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Employee Time Theft: Conceptualization, Measure Development, and Validation

Authors:
Crystal Harold at Temple University
Crystal Harold
Biyun Hu at Temple University
Biyun Hu
Joel Koopman
Joel Koopman
Joel Koopman
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Abstract

Despite its prevalence, high cost, and practical import, employee time theft has received scant research attention. To facilitate future scholarship on this important topic, the present research endeavors to clarify the conceptualization of time theft and advance understanding regarding the range of its behavioral manifestations, develop and validate an instrument to assess time theft, and provide preliminary insights into its nomological net. Results, gathered across nine samples of employees who are paid on an hourly wage scale, suggest that time theft is a multidimensional formative construct, is distinct from other deviant work behaviors (e.g., withdrawal, property theft), and is influenced by instrumental (e.g., pay satisfaction) and expressive motives (e.g., boredom). Finally, time theft explained incremental variance in criterion variables (e.g., receipt or enactment of interpersonal help) controlling for the effects of other discrete manifestations of deviance (e.g., withdrawal). Implications for future scholarship and managerial practice are discussed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
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Received: 6 March 2020 Revised: 23 July 2021 Accepted: 4 August 2021
DOI: 10.1111/peps.12477
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Employee time theft: Conceptualization, measure
development, and validation
Crystal M. Harold1Biyun Hu2,3Joel Koopman4
1Department of Human Resource
Management, Fox School of Business, Temple
University, Philadelphia, USA
2Business Administration, School of Business
and Management, Shanghai International
Studies University, Shanghai, China
3Institute of Organizational Behavior and
Organizational Neuroscience, Shanghai
International Studies University, Shanghai,
China
4Department of Management, Mays Business
School, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA
Correspondence
Crystal M. Harold, 355 Alter Hall, 1801 Lia-
couras Walk,Philadelphia PA 19122, USA.
Email: charold@temple.edu
Abstract
Despite its prevalence, high cost, and practical import,
employee time theft has received scant research attention.
To facilitate future scholarship on this important topic, the
present research endeavors to clarify the conceptualiza-
tion of time theft and advance understanding regarding the
range of its behavioral manifestations, develop and validate
an instrument to assess time theft, and provide preliminary
insights into its nomological net. Results, gathered across
nine samples of employees who are paid on an hourly wage
scale, suggest that time theft is a multidimensional forma-
tive construct, is distinct from other deviant work behaviors
(e.g., withdrawal, property theft), and is influenced by instru-
mental (e.g., pay satisfaction) and expressive motives (e.g.,
boredom). Finally, time theft explained incremental variance
in criterion variables (e.g., receipt or enactment of interper-
sonal help) controlling for the effects of other discrete man-
ifestations of deviance (e.g., withdrawal). Implications for
future scholarship and managerial practice are discussed.
KEYWORDS
construct validation, employee time theft, hourly employees
1INTRODUCTION
In the summer of 2018, the California Department of Motor Vehiclesmade national headlines when the State Auditor’s
office revealed that, over the course of 4 years, an employee slept on the job for roughly 3 hours each day (California
State Auditor, 2018). In this same report, investigators uncovered extensive time abuses by two other State employ-
ees who would regularly arrive to work at the start of the workday only to immediately proceed to take extended
breaks and even leave their worksite without permission. Over a 4-year period, the Auditor’s report estimated that
Personnel Psychology. 2022;75:347–382. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 347wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/peps
... Similarly, time theft causes more than $177 billion in losses to US corporations each year (Xu et al., 2023). Therefore, a lot of scholars are curious to determine how business organizations can curb these two unethical behaviours of employees Harold et al., 2022;Lorinkova & Perry, 2017;Offergelt & Venz, 2023). As an emerging technology, AAI in the organization, is bound to exhibit a significant impact on employees' behaviour, but whether the technology will have an impact on employee unethical behaviour is unknown. ...
... Similarly, employees may lack crisis awareness and assume that the organization is satisfied with their current status (i.e., less job insecurity), at a high level of POS, hence, believing that there is no need to spend excessive time to master new skills and knowledge (De Cuyper et al., 2022;Van Hootegem et al., 2023). Further, AAI encourages staff members to save more time and resources, but this part of working time may be used to deal with their personal affairs; resultantly, employees may exercise more time theft (Hu et al., 2022;Zhao et al., 2022). Therefore, the following research hypotheses are proposed: ...
