How resilient employees can prevent family ostracism from escalating into diminished work engagement and change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

Drawing from conservation of resources theory and the work–home resources model, this research examines the hitherto overlooked but highly relevant link between employees’ experience of resource-draining family ostracism and change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, with a specific focus on the mediating role of their work engagement and moderating role of their resilience. Tests of the research hypotheses, using survey data collected among employees who work in the construction retail industry, reveal that a core channel through which social exclusion by family members translates into diminished voluntary change efforts is that employees become less engaged with work. This intermediate role of lower work engagement is less prominent, however, among employees who have a greater ability to bounce back from challenging situations. For human resource (HR) management scholars, this study accordingly helps explain why a sense of being ignored at home may lead employees to become complacent in their change efforts: Employees exhibit less enthusiasm about work. But HR management practitioners can subdue this process to the extent that they enhance and leverage employees’ resilience levels.

Keywords:

• Family ostracism
• change-oriented OCB
• work engagement
• resilience
• conservation of resources theory
• work–home resources model

Notes

1 With the “randbetween” function in the Excel software package, we generated random numbers for each employee in the provided list; the 250 employees with the lowest numbers were selected for the study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dirk De Clercq

Dirk De Clercq is Professor of Management in the Goodman School of Business at Brock University, Canada. His research interests include entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and cross-country studies.

Renato Pereira

Renato Pereira is Professor of General Management in ISCTE Business School at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal. He is also a Researcher in the Emerging Markets Research Center at ISCIM, Mozambique. His research interests include entrepreneurship, innovation, and international business, with a particular focus on Africa.