Workplace ostracism is defined as being ignored or excluded by others in workplace. As a negative behavior, it has detrimental consequences for employees and organizations, such as decreasing voice behavior, or inducing employees’ negative comments on the organization. However, under certain circumstances, the excluded individuals may perform pro-social behaviors. The empirical findings of its outcomes are mixed.

To address this issue, based on affective events theory and social information processing theory, the research built a dual-processes model to explore the effects of workplace ostracism on employee voice behavior. Specifically, the research tested the mediating role of anger between workplace ostracism and destructive voice, as well as impression management motivation between workplace ostracism and constructive voice. Moreover, the research also examined the moderating effect of career resilience to specify the boundary conditions of the two mechanisms.

In this study, we collected data from service, internet and financial companies in Zhejiang Province. In order to reduce homologous errors, we collected information from two sources. 277 employees and 75 leaders were valid finally. To examine the distinctiveness of the study variables, we first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis by using AMOS 21.0, then employed SPSS 19.0 to test our hypotheses.

The results supported our hypotheses. It showed that: (1) Anger mediated the positive effect between workplace ostracism and destructive voice; (2) Impression management motivation mediated the positive effect between workplace ostracism and constructive voice; (3) Career resilience moderated the mediation relationships. Specifically, the indirect effect between workplace ostracism and destructive voice was significant when career resilience was low and insignificant when career resilience was high; The indirect effect between workplace ostracism and constructive voice was significant when career resilience was high and insignificant when career resilience was low.

Our findings provided some theoretical implications. Firstly, the research enriched the empirical findings about negative voice behaviors and extended prior studies on the antecedents of destructive voice. Secondly, a dual-processes model explained why previous findings were inconsistent and verified the double-edged effects of workplace ostracism. Thirdly, anger was a distinct affect which connected workplace ostracism and destructive voice. The findings extended the studies of concrete affects.

Beyond the theoretical significance highlighted above, there are a number of practical strategies for organizational management and employee practice. First of all, managers should pay attention to the reasons for employees’ negative behaviors, because they may be mistreated, and the problem may exist in the whole organization. Secondly, managers should face up to employees' self-interest motivations and meet their needs appropriately, for self-interest motivations can also achieve organization benefits. Lastly, organizations should pay attention to employees with low career resilience to prevent their negative behavior. At the same time, they can select employees with high career resilience when recruiting new employees.