TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENTS: WHAT HELPS

AND WHAT HURTS

LINDSEY JOYCE CHAMBERLAIN
RANDY HODSON
The Ohio State University

ABSTRACT:  Toxic or harmful working conditions are an important problem

for workers and organizations. Fully understanding the consequences of such
conditions has been difficult because in-depth information across organizational
contexts is scarce. The current article makes use of a new data set based on content
coding the full population of organizational ethnographies (N = 212) to secure
in-depth evaluations across a wide range of organizational contexts. The analysis
confirms the role of lack of autonomy and lack of skills as toxic working conditions
but suggests an equally important role for organizational chaos. Importantly,
returning to the narrative accounts allows exploration of the buffering and
exacerbating roles of coworker relations and employee involvement and the
mechanisms through which these work to moderate other conditions.
Keywords: content analysis, employee involvement, organizational
ethnography, toxic working conditions, buffering, exacerbating

Toxic work environments are a widespread social problem involving millions of

workers worldwide. Work environments in which there are high levels of inter-
personal conflict, a lack of worker autonomy, and a high level of disorganization
are problematic for workers and organizations alike. Seven in ten workers report
that negative work conditions cause frequent health problems (Bassman 1992:138).
Toxic work environments also have considerable organizational effects. Organiza-
tional problems include absenteeism, tardiness, turnover, low morale and motiva-
tion, communication breakdowns, impaired judgments, and workplace relations
with increased animosity and distrust (Cox 2000). One-third of workers have con-
sidered changing jobs within the last year and 14 percent have actually changed
jobs in the last two years because of toxic working conditions (Bassman 1992:38).
Controlling these working conditions is thus crucial for organizations seeking to
attract, retain, and effectively utilize the highest quality workers (Whitener, Brodt,
Korsgaard, and Werner 1998). It is important to understand what contributes to a

Address correspondence to: Dr. Lindsey Joyce Chamberlain, 238 Townshend Hall, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus,
OH 43210; e-mail: chamberlain.55@osu.edu.

Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 53, Issue 4, pp. 455–477, ISSN 0731-1214, electronic ISSN 1533-8673.
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 456 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

toxic work environment as well as what factors can lessen the impact of its nega-
tive individual- and organizational-level effects.
Toxic working conditions include interpersonal conditions, occupational condi-
tions, and organizational conditions. Because most studies of toxic working con-
ditions have been based on surveys of individual employees, the effects of indi-
vidual- and job-level conditions have been easier to ascertain than the effects of
organizational characteristics. Employees typically can provide more and better
quality information about their specific jobs than about their employing organi-
zations. Qualitative methods are a possible solution to this gap in available in-
formation because of their ability to generate in-depth descriptions of both jobs
and organizations. In qualitative case studies that focus on a single organization,
however, there is simply no variation in organizational characteristics to analyze.
A qualitative-based multi-case model of the effects of toxic conditions including
interpersonal, occupational, and organization conditions is thus needed, but gath-
ering data to evaluate such a model has been difficult.
The current article addresses the need for a comprehensive model of toxic work-
ing conditions by utilizing data coded from the full population of published book-
length organizational ethnographies. These ethnographies provide in-depth ac-
counts of interpersonal relations, jobs, organizations, workplace conditions, and
other work life experiences and thus provide an ideal source of data to evalu-
ate a comprehensive model of toxic working conditions. Returning to the narra-
tive accounts also allows exploration of the mechanisms involved and provides
an important opportunity for theoretical refinement of existing models. Through
analysis of ethnographic studies of organizations, we find that the mechanisms by
which workers cope with toxic work environments sometimes lessen and some-
times aggravate the negative effects of these environments. Statistical analyses of
the ethnographies coupled with a reexamination of the narrative accounts under-
line the processes by which buffering or exacerbation of negative effects occurs.

JOB OUTCOMES
We will examine the effects of workplace conditions on three job outcomes: job
satisfaction, commitment, and meaningful work. These three outcomes are critical
because they affect both organizations and individual workers. Job satisfaction is a
central measure of the overall health of the relationship between employees and
their jobs. Commitment is important because it implies both an outcome important
to the organization—organizational commitment—as well as an outcome impor-
tant to the individual—the maintenance of a key social and economic relationship
(Pearlin 1989). We also perceive commitment as a measure of “internalization” as
described by Reilly and Chatman (1986:493) illustrating complementary values
between worker and organization. Meaningful work is also central to establishing
common purpose between the employee and the organization. For example, sur-
geons get significant meaning at work from being responsible for life and death
judgments—a project that is also central to the organization (Bosk 1979:45). We
conceive meaningful work as a measure of workers’ perceptions of the value that
their work contributes to both their organizations and society in general.

