“Influence of frugality, materialism and employee demographics on workplace deviant behaviors”

This paper explores the impact of frugality and materialism on workplace deviant be- haviors in business organizations. The investigation sample was drawn from selected business organizations (Stanbic IBTC Bank, Globacom Limited, International Alpha Limited, and Nextzon Business Services Firm) across the Ibadan and Lagos cities of Nigeria. This study espouses a quantitative research approach, and the study’s ques- tionnaires were randomly dispersed. Out of 400 questionnaires, 323 questionnaires were useful for investigation, and the data obtained were analyzed using SPSS version 26. The research results show that the frugal are less likely to engage in workplace deviant behaviors, while materialists are more inclined to exhibit workplace deviant behav- iors in business organizations. This paper further indicates that demographics (gender, marital status, and educational qualification) have a statistical effect on workplace de- viant behavior. It was confirmed that frugality, materialism, and employee demographics significantly influenced workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. Therefore, business organizations’ leadership and management should encourage frugality, thereby directly reducing employee workplace deviant behaviors. Besides, the main focus should be on reducing materialistic tendencies through periodic training and seminars on debt prevention, particularly among vulnerable employees who dis- courage workplace deviant behaviors. that the study has focused on the negative behaviors, for instance, concealing effort, absenteeism, withdrawal, and behaviors resulting in disparity in an organization. Workplace deviant behaviors (WDBs) represent diverse forms of employee conduct detri-mental to the organization’s genuine interests, endangering its members (Sackett et al., 2006). Bennett and Robinson (2000) opined that workplace deviant behavior can be divided into two focal categories in line with its targets: behaviors targeting other individuals and targeting the organization. However, the universality of deviant behavior, perhaps, sexual harassment, theft, fraud, reducing exertions, and aggressive actions in organizations, create for them enormous contests (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007). As a result, this study pays attention to


INTRODUCTION
There are some instructions, ethics, and guidelines that lead to work organizations, and all members of such organizations are expected to behave in accordance with specific guidelines. Several employees face a toxic working setting, including terrible working conditions (Jurik & Cavender, 2016), where deviant behaviors mostly exist and have been stirred (Cheang & Appelbaum, 2015). Workplace deviant behavior can either be negative or positive. However, Appelbaum et al. (2007) posited that the study has focused on the negative behaviors, for instance, concealing effort, absenteeism, withdrawal, and behaviors resulting in disparity in an organization. Workplace deviant behaviors (WDBs) represent diverse forms of employee conduct detrimental to the organization's genuine interests, endangering its members (Sackett et al., 2006). Bennett and Robinson (2000) opined that workplace deviant behavior can be divided into two focal categories in line with its targets: behaviors targeting other individuals and targeting the organization. However, the universality of deviant behavior, perhaps, sexual harassment, theft, fraud, reducing exertions, and aggressive actions in organizations, create for them enormous contests (Lawrence & Robinson, 2007). As a result, this study pays attention to negative deviant behavior. Besides, Kalemci et al. (2019) opined that workplace deviant behavior had gained attention from organizational behavior researchers with its negative tangible, social, and psychological consequences for both organizations and employees.
Furthermore, frugality has to do with the amount of self-restraint an individual use in using money; hence, it refers to spending wisely (McCloskey, 2006). Frugality is the "careful use of resources and avoidance of waste" (De Young, 1986, p. 285). Therefore, frugality is an attitude, a culture, or quality of an individual, a household, or a social group. Being frugal is deliberate; to be exact, being frugal is not due to a sheer absence of resources (Argandoña, 2010). Consequently, this lifestyle affects disposition towards fraudulent acts (McCloskey, 2006). Moreover, Mukherjee (2016) describes materialism as a controlling sense of longing to pursue or acquire wealth and other tangible things that give physical security, regardless of cultural, spiritual, and social values. Hence, materialism places high and essential value on material possession and income (Promislo et al., 2010). At the moment, some of the teething problems confronting Nigeria as a nation that needs a combined effort to resolve are corruption and materialism. As posited by Rotimi et al. (2013), these problems have so beclouded several Nigerians' reasoning that several virtues promote nation-building like selflessness, loyalty, patriotism, integrity, and justice, to be mentioned, but a few are being continuously eroded.

