Feeling shame in the workplace: Examining negative feedback as an antecedent and performance and well‐being as consequences. (8th August 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Xing, Lu; Sun, Jian‐min (James); Jepsen, Denise
• Other Names: Tse Herman H. M. guestEditor.; Troth Ashlea C. guestEditor.; Ashkanasy Neal M. guestEditor.; Liden Robert C. guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of organizational behavior. Volume 42:Number 9(2021)
• Page Start: 1244
• Page End: 1260
• Publication Date: 2021-08-08
• Subjects: emotional exhaustion -- in‐role and extra‐role performance -- leader–member exchange -- shame -- supervisor negative feedback; Industrial sociology -- Periodicals; Organizational behavior -- Periodicals; Psychology, Industrial -- Periodicals; 302.35
• DOI: 10.1002/job.2553
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0894-3796

Abstract

Summary: Shame is a powerful but understudied emotion in organizational settings, and its antecedents and consequences have been of key interest. Drawing on Daniels and Robinson's (2019) framework of organizational shame, we first investigated supervisor negative feedback, a common practice in supervisor–subordinate interactions, as a predictor of employees' shame. We further investigated the daily effects of shame on well‐being and performance. The hypothesized model was tested using a daily diary method from 119 full‐time employees across five consecutive working days. The results show that supervisor negative feedback is associated with employees' feelings of shame at the within‐person level, increasing their end‐of‐work emotional exhaustion while improving their next‐day in‐role and extra‐role performance. Further, individual‐level leader–member exchange (LMX) moderated the relationship between negative feedback and shame, with the relationship being stronger under high LMX. We discuss how our study contributes to the shame literature by emphasizing the predictive role of negative feedback and the repair motive of shame in determining its consequences.