Research on the retention of women in academia has focused on challenges, including a “chilly climate,” devaluation, and incivility. The unique consequences of workplace ostracism – being ignored and excluded by others in an organizational setting – require focus on this experience as another interpersonal challenge for women in academia. The purpose of this study is to examine differences in the faculty experiences and outcomes of workplace ostracism, and to determine if these experiences are affected significantly by the gender composition of an employee’s specific department. Participants were recruited at two time points to complete campus climate surveys that were distributed to faculty at a large, public, research university. We examined the number of reported ostracism experiences (Study 1) and perceived information sharing (Study 2) among male and female university faculty. The findings indicated that female faculty members perceived more workplace ostracism than male faculty members. Analyses of department gender ratios suggested that the proportion of women in the department did not reduce the amount of workplace ostracism experienced by women. No gender differences were found in perceived information sharing. However, we found that Faculty of Color, both men and women, reported more frequent information exclusion than White faculty. These results have important implications for theoretical and practical understandings of workplace demography and suggest that it is necessary to look at subtle, ambiguous forms of discrimination in order to increase retention of faculty from underrepresented groups in academia.
Ostracism-being ignored and excluded by others-has detrimental effects on targets. Confrontation allows targets to express displeasure with mistreatment. Three studies examined confrontation in response to ostracism. In Study 1, participants completed an ostracism manipulation, Cyberball, and were given the opportunity to message their ostracizers. Message coding indicated that one-third of targets wrote messages expressing unhappiness with how they were treated, significantly more than included participants. In Studies 2 and 3, participants completed Cyberball before random assignment to a distraction, writing, or confrontation task. Analysis of need-recovery indicated that the distraction consistently improved need-satisfaction and affective recovery between the immediate and delayed measurements. Results provided mixed support regarding the effectiveness of confrontation in coping with ostracism; however, no significant changes in need satisfaction were seen for those in the writing condition. In sum, distraction is a response to ostracism that may improve the recovery of depleted need-satisfaction following ostracism better than confrontation.
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