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 457

TOXIC INTERPERSONAL CONDITIONS

Toxic interpersonal conditions—in particular, interpersonal conflicts—in the work-
place have long been known to be stressful to workers, as the roles they emerge
from are enduring and as people place great importance on these roles (Pearlin
1989:245). One important type of interpersonal conflict is conflict with supervisors.
We use several indicators to identify different facets of this type of conflict by in-
cluding generally contentious interactions between employees and supervisors as
well as situations in which supervision is seen as inadequate or lacking, thus act-
ing as a chronic source of irritation in the work environment. Leiter and Maslach
(1988) argue that both types of conflicts are significant sources of irritation for
workers. They argue that conflict with supervisors can be a product of role conflict,
in which workers perceive supervisory demands as unreasonable, but can also be
unrelated to job demands and be simply an unpleasant interpersonal interaction
that occurs on the job and is bounded by workplace role relations.
Contentious interactions with supervisors/management may be a particularly
important source of toxic working conditions that has been poorly measured by
traditional survey-based studies. The sporadic yet pivotal nature of workplace
conflict makes it highly salient but difficult to measure. For example, the following
series of events occurs at an apparel factory when a supervisor accuses workers of
missewing garments. The episode starts with the following confrontation: “If you
continue to treat us like animals you will find your work in this factory becoming
very difficult. We are not animals to be treated without any respect” (Kapferer
1972:243). As the confrontation progresses, other tailors gather around and begin
chanting derogatory names at the offending supervisor, who quickly exits the line
to avoid a confrontation. Such rare episodes may not be captured by surveys but
may set a tone in a workplace with significant negative consequences.
As noted previously, conflict with supervisors is also related to how well man-
agement informs and leads workers. Leadership and communication are essential for
keeping employees informed about goals, procedures, and expectations. For em-
ployees, competent management and clear communication help reduce ambiguity
and uncertainty. On the other hand, poor management and unclear communica-
tion can lead to role conflict—a significant irritant.
Related to both negative interpersonal interaction with supervisors and lead-
ership and communication is abuse. A major normative obligation of competent
management is to respect workers’ rights and interests. Workplace ethnographies
provide many examples of both respect for employees’ rights and abusive super-
visory behavior toward employees. The stress of abusive relations, for example, is
reported in an ethnography of a Japanese apparel factory:
There used to be a lot of malicious teasing. I cried a lot. . . . It was a supervi-
sor—a woman—who was the mean one . . . if you were sewing labels on gar-
ments and you asked for some more, she would take a bunch and throw them
at you, so they’d fall all over the place . . . and then you’d have to rush like crazy
to catch up your quota. (Roberts 1994:61)

Such abuse and disrespect can have devastating consequences for worker morale
and job performance.

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Customer interaction can be another, independent source of interpersonal conflict

in the workplace. Customer interaction increases opportunities for interpersonal
conflict within the work role. Customer interaction can also involve emotional la-
bor in which workers must present emotions that are organizationally desirable
in their interactions with customers. Hochschild (1983) argues that this type of
emotion work can be detrimental to workers because workers become separated
from their genuine feelings. Customer interaction is therefore a potentially unique
interpersonal factor that has not received sustained attention in the literature on
work stress. An ethnographer’s description of bank clerks’ routine contact with
customers illustrates both difficult relations with customers and the stress of do-
ing emotion work in interactions with customers: “You know, it’s difficult at the
window. That’s because you can never actually be your true self on the window. If
you really get upset, you have to go back and cry in the backroom. But you can’t
show it publicly” (Jackall 1978:54).

TOXIC OCCUPATIONAL CONDITIONS

The most widely recognized occupational-level working condition with negative
impacts for workers is lack of autonomy—failing to have control over one’s work
tasks. Jobs entailing autonomy are based on significant “occupational self-direc-
tion” (Kohn 1990) and are not repetitive or tightly controlled by a supervisor or by
technology. A meta-analysis of the effects of autonomy on worker outcomes finds
positive associations of autonomy with job satisfaction, commitment, involve-
ment, motivation and performance, and negative associations with emotional dis-
tress, absenteeism, and turnover (Spector 1986).
Skill and complexity in work are also associated with better outcomes for employ-
ees (Jencks, Perman, and Rainwater 1988; Oldham and Gordon 1999). Skills can
include complexity in working with people, data, or things, or with any combina-
tion of these (Spenner 1983). To appreciate the importance of these factors, one
need only consider that most people spend the greatest part of their waking day,
most days of the week, most weeks of the year at work.

TOXIC ORGANIZATIONAL CONDITIONS

Organizations are the key locus both for defining role requirements and for the
emergence of relations with supervisors, coworkers, and clients, and therefore,
understanding organizations is essential for understanding toxic working condi-
tions (Bennett and Lehman 1999). Interpersonal and occupational conditions in
the workplace are organizationally situated and, thus, can never be fully separated
from this context. Organizational healthiness (Cox 2000) is indicated by an effi-
ciently operating organization with a high level of integration and with healthy
subsystems such as employee recruitment, retention and development, purchas-
ing, sales, technological development, and long-range planning. Organizational
healthiness allows for effective task completion, problem solving, and initiative.
A core quality of an effective organization is thus the maintenance of a coherent
and smoothly functioning organization of production. This obligation implies

