The social context of undermining behavior at work

We developed a fairness theory perspective to explain the experience of being “singled out” for social undermining from supervisors and coworkers, and tested our predictions across four distinct social contexts. We argued and predicted that attitudinal and behavioral reactions to undermining (from s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Organizational behavior and human decision processes 2006-09, Vol.101 (1), p.105-126
Main Authors: Duffy, Michelle K., Ganster, Daniel C., Shaw, Jason D., Johnson, Jonathan L., Pagon, Milan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abusive supervision
Biological and medical sciences
Deviance
Equality
Fairness theory
Foreign Countries
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Interaction
Mediation
Networks
Occupational psychology
Organization and management. Professional relation
Organization theory
Organizational behavior
Organizational culture
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Slovenia
Social Environment
Social interaction
Social undermining
Studies
Supervisors
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Summary:We developed a fairness theory perspective to explain the experience of being “singled out” for social undermining from supervisors and coworkers, and tested our predictions across four distinct social contexts. We argued and predicted that attitudinal and behavioral reactions to undermining (from supervisors and coworkers) would be strongest when a correspondingly low level of undermining was found in the social context. The hypothesized cross-level interaction was supported for supervisor and coworker undermining among a sample of officers from the national police force in the Republic of Slovenia (Study 1), replicated for supervisor undermining among soldiers in the US National Guard (Study 2), and further replicated with group-member undermining among a sample of individuals working in student teams (Study 3). We then predicted that justice perceptions would mediate the singled out interaction and tested the mediated-moderation model in a coworker-network context among employees of a restaurant chain (Study 4). The results substantially supported the mediation prediction. These findings from diverse settings demonstrate that considering the social context is important when trying to understand the effects of social undermining behaviors at work.
ISSN:0749-5978
1095-9920
DOI:10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.04.005