Why Do Mistreated Employees Behave Badly? A Meta-Analytic Review of Multiple Mediation Processes

Abstract

Although a litany of theoretical accounts exists to explain why mistreated employees engage in counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), little is known about the relative importance of each mechanism and whether they are complementary in nature. This paper presents a meta-analytic review of three proposed mechanisms through which experiencing interpersonal mistreatment may result in employee CWBs. In particular, we invoke three theoretical perspectives that frequently appear in the literature: (1) a social exchange perspective, which states that social exchange quality is reduced when employees are mistreated, which leads them to engage in negative reciprocity, (2) a self-regulatory perspective, which states that employees’ self-regulatory capacity is depleted when they are mistreated, which renders them unable to inhibit undesirable behaviors, and (3) an affective experience perspective, which suggests that employees experience negative affect when they are mistreated, which leads them to engage in CWBs to resolve the issue or to alleviate the aversive feeling. Our meta-analytic structural equation model supported our predictions that social exchange quality, depletion of self-regulatory capacity, and negative affect each uniquely mediate the hypothesized direct effect of mistreatment on CWB. In addition, albeit being the least frequently invoked mechanism in literature, negative affect seems to be the strongest pathway when the three mechanisms are compared to each other.