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We explore the antecedents of workplace ostracism and delineate possible organizational interventions to deter ostracism. Under the lens of evolutionary psychology we argue that individuals deemed capable of contributing to social and organizational goals become valued group members while those who threaten group stability and viability risk being shunned or ostracized. Specifically, we review empirical evidence and present the results of a pilot study suggesting that those who are perceived to violate injunctive and descriptive norms, as well as threaten one’s self-concept are at increased risk for ostracism. In terms of intervention, we propose mindfulness techniques and organizational support as a route to deter employees’ inclinations to ostracize coworkers. Thus, a primary goal of this chapter is to explicate a framework for identifying the predictors and deterrents of workplace ostracism in order to generate additional research on this important topic.

Peter Y. Chen heads the Occupational Health Psychology Training program within the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program at Colorado State University. His primary research interests are in occupational health, performance evaluation, training, and methodology. He has published a book, numerous book chapters and various empirical articles appearing in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Business and Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Organizational and Occupational Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Personality Assessment, Group and Organization Management: An International Journal.Shoshi Chen is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel (M.Sc., Organizational Behavior). Her current research interests are: work and stress, preventive stress management, and IT implementation.Oranit B. Davidson is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel (M.Sc., Organizational Behavior). Her current research interests are: job stress and strain, respite relief, expectation effects and self-fulfilling prophecy.Michelle K. Duffy is an Associate Professor and Gatton Endowed Research Professor in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. She received a B.S. in Psychology from Miami University (Ohio), an M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Xavier University, and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior/Human Resources Management from the University of Arkansas. She previously worked as a Research Psychologist at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Dr. Duffy teaches courses in the area of Organizational Behavior. Her research interests include employee health and well being, social undermining behaviors and processes, and team composition issues. Her research has appeared or been accepted for publication in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Group and Organization Management, Small Group Research, and Security Journal, among others.Rudy Fenwick received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University. He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Akron. Previously, he taught at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include the effects of markets and organizational structures on jobs characteristics and worker well being, particularly job stress and participation in organizational decision making. His most recent research has appeared in The American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Journal of Family and Economic Issues. In 2003, he served as guest editor of a special edition of Sociological Focus on “Organizations Transforming Work; Work Transforming Organizations.”Glenda M. Fisk is a doctoral student in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University. She earned her B.A. degree in psychology at the University of Calgary. Her primary research interests include emotions in the workplace and organizational justice.Corina Graif received her Masters in Sociology from the University of Akron. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Her interests include studying social organizations, institutions, networks, social justice, deviance, gender, and class inequality. She is also interested in the socio-legal mechanisms behind the adoption of social policy programs in the context of comparative social, political, and economic development.Alicia A. Grandey earned her Ph.D. at Colorado State University and has been an assistant professor in industrial-organizational psychology at Penn State University since 1999. Her research focuses on the experience and expression of emotions and stress in the workplace, particularly within the service industry and as it relates to work-family issues. Her work in these areas has been published in such journals as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Journal of Organizational Behavior, as well as several book chapters. Dr. Grandey is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (APA Div. 14), and Academy of Management.Paula L. Grubb is a Research Psychologist in the Division of Applied Research and Technology, Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Grubb received her doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Grubb’s research interests include workplace violence and psychological aggression, racial/ethnic discrimination, traumatic stress, supervisory best practices, organization of work, and job stress. Her current research focuses on developing intervention and evaluation strategies for workplace psychological aggression, as well as examining workplace violence and psychological aggression policies and organizational decision-making.Stevan Hobfoll has authored and edited 11 books, including Stress, Social Support and Women, Traumatic Stress, The Ecology of Stress, and Stress Culture and Community. In addition, he has authored over 150 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports, and has been a frequent workshop leader on stress, war, and terrorism. He has received over $9 million in research grants on stress and health. Dr. Hobfoll is currently Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Kent State University and Director of the Applied Psychology Center and the Summa-KSU Center for the Treatment and Study of Traumatic Stress. Formerly at Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Universities, he has also been involved with the problem of stress in Israel. Dr. Hobfoll received special commendation for his research on The Psychology of Women and for his AIDS prevention programs with ethnic minority populations, and was cited by the Encyclopædia Britannica for his contribution to knowledge and understanding for his Ecology of Stress volume. He was co-chair of the American Psychological Association Commission on Stress and War during Operation Desert Storm, helping plan for the prevention of prolonged distress among military personnel and their families, and a member of APA’s Task Force on Resilience in Response to Terrorism. He maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist and organizational consultant.Michiel A. J. Kompier has a full chair in Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). His research area is occupational health psychology. He has published many (inter)national articles, books and book chapters on topics such as work stress, the psychosocial work environment, mental work load, sickness absenteeism, work disability, work and health, productivity, work-home interaction, and working conditions policies. In his studies the emphasis is on prevention and intervention studies in organizations and applied research methodology. Michiel Kompier is chairman of the scientific Committee “Work Organization and Psychosocial Factors” of ICOH (International Commission on Occupational Health), co-editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, and member of the editorial boards of Work and Stress and the International Journal of Stress and Health.Shavit Laski is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel (M.Sc., Organizational Behavior). Her current research interests are: work stress, burnout and work-non-work relationship.Lawrence R. Murphy, Ph.D. received from DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois and did postdoctoral training at the Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research, Michael Reese Medical Center. He joined the Work Organization and Stress Research Section, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), as a Research Psychologist in 1977. He has published articles and book chapters on job stress, stress management, and safety climate, and co-edited several books, including Stress Management in Work Settings (1989), Organizational Risk Factors for Job Stress (1995), and Healthy and Productive Work: An International Perspective (2000). He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Work and Stress, and Journal of Business and Psychology. His current research involves identifying characteristics of healthy and productive work organizations, and assessing the quality of work life using a national sample of U.S. workers.Anne M. O’Leary-Kelly is a Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Arkansas. