Abstract

Despite increasing scholarly attention to workplace ostracism, victims receive little guidance regarding how to break its negative spiral over time. Drawing on a multi-motive model of rejection-related experiences and the cybernetic model of impression management, this study examines how and why ostracized employees might ameliorate workplace ostracism through impression management efforts to enhance their popularity. Specifically, an ostracized worker may employ favour rendering tactics to enhance her or his popularity, as reported by peers, which can help reduce ostracism. In addition, ostracized employees with strong self-monitoring tendencies may be more likely to employ favour rendering tactics and use them more effectively to enhance their popularity and thus reduce ostracism. Data collected from 277 employee-coworker pairs in a three-wave, time-lagged design over 2 years confirm the proposed hypotheses, tested in a two-stage moderated mediation model. These findings have theoretical implications for ostracism research, as well as practical implications to help employees and organizations overcome ostracism. Practitioner points Being ostracized often prompts self-focused responses, but to reduce it, ostracized employees instead should pay attention to others and seek to help others to alter the treatment they receive from others. High self-monitoring employees tend to employ favour rendering tactics to increase their popularity and mitigate ostracism. To help ostracized employees mitigate ostracism, managers and organizations can suggest ways to increase their popularity among their peers.

Keyword

impression management ;  popularity ;  self-monitoring ;  workplace ostracism

Abstract

Unethical behavior in organizations has attracted much attention among researchers, yet we know little about when and why unethical behavior conducted by leaders that is intended to benefit the organization-or leader unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB)-might translate into employee unethical behavior. Drawing on a social-learning-of-principle perspective, which proposes that people can learn the principles that govern observed behaviors, we propose that employees, especially those with a high power distance orientation, can abstract and learn a moral disengagement behavioral principle by observing leader UPB. This learned moral disengagement behavioral principle then enables them to engage in unethical behaviors that may be intended to benefit or harm their organizations. In two multiwave field studies with data collected from real estate agents, we found overall support for our theoretical model but the moderating effect of power distance orientation. We discuss some key theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Keyword

leader unethical pro-organizational behavior ;  moral disengagement ;  power distance ;  principle learning ;  social learning