Sandra L. Robinson’s research while affiliated with University of British Columbia and other places

We present a meta-analytic investigation of the theoretical mechanisms underlying why experienced workplace aggression is harmful to the three core performance outcomes (i.e., task performance, citizenship behavior, and deviant behavior). Through a comprehensive literature review of 405 empirical articles, we first extract and identify five prominent theoretical mechanisms: relationship quality, justice perception, psychological strain, negative affect, and state self-evaluation. By synthesizing evidence from these articles, which include 471 unique samples from 36 countries or regions (N = 149,341 participants), we reveal the incremental effects of the five mechanisms, compare their relative strengths for each performance outcome, and examine their cultural contingencies. We find that when the five mechanisms are examined simultaneously, only relationship quality and state self-evaluation show incremental effects across all performance outcomes in the predicted direction. Moreover, the comparative strengths of mechanisms vary across performance outcomes: The impact of workplace aggression on task performance is best explained by the negative affect and state self-evaluation mechanisms, its impact on citizenship behavior is best explained by the relationship quality mechanism, and its impact on deviant behavior is best explained by the negative affect mechanism. Finally, the prominence of some mechanisms is contingent on certain cultural dimensions: The relationship quality mechanism is strengthened by individualism and masculinity, while the state self-evaluation mechanism is strengthened by masculinity. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our research.

This meta-analysis aims to understand the impact of witnessed workplace mistreatment. Bringing together two streams of research, it examines (a) the boundary conditions of observer reactions that reflect a principled moral disapproval of violations of interpersonal justice (i.e., deontic reactions) and (b) the extent to which witnessed mistreatment explains incremental variance in a range of employee outcomes beyond the effects of experienced mistreatment. The results demonstrate that observer psychological and behavioral deontic reactions are not straightforward. For example, while observers have negative reactions toward perpetrators, they fail to intervene and have mixed reactions toward targets. Findings from a series of moderator analyses illuminate the role of perpetrator rank, mistreatment severity, and study context in explaining these disparate observer deontic reactions. Further, although experienced mistreatment explains more variance in most employee outcomes than witnessed mistreatment, witnessed mistreatment still has a unique and sizable contribution. The implications of these findings and future directions for research on witnessed mistreatment are discussed.

In the mid-90s, we embarked on establishing the domain of Workplace Deviance. Though we were fortunate to meet our intended goals and have the impact we had hoped for, we have often thought about what we might have done differently. In this essay, we outline some of the things we wish we knew then that we know now. As we will describe, we perhaps should have chosen a different construct name, taken a theoretical rather than data driven approach to our typology, and developed a reflective rather than formative scale. We hope this essay based on our hindsight may be of value to future scholars seeking to establish new constructs in our field.

Research on the social consequences of narcissism points to an intriguing paradox: narcissists are socially aversive and destructive to healthy interpersonal relationships; yet, narcissists also have an ability to be socially magnetic and attractive. This raises the question we seek to answer in this paper: Are narcissists socially accepted by coworkers in the workplace, and if so, when? Drawing on the social‐constructionist perspective and power‐dependence theory, we propose that others’ dependency on narcissists plays a critical role in determining narcissists’ social acceptance in the workplace. Results from two time‐lagged independent studies suggest that narcissists with a high level of expertise status experience less ostracism than non‐narcissists, particularly in a group with high group goal interdependence; by contrast, narcissists who are perceived to lack expertise status experience greater ostracism than non‐narcissists, particularly in a group with low group goal interdependence. In Study 2, in addition to ostracism, we also examined social inclusion and popularity of narcissists, and we found that narcissists with high expertise status are more likely to be social included and to become popular, particularly in a group with a high level of group goal interdependence.

The COVID-19 pandemic—as an omnipresent mortality cue—heightens employees’ awareness of their mortality and vulnerability. Extant research has identified two distinct forms of death awareness: death anxiety and death reflection. Because researchers have exclusively examined death anxiety and death reflection as independent and unique variables across individuals while overlooking their interplay and co-existence within individuals, we know little about whether and why employees can have different combined experiences of two forms of death awareness over a certain period of time (e.g., during the pandemic), and how these different employee experiences relate to theoretically and practically important work-relevant consequences. To address this gap in our knowledge, we adopted a person-centered approach using latent profile analysis to consider death anxiety and death reflection conjointly within employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two studies, we identified three distinct death awareness profiles—the disengaged, calm reflectors, and anxious reflectors—and found membership in these profiles systematically varied according to health- (e.g., risk of severe illness from COVID-19), work- (e.g., job-required human contact), and community-related (e.g., the number of regional infections) factors influencing the self-relevance of COVID-19 as a mortality cue. In addition, we found that these death awareness profiles differentially predicted important employee outcomes, including well-being (i.e., depression and emotional exhaustion) and prosocial behaviors at work (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviors and pro-diversity behavior).

Negative workplace behavior has received substantial research attention over the past several decades. Although we have learned a lot about the consequences of negative behavior for its victims and third-party observers, a less understood but equally important research question pertains to the consequences for bad actors: How does engaging in negative behavior impact one’s thoughts, feelings, and subsequent behaviors? Moreover, do organizational members experience costs or benefits from engaging in negative acts? We address these questions with an integrative review of empirical findings on various actor-centric consequences of a wide range of negative behaviors. We organize these findings into five dominant theoretical perspectives: affective, psychological-needs, relational, psychological-resources, and cognitive-dissonance perspectives. For each perspective, we provide an overview of the theoretical arguments, summarize findings of relevant studies underlying it, and discuss observed patterns and contradictory findings. By doing so, we provide a very tentative answer to our initial questions, contending that engaging in negative acts is a two-edged sword for actors and its costs seem to slightly prevail over its benefits. Nevertheless, we make this preliminary conclusion based upon an incomplete knowledge base. In order to further our understanding of actor-centric outcomes of negative behavior, we also identify several important research gaps and needed future research directions.

In our introduction to this special issue, we explain why understanding the social and situational context around workplace mistreatment is important. We then provide summaries of the six articles in this special issue and conclude by identifying three key themes—social interpretation, recursive nature of mistreatment, and beyond the dyad—and some important directions for future research.