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 459

maintenance of the facilities and technologies and coordination and integration of

productive activities. Coherent organizational technologies and procedures are es-
sential for organizational effectiveness and for ensuring a positive organizational
climate (Lawler, Thye, and Yoon 2000).
Organizational chaos, in contrast, results from ineffective and stressful organizations
of production. This includes the purchase of faulty components, failure to schedule
activities in a coherent fashion, reliance on rigid or overly coercive systems of con-
trol, or any number of other failures (Adler and Borys 1996). In addition, having
equipment in good repair is essential for effective production and for the safety of
employees. Bureaucratic organizations, however, face complex and multilayered
environmental fields comprised of a diverse array of actors—competitors, profes-
sional associations, regulatory bodies, and employees, to name just a few (DiMag-
gio and Powell 1983). Not only are these groups able to wield significant influ-
ence, but their agendas often contradict one another, leading to the potential for
a chronic state of confusion (Parker 2005). Driven by bounded rationality and ef-
forts to routinize all challenges, organizations can compound these contradictions,
creating contradictory rules that heighten internal chaos (Clarke 1999). Overcom-
ing these obstacles and achieving competent organizational management is thus a
precondition for an effective and stress-free organization (Whitener et al. 1998).
Another key factor of organizational health is stability and security. In addition to
affecting overall organizational health that, in turn, affects workers, stability is also
a major organizational factor that directly affects the lives of workers. Fenwick and
Tausig (1994) find that decreased occupational stability filters down to the every-
day tasks of a job and increases stress. Furthermore, lack of job security is argued
by some to be even more stressful than unemployment as it creates a situation of
prolonged uncertainty and worry with few personal concrete actions available to
alleviate the situation (Wilson, Larson, and Stone 1993).

MODERATORS
People are active, creative beings—they do not just react to events. In the face of toxic
workplace conditions, employees utilize a wide range of moderators in an effort to
ameliorate negative effects. The investigation of coping factors thus becomes an es-
sential part of any study of toxic workplace conditions. Moderators include both
attempts to change the stressful situation and attempts to manage its consequences
through adjustment mechanisms (Cox 2000). Common strategies include confront-
ing the problem, seeking social support, avoidance, and accommodation. It is also
important to realize that not all responses necessarily alleviate the stress, and some
may exacerbate problems. Drinking and drug abuse are obvious examples (Martin,
Roman, and Blum 1996), but other ways of confronting workplace problems—such
as ineffective grousing—can also aggravate the situation (Cox 2000).
In a famous article on self-efficacy through human agency, Bandura (1982) notes
that the roots of self-efficacy often lie in collective efficacy. Thus, coping in the
workplace often rests on being positively involved with others. Such involvement
can occur either through informal relations with coworkers or through more for-
mal mechanisms of employee involvement.

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 460 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

The role of coworker relations as a buffer for unsatisfying work has long been
recognized. Coworker relations can provide both emotional support and instru-
mental aid through provision of useful insider information about how to survive
and prosper in a workplace. Well-integrated coworker networks have been ob-
served to have positive consequences for increased satisfaction and lowered stress
at work (Hurlbert 1991; Mueller, Boyer, Price, and Iverson 1994). Such networks
provide trusted confidants with whom to consult about work-related problems.
Participation, involvement, and connection can also occur through consciously
engineered forms of employee participation—forms of involvement that are rapidly
becoming more widespread in the workplace (Batt 2004). Although success rates
vary dramatically across different versions of employee involvement, the general
consensus is that productivity is, on average, increased by heightened employee
involvement. It also appears that workers in participatory settings, again on aver-
age, experience greater autonomy, pride, and satisfaction than workers in non-
participatory settings (Hodson 2001). Increased employee control has been shown
to increase self-efficacy and, thus, reduce stress (Spector 1986).

HYPOTHESES
In the model we are proposing, toxic conditions include interpersonal factors, such
as supervisory conflict and customer interaction; occupational conditions, such
as lack of autonomy; and organizational conditions, such as chaos and instability.
In addition, two moderators, coworker support and employee involvement, are
expected to condition the relationship between our three types of job conditions
and job outcomes. These moderating factors may either buffer the effects of inter-
personal, occupational, and organizational conditions or aggravate these effects.
Organizational factors have been understudied relative to interpersonal and oc-
cupational factors due to data constraints resulting from the predominant use of
individual-level surveys on the one hand and case studies that focus on only one
organization or occupation on the other. Nevertheless, in the limited number of
studies that directly compare organizational and occupational sources of job stress,
organizational factors have been found to be of comparable or greater consequence
relative to occupational factors (Kop, Euwema, and Schaufeli 1999). Kop et al. (1999),
for example, find that organizational stressors are more salient than occupational
stressors for police officers. Furthermore, we argue that organizations are the locus
in which other conditions become manifest and take on meaning. Organizational-
level conditions have been found both to affect stress directly and to influence the
emergence of stressful interpersonal and occupational conditions. Fenwick and
Tausig (1994:278) find that organizations “pass” macrolevel uncertainty to workers
through changing job conditions. We thus offer:
Hypothesis  1:  Interpersonal, occupational, and organizational conditions will
all significantly influence job outcomes. Furthermore, organizational con-
ditions will have stronger effects than occupational and interpersonal
conditions in influencing job outcomes.
A number of factors act to moderate the effects of interpersonal, occupational,
and organizational conditions. We argue that both coworker support and employee

