职场孤独感的形成原因与作用机理：基于调节匹配理论视角

随着组织广泛的信息技术运用、工作强度增加,员工之间面对面的、真诚的社交开始呈下降趋势。职场孤独感成了困扰员工的普遍问题,引起了企业管理实践界高度重视。通过综述已有文献,本文指出过往研究虽揭示了职场孤独感带来的消极影响效应并有效提高了组织对职场孤独问题的关注度,但尚未系统回答“如何预防与应对职场孤独感”。为了引导员工对职场孤独感的科学应对,本文认为有必要将员工视为能动的主角而非被动的承受者,并探讨职场孤独感与员工应对行为的关系,为如何应对职场孤独感提供建设性对策。 除此之外,为了更好地预防与遏制职场孤独感,有必要系统性地探讨职场孤独感的形成原因。综合过往研究,本文发现职场孤独感区别于其他消极情绪的核心在于：职场孤独感源自于高质量职场人际关系的缺失。与此观点对应的是,Wright和Silard （2021）认为当员工实际的职场人际关系未达到预期水平,员工会认为职场人际关系存在缺陷,产生孤独的体验。Wright和Silard （2021）的观点反映了职场孤独感是一种员工未实现期望社交目标而导致的心理体验。循此逻辑,本文采用与目标实现过程相关的调节匹配理论来解释职场孤独感的产生原因和影响机制,为预防和应对职场孤独感提供对策。以调节匹配理论为框架,本项目拟解决三个问题：（1）领导与下属的调节焦点（不）匹配如何通过影响领导成员交换,进而影响职场孤独感;（2）员工与团队的调节焦点（不）匹配如何通过影响团队成员交换,进而影响职场孤独感;（3）员工如何依据不同的团队调节氛围来选择社交应对策略,以及社交应对策略对员工绩效的影响。通过新颖的多项式回归分析与曲面响应分析方法,本文力求重构传统的职场孤独感的研究思路,为职场孤独感的产生机制提供新的研究视角。除此之外,本文首次将调节匹配理论引入职场孤独感的研究,系统性地分析了职场孤独感的产生和应对,呈现了职场孤独感现象在组织中的动态演化的过程与机制。

The antecedents and consequences of workplace loneliness: A regulatory focus theory perspective

With the use of information technology and increased work intensity, employees have less frequent face-to-face and sincere social contact with coworkers; thus, workplace loneliness has become a common problem for employees, which has attracted attention from management practitioners in organizations. Our literature review of workplace loneliness studies suggests that most previous studies have revealed the negative outcomes of workplace loneliness, thus highlighting the importance of focusing on this issue. However, based on the existing literature, we only have a vague understanding of how to prevent and cope with workplace loneliness. To guide employees to cope with workplace loneliness properly, we believe it is necessary to focus on how employees proactively cope with workplace loneliness rather than simply treating them as passive recipients of negative feelings. Understanding how employees cope with workplace loneliness will help propose constructive suggestions for managing it. In addition, to uncovering employees’ coping behaviors related to workplace loneliness, we still need to develop systematic thinking about how to prevent the occurrence of workplace loneliness by addressing the causes of workplace loneliness. Previous studies on workplace loneliness suggest that it is a type of negative emotion derived from a deficiency in high-quality workplace interpersonal relationships. Similarly, Wright and Silard (2021) believe that when employees' actual workplace interpersonal relationships fail to reach the expected level, employees will think that there are deficits in workplace interpersonal relationships and experience loneliness. Wright and Silard’s (2021) view reflects that workplace loneliness is a psychological experience caused by employees' failure to achieve expected social goals. Following this logic, this paper applies regulatory fit theory related to individuals’ self-regulation during the goal-chasing process to understand the generation and coping process of workplace loneliness. Based on the tenets of regulatory fit theory, this paper aims to answer three questions: 1) whether the effects of (in)congruence between leader and follower regulatory focus impact workplace loneliness through the mediating effect of leader-member exchange; 2) whether the effects of (in)congruence between employees and team regulatory focus impact workplace loneliness through the mediating effect of team-member exchange; and 3) how employees choose different social behaviors to cope with experienced workplace loneliness based on different team regulatory focus climate and how different social behaviors impact subsequent job performance. By applying polynomial regression and responding surface analysis methods, we hope to contribute to the studies of workplace loneliness and provide novel understanding about the causes of workplace loneliness. In addition, we hope to contribute to the studies of workplace loneliness by introducing regulatory fit theory to the research field. We believe that understanding individuals’ self-regulation during the process of chasing social goals will help enhance dynamic and systematic knowledge about how employees encounter workplace loneliness and how they cope with such feelings under different situations.