What are They Talking About: Exploring the Effects of Linguistic Ostracism on Proactive Behavior

Economic globalization increases opportunities for people speaking different languages to work together, making linguistic ostracism almost inevitable in the workplace. However, research offers only limited insight into its mechanisms. To help address this research gap, we draw on group engagement model, and apply an analysis of multi-source, multi-wave data from different samples to demonstrate a negative relationship between linguistic ostracism and employee proactive behavior. Findings also indicate that belongingness need satisfaction mediates the negative relationship between linguistic ostracism and employee proactive behavior, which explains how the internal mechanisms of linguistic ostracism result in low employee proactive behavior. In addition, findings show that employees with high trait social standing uncertainty will likely experience less belongingness need satisfaction and less likely to participate in proactive behavior when experiencing linguistic ostracism.