Suffer at work, vent at home: Linking workplace ostracism to family undermining from an emotional resource perspective

Although workplace ostracism has been widely recognized as a harmful organizational stressor, its cross-domain spillover effects on employee' family behaviors and the underlying mechanisms remain insufficiently explored. This study investigates the relationship between workplace ostracism and employees' family undermining, focusing on the underlying mechanisms from the perspective of emotional resource depletion, specifically regulatory emotional self-efficacy and surface acting. A total of 609 employees from private enterprises in China were surveyed using the Workplace Ostracism Scale, Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale, Surface Acting Scale, and Family Undermining Scale. The results indicate that workplace ostracism is significantly positively associated with employee family undermining, and is linked to family undermining through three pathways: (1) the independent mediating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy; (2) the independent mediating role of surface acting; (3) the serial mediation of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and surface acting. These findings deepen understanding of the mechanisms underlying the association between workplace ostracism and family interactions and provide theoretical and practical implications for organizational management and employee mental health.