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 461

involvement are important in moderating the toxic effects of interpersonal, occu-

pational, and organizational conditions. In spite of the many positive functions
of coworker support (Hurlbert 1991; Mueller et al. 1994), the research findings on
the ability of coworkers to buffer toxic working conditions are mixed. Coworker
support lessens job stress overall, but its ability to buffer other conditions is less clear
(Bennett and Lehman 1999). In part this may arise from the corrosive effects of
many toxic working conditions on the quality of coworker relations themselves.
Furthermore, coworker relations may sometimes act as exacerbating factors in
that they provide workers with the opportunity for nonproductive grousing. Such
complaining can accentuate negative aspects of work and increase rather than de-
crease distress. Employee participation programs are also found to be generally
positive for workers (Hodson 2001; Spector 1986), but there is limited research on
the role of these programs in moderating the impact of toxic work environments.
We thus propose:
Hypothesis  2:  Coworker relations and formal employee involvement pro-
grams will moderate the effects of toxic work environments. We expect
to see them mainly act as buffers, lessening the impact of various toxic
interpersonal, occupational, and organizational conditions; however, co-
worker relations may also act as aggravators, exacerbating the effects of
some toxic work conditions.

DATA AND METHODS

Comprehensive workplace surveys that provide detailed information about inter-
personal, occupational, and organizational characteristics and job outcomes are not
readily available. One of the reasons for this absence is that many organizational
characteristics are difficult to measure in generalized survey instruments that must
be asked across a wide range of work settings. Surveys are also limited by typically
interviewing at only one organizational level. That is, surveys typically interview ei-
ther managers or workers but not both and are thus limited to detailed information
either about the organization or about workers’ behaviors and attitudes.
Because of the limitations of available survey data, the current analysis relies
on data taken from the systematic coding of information from the population of
book-length organizational ethnographies. The systematic analysis of data from
a comprehensive set of organization ethnographies takes advantage of the depth
and range of observation offered by ethnographies, while avoiding the limited
variation posed by analysis of a single case or a limited set of case studies.
There have been over two hundred book-length organizational ethnographies
published in the English language. Each represents an average of over a year in
the field, with at least as much additional time spent in analysis and writing. This
resource, however, has remained largely unanalyzed by social scientists studying
organizations.
The analysis of toxic working conditions and their outcomes reported in this
article is thus based on the compilation and analysis of data gathered from book-
length organizational ethnographies (N = 212). The in-depth observation pro-
vided by organizational ethnographies is particularly important for observing the

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 462 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

subtle nature and consequences of such workplace phenomena as management

respect, organizational coherence, coworker relations, and toxic working condi-
tions (Mouly and Sankaran 1997).

Selecting the Cases

Thousands of published case studies were examined in a two-phase procedure
to locate appropriate ethnographies. First, likely titles were generated by computer-
assisted searches of archives, perusal of bibliographies of ethnographies already
located, searching the library shelves in the immediate area of previously identified
ethnographies, and an advisory board of twenty experts in the field. We excluded
cases that used primarily archival or survey data for their analysis rather than direct
ethnographic observation. In the second phase of selection, we examined each se-
lected book in detail. The criteria for inclusion in the final pool to be coded were as
follows: (1) the use of direct ethnographic methods of observation over a period of
at least six months, (2) a focus on a single organizational setting, and (3) a focus on
at least one clearly identified group of workers—an assembly line, a typing pool, a
task group, or some other identifiable work group.
These ethnographies constitute the population of published book-length English-
language ethnographies that focus on an identifiable work group in a single orga-
nization and that provide relatively complete information on the organization, the
nature of the work taking place there, and managers’ and employees’ behaviors
and experiences at work. Please see Roscigno, Hodson, and Lopez (2009) for the
complete list of ethnographies; we invite readers to examine and use this list. The
distribution of the cases across industry, occupation, and enterprise size is reported
in Table 1.

TABLE  1
Industrial, Occupational Locus, and Employment Size of Organizational
Ethnographies (N = 212)
Employment
Industry Percentage Occupation Percentage Size Percentage
Extractive and construction 5.6 Professional 20.5 Less than 50 21.7
Non-durable manufacturing 13.2 Managerial 7.6 50 to 99 9.0
Durable manufacturing 18.9 Clerical 6.2 100 to 499 21.7
Transportation equipment 9.4 Sales 3.3 500 to 999 14.6
Transportation, communi- 8.5 Skilled 9.5 1,000 to 4,999 19.3
cation, and utilities
Wholesale and retail trade 10.4 Assembly 28.1 5,000 or more 13.7
Fire, insurance, real estate, 8.5 Labor 6.7
and business services
Personal services 7.1 Service 15.7
Professional and related 14.6 Farm 2.4
services
Public administration 3.8
Total 100 100 100

