Organizational Cynicism

Abstract

What is the nature of the extremely negative attitudes expressed by so many employees toward their organizations? To respond to this question, we introduce the concept of organizational cynicism. We review the literature from several disciplines on this concept and suggest that organizational cynicism is an attitude composed of beliefs, affect, and behavioral tendencies toward an organization. Following our review and conceptualization, we derive implications of this concept and propose a research agenda for organizational cynicism.Cynicism is everywhere-widespread among organization members in the United States (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989), Europe, and Asia (Kouzes &Posner, 1993). Organizational change and quality improvement efforts particularly seem to engender cynicism (Shapiro, 1996). For example, Cunniff notes that employees are increasingly cynical about the "constant parade of initiatives that come with the usual promise of imminent improvement" (1993: 4). Employees in one company circulated clandestine copies of their firm's "adaptation" of the Deming Principles, which included "Humor all employees in phony efforts to include them in process improvement methodologies .... Provide slogans, meaningless exhortations [and] numerical goals.... Drive in fear by discouraging communicationand by instituting a policy of Continuous Layoff."These observations are echoed in our own experience by the reaction of part-time MBA students to the topic of "teamwork" (cross-functional collaboration) in organizations. These students could see the benefits of teamwork in theory but perceived it, in practice, as merely a slogan used by their organizations to appear progressive, without changing anything about how work actually gets done (cf., Aktouf, 1992). A young woman in this class was so appalled by her organization that she thought she must be part of "some huge experiment on unmotivating employees." Another young man had been invited to lunch with his coworkers by the management of his organization; he accepted the invitation but worried that management had only made the offer "to keep us off guard." Even the popularity of the comic strip "Dilbert," about an engineer whose organization plumbs the depths of unscrupulousness, suggests that many people perceive their organizations in these terms. In fact, much of the material for the strip actually is sent to the cartoonist via e-mail by frustrated employees (Greilsamer, 1995).

Organizational Cynicism A Study Among Advertising Agencies

“…(Dudley, 1937). More recently, it has become the focus of study in a variety of contexts (Andersson, 1996;Dean et al, 1998). Our emphasis here is on applications of relevance to organizational behavior in general.…”

“…However, most researchers nowadays tend to regard cynicism as an attitude (e.g., Andersson, 1996;Andersson and Bateman, 1997;Cole et al, 2006;Dean et al, 1998), that is as 'a psychological tendency to evaluate a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor' (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). The word 'tendency' implies that attitudes can change and be changed over time as a result of disconfirming experiences, whereas cynicism as a disposition or personality trait puts employees in a lasting or even permanent state of distrust (Naus, 2007).…”

“…Cynicism gives rise to a number of unconstructive sentiments in the person towards their own organizations. The most common are the feelings of dislike, rage, hurt and hatred (Dean et al, 1998).Cynicism outcomes are negative for organization as well as for organization like due to cynicism employees are hopeless, less committed with their work and they become less satisfied and at the end employees decided to quit the organization (Nair and Kamalanabhan, 2010).…”

“…In the most researches organizational cynicism including three dimensions developed by a person to his organization, namely; cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimension of the cynical construct (Dean et al, 1998;Brandes, 1999;Abraham, 2000;Turner and Valentine, 2001;Johnson and O'Leary, 2003;O'Brien et al, 2004;Stanley et al, 2005;Urbany, 2005;Brandes and Das, 2006;Arabacı, 2010;Nafei, 2013;Kasalak and Aksu, 2014).…”

Diversity Challenges and Organizational Cynicism: A study on Egyptian Physicians

“…Despite the fact that Dean et al (1998) sees that the term "cynicism" comes originally from the ancient Greek word "kyon" which mean "dog", a study made by Nazir, Ahmad, Nawab and Shah (2016) indicates that cynicism probably comes from "cynosarges" which was an institute of cynics outside Athens, the capital of Greece.…”