Impact of employees' counterproductivity on interpersonal relationships in the context of company competitive potential: Application of SEM methodology for Poland

This article describes how the counterproductive work behaviors of employees (CWB) influence the quality of interpersonal relationships at work (QR). Additionally, the study enables an analysis of how this impact is moderated by the demographic features of employees (education, age, sex, length of service and type of job). These relationships were examined in the broad context of competitiveness of a company in the Central European environment. To reach the objectives of the study, survey results - collected among 1,488 workers in Poland - were analyzed. The structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was applied for data processing. This allowed a determination of how particular dimensions of CWB (behavior against other people or against the organization) affect particular categories of QR, taking also into account the moderating role of demographic variables. The study confirms that CWB usually negatively affected QR (the higher / lower the CWB, the lower / higher the QR). However, also some interesting paradoxes were verified, which can be of special interest in practice. From the perspective of managerial importance, it was confirmed that the relationship was statistically significantly moderated by education, age, sex and job type. These results provide important guidelines for human resource management as a main tool for building/maintaining the competitive advantage of a company.