Organizational cyninism and consequences: A study of meta analysis

The history of the cynicism is embedded in Ancient Greece. However, the concept has detached from its original meaning since ancient era. While it was a school symbolizing the naturalness and simplicity of life in ancient era, today the concept has detached from its original meaning and serves as an expression of different kinds of negative thoughts such as the disdain that focuses on the selfishness and hostile attitudes of the individual. Cynicism, which has been previously studied in a variety of disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, religion and politics, it has started to take place in the organizational behavior literature since the ends of eighties of the last century, it is a relatively new concept in organizational behavior literature. Within this context, the goal of this study to present conceptual and theoretical perspectives of organizational cynicism in our language, to demonstrate the relationships the consequences of the concept and organizational cynicism and thus to contribute to the interested academicians and professionals about the subject. Motivated by this goal, the concept of cynicism was described; differences from similar concepts were discussed; the history of cynicism was evaluated; definition of organizational cynicism were presented, and the types and dimensions of organizational cynicism were put forth. Then theoretical background of organizational cynicism was discussed and the antecedents and consequences of the concept were summarized regarding both individual and organizational level. Relationship between organizational cynicism and its results was investigated using meta-analysis. The scope of this study is organizational cynicism studies recorded in Web of Science database. Within this context, a total of 32 studies were analyzed.Results showed that there was a negative relationship between organizational cynicism and job satisfaction, a negative relationship between organizational cynicism and organizational commitment and a positive relationship between organizational cynicism and intention to quit. There was no direct statistically significant relationship between organizational cynicism and job performance. In terms of sub-dimensions of job performance, there is a negatively weak correlation between organizational cynicism and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior, and a positive weak correlation between organizational cynicism and counterproductive work behavior. Keywords: Cynicism, Organizational Cynicism, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Intention to Quit, Job Performance, Meta Analysis