Need to Belong under Attack: Workplace Ostracism Brings Workplace Loneliness and Damaged Performance

The present research investigated how and when workplace ostracism affects employee workplace loneliness and, subsequently, job performance. Drawing on belongingness theory, we argued that workplace ostracism fosters an employee’s feeling of workplace loneliness, which in turn, deteriorates one’s task performance. We also identified relational-interdependent self-construal and leader perspective-taking behavior as two boundary conditions to the negative influences imposed by workplace ostracism. Results from a three-wave, 235 dyads of leader and employee data revealed that workplace ostracism elicited feeling of workplace loneliness, which further hindered employee task performance. In addition, employee relational-interdependent self-construal and leader perspective-taking behavior moderated the negative indirect relationship between workplace ostracism and employee task performance through workplace loneliness. Specifically, the negative indirect relationship was strengthened when the employee was high in relational-interdependent self-construal. On the other hand, the negative indirect relationship was weakened when the leader engaged in a high level of perspective-taking behavior. Implications for theory and practice were also discussed.