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 463

Coding the Ethnographies

A team of four researchers—the senior author and three advanced graduate
students—developed the coding instrument for the ethnographies. First, we de-
veloped a list of relevant concepts and preliminary response categories. Second,
over a period of six months, eight selected ethnographies were read and coded by
each of the four team members to test the usefulness of the preliminary response
categories. After each ethnography was coded, we discussed our respective cod-
ings to decide on the retention or removal of items and to develop new response
categories and coding protocols. Coding protocols detail specific levels of mea-
surement for each variable.1 For example, the coding protocol details the following
levels of the variable “autonomy”:

Autonomy addresses the level of independent worker input into the tasks as
mandated by how the task is organized. Workers whose tasks are completely
determined by others should be coded “1-None.” “2-Little” autonomy implies
that workers occasionally have the chance to select among procedures or priori-
ties. “3-Average” autonomy implies regular opportunities to select procedures
or to set priorities but that there are definite limits on these choices. “4-High”
implies significant latitude in determining procedures and setting priorities.
“5-Very High” implies that significant interpretation is needed to reach broadly
stated goals.

The ethnographies were read and coded by the same team of four researchers, by
members of a year-long graduate research practicum, and by additional graduate
research assistants supported through a grant from the National Science Founda-
tion. If multiple instances of a behavior were found, the coder was instructed to
review all previous passages cited, reconcile inconsistencies between the passages,
and record the best answer, along with all relevant page numbers. After complet-
ing a book, the primary coder was debriefed by a member of the research staff to
check the accuracy of the codings. At this time, the codings were reviewed in de-
tail. The coding and evidence for each variable of each ethnography was reviewed
by a group. In addition, a 10 percent sample of cases was recoded as a reliability
check. The average intercorrelation between codings is .79, indicating a relatively
high degree of intercoder reliability.
The systematic compilation of data from the population of organizational eth-
nographies allows their otherwise separate observations to be used to test hypoth-
eses about toxic working conditions across a wide range of settings entailing di-
verse organizational experiences. These measures provide the empirical basis for
the analysis presented in this article and are discussed in the following sections.
Although the process of content coding temporarily loses some of the richness
of each context, this richness will be regained and utilized in the Results section,
where we return to particular cases for reimmersion toward the goal of identify-
ing the mechanisms underlying the relationships observed. As with any content
analysis project, we may have made errors in the interpretation of the texts or in
the coding of the data. The data, however, are available for public scrutiny and
reanalysis, and we welcome suggestions, criticisms, and alternative views on the
coded data.

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TABLE  2
Key Job Outcomes, Organizational Ethnographies (N = 212)
Variable Coding M SD
Job satisfaction (1) very low, (2) moderately low, (3) average, (4) high, 2.86 1.06
  (5) very high
Commitment (0) no, (1) yes 0.58 0.49
Meaningful work (1) meaningful, (2) somewhat meaningful, (3) fulfilling 1.97 0.78

Job Outcomes
Measures of three key job outcomes—job satisfaction, commitment, and mean-
ingful work—are reported in Table 2. One benefit of coding data from published
ethnographies is that we can return to the original passages for illustrations of
the meanings of the variables. For example, job satisfaction at a low level (score
2—moderately low) is exemplified in the following description of factory work:
Basically he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d settled for. Complaining to fellow
workers was his main way of expressing that dissatisfaction. . . . He had learned
to expect nothing from his job but money. He treated the company the way the
company treated him, coldly and with calculation. (Pfeffer 1979:78–9)

We define commitment as workers’ level of commitment to organizational goals.

An example of employees having no organizational commitment is presented in the
following example from an ethnography about work in automobile factories. One
worker states, “It isn’t so much that you hate the job—you hate General Motors,
hate being there” (Milkman 1997:45).
By contrast, work that is meaningful, even fulfilling, is depicted in the following
account of copy machine service technicians:

Their errand is one of rescue, and this uncertain, perilous world affords the
opportunity for heroism of a sort. In this context, the “technician” is defined as
someone who fixes the world and makes it right, and the technicians cultivate
the image of white-hatted wrench-slingers. They value their job both for the
challenge of the work and for the identity as hero. Competent practice at the job
creates the identity, and their stories celebrate both the practice and the hero-
ism. (Orr 1996:160–1)

Meaningful work is a measure of how workers perceive their work. In general, this
variable addresses whether or not the work constitutes a valuable contribution in
the worker’s eyes. Since “Meaningful Work” is based on workers’ perceptions, it
is not inferred from how meaningful the coders might find the work; it is instead
based upon what the author reports about workers’ perceptions and experiences
of the work.

