Is It My Fault or Yours?: Exploring From a Sabotage Point of View

Introduction

Throughout life, individuals have sought ways to be successful and have endeavored to avoid failure. There may be times and situations when individuals face failure, although they strive for success (Anlı, Akın, Şar & Eker, 2015).

Today's era of change is forcing organizations to a continuous structure, system and process to renewal. Although this inevitable change and development process is perceived as necessary by some organizations, only some of them are willing and determined in terms of vision - mission - strategy - action for this change. Some other organizations always react to change in a negative manner as a result of the factors and actors that prevent change in these organizations (Aktan & Yay, 2016).

Individuals working in organizations try to achieve both organizational and their individual goals. Efforts to accomplish these goals, both the stress that may be experienced in the organization and the conflicts that may be experienced, cause aggressive behaviors such as sabotage (Özdevecioğlu & Aksoy, 2005). Sabotage, also known as aggressive behavior, can be defined as, in a broad manner, behaviors that cause harm to individuals, organizations or equipment (Robinson & Bennettt, 1995; Altıntaş, 2009). The reasons for these behaviors may be the disbelief of the power, the frustrations suffered by those who cannot realize their goals, misconduct or illegal actions while trying to take shortcuts or the idea of facilitating the work, the actions stemming from the idea of boredom or entertainment, or belief in injustice within the organization (Ambrose, Seabright & Schminke, 2002; Özdevecioğlu & Aksoy, 2005).

Sabotage may be expressed in two forms; either verbally or behaviorally (Cox & Giuliano, 1999). In verbal sabotage, the individual has negative thoughts about his / her internal status and claims that his / her circumstances lead to negativity and failure. These allegations lead to negative emotions such as test anxiety and social anxiety without revealing the performance of the individual (Smith, Snyder & Handelsman, 1982; Snyder & Ickes, 1985). Behavioral sabotage on the other hand may be observed as; avoiding work, absenteeism, damaging the property of the organization, misconduct, theft and wasting, which in turn harms the organization (Demir & Tütüncü, 2010).

Robinson & Bennettt (1995) divided sabotage behaviors into four categories; production deviance which harms organizations’ production capabilities, property deviance which comprises stealing from company and accepting kickbacks, political deviance behaviors such as gossip about other workers, showing favoritism and finally personal aggression which consists of sexual harassment, verbal abuse, stealing and endangering colleagues. Such behaviors may adversely affect the performance of individuals and may even increase their tendency to quit (Demir & Tütüncü, 2010).

Today, the tourism sector continues to function as one of the most important branches of the service industry. Increasing competition in this sector, which is ahead of even the industries of many countries in terms of revenues, increases the pressures on the most important capital, the labor force. The uncertainty and length of working hours and the ever-expecting of friendly service either from customers or supervisors, the never-ending demands and the expectations of customers that generate variability inevitably create stress on the employees of the sector. This stress and pressure cause negative conditions such as discontinuation of work, low performance, decrease in productivity, increasing health problems, and sabotage behavior. Efforts to overcome these drawbacks are examined by various researchers (Turunç, 2015). In this context, this study aims to reveal the sabotage areas of the accommodation, travel and food and beverage enterprises within the tourism sector as well as the personnel within these enterprises and the effects on customers and organization.