Mitigating Organizational Conspiracy Beliefs Through Strategic Internal Communication and Employee–Organization Relationships (EOR) in the Workplace

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore how strategic internal communication and the quality of employee – organization relationship (EOR) can reduce organizational conspiracy beliefs among employees and thus prevent the negative outcomes thereof in the workplace. Using a national survey (N = 810) of full-time employees in the United States, this study found that high-quality EOR based on two-way symmetrical communication with employees is likely to reduce the potential for conspiracy theories and, in turn, for turnover intentions in the workplace. This finding provides meaningful insight into how internal communication managers can mitigate negative employee outcomes that are closely associated with organizational conspiracy theories in the workplace, namely by practicing strategic internal communication and developing high-quality EOR. This study theoretically advances conspiracy theory research by offering a theoretical explanation for belief systems of conspiracy theories that also considers strategic internal communication and the quality of EOR.

KEYWORDS:

• Employee turnover intentions
• employee-organization relationships
• organizational conspiracy beliefs
• two-way symmetrical communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A similar concept, organizational conspiracy theories, is defined as “powerful groups (e.g., managers) within the workplace are acting in secret to achieve some kind of malevolent objective” (Douglas & Leite, 2017, p. 487).

2. Researchers have underscored that conspiracy beliefs are distinct from distrust, which is “often generally considered a milder version of paranoia, an exaggerated distrust of others but without a conspiracy belief’s requirement of a powerful other at work” (Hollander, 2018, p. 695). In addition, in the context of organization-public relationships, distrust is defined as “one party’s level of suspicion and fear about the other party’s conduct and the willingness to close oneself off from the other party” (Moon & Rhee, 2013, p. 695).

3. J.-N. Kim and Grunig (2021) suggested that the relationship quality can serve as a contextual cause for conspiracy theories: individuals who have negative relationships with social systems or organizations are more likely to develop heightened levels of conspiratorial thinking.

4. Generic conspiracy belief is a personality trait or tendency characterized by relative stability, remaining unaffected by temporary threats to control (Stojanov & Halberstadt, 2019).

5. The participants in the pretest reported that the instructions and questions were clear (M = 5.83, SD = 1.80), understandable (M = 5.54, SD = 1.85), and relevant (M = 5.71, SD = 1.75), their answers were rated on a 7-point semantic differential scale ranging from unclear, confusing, or irrelevant (1) to clear, understandable, and relevant (7). Moreover, in an open-ended question soliciting additional comments and suggestions, the participants did not raise any major issues.

6. Two reverse coded items (#4. Our managers would never consciously hide important information from us employees and #5 Our supervisors would never conspire against subordinates) had extremely low standardized factor loadings (#4: β = .21 and #5: β = .09), as well as low variance levels (R²) (#4: β = .043 and #5: β = .008). These items were very similar to other items (#3 and #6). Consequently, the two reverse items were deleted.

7. A series of multiple ordinary least squares regression analyses were performed to find the significance of the effect of each control variable on the endogenous variables (i.e., organizational conspiracy beliefs and employee turnover intention). The results showed that generic conspiracy belief (b = 0.72, t = 22.53), age (b = −0.02, t = −4.60), and (male) gender (b = 0.23, t = 2.08) were statistically significant for organizational conspiracy beliefs, and age (b = −0.02, t = −3.81), education (b = 0.12, t = 0.04), and income (b = −0.09, t = −2.36) were statistically significant for employee turnover intention. In the regression models, the independent variables did not violate multicollinearity, with each variable having a Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) smaller than 10 (i.e., mean VIF: 1.74) and a Tolerance (T) of each variable greater than .10. Furthermore, this study examined correlations between the four indicators of EOR and organizational conspiracy beliefs and found very weak associations: trust*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.09, p < .05.), control mutuality*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.02, p > .05.), commitment*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.08, p < .05), and satisfaction*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.10, p < .01) (see Table 1). This study also found very weak correlations between specific dimensions of trust and organizational conspiracy beliefs: integrity*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.07, p < .05.), dependability*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.06, p = .12.), and competence*organizational conspiracy beliefs (r = −.12, p < .01).

8. Numerous questions still persist as to whether developing conspiracy beliefs stems from individual feelings of powerlessness and alienation (psychological factors) or arises from one’s desire to make sense of the world around them (the socio-cognitive foundation of the beliefs) (Newheiser et al., 2011; Swami & Coles, 2010).