Materialism and workplace deviant behaviors
Research showed that materialism inspires greed, financial crime, corruption, injustice, inequality, and other forms of social vices (Richins & Dawson, 1992). Moreover, materialistic individuals are undoubtedly more prone to engaging in deviant behaviors than non-materialistic individuals within work organizations (Barrett, 1992). Kasser (2002) suggested that deviant behaviors significantly increase with increased materialism levels. People become materialistic by emulating essential persons, for instance, leaders, peers, parents, managers, media personalities, who act in ways that infer that achieving some substantial possessions is crucial and worthy of pursuit in life (Kasser et al., 2006). Hence, emphasis on materialism is likely to increase interpersonal deviant behavior in work organizations (Deckop et al., 2015). In addition, findings showed that materialistic individuals are more fascinated by fraudulent practices (Lu & Lu, 2010). Furthermore, Robinson and Bennett (1995) noted the influence of personal attributes such as materialism on deviant behaviors in work organizations. Bindah and Othman (2011) indicated a healthy effect of materialism on workplace deviant behaviors. A study has shown that materialists have an insatiable longing for white-collar professions with higher incomes and fraud to increase their wealth (Roberts et al., 2005). Likewise, the study of Roets et al. (2006) indicated that materialistic people would be more inclined to break organizational standards and interpersonal treatment rules, predominantly impending to the welfare of colleagues and the organizations.

Employee demographics and workplace deviant behaviors
Relating to demographic factors that could influence workplace deviance behaviors, some studies found differences in deviants' demography among employees, whereas other research failed to find any variances. A study noted that the gender of respondents was a stronger predictor of deviant behaviors (Hershcovis et al., 2007), while others considered age as the most prominent influence of deviant behavior (Lau & Sholihin, 2005

AIM
Despite the growing interest in the topic, workplace deviant behaviors in work organizations are still ignored or inadequately explored. This fact has deepened the innumerable problems facing Nigeria's work industry. Therefore, this research's heart lies in the point that little research works have hitherto been done to determine the influence of frugality and materialism on workplace deviant behaviors within business organizations. This paper aims to extend the literature by advancing research into the influence of these factors on workplace deviant behaviors to develop a practical model that could successfully and significantly reduce workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations.

HYPOTHESES
With the intention of more clearly examining the influence of frugality, materialism, and employee demographics on deviant behaviors in work organizations, the following hypotheses were put forward:

METHODS
This paper adopted a quantitative research approach to investigate the influence of frugality and materialism on workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. To test the influence of frugality and materialism on workplace deviant behaviors, this study collected data using a self-administered instrument, namely, a questionnaire, a formal list of questions designed to collate participants' responses to a specific issue (Babbie & Mouton, 2010). This administering was conducted on a sample of 400 participants from selected business organizations across the Ibadan and Lagos cities of Nigeria. The selected business organizations are Stanbic IBTC Bank, Globacom Limited, International Alpha Limited, and Nextzon Business Services Firm. From each organization, 100 (one hundred) participants were sampled, a total of 400 participants. A random sampling technique was used when choosing participants for the study. The participants were recruited through a simple random sampling technique. This study assured the employees' anonymity was well-maintained in the inquiry process as inclusive of the primary research. The study also retrieved a total number of 323 valid questionnaires, and these questionnaires were analyzed. A questionnaire was used as a research instrument, and this questionnaire comprised different sections.

Section A: Demographic questions
This section is for the respondents' demographic data (gender, marital status, religion, age, educational qualifications, and work experience in years).

Section B: Frugality
This part of the questionnaire measures individuals' degree to which they exercise self-discipline in using their money (Frugality). This instrument is a 4-item self-report instrument developed by Lastovicka et al. (1999). This scale is also a 5-point Likert rating scale having an answer layout of SD = Strongly Disagree, D = Disagree, NS = Not Sure, A = Agree, and SA = Strongly Agree. The initial reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.69. However, this study achieved a Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of 0.73.

