Self‐Reported Counterproductive Behaviors and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: Separate but Related Constructs

Abstract

The construct validity of self‐reported counterproductive work behaviors (CPBs) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) was explored by separating item content from item wording, through the confirmatory factor analysis of three scales: a CPB scale containing only negatively worded items, an OCB scale with only positively worded items, and the supervision subscale of the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) (Smith, Kendall and Hulin 1969) comprised of both negatively and positively worded items. Results (N = 475) suggest that self‐report measures of CPBs and OCBs are affected by method variance, but that the presence of such an influence does not compromise the substantive interpretation of these scales. Consequently, these scales do appear to be unique constructs.