Workplace Arrogance, Need for Power, and Counterproductive Work Behaviors in Corporate Managers: The Mediating Role of Humility

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship between workplace arrogance, the need for power, and Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB) in corporate managers. The study was carried out by following the correlational research design. The sample of N = 260 corporate managers (males = 181, females = 79), with an age range from 30 years to 55 years (M = 41.03, SD = 7.06), was recruited through the purposive sampling strategy from the different cities of Pakistan. In the first step, the authors established a factor structure of the workplace arrogance scale and retained 22 items with well-fitted indices of the one-factor solution model. The results of correlation analysis exhibited significant (p < .05) positive relationships between workplace arrogance, the personalized need for power (P nPower). The CWB was negatively associated with the socialized need for power (S nPower), humility, and agreeableness in corporate managers. The independent sample t-test indicated that male and female corporate managers had similar scores in terms of all study variables (p > .05). In addition, results of multiple linear regression analysis revealed that workplace arrogance and personalized need for power with 25% of the variance were found to be significant (p < .01) predictors of the CWB. Moreover, the path analysis through Structure Equational Modeling (SEM) also suggested that personalized need for power, workplace arrogance, and humility were significant predictors of CWB. Lastly, SEM demonstrated that humility significantly mediated the relationship between workplace arrogance, the need for power, and CWB in corporate managers. Moreover, two demographic variables (i.e., work experience and the corporate sectors) also impact their CWB and the overall model fit indices. The study provides researchers with a validated workplace arrogance scale on the corporate sample. It helps the researchers to expand their understanding of the significance of these constructs in the field of industrial-organizational psychology. In addition, the study seeks to benefit many employees and employers to comprehend the nature and the association of CWB with other undesirable variables in the workplace (i.e., workplace arrogance and personalized need for power).