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management from Michigan State University in 1990 and previously has been on the faculty at Texas A&M University and the University of Dayton. Her research interests include the study of aggressive work behavior (violence, sexual harassment) and individual attachments to work organizations (psychological contracts, identification, cynicism). Her work has appeared in (among others) the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, the Journal of Management Inquiry, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Research in Organizational Change and Development, and the American Business Law Journal. She is a member of the Academy of Management and has been co-recipient of the Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior Award (given by the Organizational Behavior Division) and co-recipient of the Dorothy Harlow Outstanding Paper Award (given by the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division). She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the OB Division of the Academy of Management.Rashaun K. Roberts is a Research Psychologist in the Division of Applied Research and Technology, Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Roberts received her master’s and doctorate degrees in Clinical Psychology from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining the research team at NIOSH in 2002, Dr. Roberts was a fellow at Duke University Medical Center in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, where she developed an expertise in occupational mental health. Dr. Roberts’ current research at NIOSH focuses on the contributions of structural and psychosocial variables to the emergence of psychological aggression in the workplace and on understanding the implications of psychologically aggressive behaviors for occupational safety and health. As a member of the Federal Interagency Task Force on Workplace Violence Research and Prevention, she is collaborating to develop NIOSH’s research agenda in these areas. Dr. Roberts’ other research interests include issues related racial/ethnic health disparities, occupational mental health, and women’s health.Steven L. Sauter received his Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and held an appointment in the University of Wisconsin, Department of Preventive Medicine until joining the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1985. He currently serves as Chief of the Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch at NIOSH, and leads the NIOSH research program on work organization and health. He also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Professor of Human Factors Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Department of Industrial Engineering. His research interests focus on work organization and occupational stress. He serves on editorial boards of several scholarly journals – including Work and Stress and the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, he has prepared several books and articles on psychosocial aspects of occupational health, and he is one of the senior editors of the 4th Edition of the International Encyclopedia of Occupational Safety and Health.Kristin L. Scott is a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior/Human Resources Management in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. She received a B.S. in Business Administration from Villanova University and an M.A. in Human Resources from the University of South Carolina. She previously worked as a Human Resources Manager at General Electric Company. Her research interests include employee emotional responses, justice issues, employee antisocial behavior, and compensation and reward systems. Currently, she has manuscripts under review at the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management and the Leadership Quarterly.Lori Anderson Snyder received her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Colorado State University. She is now an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include workplace aggression, safety, performance errors, multisource feedback, and the Assessment Center method.Naomi G. Swanson is head of the Work Organization and Stress Research group at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the U.S. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989. Along with Dr. Steven Sauter, NIOSH, she was involved in some of the initial research in the U.S. examining the relationship of organizational factors to non-fatal workplace violence. She is currently participating in research examining the relationship between workplace stressors and depression, the assessment of work organization interventions designed to improve worker health and well being, and the assessment of workplace violence programs and practices.Toon W. Taris is an associate professor at the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology of the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He holds a MA degree in Administrative Science (1988) and took his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1994, both from the Free University of Amsterdam. Since 1993 he has been affiliated with various psychology departments of several Dutch universities and also served as a research consultant. His research interests include work motivation, psychosocial work stress models, and longitudinal reearch methods. Taris has published on a wide range of topics in journals such as Journal of Vocational Behavior, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational and Occupational Psychology, and Sociological Methods and Resarch. Further, he serves on the boards of several journals, including Work & Stress and the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health.Mark Tausig received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Albany. He is has been at the University of Akron since 1983 and currently holds the title of Professor of Sociology. His research interests include investigating the relationships between macro-economic conditions, work organization and worker well being. His most recent research has appeared in The American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Family and Economic Issues and, The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. He is also co-author of A Sociology of Mental Illness.Mina Westman an associate professor and Researcher, at Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University, Israel (Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, Tel Aviv University). Her primary research interests include determinants and consequences of job and life stress, negative and positive crossover between partners and team members, work-family interchange, effects of vacation on psychological and behavioral strain and the impact of short business trips on the individual, the family and the organization. She has authores empirical and conceptual articles that have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Journal, and Journal of Vocational Psychology. In addition, she has also contributed to several book chapters and presented numerous scholarly papers at international conferences. She is on the editorial board of Journal of Organizational Behavior and Applied Psychology: An International Journal.Thomas A. Wright is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior and industrial relations from the University of California, Berkeley. Similar to the Claude Rains character from the classic movie, Casablanca, he has published his work in many of the “usual suspects” including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychometrika, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Management and the Journal of Management Inquiry. He has consulted with a number of organizations over the years on such topics as: optimizing employee performance and organizational productivity, sustaining employee commitment, stimulating employee motivation, developing employee recruitment and retention strategies, and enhancing employee health and well being.Angela Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at California State University, Los Angeles. Current research interests include mentoring relationships, organizational relationships, equity and fairness in the workplace, and the interview process. Her work has been published in Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Review, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, and other journals. She has presented her research at numerous conferences including National Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, Western Academy of Management, and Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology.

