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The lower boundary of workplace mistreatment: Do small slights matter?

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Recent research in psychology, management, and more recently in economics, highlights the role of individual managers and their behavior in shaping employee performance. While emerging literature on harmful managerial behavior has focused primarily on severe forms of workplace mistreatment, especially various types of harassment, much less is known about its boundary conditions: How minor can a manager's bad behavior be and still negatively affect employee performance? We study what appears to be a very minor workplace mistreatment-failing to deliver an expected birthday gift and greeting card on time-and examine its effect on subsequent employee performance. Using a dynamic difference-in-differences approach with detailed data from a national retail chain, we find that this small slight leads to over a 50% increase in employee absenteeism and a reduction of more than two working hours per month. Our analysis suggests that emotional responses to perceived workplace mistreatment drive the results. These findings indicate that even modest slights can meaningfully harm employee performance.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2503650122

Authors: Michal Hodor, Liat Eldor, Peter Cappelli

Institutions: Tel Aviv University, University of Pennsylvania

Language: English

Topic: Workplace Violence and Bullying

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: Jeremy Coller Foundation