Workplace ostracism and employee silence in the Sri Lankan apparel industry: The moderating role of negative reciprocity beliefs

Abstract

In today’s dynamic apparel industry, interpersonal relationships significantly influence employee behavior and organizational outcomes. This study investigates how workplace ostracism influences different forms of employee silence, such as acquiescence, defensive, and prosocial, and examines whether this impact is moderated by Negative Reciprocity Beliefs (NRBs). Drawing on the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, we argue that ostracized employees, perceiving a threat to their psychological and social resources, may withdraw their input to conserve energy and protect themselves. Employees with high NRBs are particularly inclined to respond to exclusion with retaliatory silence. Using a time-lagged survey design, data were collected from 241 lower-level employees through convenience sampling across five apparel organizations in Northern Sri Lanka. Workplace ostracism, NRBs, and employee silence were measured using validated scales. Results from hierarchical regression analyses showed that workplace ostracism significantly predicted both acquiescence silence (β = 0.46, p < .001) and defensive silence (β = 0.49, p < .001), while its effect on prosocial silence was nonsignificant (β = 0.04, p = .409). Moreover, NRBs significantly moderated the impact between workplace ostracism and both acquiescence silence (β = 0.19, p < .01) and defensive silence (β = 0.22, p < .001), but not prosocial silence (β = 0.02, p = .549). These findings suggest that employee silence is a coping response to ostracism, especially among individuals with strong retaliatory beliefs. While this study contributes to understanding interpersonal dynamics, its reliance on self-report data restricts causal interpretations. Future research could explore multi-source designs to further unpack these dynamics across different cultural and industrial contexts.