Occupational stress and deviant workplace behavior among customer services employees of a call center in Malaysia

Researchers have shown an increased interest in conducting studies in deviant workplace behavior since the past researches shown the cascading effects of workplace deviance on the organization as a whole. However, there is still question on the association and the
influence of occupational stress and its relation to the occurrence of workplace deviance
despite the increase in attention given to the study of deviant workplace behavior. This study tries to identify the correlation between occupational stress in a customer call center
towards the deviant workplace behavior of its employees. The current research has been
conducted among 400 customer services employees in a selected call center in Malaysia. The data was collected using a questionnaire survey method and the data analysis was conducted using Pearson correlation method and linear regression method to identify the association and to test the research hypotheses. The findings of this study reveal that there is no significant correlation between occupational stress and deviant workplace behavior on the whole. However, the results show that the interpersonal deviance level in the selected call center is linked with the responsibility pressure, role conflict and workload dimensions. Furthermore the occurrence of workplace deviance is significantly associated
with the job vs non-job conflict among the employees. Ignoring these issues may cause a
decrease in the work performance of the customer services employees, causing the
organization valuable performance and profitability