Justifying the Inevitable: How Observers of Workplace Mistreatment Can Become Accomplices

Why do some observers fail to support targets of workplace mistreatment? Drawing on system justification theory, we propose that perceiving workplace mistreatment as more inevitable can prompt observers to justify the mistreatment. Using an experiment (N = 301) and a multi-wave survey (N = 554), we found that perceived mistreatment inevitability positively related to observers’ evaluations of mistreatment legitimacy and negatively related to their evaluations of target legitimacy. In turn, these legitimacy evaluations had implications for observers’ reactions to the mistreatment incident (i.e., minimizing the incident) and the target of mistreatment (i.e., decreasing work-related support, increasing negative gossip, and increasing avoidance). Importantly, we identified organizational mistreatment climate as an antecedent of perceived mistreatment inevitability, with supplemental analyses revealing that gender exacerbated the negative effects of climate on perceived mistreatment inevitability for female (but not male) targets. Theoretical implications include understanding how observers may inadvertently worsen mistreatment in the workplace, including why observers may justify workplace mistreatment, how this can impact their behaviors, what may prompt observers’ system justification tendencies, and who (i.e., which targets) are most likely to experience these detrimental effects. Managerial insights include recognizing that observers may contribute to further negative consequences for mistreatment targets and the critical role of organizational climate for curtailing these effects.