Browsing by Author "Dong, Yun"

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    Negative workplace gossip and targets’ subjective well-being: a moderated mediation model
    (Taylor and Francis, 2022-01-25) Cheng, Bao; Peng, Yan; Zhou, Xing; Shaalan, Ahmed; Tourky, Marwa; Dong, Yun
    Negative gossip is an everyday part of life and work whose outcomes have been the focus of a growing number of studies. However, the impact of negative workplace gossip on employees’ subjective well-being (SWB) appears to have received no attention in the literature. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we use time-lagged data from 243 employees in five firms in China to investigate the processes underlying the links between negative workplace gossip and SWB. Our findings show that negative workplace gossip has a significant negative effect on SWB, and that psychological distress mediates this relationship. We also find that emotional intelligence plays a moderating role between negative workplace gossip and targets’ psychological distress. Our results indicate for the first time that negative workplace gossip increases psychological distress and lowers SWB among its targets. As a result, several managerial implications are suggested, such as seeking to reduce the prevalence of negative workplace gossip, offering early support to employees in psychological distress, and taking steps to raise the emotional intelligence level of staff.
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    When and how does leader humor promote customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior in hotel employees?
    (Elsevier, 2022-11-28) Cheng, Bao; Dong, Yun; Kong, Yurou; Shaalan, Ahmed; Tourky, Marwa
    This study explores whether leader humor can encourage staff to exceed job expectations in their positive behavior toward customers, even in the notoriously stressful context of the hospitality industry. Based on our findings, leaders who use humor are more likely to prompt employees to engage in customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Leader humor affects customer-oriented OCB through the mediating effect of relational energy. In addition, employee traditionality and relational energy differentiation moderate the process. Using time-lagged data collected from 456 employees in 71 teams in China’s hotel industry, this study adds significant knowledge to the under-researched area of humor and leader humor in the hospitality industry. The findings suggest that hospitality leaders can implement humor to obtain positive effects by raising relational energy and triggering customer-oriented OCB, particularly among less-traditional workers and in situations of low relational energy differentiation.
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    When targets strike back: how negative workplace gossip triggers political acts by employees
    (Springer, 2020-10-15) Cheng, Bao; Dong, Yun; Zhang, Zhenduo; Shaalan, Ahmed; Guo, Gongxing; Peng, Yan
    This study examines why and when negative workplace gossip promotes self-serving behaviors by the employees being targeted. Using conservation of resources (COR) theory, we find that targets tend to increase their political acts as a result of ego depletion triggered by negative gossip. We also show that sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment and moral disengagement moderate this process. Specifically, we demonstrate that targets with high levels of sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment are more likely to experience ego depletion, and that targets with high levels of moral disengagement will find it easier to persuade themselves to engage in political acts. We conducted a three-wave time-lagged survey of 265 employees in Guangdong, China, to test our hypotheses. The results support our theoretical model and indicate that COR theory can be used to explain the impacts of negative workplace gossip. Alongside our important and timely theoretical contributions, we provide new perspectives on how managers can avoid or mitigate these political acts.