Being Exploited at Work: Why and When Perceived Exploitation Relates to Employee Job Performance

While research has indicated that negative treatments of employees are reciprocated by the employees with reduced job performance, in reality, we know that this is not always the case. In the present study, we provide two competing explanations for employee reactions to their perceptions of exploitative employee-organization relationship. Drawing from the social exchange view, we theorize that perceived organizational exploitation can reduce employees’ felt obligation toward the organization, which in turn can inhibit two key dimensions of their job performance (i.e., in-role and extra-role performance). Conversely, drawing from the motivated information processing theory (MIPT), we suggest that the relationships between perceived organizational exploitation and these two indicators of job performance are more complex. We predict that perceived organizational exploitation heightens employee self-interest, which in turn increases in-role performance but reduces extra-role performance. Furthermore, we examine employee job instrumentality beliefs as a moderator of both mediating pathways (i.e., felt obligation and self-interest pathways). Results from data collected at three points in time from 217 employees in Nigeria support both hypothesized pathways but surprisingly reveal opposite results for the moderating effect of job instrumentality beliefs on the felt-obligation pathway (i.e., the mediating effect of felt-obligation was stronger at higher (rather than low) job instrumentality). Implications for theory and practice are discussed