Interpersonal Conditions
Our measures of interpersonal, occupational, and organizational conditions
and moderators are described in Table 3. We include two interpersonal conditions:

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TABLE  3
Interpersonal, Occupational, and Organizational Conditions and Moderators,
Organizational Ethnographies (N = 212)
Variable Coding M SD
Interpersonal Conditions
Supervisory conflict Factor scale of 5 indicatorsa 0.00 1.00
Customer interaction Percent of work time spent with customers 24.12 32.51
Occupational Conditions
Lack of autonomy (1) very high autonomy, (2) high, (3) average, 3.05 1.25
(4) little, (5) none
Lack of job-specific skills (1) extensive insider skills, (2) more than 2.17 0.93
average, (3) average, (4) very little, (5) none
Organizational Conditions
Organizational chaos Factor scale of 2 indicatorsa 0.00 1.00
Unstable product market (0) stable, (1) unstable 0.38 0.49
Moderators
Coworker support Factor scale of 4 indicatorsa 0.00 1.00
Employee involvement (1) never asked, (2) informal, (3) formal 1.94 0.86
a
 See Appendix.

supervisory conflict and customer interaction. Supervisory conflict is a multifaceted

phenomenon and is thus measured as a scale based on five components: conten-
tious interactions with supervisors, contentious interactions with management, su-
pervisory abuse, leadership, and communication (with the latter two components
reverse coded). These five indicators are analyzed using principal components
factor analysis, and the results are used to construct a scale of supervisory conflict
(see Appendix). An example of contention with management (score 4—frequent)
is illustrated in the following episode from a study of a knitting mill:

There was no suggestion from the women in John’s department that manage-
ment had either the right or the ability to manage. Instead, the women were
constantly critical of management. They asked, “When are they going to man-
age? After all, it’s what they get paid for and it’s a darn sight more than we get.”
(Westwood 1982:25–6)

In addition to contentious interaction with supervisors and management, super-

visory abuse is unfortunately commonplace in many workplaces. Abusive manage-
ment behavior (Level 4—frequent) is illustrated in a report from an ethnography
of paralegals:

Whether a lawyer is angry about X, Y, or Z, the paralegal is liable to suffer

the consequences—even when it was not her (sic.) fault. For example, Greg, a
paralegal, had brought a client into his office to wait until the attorney, Chris (a
woman), got off the phone. . . . After the client left, Chris yelled at the paralegal
for leaving the client by himself. Greg explained what had happened. Rather
than apologizing for her outburst, the attorney angrily replied: “Well, I just had
to yell at someone, and you were there.” (Pierce 1995:91)

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Good communication (Level 3—good) is illustrated in an ethnography of an elec-

tronic components manufacturing company with substantial elements of worker
ownership through an employee stock ownership plan:
Employees have almost unrestricted access to financial information about the
company. . . . At HelpCo, information about investments, revenues, and ex-
penditures are all available to all employees. The walls of the company lunch
rooms are covered with charts and graphs showing monthly sales and profits
for different products. (Tucker 1999:29)

An example of good leadership in a less formal setting is provided by an ethnogra-

phy of a plant producing home tableware. The ethnographer describes the man-
ager’s activities in the following terms:
In the plant [the manager] discussed production problems and passed the time
of day with groups of workers. He appeared alert and attentive and obviously
enjoyed conversation with everyone, especially the older heads of factory fami-
lies. (Savage and Lombard 1986:59)

Customer interaction is measured by the percent of work time an employee

spends with customers. For example, based on the following quote and related
passages, customer interaction was coded at 95 percent for the aides in a nursing
home ethnography:
One aide summed it up: “In the morning, I get patients up and dressed and
make beds and give one or two baths or showers. Then lunch. I feed people in
the dayroom and bring trays to those eating in their rooms and help them. After
lunch, I change patients and put back to bed those who want to go and do my
paper work.” (Foner 1994:32)

Occupational Conditions
We include two measures of occupational conditions in our model: lack of au-
tonomy and lack of job-specific skills. Lack of autonomy is a commonly studied oc-
cupational variable (Fenwick and Tausig 1994). The following passage describing
the work of nursing aides in a retirement home illustrates work with little to no
autonomy: “Aides cannot take a patient off the floor or alter care plans, even add-
ing chair padding, without a nurse’s okay” (Foner 1994:81).
Lack of job-specific skills is our final occupational factor and ranges from situations
with extensive insider skills to situations with no insider skills. An example of a
job with few skills based on insider knowledge is provided by an ethnography of
fast food work:
One worker, a young mother of two who had dropped out of high school after
grade ten, remarked in disgust her second week of work, “A moron could learn
this job, it’s so easy.” . . . Almost any crew member, in the space of a few hours,
can learn any job that needs to be done. (Reiter 1992:150)

Organizational Conditions
We include two organizational conditions in the model. The first is organiza-
tional chaos. We measure organizational chaos as a scale based on two indicators:

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 467

organization of production and repair (see Appendix). The demoralizing effects of

a poor organization of production are illustrated in an ethnography of domestic
work: “Cheap equipment forces the worker to compensate for its ineffectiveness
with extra physical effort. . . . I was asked to scour kitchen counter tops, stove, and
sink using only bar soap and cotton rags” (Rollins 1985:70).
Repair levels below the norm (score 1—poor) are illustrated in the following
example from an automobile parts manufacturer: “The lack of spare parts coupled
with the general disrepair of the machines . . . made it impossible to keep the
[machines] running for any length of time. As two weeks turned into a month this
situation became maddening” (Juravich 1985:37).
Our second organizational condition is an unstable product market, which creates
an unstable, insecure employment situation for workers. An example is provided
by the following description of seasonal variability in employment at an electron-
ics factory: “In August 1992, at a time of slack orders and downsizing, Liton had
about 700 workers, to be increased to more than 1,000 in the summer months of
1993 when the volume of orders picked up” (Lee 1998:70).

