Workplace Ostracism and Organizational Culture in Secondary Schools in Russia

Communication between people significantly defines the way people perform in personal, professional and social activities. Ostracism – the purposeful ignoring or shunning of an individual by others (Sommer, Williams, Ciarocco, & Baumeister, 2001) is one of the negative outcomes of communication. Ostracism is often called as passive treatment, when people do not greet you, do not speak to you, do not spend time with you. Such an attitude from the others has a deteriorating influence on the target of ostracism, causing negative psychological and physiological reactions. Ostracism is widely examined in the sociological context (personality, communication, etc.), but not a lot is known about ostracism in the workplace. The present research explores ostracism in the organizational context, focusing on its (ostracism) interaction with the types of the corporate culture. Individualistic and collectivistic types of corporate culture define whether people perform as a separate unit or as a group respectively. The type of corporate culture may strongly influence the existence and extent of ostracism as these types are about the way people communicate in the group while ostracism is excluding the person from the group. The research examines two private schools from the secondary education sector to reveal the type of corporate culture and the level of ostracism and formulate the relationship between organizational culture and workplace ostracism. In the research correlation and regression analyses are applied, to reveal the connection between ostracism and types of corporate culture and the influence of demographic factors on the level of ostracism. Sociometry methodology is used for comprehensive analysis of group communication. The results show that both schools have a low level of ostracism and the prevailing individualistic type of culture. Comparing organizations, School 1 has a lower exclusion level and more developed corporate culture. According to the results, the corporate culture of any type and the level of ostracism are negatively correlated. Keywords: workplace ostracism, organizational culture, individualism and collectivism, sociometry