THE ROLE OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ON THE RELATIONSHIP OF JOB STRESS AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WORK BEHAVIOR (RESEARCH ON PUBLIC SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS)

Sayed Mahdi¹----Mahdani Ibrahim⁺ ----Saed Armia³

¹Lecturer of Syiah Kuala University Banda Aceh, Indonesia

^2,3Associate Professor of Syiah Kuala University of Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Keywords:Work stress Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) Negative emotion.

ARTICLE HISTORY: Received: 22 January 2018, Revised:20 February 2018, Accepted:23 February 2018, Published:28 February 2018.

Contribution/ Originality:Job stress experienced by teachers, it can be minimized with negative emotions. The negative emotions experienced by teachers as a whole are significant with CWB both organizational and interpersonal, the findings indicate that negative emotions will elevate CWB.

1. INTRODUCTION

Education is one of the primary needs that should be developed in developing countries such as Indonesia. Generation with high quality of course cannot be separated from the teachers’ roles in giving guidance over the teaching and learning process in the schools. The head of Aceh education department mentions that the teachers’ quality in Aceh ranked 33 at the national level. One of the ways to produce teachers who can effectively work is to look at the aspects such as compensation, comfort at the workplace, freedom that can influence the teachers’ emotion and hearth condition.

The comfort at the workplace is needed so that there will not be any negative emotion. Thus, the teachers’ performance can be improved. To improve the teachers’ performance, it is needed to pay attention to the work stress (Weinstein and Trickett, 2016). Troesch and Bauer (2017)  also adds that the teachers’ stress is a sort of experience faced by teachers resulting from the discomfort, negative emotion such as anger, anxiety, tension, frustration, and depression caused by various aspects of their work as teachers.

Weinstein and Trickett (2016) adds that someone can be categorized as having work stress if the stress faced involves the authorities at the school where she or he is working. Stress is proximal antecedents toward CWB that weakens and finally leads to the ignorance of the cognitive control that can prevent CWB. The study framework is needed to explain how the work stress can link to counterproductive work behavior and negative emotion.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1.Work Stress

According to Weinstein and Trickett (2016) stress as a certain interaction between human and environment and it is alleged and evaluated by human him or herself as a burden beyond his or her capability. As a result, it can disturb his or her routine. Workload, lack of capability and professional connection with the colleagues, insufficient salary, pupil misbehavior, difficulty to interact with students’ parents and staff’s other expectation have been identified by previous literatures as a source of stress (Stephens et al., 2016; Desouky and Allam, 2017; Zee et al., 2017) . Yoon (2002) found that the teachers’ level stress can be conceptualized as an influencing factor of the teachers-students’ interaction in various circumstances.

2.2. Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB)

Spector et al. (2006) states that CWB consists of intentional action that can disturb or desire to disturb organization and its stakeholders. Specifically, CWB comprises opposing behavior, aggressiveness (either physically or verbally), purposely incorrect action, sabotage, stealing, and withdrawal such as absence, being late, and resign for another work. Characteristics of CWB is that those actions should have an objective and cannot happen accidentally. In the other words, the employees make a choice or decision to behave as such specifically to disturb the organization.

CWB is a combination of different actions committed voluntarily as opposed to accidental accidents that can disturb the organization as well as its stakeholders such as client, workmates, costumers and supervisors  (Ou and Verhoef, 2017).

2.3. Negative Emotions

Negative emotions play an important role in the interactional judicial process (Barsky and Kaplan, 2007) emotions are considered an immediate response to situations that are considered unfair. In fact, the empirical work that links justice with negative emotions has reported relationships with anger, enmity, sadness, fear, and envy (Coget et al., 2011; Kaplan et al., 2014). Desouky and Allam (2017) found that interactional fairness perceptions were associated with depression and anxiety at two time points. Thus, in general negative emotions can be expected as a result of interactional justice. The basic negative emotions are the unpleasant feelings of individuals (fear, anxiety, anxiety, hatred, anger) that can make individuals act very irrational or out of control (Barsky and Kaplan, 2007).

