When organizational dehumanization hits home: Short-scale validation and test of a spillover–crossover model

Abstract

Organizational dehumanization, a concept that has garnered increasing scholarly attention, still faces two significant limitations within the current literature. First, there is a lack of rigorously validated scales in the field. Second, the effects of organizational dehumanization on the family domain have been largely overlooked. In light of these gaps, we embarked on a comprehensive research project comprising five studies (N_Total = 2635) to address these limitations. Our primary objectives were twofold: (1) to develop and validate a concise five-item scale for measuring organizational dehumanization based on Caesens et al.'s (Eur. J. Work Org. Psychol., 26, 2017, 527-540) 11-item measure (Studies 1, 2 and 3) and (2) to investigate a novel spillover–crossover model of organizational dehumanization (Studies 4 and 5). Our results indicated that our proposed short scale has a good factorial structure and high reliability indices, correlates strongly with the 11-item full scale, is invariant over time and demonstrates evidence for convergent, discriminant and incremental validity. In addition, using data from both employees and their family members, we showed that organizational dehumanization contributes to an increase in work-to-family conflict among employees, as perceived by their family members. This, in turn, heightens relationship tension within their family members, ultimately leading to a decline in their relationship satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications and avenues for future research are also discussed.