Worst Case Scenario - The Interaction Effect of Identity Violation and Emotional Exhaustion -

As employees become more experienced with burnout, it is important for researchers and managers to understand the nature of the relationship between their experienced burnout, identity violation, justice perception and behavior. This paper examined the direct interaction effect of emotional exhaustion and identity violation on interactional justice and the indirect effect on organizational citizenship behavior. The data were collected from South Korean companies with 328 team members and their leaders from diverse functional areas. Hierarchical regression analysis and mediated moderation analysis with bootstrapping were conducted for verification of hypothesis. Results demonstrated that emotionally exhausted employees reacted to identity violation by negatively perceiving interactional justice and reduced efforts for organizational citizenship behavior. This study contributed justice and burnout research field by considering people’s violated identity and it suggested that managerial intervention was needed for their organizational citizenship behavior. Previous researches provided negative effect of emotional exhaustion and identity violation, but the interaction effect remains still unclear. Simultaneously considering them, this study dealt with the worst-case scenario of team members’ mental health.