2.4. Stress and CWB

CWB also includes any actions that employee conduct that can harm their organization. CWB has also appeared as an issue within research domain of organization behavior (Dalal, 2005; Griep and Vantilborgh, 2018). Several studies focusing on identifying the potential causes of CWB; some have examined the main effect of individual difference variables (e.g. personality traits) (Salgado, 2002; Dalal, 2005; Berry et al., 2007) whereas others examined the main effect of work stress (Bruk-Lee and Spector, 2006). Hence, Hypothesis 1 is formulated as follow:

Hypothesis 1: Work stress influences CWB

2.5. Stress and Negative Emotion

Teachers’ stress is also related to a problem originating from the interaction with the students (Canales and Maldonado, 2018). Teachers tend to show their angry feeling personally toward boisterous students (Berry et al., 2007; Eaton and Bradley, 2008). Teachers also feel down intellectually and emotionally when they are encountered with students’ misbehavior (Ou and Verhoef, 2017). Thus, hypothesis 2 is designed as follow:

Hypothesis 2: working stress influences negative emotion

2.6. Negative Emotion and CWB

Individual’s strong negative emotion can cause angry easily, impulsive tendency, and ineffective action (Eaton and Bradley, 2008; O’Brien et al., 2008). Due to these reasons, negative emotion is expected to have a positive correlation with CWB (Fox and Spector, 1999; Hershcovis et al., 2007). In example, the tendency to be impulsive will lead someone to stealing the company’s property, underestimating the workmates, easily getting angry, committing a sabotage on the work, or verbally abusing the workmates. Thus, hypothesis 3 is formulated as follow:

Hypothesis 3: Negative emotion influences CWB.

2.7. Stress, Negative Emotion, and CWB

As an affective aspect as has been postulated and found, it is predicted that CWB often mediates the stress experience in the workplace and CWB (Barclay et al., 2005; Bruk-Lee and Spector, 2006; Bordia et al., 2008) . Further, the relation between CWB and work stress is also found as an organization barrier, the role of stress, interpersonal conflict, and lack of justice (Fox and Spector, 1999).

Mohr et al. (2006) explain that state that job strains can be classified into psychological strains, physical strains, and behavioral strains. Behavioral strains is an individual’s way to face stress by reducing stress-emitting emotion (e.g. alcohol drinking, work avoidance) or eliminate the stress itself (e.g. talking to supervisor, and solution development), a form of behavioral strains such as yelling at workmates, sitting at home and not going to office, and reducing the work quality and quantity equivalent to CWB, including role ambiguity, work conflict, workload, organizational constrains, and interpersonal conflict (Bruk-Lee and Spector, 2006; Galic and Ruzojcic, 2017). Some studies above can help explain that employees’ work stress tend to cause them to commit deviant action as their emotion has led to being negative. Thus, hypothesis 4 can be made as follow:

Hypothesis 4: Negative Emotion mediates the influence of stress on CWB

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1. Sample

The survey was conducted at public senior high school (called SMAN) in Banda Aceh City which amounted to 3 schools, namely: SMAN 1, 3, & 4, all of which are the favorite high schools in Banda Aceh city. The teacher population at these three high schools is 156 people. The sample is taken by means of Slovin’s formula (Tejada and Punzalan, 2012). The formula is n = N/(1+Ne^2). In the formula, n = the number of samples needed, N = total population and e = error tolerance. Based on this formula, we got 100 teachers. The choice of sample was done by using random sampling run proportionally from these three high schools.

3.2. Primary Data

Primary data was elicited from the questionnaire to 100 teachers chosen by means of random sampling. The questionnaire items are based on the indicators that have been examined. The answer is presented in Likert scale.

3.3. Data Analysis

This study employed SPSS software as data analysis tool as steps causal technique (Baron and Kenny, 1986). To do the analysis of mediation influence, Baron and Kenny (1986) proposes the following steps:

1. Independent variable influences the dependent variables significantly.
2. Independent variable influences mediator variable significantly.
3. Mediator variable influences dependent variable significantly.
4. Full/Perfect Mediation occurs if the influence of independent variable on dependent variable is significant when a mediator variable involves. Partial mediation occurs if the direct and indirect influences of independent variable on the dependent variable are significant.

Table-1. Characteristics of Respondents

The computation of the sample was done by using the formula proposed by Slovin and whole population of the teacher (SMAN 1, SMAN 3, SMAN 4 Banda Aceh) is 156 people.

3.4. Measurement

Job stress: this study used six statement items from Desouky and Allam (2017)  as an indicator to measure the work stress, consisting of “my tasks in my workplace is very boring”; “my workmates tend to make me uncomfortable and easily tired”. The reliability of these items is 0.835.

