Effect Of Workplace Ostracism On Employees’ Counterproductive Work Behavior

Workplace ostracism (WOS) is a very typical workplace cold violence,which is widespread in all kinds of organization, and causes enormouspsychological damage to employees. Even so, not until Ferris et al.(2008)developed the workplace ostracism scale, little attention has been paid to WOS.Since then, there were emerging some empirical studies concerning theinfluence of WOS on organizational outcomes. Within these researches,organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been studied largely, whilenegative behavioral outcomes neglected. However, initial evidence in the fieldof social exclusion showed that Ostracism would trigger maladaptive responses(e.g., aggressive behavior). Therefore, the major purpose of this study is toexplore the impact of WOS on counterproductive work behavior (CWB) inChinese organizational settings, and further examine the mediating role of stateself-control in the WOS-CWB relationship and the moderating effect of psychological capital (PsyCap) on the relationship between WOS and stateself-control.Based on the resource model of self-control and a further literaturereview, this study proposed the research framework and hypotheses.Questionnaire investigation method was adopted, and a valid sample of345was collected throughout china. Factor analysis, correlation analysis, analysisof variance and hierarchical regression analyses were successively conductedunder the usage of SPSS17.0, and the following conclusions were drawn:(1)WOS relates negatively to CWB;(2) WOS relates negatively to stateself-control;(3) State self-control relates negatively to CWB;(4) Stateself-control partly mediates the relationship between WOS and CWB;(5) WOShas a stronger negative effect on state self-control when employee PsyCapvalues are high rather than low;(6) PsyCap relates positively to stateself-control.Finally, Management suggestions and limitations of the study areput forwarded.