The Mechanism of Fun Activities Weakening the Impact of Workplace Ostracism: A Mediated Moderation Model

In the era of shifting global economic dynamics and rapid digital transformation, the demand for enhanced corporate innovation capabilities has significantly increased. However, workplace ostracism, which often arises in complex organizational contexts, may trigger employees’ creative territory behavior, thereby undermining the organization’s innovation ecosystem. There is a need for further research on mitigating the negative impacts of workplace ostracism. Drawing on Affective Events Theory, this study adopts the perspective of enhancing individuals’ perceived coping resources and conceptualizes fun activities as a form of indirect support created by the organization. It further develops a mediated moderation model to examine how fun activities buffer the impact of workplace ostracism on employees’ creative territory behavior by mitigating their fear of missing out. Using a two-wave questionnaire survey, this study collected 337 valid responses from Chinese employees and conducted a hierarchical regression analysis with SPSS. The results reveal that fun activities perform a dual role: directly, they can mitigate employees’ fear of missing out triggered by workplace ostracism; indirectly, they can weaken the impact of workplace ostracism on employees’ creative territory behavior by alleviating such apprehension. This study offers theoretical insights for organizations on integrating ostracism governance into their organizational management systems and on alleviating the adverse outcomes of workplace ostracism by fostering an environment of indirect support.