... We measured time theft with the 15-item from Harold et al. (2022). A sample item was "I took unapproved breaks (e.g., coffee breaks, cigarette breaks, bathroom breaks)". ...
Every coin has two sides: The application of artificial intelligence on employees' unethical behaviours
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Based on cognitive appraisal theory, this paper performs two studies using time-lag design to explore the influential mechanism of the application of artificial intelligence (AAI) on employ-ees' unethical behaviours (i.e. knowledge hiding and time theft). Study 1 indicates that AAI demonstrates a significant positive impact on knowledge hiding, while job insecurity plays a mediating role in the aforementioned relationship. Study 2 not only confirms the research findings of Study 1 but also establishes that AAI exerts a significant negative influence on time theft, whereas job insecurity plays a mediating role in the above relationship. Meanwhile, perceived organizational support is capable to weaken the positive effect of AAI on job insecurity, while also weakening the indirect impact of AAI on knowledge hiding and time theft. Overall, this study unveils why, how, and when AAI shall affect employees' unethical behaviours.
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... All managers want their organizations' employees to be productive during the workday (Brock Baskin et al., 2017;Diamantidis & Chatzoglou, 2019). However, the amount of time employees waste at work is considerable and few people can ensure that they are 100% productive at work (Brock et al., 2013;Harold et al., 2022). Moreover, the length of time employees waste at work has consistently climbed (Brock Baskin & McKee, 2019). ...
... Moreover, the length of time employees waste at work has consistently climbed (Brock Baskin & McKee, 2019). A large number of employees perform non-work-related tasks or deliberately fail to report the number of their work hours, but still get payment for this time (Elrehail et al., 2021;Harold et al., 2022). This behavior of wasting or not working time within the allotted working hours is essentially time theft (Henle et al., 2010;Brock Baskin et al., 2017;Ding et al., 2018). ...
... Time theft has been recognized as a form of organizational deviant behavior (Robinson & Greenberg, 1998;Henle et al., 2010;Harold et al., 2022). The motivations for this behavior can be broadly divided into two categories: (1) Instrumental motivations arising from feelings of unfairness, to improve the condition or restore fairness; (2) Expressive motivations arising from negative emotions, to vent anger or frustration (Robinson & Bennett, 1997). ...
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Time theft is an organizational deviant behavior that can have a serious negative impact on both the organization and the individual employees. There are two dimensions of time theft that are easily overlooked due to their high level of concealment: manipulating the speed of work and faking work hours. Based on self-presentation theory, this study constructs a theoretical model of the effects of careerist orientation on manipulating the speed of work and faking work hours, and examines the mediating role of self-monitoring and the moderating role of moral identity. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 306 employees in Chinese companies and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The results of the study show that careerist orientation can positively influence falsifying working hours and manipulating the speed of work not only directly but also indirectly through self-monitoring. In addition, moral identity can inhibit employees with careerist orientation from achieving their career goals because of falsifying working hours and manipulating the speed of work. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence that careerist orientation positively influences time theft behaviors through self-monitoring, highlighting the role of individual traits in organizational deviance. Furthermore, it enriches the field by demonstrating the moderating effect of moral identity, which inhibits the tendency of careerist-oriented employees to engage in time theft, offering new insights into the boundary conditions of unethical conduct in the workplace.
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... As time is invisible, time theft is difficult to detect but damages a lot (Xu et al., 2023). According to the American Payroll Association, the 75% of businesses in the U.S. are afflicted by these inconspicuous misconducts and the average hourly employee steals four hours per week, resulting in an approximate 7% annual payroll loss for businesses (Harold et al., 2022). Given the detrimental effects of time theft, human resource practitioners urgently need Bo Lv and Jie Xiao have contributed equally to this paper. ...