Moderators
We argue that informal coworker relations and formal employee involvement
are two main moderators that will moderate the effects of interpersonal, occupa-
tional, and organizational conditions on job outcomes. In the classic understand-
ing, these factors act to reduce the impact of toxic conditions on job outcomes. This
is due partly to their direct roles in reducing stress and partly to the increased
self-efficacy that they provide for workers. We also argue, however, that they may
act as “exacerbating factors”—that is, they moderate the relationship between
conditions and job outcomes, but instead of reducing the impact of conditions on
job outcomes, they increase the impact. An example of such an effect is destructive
“grousing” in which coworkers aggravate negative attitudes by discussing and
highlighting irritating aspects of the job with each other without generating any
positive actions or alternatives.
Informal coworker relations measures the existence of a social network as well as
aspects of its content and function (House 1987). Informal coworker relations are
thus measured by a scale of four factors, including cohesion, mutual defense, social
activities, and friendships at work (see Appendix). Cohesion (score 5—pervasive)
is exemplified in the following quotation about work on a construction site:
On most construction projects, a community social structure is usually built
along with the physical structure. . . . Social interaction takes place at work,
during lunch time, and after work at the local bar or bowling alley. All of this
activity builds group feeling, a sense of “us” and “they.” (Applebaum 1981:96)

An example of mutual defense (score 3—strong) in the face of attacks on the

work group is provided by an ethnography of work in a Japanese transplant auto-
mobile factory ion the American Midwest:
That afternoon, the group leader approached me and asked me why I was not
willing to work [late]. I explained that I had not expected to work and had

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 468 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

a medical appointment. Shortly after that, our team leader informed us that,
“according to human resources, if [anyone] left at 3:00 P.M., it would be an
unexcused absence.” The company was instituting this policy on the spot. This
caused a third woman on our team also to refuse the overtime. On principle,
she decided to leave with us to protest the company’s method of assigning un-
excused absences. (Graham 1995:124)

Employee involvement is defined as formal mechanisms of involvement devel-

oped by the organization and may include such things as team meetings and for-
mal peer training. Active participation in employee involvement can provide so-
cial support in the workplace. An example of employee participation is provided
by an example of an ethnography of an abortion clinic: “The Center loosely incor-
porated unitary democratic methods. For example, at the health workers’ monthly
meetings I observed, the supervisors who ran the meetings often urged health
workers to raise their concerns” (Simonds 1996:143). In contrast, an ethnography
of the work of nursing home aides evidences few if any formal opportunities for
participation or involvement:
Aides operate in an environment in which the focus and sympathy of the ad-
ministration, government regulators, and the public at large are with the prob-
lems of frail elderly residents, not the workers. Administrators and professional
staff make a point of knowing who residents are and going out of their way
to greet them by name. By contrast, they usually ignore most nursing aides as
they walk through the halls and rarely say hello. (Foner 1994:44)

RESULTS
Regressions of job satisfaction, commitment, and meaning on interpersonal, oc-
cupational, and organizational conditions are presented in Table 4. Model 1 is the
baseline model, while Model 2 includes all significant interactions with the mod-
erating variables. The explained variance is highly significant for Model 1 for all
three job outcomes, indicating that the model fits the data reasonably well.
Each of the three working conditions domains has effects on each job outcome.
Supervisory conflict shows expected negative effects on all three job outcomes.
Somewhat surprisingly customer interaction increases commitment and meaning,
suggesting that the pleasures of human interaction can outweigh negative aspects
of potential employee-customer tensions. Taken together, the effects of interper-
sonal conditions on job outcomes illustrate that interpersonal conditions have
very real consequences for workers (cf., Leiter and Maslach 1988).
Occupational conditions also have significant effects on job outcomes. As ex-
pected, lack of autonomy and lack of skills impact all three job outcomes nega-
tively. Organizational conditions also have significant effects on all three job out-
comes, with organizational chaos having the strongest negative impact.
In summary, toxic interpersonal, occupational, and organizational conditions all
have important negative effects on job outcomes in partial support of Hypothesis
1, which predicted the importance of each of the three types of conditions. Con-
trary to Hypothesis 1, organizational conditions do not have the strongest overall

