Employees’ dissenting voices via testimonials and their impact on corporate hypocrisy perception and reputational damage via narrative transportation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Rumors of a toxic workplace can create a negative organizational reputation among external stakeholders. Based on the theoretical framework of narrative transportation, the current study tests how exposure to employees’ dissenting testimonials of the workplace might increase hypocrisy perception and negatively influence organizational reputation via the experience of transportation. A classic experiment design with a control group tests the between-subjects and within-subject effects of employees’ dissenting voices on study variables. The results support the influences of employees’ dissenting testimonials on transportation, perception of organizational hypocrisy, and damage to organizational reputation on both moral/affective and ability dimensions. Additionally, this study finds that the level of transportation differently influenced assessments of organizational reputation, suggesting a spillover effect on the ability dimension by moral transgressions.