Tolerating employee misbehaviour: where does our federal industrial tribunal stand?

Industrial tribunal decisions are believed to contribute to public standards (Donaghey 2006) and to reflect societal values (Wright 2002). How much tolerance employers and unions must show towards employees who may have engaged in misbehaviour is therefore likely to be influenced by unfair dismissal decisions made by Australia’s federal industrial tribunal. The endless manifestation of employee misbehaviours can be classified according to Robinson and Bennett’s (1995) employee deviance typology. Using this typology, the research question examined the level of ‘judicial’ tolerance for offences committed by employees across Australian workplaces that culminated in an arbitration hearing before the country’s federal industrial tribunal