Employee responses to organisational wrongdoing as coping strategies : a process model and integrative review

This conceptual paper aims to demonstrate how employees’ behavioural reactions to organisational wrongdoing serve as a coping response designed to reduce the stress associated with witnessing or experiencing wrongdoing. To this end, a model of employees’ coping responses is presented that extends Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional process theory of stress and Affective Events Theory to investigate employee silence, disclosure to others, confrontation, and whistle-blowing as coping mechanisms. We propose that these responses are conscious and proactive coping mechanisms rather than more passive behavioural reactions to wrongdoing. The theoretical and practical implications of this model are discussed, as well as its limitations and future directions for research.