... To a certain extent, such behavior satisfies employees' interests, such as completing other things during work time to ensure that they can rest after work, or just slacking off at work to recover their resources (Henle et al., 2010). However, it is at the expense of the organization's economic interests because time theft diminishes motivation, morale and productivity, impairs interpersonal relationship with coworkers or supervisors, and causes large amounts of organizational financial loss (Harold et al., 2022;Henle et al., 2010;Liu & Berry, 2013). In summary, time theft represents the destruction for others in nature and violation for the ethical rules, which runs counter to the other-oriented ethical code emphasized by SRHRM. ...
Serving as an Ethical Signal: Understanding How and When Socially Responsible Human Resource Management Inhibits Time Theft
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... Using a critical incident approach, we came to realize that the most critical distinguishing factor across venting episodes involved the target of the venting-supervisor, coworker, clients, work itself, or one's family or personal life. Using these narratives, in Phase 2 we generated 58 items (51 of which capture the specific targets about which people vent, and 7 which capture venting in a "global" sense based on our a priori expectation [see Phase 4] that venting is a formative construct; Diamantopoulos 2017a, 2017b;Harold, Hu, and Koopman 2022;Li, Kristof-Brown, and Nielsen 2019;MacKenzie, Podsakoff, and Podsakoff 2011) and tested their content validity. This allowed us to reduce our items to five per dimension (30 items total-25 capturing the specific dimensions of venting and 5 global items). ...
... 7 In total, we included 15 items. We also included a three-item global measure of venting, as this is necessary to model venting as a formative construct in the CFA (e.g., Harold, Hu, and Koopman 2022). Participants responded to each item on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = "not at all" to 5 = "a great deal." ...
The Receipt of Venting at Work: A Multi‐Study Investigation of Affective and Behavioral Reactions for Venting Recipients
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As a form of social communication at work, venting—expressing negative feelings about a person or event to others—is fairly ubiquitous. Yet little is known about how those who are the recipients of venting react affectively and behaviorally to this experience at work. To advance our understanding of venting receipt in the workplace, we integrate the archaic view of vicarious emotions into research related to venting at work to develop theory regarding how receiving venting is likely to evoke feelings of personal distress and empathy as employees react to and process this social information. In turn, we theorize that while personal distress leads to venting enactment, empathy leads to helping that can promote more positive social relations, highlighting the double‐edged nature of this phenomenon. Finally, beyond clarifying the theoretical ways that venting recipients react, we also consider how the broader social context—namely, coworker similarity—has the potential to shape these reactions. Across two within‐person field studies, both of which utilize a newly developed measure of venting receipt at work, and a supplemental recall experiment, our research highlights why and when venting at work can have divergent effects on venting recipients.
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... Following best practices for construct validation (e.g., Djurdjevic et al., 2017;Gorbatov et al., 2021;Harold et al., 2022), we explored the discriminant validity of our measure using a series of one-and two-factor CFAs in which the items for wasted time and one orbiting construct (interruptions or justice) were loaded onto the same factor or two separate factors. Here, we aim to assess the distinctiveness of wasted time perceptions in relation to each orbiting construct individually. ...
... We also encourage research aimed at expanding our understanding of the potential effects of wasted time perceptions beyond the outcomes from this study. For exploratory purposes, in our incremental validity investigation (Sample 4), we also examined whether employees might engage in specific forms of CWB (i.e., withdrawal & time theft ;Harold, et al., 2022) in response to others wasting their time (see Tables A6 and A7 of the online supplement). Results suggest that wasted time perceptions explained unique variance in withdrawal (∆R 2 = .05), ...
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... Following best practices for construct validation (e.g., Djurdjevic et al., 2017;Gorbatov et al., 2021;Harold et al., 2022), we explored the discriminant validity of our measure using a series of one-and two-factor CFAs in which the items for wasted time and one orbiting construct (interruptions or justice) were loaded onto the same factor or two separate factors. Here, we aim to assess the distinctiveness of wasted time perceptions in relation to each orbiting construct individually. ...
... We also encourage research aimed at expanding our understanding of the potential effects of wasted time perceptions beyond the outcomes from this study. For exploratory purposes, in our incremental validity investigation (Sample 4), we also examined whether employees might engage in specific forms of CWB (i.e., withdrawal & time theft ;Harold, et al., 2022) in response to others wasting their time (see Tables A6 and A7 of the online supplement). Results suggest that wasted time perceptions explained unique variance in withdrawal (∆R 2 = .05), ...
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