Workplace Exclusion in the Workplace and Employee Productivity: An emotional exhaustion and motivation stress and coping approach.

Abstract

On one hand, workplace exclusion has become an invisible but a widespread interpersonal stress factor in modern organizations. In contrast to blatant forms of abuse, exclusion is silent and it can be manifested by neglect, avoidance, and social isolation, which can go unnoticed and yet cause severe psychological and performance-related effects. Based on the Transactions Theory of Stress and Coping, this paper theorizes workplace exclusion as a persistent social stressor imprinted into organizational structures that drain employees of their emotional resources and job performance due to emotional exhaustion. By applying a quantitative research design, a newly designed survey data was gathered with employees of the manufacturing industry and processed with descriptive, reliability, and structural equation modeling methods to determine both the direct and indirect relationships between the variables of the study. The results prove that workplace exclusion is a significant predictor of emotional exhaustion, which subsequently has a negative correlation with the productivity of employees. The combination of the stress theory and the original empirical data allows this research to refine the theoretical knowledge about the loss of productivity associated with the exclusion and provides the practical implications of the organizational policy and human resource management, including the necessity of inclusive practices and favorable organizational climate to maintain the well-being and productivity of employees.