Job Insecurity and Deviant Workplace Behaviors: Buffering Role of Honesty-Humility Personality Trait

Deviant workplace behaviors (DWBs) such as sabotage, fraud, corruption, stealing, willful refusal to carry out assigned tasks, willful damage to the company's property, taking excessive breaks, sexual harassment, peddling rumors, feigning illness, etc. are pervasive in workplaces and tend to pose deleterious effect on organizational functioning and effectiveness. In this study, the relationship between job insecurity and deviant workplace behaviors (DWBs) as well as the buffering role of honesty-humility personality trait in the relationship was investigated. Two hundred and twenty-eight faculty members randomly selected from some private universities in Southeast Nigeria took part in the study. Their ages ranged from 28 to 64 years and the mean age of 40.41 years (SD = 11.59). Results of Hayes PROCESS Macro showed that job insecurity has a significant positive relationship with DWBs; whereas the honesty-humility personality trait was negatively correlated with DWBs. More importantly, the results of the study further indicated that the honesty-humility personality trait played a significant buffering role in the relationship between job insecurity and DWBs such that the relationship attenuated when the honesty-humility personality trait was high as against when the trait was low among faculty members. The implications of the study for organizational intervention programs, limitations, and suggestions for future study were highlighted.