Counterproductive work behavior:  this study used the items proposed from Bai et al. (2016) consisting of five statement items that describe the counterproductive  work behavior such as  “I use the property in my workplace for my own interest”; I am often late to go to work”. The reliability of these items is 0.906.

Negative emotion: This study also used the statement items developed by Ou and Verhoef (2017) comprising six items such as “I feel angry when I look at other teachers who are more qualified than I am”; I feel shy when my students criticize my teaching method”. The reliability of these items is 0.862.

4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Hypothesis 1 states that work stress influences counterproductive work behavior (CWB); hypothesis 2 states that work stress influences negative emotion; hypothesis 3 states that emotion influences counterproductive work behavior (CWB), and hypothesis 4 states that negative emotion mediates the influence of work stress on counterproductive work behavior (CWB). The result shows (H1; β = 0,310, p< 0,05), (H2; β = 0,042, p< 0,05), (H3; β = 0,292, p< 0,05). Hypothesis 4 is an indirect hypothesis testing.

To measure the mediation hypothesis by means of causal steps (Baron and Kenny, 1986) it can be seen from the coefficient regression (β)and its significance after the variable of mediation  (negative emotion) is entered. The characteristics of mediation by using causal steps is divided into: Partial and full. Partial mediation occurs if the influence of regression coefficient (β) remains significant (p< 0,05) even after the variable of mediation (negative emotion) is computed. Full mediation takes place if the influence of coefficient regression (β) is not significant anymore (p> 0,05) after variable of mediation (negative emotion) is computed.

Table-2. The result of regression analysis for H: 1, 2, 3.

Coefficient value (R2) aims at investigating the closeness of relationship between one variable and other variables. The coefficient value Adj.R2 measures to what extent independent variables can explain dependent variables.

Table-3. The result of regression analysis for indirect influence.

Coefficient value (β) increased after the variable of mediation (negative emotions) of Negative emotion is computed

This study aims at examining the indirect effect of negative emotion relating to the influence of the work stress on counterproductive work behavior. The result of this study shows that there is an influence of significant work stress on the counterproductive work behavior and the negative emotion mediated the influence of the work stress on counterproductive work behavior.

5. IMPLICATION OF RESEARCH

5.1.Theoretical Implication

The result of this study can enrich the reference of the previous research focusing on the performance in the workplace connected to the work stress by examining the influence of the work stress on the counterproductive work behavior and the negative emotion in the senior high schools 1, 3, and 4 in Banda Aceh city, Indonesia. The result of this study is consistent with what has been found by Weinstein and Trickett (2016) in which the stress became a proximal antecedent of the CWB, meaning that someone feeling continuous stress in the work place tends to commit counterproductive work behavior. Yoon (2002) also adds that stress faced by teachers is a syndrome of the negative emotion originating from the work as a teacher. There is a further need regarding the correlation between stress and performance.

Behavioral problem also influences counterproductive work behavior (Miles et al., 2003). Negative emotion as a whole was also found to have a significant correlation toward the counterproductive work organizationally and interpersonally and the result shows that negative emotion will increase counterproductive work (Salgado, 2002). Emotion has a central role in the process of work stress. Consequently, emotion represents the response toward the situation felt as something that can produce stress (Coget et al., 2011) and emotion can also waste the energy and motivate a further behavior and psychological change (Collie and Martin, 2017). Research results (Bai et al., 2016) has also been underlined the work–home resources model by examining the relationship between family incivility and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). It also explicates the role of mediating mechanism state self-esteem plays in this relationship.

5.2. Practical Implication

In addition to the theoretical contribution, the result of this study can also provide the practical implication for individuals. The result showed that there was a negative influence toward the counterproductive work behavior. Salgado (2002) conducted a research by classifying the counterproductive work behavior into several criteria (2002): (1) absence (measuring to what extent the absence and lateness in working are); (2) deviant action (measuring to what extent the stealing of the organization’s inventories, the unwillingness to confess that wrongdoing, discipline, the breaking of organization’s inventories, and the violation of the organization regulation are). The result of this also suggests that the organization can reduce employees’ stress. Eaton and Bradley (2008) urge to pay attention to the judicial factor of organization implemented in order to reduce the work stress.

Ou and Verhoef (2017)  found a situation that can cause negative emotion will improve the likelihood of the counterproductive work behavior occurrence that can actively or inactively and directly or indirectly attack someone, making him or her as an agent of situation. Galic and Ruzojcic (2017) adds that the control of self-perception is needed so as to control the counterproductive work behavior.

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