Organizational culture and leadership: Analyzing their roles in hypocrisy and workplace aggression

Since the 1980s, organizations have increasingly experienced workplace aggression. Using an organizational level of analysis, organizational culture and leadership issues are explored as they relate to workplace aggression. Hypocrisy in organizations and its relation to culture and leadership are also explored. Leaders seldom keep the espoused organizational culture aligned with how the culture actually operates. Also, leaders view their own capabilities and the organization's culture differently than employees. As a result, hypocrisy has the potential of causing frustration and undesired behavior.; Positive forms of behavior were also explored to make this project less threatening to the research site and also to determine if positive behavior had the opposite relationship with culture and leadership when compared to aggression.; Using a case study approach, one large public service agency with multiple regional offices was selected. The goal was to analyze the culture and leadership at the workgroup level using workgroups that had limited interaction. Two hundred seventy-three employees, in twenty-eight different workgroups participated in the study. Workgroup leaders had a 100% response rate and the employees had a 92.2% response rate. Assessments of culture and leadership were performed using two survey instruments.; Organizational culture was measured using the Denison Organization Culture Survey. This instrument was designed to measure organizational culture and effectiveness. Additional questions were added to capture types of employee behavior.; The leadership was measured using the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory. This survey captured an individual's ability to handle social and emotional demands. The workplace requires leaders to deal with stress and emotions, and since aggression is generally an emotional response to situations, this tool was selected.; The strongest findings existed between the strength (effectiveness) of the organizational culture and both workplace aggression (negative relationship) and positive employee behavior (positive relationship). The expected relationships between leadership and aggression did not materialize. Weak relationships were found with hypocrisy, requiring further studies to uncover underlying causes.; The implications from these findings is that organizational culture has a much stronger impact on employee behavior than previously believed thereby indicating that organizations have more control and responsibility over the incidences of workplace aggression.