Section C: Materialism
This section deals with the importance individuals place on acquiring belongings as an essential way of reaching their anticipated goals (Materialism), by using the materialism scale developed by Richins and Dawson (1992 However, to validate the measuring scales' efficiency, a pilot study was adopted to detect any possible hitches beforehand.

RESULTS
This study analyzed data from participants using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS v 26). The retrieved data were inspected and cleaned before analysis. This paper shows the results of the data analyzed in the sections below.  were from the Nextzon Business service firm. The findings also discovered that 52 participants had 1-3 years of work experience, 55 had 4-6 years, and 42 participants had 7-10 years of work experience.  Nonetheless, the model in Table 3 specifies that farther than all the demographics (for instance, gender, age, marital status, educational qualification, name of organization, and work experience) exposed to analysis, only employees' demographic factors -gender, marital status and the level of education, meaningfully and positively predict the change in workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations at β = .112, t = 2.234; p < .01; β = .210, t = 3.532; p < .01; β = .104, t = 2.119; and p < .01, respectively. These results imply that gender contributed about 11%, marital status 21%, and the level of education -10% variance in workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. As specified above, the positive relationship demonstrates that workplace deviant behaviors increase with em-ployees' gender type, marital status, and education level. So, the stated hypothesis is confirmed.

Inferential statistics (Hypothesis testing)
Furthermore, Table 3 shows that materialism considerably and positively predicts the change in workplace deviant behaviors, while frugality significantly and adversely predicts the variance in workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations at β = .208, t = 3.041; p < .01 and β = -.478, t = -7.879; and p < .01. These results infer that materialism provided about 20% of influence and frugality about 47% of influence on variance in workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. Besides, as noted above, the positive relationship shows that workplace deviant behaviors increase as employees' materialism increases, while employees' deviant behaviors decrease once frugal. Thus, the stated hypotheses are confirmed.   Note: * The mean difference is significant at 0.05.
Nevertheless, these findings require further explanations on the effects of the demographics on workplace deviant behavior. Two of the significant demographics, for instance, gender and marital status, will be further analyzed using a t-test, while the other two of the significant demographic factors, such as the level of education, will be further analyzed using ANOVA (see Tables 4 and 5). Table 4 confirms a significant difference in score between the two levels of gender regarding workplace deviant behavior (at t (321) = -3.756; p = <.05) in business organizations, two-tailed with female employees (M = 34.613, SD = 6.083) scoring higher than male employees (M = 31.975, SD = 6.538). With a positive effect of gender on workplace deviant behavior as earlier indicated (β = .112, t = 2.234; p < .01), this result assumes that female employees with a higher mean score are more favourably disposed towards workplace deviant behavior than their male counterparts.
Also, the result further shows that gender significantly affects employees' deviant behavior in business organizations.
In addition, Table 4 shows a substantial difference in score between the two levels of marital status about workplace deviant behavior at (t (321) = 1.704; p = <.05) in business organizations, twotailed with single employees (M = 34.063, SD = 6.120) scoring higher than married employees (M = 32.816, SD = 6.608). With a positive influence of marital status on workplace deviant behavior as earlier specified (β = .210, t = 3.532; p < .01); thus, this result means that single employees with a higher mean score are more favourably inclined towards engaging in deviant behavior than married employees. Therefore, the result shows that marital status significantly affects employees' deviant behavior in business organizations.
Furthermore, Table 5 does not show significant differences between group 1 (employees with OND/ NCE qualifications), group 2 (employees with HND/BSc qualifications), group 3 (employee with MSc/PGD certification), and group 4 (employees with other professional qualifications) at a p = >.05 level in terms of their engagement in workplace deviant behaviors. Table 6 shows the actual variance in mean scores across all sets of education groups to find out which group is more prone to deviant behavior in business organizations. Table 6 shows the substantial difference between the mean scores of the level of education groups: group 1 (employees with OND/NCE qualifications = 33.938), group 2 (employees with HND/ BSc qualifications = 33.162), group 3 (employees with MSc/PGD certification = 32.285), and group 4 (employees with other qualifications = 34.628). As earlier stated, the level of education positively influences workplace deviant behaviors (β = .104, t = 2.119; p < .01). Therefore, this assumes that group 4 (employees with other professional qualifications = 34.628) with the highest mean tends to be more favourably disposed towards exhibiting deviant behavior than other sets of groups.

