Entitlement and conscientiousness in the prediction of organizational deviance

• Dispositional influences on organizational deviance analyzed.
• Specificity matching principle used as framework for analysis.
• Narrow traits should predict narrow behaviors better than broad traits.
• Dominance analysis used to test specificity matching principle.
• Entitlement predicts deviance better than conscientiousness does.

Responding to Wu and LeBreton’s (2011) call for further study, this paper examines dispositional predictors of organizational deviance. In a sample of 428 participants, self-report data were collected anonymously. Using hierarchical regression, the dispositional variables of entitlement and conscientiousness were similarly strong and statistically significant predictors of organizational deviance. The total variance explained in deviance by these variables and some demographic variables was .31. Additionally, the specificity matching principle suggests that narrow band traits like entitlement are better at predicting narrowly measured behaviors like deviance than are broad band traits like conscientiousness. Using dominance analysis, entitlement was a stronger predictor of organizational deviance than is conscientiousness.