Coping trauma with tolerance! A dyadic approach to investigate the relationship between social rejection and work-deviant behavior

Abstract

PurposeBased on the conservation of resources and emotional regulation theories, this research seeks to examine the relationship between social rejection and work-deviant behavior with a moderated mediation effect of emotional tolerance and psychological trauma.Design/methodology/approachA three-wave multi-sourced (dyad) data were collected from the professionals and respective supervisors of state-managed services sector organizations operating in Pakistan (n1 = 252, n2 = 126) selected through snowball sampling technique.FindingsThe results reflected that socially excluded employees indulge in work-deviant behaviors and psychological trauma perform a partial transmitting link. Further, an ability to be emotionally tolerant buffers the detrimental aspects effects of social rejection on psychological trauma but might not be an effective tool while one moves to the trauma stage. Further, the conditional effect confirms that a high level of emotional tolerance weakens the moderated mediation relationship between social rejection and work-deviant behavior via psychological trauma.Practical implicationsThe present study provides guidelines to carefully identify and tackle the incidences of social rejection in the workplace and develop tolerance capabilities of employees to tackle the trauma and reduce work deviance.Originality/valueThis is a novel attempt to link the emotional regulation theory with the conservation of resources theory in order to minimize the deviance-related issues provoked by social rejection by introducing emotional tolerance as a coping mechanism which was paid less attention in the contemporary literature.