DISCUSSION
The results suggest that when employees are more frugal, it will reduce their tendency to exhibit workplace deviant behaviors. Hence, frugality significantly and negatively predicts workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. This position is in line with Argandoña (2010), who states that frugal individuals are self-controlled and could delay gratification, which significantly helps them against deviant behaviors that suggest an immediate grat- ification. This paper further confirms the positions of Holmes et al. (2002), who pointed to the significant influence of frugality on reducing employees' propensity for deviant behavior in work organizations, and Greenberg (2002), who points to the negative influence of frugality on workplace deviant behaviors. Moreover, the current results corroborate Cohen's (1996) assertion that emphasized a significant negative effect of frugality on workplace deviant behaviors, and McCloskey's (2006) position that frugal employees are significantly self-controlled; therefore, it is difficult for them to engage in deviant behaviors.
The findings stated above revealed that materialism significantly and positively influences workplace deviant behaviors, suggesting a substantial difference in workplace deviant behavior due to materialism. Remarkably, materialism influences workplace deviant behavior in business organizations. This assertion corroborates Kasser's (2002) suggestion that deviant behaviors significantly increase with increased materialism levels, and Deckop et al. (2015), who opined that materialism is likely to increase interpersonal deviant behavior in work organizations. The current results are also in line with Roets et al. (2006), who state that materialistic people will be more inclined to break organizational standards and the interpersonal treatment rules, predominantly impending colleagues' welfare directly and the organization's welfare. Furthermore, this paper confirms Bindah and Othman's (2011) position, which indicated a healthy effect of materialism on workplace deviant behaviors.
In addition, this paper's results indicate that frugality, materialism, and employee demographics have a significant joint influence on workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. These results also showed that all the stated predictors contributed about 36% of variance in workplace deviant behaviors in the business organizations, while other factors not considered in the current study contribute about 64% of variance.
The results also indicate that gender, marital status, and education level are the demograph- This study aims to develop a practical model that could efficiently reduce workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. Thus, Figure 1 shows this model based on current results.

CONCLUSION
This paper focused on developing a practical model that could efficiently reduce workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. The results of this paper indicate that frugal people are less prone to deviant behaviors in the workplace. Secondly, this paper shows that materialist individuals are more inclined to exhibiting workplace deviant behaviors, suggesting that materialism significantly and positively influences workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations. However, the results show that gender, marital status, and education level significantly contribute to workplace deviant behavior in business organizations. Hence, single female employees and employees with other professional qualifications are more prone to engage in WDBs. This paper concludes that frugality significantly and negatively influences workplace deviant behaviors, materialism significantly and positively influences workplace deviant behaviours, and employee demographics significantly influence workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations.
Nonetheless, the results of this paper provide valuable new insight into the effect of frugality, materialism, and employee demographics on workplace deviant behaviors in business organizations.
Based on these findings, leadership and management in business organizations can benefit from encouraging constrained behavior, by reducing favorable disposition towards exhibiting deviant behaviors. Moreover, training and mentoring to impart the view and benefits of practicing self-restraint in using money and possessions and their value may help frugality and decrease deviant behaviors. Moreover, training and seminars on debt prevention are needed, especially among vulnerable employees who are frequently bombarded with materialistic media messages assigning that happiness, belongingness, and acceptance can be purchased. Financial literacy education can help develop positive financial attitudes and decrease materialism. Hence, money-management education is advantageous in business organizations. This paper also suggests that the promotion of constrained behavior and money-management ed-Source: Author's findings.