How Do Employees With Political Skill Avoid Workplace Ostracism?

More attentions have been attached to the study of workplace ostracism recently.Workplace ostracism whose definition is others' perception,exclusion and rejection felt by employees in workplace will create a negative experience for employees and threat to their social resources,it's very detrimental to the organization's interaction and performance.Therefore,it's very important to study the influencial factor of workplace ostracism.Western scholars argued that employees' political skill can significantly reduce the perceptions of workplace ostracism,the mechanism is employees with high political skill can avoid suffering workplace ostracism,by means of increasing their popularity in the organization.However,the underlying rationale may be different between the western and eastern context.This paper introduces three related concepts(LMX,Ingratiation and Atmosphere of "Differential Rank Distance")to explore the negative effect of employees' political skill on workplace ostracism based on the Chinese cultural context.First,LMX which is leaders' trust,love,respect and support felt by employees plays and important role in the interaction between the members of the organization,because the situation of employees in the organization is largely determined by the relationship between the employee and the leader in Chinese organizational context where the "official standard"and "circle culture" are very popular.Second,Ingratiation is usually regarded as one of the most important strategies to increase the acceptance of others by influencing them,it is able to construct the harmonious working environment and positive interpersonal relationship.Third,Atmosphere of "Differential Rank Distance" is generally used to refer to the degree of relationship differences between team members and team resources controllers.Team members will consider that the relationship between leaders and other members has bigger difference in organizations whose atmosphere of"differential rank distance" felt by employees is higher,while it is reverse in organizations whose atmosphere of "differential rank distance" felt by employees is lower.In this way,the atmosphere of "differential rank distance" can influence the strategy which employees use to avoid workplace ostracism as a boundary condition.In a word,this paper considers that LMX,ingratiation and atmosphere of "differential rank distance" play important roles in the mechanism between political skill and workplace ostracism in our Chinese cultural context.This paper selected 341 employees as the research object from 12 enterprises and public institutions in Hohhot,and verified hypotheses by constructing a moderated-mediation model and sending questionnaires to these employees.The study found that,in the Chinese cultural context,employees with high political skill usually avoid workplace ostracism by establishing more intimate LMX and ingratiating colleagues more frequently,and the atmosphere of "differential rank distance" felt by employees moderates the mediating role LMX plays in the relationship between political skill and workplace ostracism.This paper expands Western scholars' research achievements and provides an idea for researches about the atmosphere of "differential rank distance" or based on Chinese cultural context on theoretical aspect.On practical aspect,this paper has guiding significance for employees who want to avoid workplace ostracism and helps managers to take reasonable and effective management according to organizational characteristic by revealing the crucial status LMX enjoys in daily interaction.