Integrating victim precipitation theory with the belongingness perspective of work meaningfulness, this study investigates the interplay among employee perceived overqualification, peer overqualification, and peer ostracism and examines how peer ostracism, in turn, leads to subsequent reduced work meaningfulness. In Study 1, a time-lagged field study of 282 employees, we found that employees who felt overqualified, while working with peers who were less overqualified, experienced more ostracism, which was associated with reduced levels of work meaningfulness. These findings were replicated in Study (...) 2, using time-lagged multi-source data collected from 300 employees working in 51 teams. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and identify directions for future research. (shrink)

The literature on error sharing has focused on employees’ cost–benefit assessment to predict whether employees will disclose self-made errors. Our study advances this line of research by adopting a different theoretical lens and examining leaders’ role in promoting employee error sharing. Drawing primarily upon social learning theory, we expected that when team leaders openly talk about their own errors within teams, through their behavior, they would set an example for team members and encourage members’ error sharing with team leaders. Based (...) on a sample of 353 employees within 95 teams, we found a positive link between leader error sharing and team member error sharing; in addition, we found that ethical leadership evaluation partially mediates this positive link. Moreover, we found that leader error sharing was positively related to the team error management climate, which moderated the relationship between ethical leadership evaluation and team member error sharing in such a way that the positive relationship becomes stronger under a higher error management climate. Our findings highlight the critical roles played by leaders in promoting employees’ error sharing. (shrink)