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When There’s No One Else to Blame: The Impact of Coworkers’ Perceived Competence and Warmth on the Relations between Ostracism, Shame, and Ingratiation

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Abstract

Workplace ostracism is a prevalent and painful experience. The majority of studies focus on negative outcomes of ostracism, with less work examining employees’ potential adaptive responses to it. Further, scholars have suggested that such responses depend on employee attributions, yet little research has taken an attributional perspective on workplace ostracism. Drawing on sociometer theory and attribution theory we develop and test a model that investigates why and under what circumstances ostracized employees engage in adaptive responses to ostracism. Specifically, we argue that ostracized employees feel greater levels of shame and, in turn, are motivated to engage in greater ingratiation behavior toward their ostracizers. However, we predict that perceptions of ostracizers’ competence and warmth shape different attributional processes, which influence the degree to which the ostracized employee experience shame and, in turn, is motivated to engage in ingratiation behavior. Results of a three-wave, time-lagged survey support our prediction that shame mediates the relationship between coworker ostracism and ingratiation behavior. Moreover, results support our three-way interaction, such that coworkers who report higher levels of ostracism and who perceive their coworkers as more (vs. less) competent and more (vs. less) warm report higher shame, and, in turn, ingratiation behavior. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as avenues for future research, are discussed.

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Notes

  1. In general, shame, guilt, and embarrassment are all self-conscious emotions involving a process of self-awareness and self-reflection, paving the way for self-evaluations to occur (Leary, 2007; Tracy et al., 2007). However, these emotions are distinct from one another. For example, shame and guilt differ in the “object of evaluation,” such that shame focuses on one’s core sense of self (i.e., “I feel ashamed of myself”), while guilt focuses on one’s behavior (i.e., “I feel guilty about my behavior”). Further, individuals who experience shame make stable, negative internal attributions about their core selves (i.e., that they suffer from a fundamental self-defect; Daniels & Robinson, 2019; Tracy & Robins, 2006), whereas those who feel embarrassed experience a presentational predicament wherein they believe that others have developed an undesired impression of them (Leary et al., 1996; Miller & Tangney, 1994). Additionally, embarrassment typically involves social evaluation from minor violations, whereas shame involves self-evaluation from more serious perceived social failures (Crozier, 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Clemson University, Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business, 225 Walter T Cox Blvd, Clemson, SC, 29634, USA

    Sara Joy Krivacek

  2. Department of Management, James Madison University, 421 Bluestone Drive, Harrisonburg, VA, 22801, USA

    Sara Joy Krivacek

  3. Department of Management, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Christian N. Thoroughgood

  4. Department of Management and Organizations, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Katina B. Sawyer

  5. Department of Psychlogy, University of Texas at Arlington, 701 S Nedderman Drive, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA

    Nicholas Anthony Smith

  6. Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Thomas J. Zagenczyk

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Krivacek, S.J., Thoroughgood, C.N., Sawyer, K.B. et al. When There’s No One Else to Blame: The Impact of Coworkers’ Perceived Competence and Warmth on the Relations between Ostracism, Shame, and Ingratiation. J Bus Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05614-1

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