Understanding Quiet Quitting: organizational citizenship behavior reductions in the post-pandemic workplace

Matias, Kaue Marques (2024) Understanding Quiet Quitting: organizational citizenship behavior reductions in the post-pandemic workplace. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

In this study, I seek to understand what has led workers to engage in a trend known as Quiet Quitting, where employees continue to perform their work but choose not to go above and beyond the formal obligations of their employment. I propose that this phenomenon can be operationalized as reduction of organizational citizenship behaviors and it exists as a result of return to the pre-pandemic status quo in which employees are no longer allowed to work in a primarily remote work environment. I used three well-known theories to explain the possible ways in which the return to a primarily in-person work environment may have led employees to stop going above and beyond in their obligations: psychological contract breaches, work engagement, and adaptive cost. Using a cross-sectional questionnaire, I gathered data from 251 participants on each of those constructs as well as their beliefs in Quiet Quitting and organizational citizenship behaviors. I analyzed the data using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results suggest that employees being mandated back to a primarily in-person work environment has a negative relationship with meaningfulness. This, in turn, has a negative relationship on their performance of discretionary behaviors. Also, the results suggest that the adaptive costs associated with the COVID-19 drained workers’ resources such that they were less likely to engage in those behaviors whether they wanted to or not. The COVID-19 pandemic was a largely unprecedented event in modern history and the measures to mitigate its spread brought several changes to how work is performed. This study tries to understand the lasting impacts of those changes and the lessons they bring to managers. It will help advance the scholarship on remote work and how three important organizational behavior theories apply to workers in the post-pandemic world. It will also provide further information to help practitioners make informed decisions on the future of the workplace and how much flexibility to give employees in how they perform their jobs.

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