Omissive Acts of Workplace Mistreatment

Omission, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “The action of omitting, leaving out, or not including a person or thing” or “The non-performance or neglect of an action which one has a moral duty or legal obligation to perform; an instance of this” is a defining facet of workplace ostracism (Robinson, O'Reilly, & Wang, Reference Robinson, O'Reilly and Wang2013). Building on this definition, Robinson et al. characterize workplace ostracism as situations where “an individual or group omits to take actions that engage another organizational member when it is socially appropriate to do so” (Reference Robinson, O'Reilly and Wang2013, p. 206). At its core, ostracism is differentiated from other aspects of workplace mistreatment by the absence of interaction or acknowledgment with the target (Ferris, Chen, & Lim, Reference Ferris, Chen and Lim2017; Robinson & Schabram, Reference Robinson, Schabram, Bowling and Hershcovis2017). This absence of action or social contact creates an ambiguous context whereby victims may not be able to discern why they are being treated in such a way or even “whether it even happened at all” (Robinson et al., Reference Robinson, O'Reilly and Wang2013, p. 208). As two of the key tenets of the of the perpetrator predation framework revolve around agency and control, we argue that this does not necessarily fit this important and growing stream of workplace mistreatment research.

To further complicate matters, many of the focal measures of workplace mistreatment integrate omissive acts within their scales. For example, the Workplace Incivility Scale includes the following item: “Have you been in a situation where any of your superiors or coworkers ignored or excluded you from professional camaraderie?” (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, Reference Cortina, Magley, Williams and Langhout2001). This item clearly reflects the construct of workplace ostracism and the fact that work colleagues have failed to act in an appropriate manner. Due to the formative nature of many of these scales, negative acts of commission are weighted in a similar manner as omission of positive or negative interactions (Hershcovis & Reich, Reference Hershcovis and Reich2013). Recently, researchers have begun to conceptually and theoretically distinguish workplace ostracism from other workplace mistreatment constructs based on this notion of omission (e.g., Ferris et al., Reference Ferris, Chen and Lim2017; O'Reilly, Robinson, Berdahl, & Banki, Reference O'Reilly, Robinson, Berdahl and Banki2014). Thus, its low intensity and ambiguous nature (Ferris et al., Reference Ferris, Johnson, Rosen, Djurdjevic, Chang and Tan2013; Robinson et al., Reference Robinson, O'Reilly and Wang2013) puts into question whether we can use perpetrator predation as a guiding framework for workplace mistreatment in its entirety.

One explanation for why acts of omission and commission have been inserted into the same measures of workplace mistreatment is that workplaces that disregard how individuals treat one another are likely to implicitly or explicitly condone workplace mistreatment (Ferris et al., Reference Ferris, Chen and Lim2017). This is evidenced in several studies where two conceptually discrete forms of workplace mistreatment were found to be highly related, including Lim and Cortina's (Reference Lim and Cortina2005) examination of incivility and sexual harassment and O'Reilly et al.’s (Reference O'Reilly, Robinson, Berdahl and Banki2014) study of general harassment and workplace ostracism. Thus, with obvious differences in how variables under the workplace mistreatment umbrella are conceptualized, the use of a single perpetrator-focused framework to view these acts is problematic.

The Question of Intention

A second issue related to the perpetrator predation paradigm concerns the notion of intent. In her critique of the workplace mistreatment literature, Hershcovis (Reference Hershcovis2011) identified five characteristics, including intent, by which each of the constructs examined could be distinguished. For example, social undermining is a highly intentional set of behaviors that serves to interfere with the social and organizational achievement of victims. On the other hand, workplace incivility and ostracism are acts of ambiguous intent that may cause victim similar levels of distress (Andersson & Pearson, Reference Andersson and Pearson1999; Ferris et al., Reference Ferris, Chen and Lim2017).

Although Cortina et al. (Reference Cortina, Rabelo and Holland2018) briefly mention how stereotypes and other forms of implicit biases held by perpetrators may influence their actions, the authors fall short in their attempt to explain how the perpetrator predation framework functions in cases where their actions are ambiguous in intent and easily dismissed. This is of particular importance, as perceived intent can impact how victims react and make sense of workplace mistreatment, given that alternative explanations, such as ignorance or preoccupation, may play a role in explaining these behaviors (Hershcovis, Reference Hershcovis2011). Thus, although a lack of intentionality or premeditation in no way absolves the actor of responsibility for any offense committed, we argue that the term “predation” fails to fully represent such instances, due to the connotation inherent in its definition.