The impact of workplace violence on occupational stress and well being is garnering increasing attention. Despite the fact that workplace violence has been identified as a critical organizational safety and health issue, there has been limited scholarly focus on the problem of domestic or intimate partner violence in the workplace. This paper examines intimate partner violence from both ecological and work family spillover modes of theorizing. Within this framework, we propose that the effects of intimate partner violence are reciprocal and spillover into the workplace, impacting employee and organizational well being. We conclude by discussing the implications of the integrated framework and by offering suggestions for future research in this area.

Service researchers have been tasked with improving the well-being of consumers experiencing vulnerability. The current research aims to demonstrate how these consumers can experience empowerment through transformative service improvements to the traditional microfinance model.

To ground the research in a real-world setting with consumers experiencing vulnerability, the research team worked with a nonprofit microfinance organization offering loans to communities of Indigenous women entrepreneurs. The research team worked in six communities and conducted over 25 borrower interviews and 14 staff and volunteer interviews totaling 1,200 min of recorded content.

The present investigation of a unique approach to microfinance offers a new theoretical model, the service empowerment model (SEM), which illustrates how empowerment emanates from processes and outcomes at three distinct levels: micro, meso and macro. Recognizing that change occurs individually and also at familial and societal levels begins to challenge deeply rooted structural and cultural norms involved in the services ecosystem.

Originating from the microfinance service setting, the SEM can be explored, tested and implemented as a pilot program in a variety of service settings that involve transformative service initiatives (e.g. homelessness, refugees, etc.).

As society pursues solutions to the pressing problems of consumers experiencing vulnerability, the present research offers critical insights into how services should be designed.

The present research defines a new term, service empowerment, and creates a new theoretical model, the SEM, to aid in improving transformative service initiatives.