviance through work intensity.

Consistent with social exchange theory, this research demonstrates that work intensity mediates the relationship between perceived HRM practices and deviance, thereby advancing our understanding of the ‘black box’ between HRM practices and employee outcomes. This research also highlights the moderating roles of CSE and identity threat in the work intensity and organizational deviance relationship. These results demonstrate that the negative relationship between work intensity and organizational deviance strengthens when high CSE employees experience low identity threat. That is, this three-way interaction supports much of the CSE literature that points to the positive implications associated with high CSE, but it also contrasts the mainstream literature by revealing that high CSE may not always be desirable. This research also reveals some of the boundary conditions, namely, CSE and identity threat, in the perceived HRM practices and organizational deviance relationship.