Suffered from deep-seated childhood shadows: Linking childhood emotional abuse to interpersonal conflict at work and workplace ostracism

Abstract

Childhood experiences are critical for individuals' physical and mental development, but we know little about how they affect employees' workplace behaviors later in life. We draw on social learning theory to build a model linking people's childhood emotional abuse with their ostracism in the workplace. Data from a multi-source, multi-phase survey of 257 employees and their co-workers indicates that only when employees who are highly focused on seeking power, childhood emotional abuse increases employees' interpersonal conflict at work and thus makes them more likely to be victims of workplace ostracism. The findings contribute to the literature by showing how individuals' non-workplace experiences during their formative years can have a lingering effect on their workplace behaviors when they are adults. The findings also have important practical implications for employees and organizations.