Taming a wild new term: exploring the concept of quiet quitting as a coping response
| Date | 31 October 2024 |
| Pages | 1805-1825 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-03-2024-0172 |
| Published date | 31 October 2024 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Ryan Armstrong,Csenge Pfandler |
Taming a wild new term:
exploring the concept of quiet
quitting as a coping response
Ryan Armstrong and Csenge Pfandler
Department of Business, Facultat d’Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona,
Barcelona, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –“Quiet quitting” emerged as a term in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since gained
immense popularity worldwide, working its way into common usage. However, disagreement exists over the
term’s meaning and utility. Our paper critically considers the value of the construct of quiet quitting,
proposing an initial operationalization of its properties.
Design/methodology/approach –We develop hypotheses related to the antecedents, characteristics and
consequences of quiet quitting through a literature review and subsequent survey. The questionnaire was
distributed to working professionals in Europe and assessed through multiple partial least squares analyses.
Findings –We propose quiet quitting as a coping strategy involving a combination of reduced effort,
disengagement, disassociation and boundary-setting. 108 responses obtained through a survey of knowledge
workers provide some support that these existing concepts indeed form a second-order construct with
emergent properties not found when assessed individually. However, we suggest that the utility of quiet
quitting as a distinct coping strategy is questionable and that generally, it is more useful to discuss its
subcomponents separately.
Research limitations/implications –While limited by its cross-sectional nature, this work raises several
potentially fruitful future lines of research and offers a first step in evaluating a relatively new term that is of
substantial relevance to management scholarship and practice.
Originality/value –New concepts stemming from popular literature can be problematic, grounded in
untested folk theory and riddled with ambiguity. At the same time, they can stretch our thinking and drive
research in new directions if they can be sufficiently refined. We offer a new conceptualization ofquiet quitting
but question its usefulness.
Keywords Engagement, Presenteeism, Coping, Work–life balance, Boundary setting, Quiet quitting
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The term “quiet quitting” is currently a wild, untamed thing. Its widespread use emerged
alongside other socioeconomic trends following the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its
apparent youth, quiet quitting has racked up some impressive numbers: Gallup suggests
that in 2023, 59% of the global workforce were quiet quitters,at a cost of $8.8 billion annually
(Gallup, 2023). The term became a trending topic, widely discussed in news outlets and
social media.
Quiet quitting has also generated a good deal of controversy, not only over its definition,
but also its desirability (Pearce, 2022). It has been dismissed as old wine in a new bottle, a
corporate-sponsored misnomer that unjustly places the burden of slumping performance on
the shoulders of employees. Others see it as a healthy and natural evolution of employee
values as they embrace greater work-life balance. And it has been argued that the term’s
“content here isn’t that important. What matters is that Generation Zis waking up to the fact
Employee
Relations: The
International
Journal
1805
We gratefully acknowledge support for this research through funding provided through the University
of Barcelona Vice Rectorate of Research Grant for projects in emerging topics, code UB-AE-AS017636,
awarded July 1, 2022 (“Convocat
oria d’ajuts per a projectes en
arees emergent”).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 21 March 2024
Revised 12 September 2024
8 October 2024
Accepted 8 October 2024
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 46 No. 8, 2024
pp. 1805-1825
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-03-2024-0172
that the unnatural melding of self and work induced by an adolescence lived within online
spaces isn’t sustainable” (Newport, 2022).
This paper takes the position that the term’s content is important and should be taken
seriously, especially as it is being measured in the workplace to guide decision making
(Stanchak, 2022), and has increasingly captured scholarly attention. Quiet Quitting is still a
new concept, and new concepts, especially those emerging from practice, can challenge
current ways of thinking and capture aspects of reality that existing terms ignore (Hochberg,
2006). We set off from the belief that “quiet quitting” may hold this capacity, albeit with an
expected level of ambiguity and disagreement that comes with any new term. Indeed, Macey
and Schneider (2008) note analogous disagreement in now widely accepted scholarly terms of
engagement and burnout, which also emerged from practice and were originally held to be
new words for old concepts. It is not currently clear whether quiet quitting holds similar
explanatory potential.
Therefore, in this paper, we explore the position that quiet quitting is a coping response to
emotional invalidation at work and an overly demanding work culture. We claim that quiet
quitting is best conceived as an emergent construct consisting of reduced effort, strict
boundary-setting, disengagement, and disassociation, and which negatively impacts
organizational performance. To evaluate our claim, we conducted an extensive review of
discussions of quiet quitting drawing from practitioner outlets. We develop a scale based on
the synthesis of these descriptions, which was piloted in a survey of 108 professionals and
analyzed using PLS modeling. Through this analysis, we conclude that as a coping
mechanism, the term quiet quitting obfuscates the distinction between beneficial and
harmful employee behavior for the organization.
We begin by reviewing the emergence of quiet quitting and compare it with similar,
existing concepts, considering it as a coping strategy in response to work stress involving
reduced effort, boundary-setting, disengagement, and disassociation. Next, we present
the scale development for these items and our data analysis before discussing
conclusions.
2. Background
Ours is not the first scholarly examination of quiet quitting, though a range of definitions
can be found in the literature, which can refer to social trends as well as a psychological
phenomenon. Though it originated in the late 2000s, it became a trending topic in 2022 in
social and mainstream media, a year following the Great Resignation, when many
workers previously forced into remote work chose not to quit when COVID-19 restrictions
were lessened (Formica and Sfodera, 2022). Quiet quitting has been equated with the
notion of “Work-to-Rule”, doing no more than contractually obligated at work, tang ping,
or “lying flat”, and “acting your wage”, among others, either directed at maintaining
mental health or used disparagingly by executives to label unmotivated or detached
workers (Bartleby, 2022). Regardless of its desirability, the term appears at a time of a
collective questioning of values, when the crisis forced many employees to redefine their
psychological contract with their employers (L€
offert and Diehl, 2023). In turn, this shift
presents managers with major challenges in recruiting and motivating employees
(Newman et al., 2023).
Quiet quitting can also be seen as an individual-level behavior. Hamouche et al. (2023)
favor this use, arguing that quiet quitting involves withdrawal, cynicism, and silence.
Serenko’s (2023) paper develops the concept of quiet quitting through an analysis of
comments on TikTok on Zaid Khan’s (2022) seminal post on the topic, which were analyzed
via content analysis. The paper conceives of quiet quitting as a “as a mindset in which
employees deliberately limit all work activities to those of a formal or informal job
ER
46,8
1806
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