Organisational trust as a mediator between perceived organisational support and constructive deviance

1. INTRODUCTIONInitial research has traditionally described deviant workplace behaviours (DWBs) as destructive behaviours that threaten the well-being of an organization, and/or its members (Bennett & Robinson, 2000; Robinson & Bennett, 1995). Specifically, early researchers often described DWBs as being similar to counterproductive work behaviour (Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001), dysfunctional behaviour (Griffin, O'Leary-Kelly, & Collins, 1998), bad behaviour in organizations (Griffin & Lopez, 2005), non-complaint behaviour, and so on (Puffer, 1987). Furthermore, DWBs have been associated with negative antecedents, including organizational injustice (Ambrose, Seabright, & Schminke, 2002), negative affectivity (Aquino, Grover, Bradfield, & Allen, 1999), psychological contract breach (Bordia, Restubog, & Tang, 2008), work stressors (Chen & Spector, 1992), abusive supervision, and so forth (Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007). Previous research has also demonstrated that DWBs could have significant negative consequences for both organization and its members, including work-related stress (Henle, Giacalone, & Jurkiewicz, 2005), decreased productivity (Martin & Hine, 2005), damaged organization's reputation (Bowling & Gruys, 2010), and decreased profitability (Lee & Ok, 2014).While prior research has increased our understanding of the negative consequences of deviance within organizations (i.e., destructive deviance), however, in recent years, there is a growing interest in constructive deviance. The interest in constructive deviance has grown because such behaviours can play a significant role in creating positive organizational change (Luthans & Church, 2002; Robbins & Galperin, 2010). Constructive deviance is defined as a "voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in doing so contributes to the well-being of an organization, its members, or both" (Galperin, 2003, p. 158). Examples of such behaviours include among others: departing from the organisational norms to solve problems and using unconventional ways to achieve work goals (Galperin, 2002; Galperin, 2003, 2012).Due to the increasing interest in constructive deviance among researchers, to date, several factors have been suggested to explain the underlying cause of constructive deviance. For instance, empirical evidence suggests that perceived organizational support (POS) play an important role in promoting constructive deviance (e.g., Chen, Eisenberger, Johnson, Sucharski, & Aselage, 2009; Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001; Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003; Tucker, Chmiel, Turner, Hershcovis, & Stride, 2008). These studies proposed social exchange perspective whereby employees exhibit constructive deviant behaviours to reciprocate the extent to which an organization values their contributions (Blau, 1964; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986; Moorman, Blakely, & Niehoff, 1998)Despite these empirical studies on the role of perceived organisational support in explaining the likelihood employees to engage in constructive deviance, however, less attention has been paid to the fundamental reason why perceived organisational support lead to constructive deviance at work. We argued that organisational trust (OT), defined as "willingness to be vulnerable" (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996, p. 347)may be a key mechanism in explaining constructive deviance because organisational trust has been established to be a significant predictor of both positive and negative deviant behaviours at work (Demir, 2011; Erkutlu & Chafra, 2013; Rahim & Nasurdin, 2008). The logic here is that trust in organisation is the fundamental reason why perceived organisational support predicts constructive deviance at work. This line of argument is consistent with social exchange principle (Blau, 1964) and Eisenberger, Fasolo, and Davis-LaMastro's(1990) who noted that 'perceived support would create trust that the organization will fulfil its exchange obligations of noticing and rewarding employee efforts made on its behalf' (p. …