The Impact of Workplace Ostracism on Stress and Employee Engagement

Abstract

Article Classification: Research ArticlePurpose -This research aims to find out the impact of workplace ostracism on stress and employee engagement; this study is beneficial for organizations specific to Banking Sectors so that they can manage their employees correctly.Design/methodology/approach -Quantitative research method was used in this research followed with non-probability convenient sampling with the sample size of 330 of employees working in the banking sectors located in Karachi both Public & Private, the instruments for measuring continuous variable are adopted from previous research.Findings -We have found by testing our hypotheses that there is a significant positive impact of Ostracism on Stress, on the other hand, it has been found that there is a negative impact of Ostracism on Employee Engagement.Discussion -The theoretical implication of the research is that our results reinforced the past theories and the practical implication that ostracism decreases the productivity of employees, for increasing the productivity of employees, the organization should decrease the level of ostracism at the workplace, and it will be beneficial for the banking sector.

Linking workplace ostracism and knowledge hoarding via organizational climate: a review and research agenda

“…Therefore, it can be stated that the reverse directional relationship between knowledge hoarding and workplace ostracism has been established in the previous studies, except for the causal relationship between the constructs. Workplace ostracism negatively affects employee creativity as it increases the employee's perception that new ideas are disparaged in the organization (Samo et al, 2019;Tu et al, 2019). Besides, employees experiencing ostracism may exhibit more powerful psychological and behavioural displays by decreasing the sense of belonging to their group.…”

“…Further, Robinson et al (2013) find that employees experiencing workplace discrimination will display unpredictable behavioural reactions to workplace ostracism. Such behavioural outputs are detrimental to the organization, and therefore, there is a need to explore purposefully and non-purposeful workplace ostracism (Samo et al, 2019). Previous studies have examined the area of knowledge hoarding and its related concepts, including knowledge hiding, knowledge sharing; however, the direct or indirect relationship between organizational culture and workplace ostracism has not been Workplace ostracism and knowledge hoarding widely examined (Riaz et al, 2019;Connelly et al, 2012).…”

“…When the damages due to workplace ostracism spread to the family roles of ostracized employees and start negatively influencing the employee’s emotional well-being (Samo, Khan, Ali and Ali, 2019), such situations are considered as a form of “social death” (Liu et al , 2013; Samo et al , 2019; Zhao and Xia, 2017). The consequential effect of workplace ostracism includes employees experiencing stress, depression, unhappiness and loneliness, which reduces performance, further restricting creative idea generation (Samo et al , 2019). In such a case, the organization should react promptly and play an active role in diffusing or arresting the spill-over effect, thereby blocking the impairment of workplace ostracism.…”

“…Workplace ostracism negatively affects employee creativity as it increases the employee’s perception that new ideas are disparaged in the organization (Samo et al , 2019; Tu et al , 2019). Besides, employees experiencing ostracism may exhibit more powerful psychological and behavioural displays by decreasing the sense of belonging to their group.…”

“…Organizational climate reciprocates the interpersonal relationship and facilitates social norms against knowledge hiding, thereby discouraging knowledge hiding tendencies of employees (Bock et al , 2005; Pan, Zhang, Teo and Lim, 2018). The increase in occurrences of workplace ostracism (purposeful or non-purposeful) can be attributed to multiple organizational antecedents (Robinson et al , 2013; Samo et al , 2019). Further, Robinson et al (2013) conclude that factors associated with purposeful workplace ostracism include “group ostracism, low task independence, formal policies or culture, and flat hierarchical structure”.…”