Designing a Model of Employees’ Positive Deviant Behaviors in Insurance Industry

Although deviance in the workplace is in most cases destructive in nature, it may also have some benefits. In recent years, due to the fact that positive deviation can lead to positive changes in organizations and promote innovation, there has been great interest in this type of deviation in organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to design a model of positive deviant behaviors of employees in the Iranian insurance industry. This qualitative study was conducted using the Strauss and Corbin grounded theory methodology. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 16 participants selected using the purposive and snowballing methods from 7 insurance companies. The triangulation strategy was used for validation. Also, for the reliability test of the interviews, the reliability of the retest (stability index) and the method of intra-subject agreement were used, which obtained 84 and 93% results, respectively. After analyzing all the interviews, 231 primary codes were identified, which after refinement became 57 concepts, 23 sub-categories and 6 main categories. The core phenomenon was explained in the form of 5 categories of creative and innovative work behaviors, respectful and well-motivated violations of organizational norms and laws, organizational citizenship behaviors, fair criticism of managers and the organization, and whistle-blowing. Due to the movement of Iran's insurance industry towards a competitive environment, the importance of positive organizational behaviors has been increasingly important and in this regard, providing grounds for the occurrence of behaviors such as positive deviant behaviors can facilitate the achievement of predetermined goals.JEL Classification: D23,C91,C92