Employee Popularity Mediates the Relationship Between Political Skill and Workplace Interpersonal Mistreatment

Abstract

Interpersonal mistreatment is a common and often devastating occurrence in the workplace. Although victim characteristics are an important determinant of who is targeted, research examining the link between target characteristics and interpersonal mistreatment is limited. Researchers have not considered employees’ interpersonal style as an antecedent of the mistreatment they experience from others. Further, very few studies have attempted to understand the mediating processes underlying the relationships between victim characteristics and workplace interpersonal mistreatment. The current study addresses these needs by examining employee popularity as a mediator of the relationship between political skill and two forms of interpersonal mistreatment: workplace interpersonal conflict and workplace ostracism. Results indicate that the political skill–interpersonal mistreatment relationships were mediated by employee popularity.

Social intra-organizational connection: effects in three relational domains

“…We suggest future studies to tests relating expressive and instrumental ties with SIC and relate these constructs to other attitudinal and behavioral variables at work to evaluate the discrimination between these types of social tie content and other variables. To examine the discriminant validity of SIC, a comparison could be made using scales of expressive and instrumental ties (Manev & Stevenson, 2001); popularity (Cullen et al, 2014); and structural, relational and cognitive social capital (Lin, 2011). To establish the predictive validity of the proposed concept in future studies, a possible suggestion is the inclusion of the variables cited previously as a control of the effects of SIC in the following dependent variables: organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance (Lee & Allen, 2002); organizational identification (Mael & Ashforth, 1992); commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991); and engagement and job performance (Rich et al, 2010).…”

Interpersonal Mistreatment, Organizational Attitudes and Well-Being: The Impact of Instigator’s Hierarchical Position and Demographic Characteristics

“…Organizational commitment, described as employees' emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in a particular organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991), is also one of the most important areas affected by abusive supervision (Gabler et al, 2014;Morrow, 2011). Other recent evidence indicates that employees' organizational commitment diminishes while their turnover intention increases when they are mistreated at work by variety of sources (such as supervisors and colleagues), as this promotes feelings of injustice and frustration, which are likely to impact the effectiveness and functional ability of the employing organization in the long run (Cullen, Fan, & Liu, 2014).…”

Essays on co-operatives’ idiosyncrasies : structure, performance, and membership

“…Chapter 4, we explore, measure and document a core co-op peril with the aid of social exclusion and social mistreatment literature (e.g., Cullen et al, 2012;Duffy et al, 2002;Scott et al, 2013;Spector and Jex, 1998), predominantly relying on the voluminous ostracism research (e.g., Chernyak and Zayas, 2010;Ferris et al, 2008;O'Reilly et al, 2014;Robinson et al, 2013;Williams, 2001;Wolf et al, 2015;Zadro et al, 2005). Finally, in the same chapter (Chapter 4), we draw from critical relationship marketing research (e.g., Aurier and N'Goala, 2010;Morgan and Hunt, 1994;Sirdeshmukh et al, 2002;Verma et al, 2016 Vincent andWebster, 2013), eventually deliberating why scholars need to shed more light on the "dark side" of relationship marketing (Payne and Frow, 2017).…”

“…That is, it is characterized by the absence of positive attention and wanted behavior rather than the presence of negative attention or unwanted behavior (O'Reilly et al, 2014;Rajchert and Winiewski, 2016). This is why it reduces social interaction, in contrast to other social mistreatment behaviors (e.g., assault), which are interactional by nature (Cullen et al, 2012).…”

“…On the other hand, even though the workplace ostracism scale (WOS; Ferris et al, 2008) is a well-validated tool that has been used in a host of organizational studies (e.g., Cullen et al, 2012;Leunga et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2013;Scott et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2012;Zhao et al, 2013), it measures ostracism perceptions in a particular organizational domain, the workplace. Hence, we could not utilize WOS and, instead, chose to develop a co-op domain-specific scale, consistent with our definition.…”