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Drawing on approach/inhibition theory of power, we investigated two factors that influence the manner by which victims react to workplace ostracism: the hierarchical status of the ostracizer and the level of an ostracizee's external social support including family, friends, and significant others. Across an experimental vignette study (Study 1) and a field study (Study 2), we found support for a three-way interaction with felt ostracism, ostracizee external social support, and ostracizer status influencing victims' organizational citizenship behavior and deviance directed toward other individuals. In addition, felt ostracism and ostracizee external social support interacted to predict turnover intentions. Overall, victims who were ostracized by a legitimate higher-status authority (e.g., manager) and whose external social support network was limited experienced the most negative outcomes across both studies. Our findings suggest that contextual factors both inside and outside the organization jointly impact the way in which individuals react to perceived workplace ostracism. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Glass cliffs describe situations in which women are promoted to executive roles in declining organizations. To explain them, some authors suggest that people tend to “think crisis-think female.” However, the root cause of this association remains elusive. Using several subfields of evolutionary theory, we argue that biology and culture have shaped the perception of women as being more empathic than men and, consequently, as capable of quelling certain crises. Some crises are more intense than others and, whereas some brew within organizations, others originate from the external environment. We therefore propose that women will be selected to lead whenever a crisis is minimal to moderate and stems primarily from within the organization. Men, on the other hand, will be chosen as leaders whenever the crisis threatens the very existence of the firm and its source is an external threat. Leadership is a highly stressful experience, and even more so when leaders must scale glass cliffs. It is imperative that we understand what gives rise to them not only because they place women and potentially other minorities in positions where the likelihood of failure is high, but also because they help propagate stereotypes that undermine their true leadership ability.

We introduce a biopsychosocial model to explain how men's and women's testosterone fluctuations ensuing from winning and losing status in intrasexual competitions affect their proactive and reactive aggression, as well as their accuracy at assessing others' emotions (empathic accuracy) and anxiety at witnessing others' pain (personal distress). We also propose that their empathic responses depend on the extent to which they are driven by a need to influence other people (implicit power motivation). To our knowledge, this is among the first articles to offer a comprehensive investigation of the physiological and psychological effects that competitive outcomes have on individuals' empathic responses. Given that competition is ubiquitous in organisational life, we sensitise practitioners to its effect on empathy in the workplace and give recommendations on how they could foster a healthy work environment. Finally, to encourage scholars along this research avenue, we provide concrete suggestions for empirically testing our model and advise them to probe other hormones, as well as other empathic responses and non-hormonal mechanisms that may assist in further explaining the competition-empathy link.

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