When customers become scapegoats: how negative gossip about organizational change can cause negative emotions and displaced aggression
| Date | 22 November 2024 |
| Pages | 256-283 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-11-2023-0941 |
| Published date | 22 November 2024 |
| Author | Wenyi Cao,Lu Chen,Rong Tang,Xinyuan Zhao,Anna S. Mattila,Jun Liu,Yan Qin |
When customers become scapegoats:
how negative gossip about
organizational change can cause
negative emotions and
displaced aggression
Wenyi Cao, Lu Chen and Rong Tang
School of Management and Economics,
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
Xinyuan Zhao
School of Liberal Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, China
Anna S. Mattila
School of Hospitality Management, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Jun Liu
School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China, and
Yan Qin
School of Management and Economics,
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
Abstract
Purpose –Based on affective events theory, this research attempted to investigate how negative gossip about
organizational change drives employees to experience negative emotions and direct their aggression toward customers.
Design/methodology/approach –Weconducted a scenario-based experiment (Study 1) and a multiwave field
survey (Study 2) to test our hypotheses.
Findings –The results show that (1) negative emotions mediate the relationship between change-related
negative gossip and displaced aggression toward customers; (2) perceived organizational constraints strengthen
the relationship between change-related negative gossip and negative emotions; (3) future work self-salience
weakens the relationship between change-related negative gossipand negative emotions; and (4) change-related
negative gossip has a strengthened (weakened) indirect effect on displaced aggression via negative emotions
when employees have high perceived organizational constraints (future work self-salience).
Originality/value –The study expands research on organizational change and displaced aggression and
provides practical implications for managing organizational change.
Keywords Change-related negative gossip, Displaced aggression toward customers, Future work self-salience,
Negative emotions, Perceived organizational constraints
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the service industry (Kim et al., 2021) by sharply
reducing revenues and increasing labor costs (Huang and Jahromi, 2021;Jang, 2021). Some
service firms have tried to reduce labor costs and improve competitiveness through massive
layoffs, pay cuts, restructuring, and job changes (Huang and Jahromi, 2021). For example,
PR
54,1
256
Author Note: We acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant Nos. 72072019, 72332010, 72172161, 71872191 & 72174096), the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant No. ZYGX2020FRJH012), and the Natural Science
Foundation of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2021A1515011978).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0048-3486.htm
Received 3 November 2023
Revised 25 March 2024
2 August 2024
Accepted 21 October 2024
PersonnelReview
Vol.54 No. 1, 2025
pp.256-283
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI10.1108/PR-11-2023-0941
Schlumberger, Exxon Mobil, BP, and many other petrochemical companies have optimized
staff structures and implemented layoff plans to improve competitiveness (Egan, 2020). Banco
Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Commerzbank, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
have also undertaken large-scale layoffs and branch closures (Xie, 2021;Zhang, 2021).
Organizational change is risky (Dahl, 2011;Zhang et al., 2019). It adversely affects
employees’ emotions and behaviors (Castillo et al., 2018;Huang et al., 2017;Oreg et al.,
2018;Thoroughgood et al., 2021). It causes job insecurity (Nikolova et al., 2019) and
generates dysfunctional behavior (Bryant and Higgins, 2010;Rahaman et al., 2021), such as
workplace aggression (Baron and Neuman, 1996). Displaced aggression refers to “situations
in which a person is provoked, is prevented from retaliating against the original provocateur,
and subsequently aggresses against a seemingly innocent target” (Garcia-Sancho et al., 2016,
p. 96). Most attention in the organizational change literature has been paid to employee
aggression toward internal stakeholders (Bryant and Higgins, 2010;Thoroughgood et al.,
2021) rather than aggression toward external stakeholders (e.g. displaced aggression toward
customers).
Nevertheless, service industry employees are showing increasingly severe aggression
toward customers (Hwang et al., 2021). For example, China news reported that a quarrelsome
bank employee struck a customer (Li, 2018). Such aggression has potential long-term,
detrimental effects on organizational reputations (Li et al., 2019), growth, and profitability
(Hwang et al., 2021). The displaced aggression literature suggests that employees who have
narcissistic personalities (Martinez et al., 2008), have predominantly negative emotions
(Li et al., 2019), and who are experiencing work-family conflict (Liu et al., 2015) tend to
behave aggressively. However, previous studies focus on internally directed aggression,
leaving a gap in examining organizational change as a factor driving disgruntled employees to
displace their aggression toward customers.
Managers implementing organizational change need to understand the antecedents that
may cause employees to retaliate against customers. Open, equal organizational
communication is known to greatly influence how employees react to changes and to
determine whether negative reactions generate destructive behaviors (Jiang et al., 2020;
Shulga, 2021). When organizations withhold or provide insufficient information about
organizational changes, employees are likely to turn to informal channels, such as gossip
(Smet et al., 2016). Workplace gossip refers to informal and evaluative (i.e. positive or
negative) talk from one member of an organization to one or more members of the same
organization about another member who is not present to hear what is said (Brady et al., 2017).
Negative workplace gossip is emotionally exhausting and can arouse dysfunctional behavior
and cause employees to become jaded (Cheng et al., 2022;Guo et al., 2021;Wu et al., 2018).
Will such reactions extend to displaced aggression toward customers? Aligned with Brady
et al. (2017), we define change-related negative gossip as informal, negative information that
employees receive from colleagues about ongoing adverse changes such as layoffs and pay
cuts. In this research, we seek to address the following questions: What is the mechanism for
negative gossip to transfer to aggression against customers? What situational factors and
individual differences amplify or buffer this effect?
Based on the affective events theory (Weissand Cropanzano, 1996), our first objective is to
investigate whether negative emotions are the mediating mechanism. Negative emotions such
as anxiety, anger, and fear are universal reactions to harm, loss, and threat (Lazarus, 1991).
The affective events theory (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996) suggests that affective responses
are central to understanding how workplace events influence employee behaviors; that is,
when work events generate negative emotions, employees show correspondingly destructive
work behaviors (Atwater et al., 2016;Li et al., 2019). Specifically,adverse change events such
as layoffs and pay cuts threaten work goals and career development (Castillo et al., 2018;
Lahner et al., 2014), driving anxiety,fear, and anger (Bordia et al., 2006;Jiang et al., 2020) and
increasing possibilities of aggression (Abubakar et al., 2018;Baron and Neuman, 1996;Liu
et al., 2015). However, employees often undertake risks if they retaliate against managers who
Personnel Review
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