Workplace Ostracism and Job Performance- The Role of Depressed Mood and Political Skill

Abstract

Ostracism has become a common hurtful phenomenon in the workplace. Researchers and practitioners are interested in identifying the range of consequences for employee attitudes and behaviors caused by workplace ostracism. By drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this paper examines the impact of workplace ostracism on job performance through depressed mood and the moderating effect of employees’ political skill in buffering the negative consequences of ostracism on job performance. In this empirical study, the data were collected from 233 employees of private banks using a self-administrative survey method. The proposed hypotheses were tested utilizing the moderated mediation analysis. The results show that the indirect impact of workplace ostracism on job performance through depressed mood becomes weak for individuals with high political skills and vice versa. The present study contributes to the existing stream of knowledge by providing how workplace ostracism transforms into poor performance outcomes by investigating the underpinning mechanism of depressed mood. It also examines an essential but unexplored boundary condition of political skill that detonates the indirect process for the employees with high political skill compared to low.

Keywords: workplace ostracism, job performance, political skill, depressed mood, COR