All Eyes on the New, but Who Hears the Old? The Impact of Incumbent Employees’ Perceived Status Threat on Work Behavior

TL;DR

This study explores how high-performing new employees can threaten the status of existing workers, affecting their work behavior and engagement.

Contribution

The paper shifts focus to incumbent employees' reactions to new hires, revealing how coping strategies mediate these effects.

Findings

High-performing new employees increase perceived status threats among incumbents.

Perceived threats lead to higher engagement via proactive strategies and disengagement via avoidance.

Stress perception orientation weakens the link between threats and passive coping.

Abstract

This research applies the stress appraisal framework to examine how perceived status threats, triggered by high-performing new employees, affect incumbent employees’ work engagement and withdrawal behaviors. The investigation proposes that coping approaches, specifically proactive adaptation strategies and disengagement tactics, serve as mediating mechanisms, with stress perception orientation playing a moderating role. By reversing traditional research perspectives to concentrate on incumbent employees rather than new employees, this analysis identifies the key drivers of perceived occupational vulnerability and investigates their behavioral consequences. Through a time-lagged research methodology, we garnered responses from 266 incumbent employees spanning multiple sectors. The results demonstrate a strong positive correlation between the competence of new employees and incumbent employees’ perceived status of threat, which subsequently elevates work engagement via approach-focused strategies, while simultaneously increasing disengagement behaviors through avoidance mechanisms. Notably, employees’ fundamental beliefs about stress significantly weaken the association between perceived competitive threats and passive coping methods. These discoveries highlight critical implications for managing workplace dynamics and optimizing team performance through an enhanced understanding of perceived status challenges.

Figures