Introduction

Accurately measuring employee integrity, commonly referred to as Counterproductive Work Behaviour (CWB), is a growing concern. Reviews and high profile media exposés show the pervasive damage companies experience worldwide as a result of employee CWB, as well as the lack of recognised overt assessments available. Globally, the measurement of obstructive work behaviours remains an underdeveloped area of testing, which contrasts to its demand.

Objectives

The aim of this paper is to present a review of ETIX, a new assessment aimed at measuring individuals’ likelihood of engaging in CWB. Developed in 3 languages simultaneously, ETIX was designed to be a valid and fair assessment that respects equal opportunity and have international applicability.

Design/Methodology

ETIX is designed to measure people’s attitudes and dispositions towards instances of CWBs to predict their likelihood of engaging in CWB. Six broad dimensions measured by the assessment were derived from an extensive organisational field survey conducted in three languages (English, French and Spanish) with 109 companies from 35 different countries. Literature reviews and Ethics charters from multinational companies were also used in the development. The behavioural content was then referenced to ISO 26000 - the internationally recognised standards for organisational social responsibility. A pilot study was run with representative samples in the corresponding languages to test key psychometric properties.

Results

Findings demonstrate that ETIX has good reliability as well as concurrent, consequential and construct validity. Measurement equivalence is also demonstrated through DIF analyses. Overall, results demonstrate the assessments efficiency in predicting CWB on an international level.

Conclusions

The review confirms that ETIX is an accurate predictor of CWB. Furthermore, the results of the analyses show that ETIX is appropriate for use with professionals, regardless of their educational level, age or gender, without causing discrimination. Practitioners should be confident of obtaining valid, representative and fair results.