The Effect of Organizational Cronyism on Counterproductive Work Behavior with Mediating Role of Job Stress and Emotional Exhaustion

The study at hand intends to investigate the effect of organizational cronyism (OC) on counterproductive work behavior (CWB), in light of the mediating role of job stress and emotional exhaustion, using the effort and reward imbalance paradigm and the norm of negative reciprocity as theoretical foundations. The current investigation included 220 employees from the banking sector. The proposed model was examined utilizing the structural equation modeling methodology and the bootstrapping method in AMOS. The results affirmed that organizational cronyism is positively related to CWB. Further, job stress partially mediated the association between OC and CWB whereas emotional exhaustion fully mediated it. The findings disclose that managing organizational cronyism will help organizations curb job stress, emotional exhaustion, and CWB. The uniqueness of this study stems from its focus on the mediating role of job stress and emotional exhaustion, using the effort-reward imbalance model and norm of negative reciprocity grounded in new perspectives.