Expanding Our Understanding of Quiet Quitting: Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences

ABSTRACT Quiet quitting remains an undertheorized and inconsistently defined construct in the scholarly literature. There is little understanding of or agreement about its construct domain, and no unifying conceptual framework to distinguish it from related constructs. Popular accounts often equate quiet quitting with employee work disengagement. Drawing on a synthesis of academic and practitioner literatures, we conceptualized quiet quitting as a form of psychological withdrawal that extends beyond in‐role task disengagement to include disengagement from colleagues and the organization more broadly. Its key components include a weakening of social connections at work, diminishing job engagement, a generalized disinclination toward work, and the desire to set boundaries between work and personal life. To reflect this multifaceted conceptualization, we developed the Multidimensional Quiet Quitting (MQQ) scale, comprising four interrelated dimensions: (1) lack of job‐specific engagement, (2) lack of generalized work engagement, (3) lack of social connections at work, and (4) boundary setting. Using a content validation sample of working adults ( N = 114), we evaluated the scale's content validity. We then examined its latent structure and internal consistency using experience sampling data from 124 professionals over 10 weeks, followed by confirmatory factor analysis in an independent replication sample ( N = 290). Finally, we mapped the nomological network of quiet quitting by examining associations with theoretically relevant antecedents and outcomes. Results indicated that organizational newcomers and younger employees were slightly more prone to quiet quitting, while job autonomy, work responsibility, marriage, and childcare responsibilities served as protective factors. Quiet quitters also tended to be less extraverted, conscientious, emotionally stable, and agreeable. Quiet quitting and disengagement were each associated with concurrent and subsequent mental health and work outcomes. Quiet quitting components incrementally predicted stress, job satisfaction, burnout, and work effectiveness beyond traditional work disengagement, an overlapping construct. By specifying and measuring quiet quitting as a multidimensional construct, this study provides much‐needed construct clarity and demonstrates empirical effects associated with the phenomenon. Implications for research and practice are discussed.