Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) consists of acts that harm or are intended to harm organizations. They include acts directed toward both organizations and individuals, including aggression (physical and verbal), sabotage, theft, and withdrawal. The Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist (CWB-C) comes in two versions. The full 45-item was designed to be scored as either overall CWB (all items), or as two subscales (43 items) that are classified into CWB directed toward the organization versus people. The 32-item version produces 5 subscales of abuse (harmful and nasty behaviors that affect other people), production deviance (purposely doing the job incorrectly or allowing errors to occur), sabotage (destroying the physical environment), theft, and withdrawal (avoiding work through being absent or late). Responses are made on a 5-point frequency scale Never, Once or twice, Once or twice per month, Once or twice per week, Every day. Details of the scale’s development and history can be found in Spector, P. E., Fox, S., Penney, L. M., Bruursema, K., Goh, A., & Kessler, S. (2006). The dimensionality of counterproductivity: Are all counterproductive behaviors created equal? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68, 446-460.
The 10-item short form has half organization-focused and half person-focused items, but we have only used it as a total score. It can be cited as Spector, P. E., Bauer, J. A., & Fox, S. (2010). Measurement artifacts in the assessment of counterproductive work behavior and organizational citizenship behavior: Do we know what we think we know? Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(4), 781-790. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0019477
NOTICE: The Abuse subscale has been modified by deleting Item 4 (Told people outside the job what a lousy place you work for), leaving the short form with 32 rather than 33 items.
Conditions for Using the CWB-C
CWB-C 45-item English version.
CWB-C 32-item Short English version that contains the 5 subscales of abuse, production deviance, sabotage, theft, and withdrawal.
CWB-C 10-item English version.
Note: The CWB-C is copyright © 2002, Paul E Spector and Suzy Fox, All rights reserved.