Lynne Andersson

Cynicism in the Workplace: Some Causes and Effects

A scenario-based experiment was employed to test seven hypotheses concerning several causes and consequences of cynicism in the workplace. The results of a 2×2×2 MANOVA revealed that high levels of executive compensation, poor organizational performance, and harsh, immediate layoffs generate cynicism in white-collar workers. Furthermore, regression analyses showed that cynicism relates negatively to intentions to perform organizational citizenship behaviors and intentions to comply with requests to engage in unethical behaviors. The study provides a first experimental investigation of an important employee attitude and indicates directions for further research.

Employee Cynicism: An Examination Using a Contract Violation Framework

Employee cynicism is an attitude characterized by frustration, hopelessness, and disillusionment, as well as contempt toward and distrust of business organizations, executives, and/or other objects in the workplace. This paper uses theory on contract violation to help integrate the diverse literature on cynicism and develop plausible propositions concerning some of the predictors and moderators of employee cynicism. First, the pertinent theory and research on cynicism is reviewed. Four specific domains of research are discussed in terms of their relevance to cynicism in an organizational setting. Next, the literature on psychological and implied contracts and their violation is presented as a framework for the study of employee cynicism. Finally, hypothetical linkages between cynicism and specific characteristics of the contemporary workplace are explored, offering propositions for future research.

When Workers Flout Convention: A Study of Workplace Incivility

Many organizations are concerned about the potential for workplace aggression and violence, yet pay little heed to lesser forms of interpersonal and organizational mistreatment. Drawing from knowledge and experiences of managers, attorneys, law enforcement officers and emergency medical professionals, we report a multi-method, multidisciplinary inductive study addressing two questions: (1) what is the nature of workplace incivility and how does incivility differ from and fit among other types of workplace mistreatment; and (2) what are some implications of incivility for employees and organizations?

Doing unto others: The reciprocity of helping behavior in organizations

Reciprocity is a fundamental aspect of social life, and a phenomenon studied from a wide variety of philosophical, theological, and social scientific perspectives. In this study, we use social exchange theory to investigate why employees help other employees. We hypothesize, based on the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), that a significant cause of an employees helping behavior is how much organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) the employee has received from coworkers. To provide evidence of the discriminant validity of OCB received as an antecedent of helping behavior, we also assess its effects on another form of extra-role behavior, voice, as well as in-role performance. We found, in a sample of 157 employee-supervisor dyads, that OCB received was related to helping behavior after controlling for several antecedents of helping behavior identified in past research, and was less related to voice and in-role behavior, as hypothesized. Implications for theory and practice are presented.

Testing a measure of instigated workplace incivility

Using a sample of 211 working adults, an instigated workplace incivility measure, distinct from an experienced workplace incivility and general interpersonal deviance measures, was developed. Correlates of instigated workplace incivility were then tested using 162 medical technologists over a 4-year time frame. Results indicated that Time 1 measures of distributive justice and job satisfaction were negatively related to instigated workplace incivility, while a Time 1 measure of work exhaustion was positively related to such incivility. Furthermore, these three antecedents contributed significantly to explaining instigated workplace incivility, beyond Time 2 measures of these three variables. Future research issues, as well as study limitations, are discussed.

Top management credibility and employee cynicism: A comprehensive model

By combining quantitative and qualitative methods of study, we develop a comprehensive model of top management behaviors, perceived management credibility, and employee cynicism and outcomes. Specifically, we identify managerial behaviors that affect employees’ perceptions of two components of top management’s credibility — trustworthiness and competence — and examine how each of those components relates to employee cynicism. Top management competence and trustworthiness relate to different components of employee cynicism (cognitive, affective, and behavioral cynicism), and these dimensions of cynicism differentially relate to organizational commitment and self-assessed job performance. Content analysis of critical incidents revealed that different sets of managerial behaviors generate attributions of competence, incompetence, trustworthiness, and non-trustworthiness. This study and the resulting model open the door to more finely distilled research on management credibility and employee cynicism.

Hitting the jackpot (or not): an attempt to extract value in Philadelphia’s casino controversy:

Beginning in the late 1980s, casinos became a favoured neoliberal economic development strategy for cash-strapped states and municipalities. During the same time period, the political power and profitability of the gaming industry increased, while opposition from communities grew. A recent example of this phenomenon is the controversy that ensued after Pennsylvania’s legalization of slot machines and the subsequent selection of two casino sites in Philadelphia. Our study analyses the Philadelphia casino controversy using a critical case study approach and the theoretical framework of accumulation by dispossession.We argue that the situation in Philadelphia represents attempted value extraction by corporate and government elites from communities and citizens. Moreover, the nature of the value extraction goes beyond the economic, impinging on the social dimensions of community life.

Of Great Vampire Squids and Jamming Blood Funnels: A Socially Constructed and Historically Situated Perspective on Organizational Corruption:

In this essay, I propose an eventful way to approach corruption as socially constructed and historically situated. First, I describe how deep (socially constructed) and long (processual, historical) perspectives on corruption have been less examined. Then, I build an approach to understanding organizational corruption as a constructed event embedded in scenario, utilizing concepts from history, cultural studies, and the interactionist tradition in sociology. To offer scholars a way to articulate this eventful conception of organizational corruption and inform how it might be approached through interpretive textual reading and narrative, I draw in an example of a highly publicized accusation of corruption by the financial services firm Goldman Sachs. In closing, I present implications for theory building and research.

Book Review Symposium: Slavery In and Around Organizations

The promise of neoliberal capitalism is that it would unleash us all, offering ultimate freedom based on our freedom to act in the marketplace (Harvey, 2005). Capitalism and liberalism, which are compatible ideals, go hand in hand. Today’s owners and dealers of capital—the tech gurus, the Wall Street wizards, the influential industrialists, the investor class—famously tout the access that seemingly all have to economic autonomy, in such varied guises as entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, free agency, gig work and the continuous development of the enterprising self (Fleming, 2017). In reality, many of the participants in the global neoliberal capitalist systems are by no means free. Many in the system are, at best, indentured servants to organizations or contractors (e.g., “wage slaves”) or, at worst, literal slaves. Most workers are the less-free and the un-free. The handcuffs of neoliberal capitalism are, akin to the hand that guides it, invisible to many of us, in the sense that we cannot see the constraints of the broader system on our freedoms (Perelman, 2011). But the handcuffs and their effects are also, horrifically, clearly visible to many. A report released in September 2017 by the UN-affiliated International Labor Office (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation estimates that, in 2016, there were 40.3 million people in some form of modern slavery around the world, in every country, on any given day. Females account for an estimated 28.7 million of enslaved people, about 71 percent of the total. In addition, one in four victims of modern slavery are below the age of 18 (Taylor, 2017). Modern slavery tends to occur under conditions of labor intensity, in low technology industries and low-skill service industries, situations where slavery presents an opportunity to abolish labor costs and drive profit (Crane, 2013). Susceptible work includes garment workers in the fast fashion industry, migrant workers in nail salons, small-scale construction and renovation workers, security staff who have been outsourced, seasonal employees in the hospitality industry, meat and poultry processing, and domestic and sex work (Lawrence, 2018). Such work is often characterized by distance between management and workers, whether subcontracted or gigged out, creating a grey space that allows diffusion of economic and moral responsibility. Threats of violence, debt bondage, physical abuse, constraints on mobility, and exploitive underpayment are but some of the practices that inhabit that space (Crane, 2013). 789380OSS0010.1177/0170840618789380Organization StudiesBook Review Symposium research-article2018