Eyes wide open: perceived exploitation and its consequences

Ephrat Ofer, Jackie Coyle-Shapiro and Jone L. Pearce

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Drawing on the array of literature on exploitation from several social science disciplines, we propose a new way of seeing employer-employee relationships by introducing the concept of perceived exploitative employee-organization relationships, distinguish it from related concepts, and conduct five studies to develop a scale and test our theoretical model of the effects of such employee perceptions. Contributing to the Employee-Organization Relationships and workplace emotions literatures, perceived exploitation is defined as employees’ perceptions that they have been purposefully taken advantage of in their relationship with the organization, to the benefit of the organization itself. We propose and find that such perceptions are associated with both outward-focused emotions of anger and hostility toward the organization and inward-focused ones of shame and guilt at remaining in an exploitative job. In two studies including construction workers and a time-lagged study of medical residents, we find that the emotions of anger and hostility partially mediate the effects of perceived exploitation on employee engagement, revenge against the organization, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions, whereas the emotions of shame and guilt partially mediate the effects of perceived exploitation on employee burnout, silence, and psychological withdrawal.

JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2019-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in Academy of Management Journal, December, 2019, 62(6), pp. 1989 - 2018. ISSN: 0001-4273

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/90823/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:90823

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().