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 469

TABLE  4
Regression of Job Outcomes on Interpersonal, Occupational, and Organizational
Conditions, and Moderators, Organizational Ethnographies (N = 212)
Job Satisfaction Commitment Meaningful Work
Explanatory Variables (1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (2)
Interpersonal Conditions
Supervisory conflict –.28* .04 –.23** –.25** –.13† –.14***
Customer interactiona .01 .01 .21** .23* .14*** .14***
Occupational Conditions
Lack of autonomy –.39* –.37* –.23** –.24** .51* –.51*
Lack of job-specific skills –.19** –.21** –.13 –.63* –.23* –.23*
Organizational Conditions
Organizational chaos –.13† –.14† –.15† –.14† –.03 –.33***
Unstable product market –.04 –.03 .07 .09 .02 .02
Moderators
Coworker support .11† .11† .11 –.00 .08 .07
Employee involvement –.07 –.05 .09 –.46c –.06 –.06
Interactions with Moderators
Coworker support
  with supervisory conflict –.13†
  with organizational chaos .12† .34***
Employee involvement
  with supervisory conflict –.35***
  with lack of skills .67**
R 2
.50* .52* .36* .42* .54* .56*
Change in R2 .02*** .06** .02
Note: The table reports standardized regression coefficients.
a
 Coefficients multiplied by 10 for purposes of display.
*p ≥ .001; **p ≥ .01; ***p ≥ .05; †p ≥ .10 (two-tailed t tests).

effects, with organizational chaos but not unstable product markets having sig-
nificant effects and interpersonal and occupational conditions having somewhat
stronger overall impacts.
The roles of the potential moderating variables are also evaluated in Model 1
of Table 4. Informal coworker relations significantly increase job satisfaction. This
supports the image of positive coworker relations providing important and enjoy-
able social networks for employees (Hurlbert 1991; Lin, Ye, and Ensel 1999; Mueller
et al. 1994). However, coworker relations have no direct effect on commitment, and
employee involvement does not have a direct impact on job satisfaction, commit-
ment, or meaning in work. Thus, social relations on the job appear to have only a
modest direct influence on job outcomes. However, research interest in the effects
of social relations in determining job outcomes also rests on their hypothesized role
as moderating factors, which we turn to now.

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 470 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

Reimmersion in the Narratives

The moderating effects of coworker relations and employee involvement on toxic
working conditions are evaluated in Model 2 of Table 4. This model repeats the
regression of job satisfaction, commitment, and meaning on working conditions
and adds all significant interactions with the moderating variables—coworker
relations and employee involvement—in conditioning these effects. Moderations
are found for three of the six working conditions evaluated.2 This pattern pro-
vides support for Hypothesis 2, which predicts a significant role for moderating
variables in determining job outcomes. The interactions observed also support the
idea that these moderators can both buffer and inflame the impact of working
conditions on job outcomes.
The mechanisms behind these interactions are not clearly revealed by simply
statistically identifying them. Often researchers are reduced to offering the most
credible post hoc explanation possible and suggesting more definitive identifica-
tion of mechanisms as a project for future research. In the current situation, we
are in the privileged position of being able to “reinterview our respondents”—the
narrative accounts that we content coded—in order to see what light they shed on
these mechanisms.
Employee involvement significantly interacts with a low skill labor force to generate
increased commitment. This interaction is actually well known in the literature—
the greatest positive impact of employee involvement is for low skill workers who
have previously been denied opportunities for participation and the respect that
participation implies (Batt 2004; Vallas 2003). This interpretation is supported by
an ethnography of sanitation workers in a large city in the Eastern United States:
[These] labor-management committees and quality circles . . . were forms of
worker participation designed to ensure the input of operators in the decision-
making process. . . . They helped move labor-management relations to a more
productive, cooperative mode, compared to the traditional confrontational set-
ting. . . . The strongest factor affecting job satisfaction for operators was their
perception that the job offered opportunities to improve their knowledge or
work skills. The operator ladder provided several attributes that made the job
challenging. . . . “Working for PSA is great. It’s the best job I have ever had. This
job has been good for me and my family.” (Ospina 1996:89, 161–5)

The interaction between coworker relations and chaos provides a classic example
of the buffering effect of coworker support on toxic working conditions. Support-
ive coworker relations buffer the negative effects of organizational chaos, reduce
the disaffection of employees from the job, and provide a sense of meaning and
commitment even for these otherwise potentially disaffected workers. An exam-
ple is provided by an ethnography of restaurant work in the American Midwest
where cramped quarters and chaos is pervasive:
The knobs on the stove burners do not turn properly; the only way to light a
burner is to toss a match at it. . . . The stove never lights. You have to light them
by yourself. When you’re busy, every few seconds is valuable. In two seconds
I can be in the cooler and half way out with something. But the burner didn’t
light, so the pan’s not hot, so I can’t cook. (Fine 1996:84)

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 471

In this setting, joking relationships, including horseplay, teasing, and pranks, be-
come an important way of life and allow workers to accentuate social relations to
offset the irritations of chronic chaos: “Much of the horseplay found in restaurant
kitchens is centered on food. . . . At Stan’s cooks played catch with a steak; at the
Blakemore they threw a cauliflower” (Fine 1996:120).
In contrast, the interaction between coworker relations and supervisory conflict
illustrates how a “moderator” may actually act as an exacerbating factor. Cohesive
coworker relations further depress job satisfaction in situations of high supervi-
sory conflict. Returning to the ethnographies suggests that this interaction rests
on the effects of “grousing” in which dissatisfied employees discuss complaints
with one another and in the process actually increase their overall dissatisfaction.
An example is provided by an ethnography of an automobile assembly plant in
the British midlands where chronic conflicts with management produce a culture
of contentiousness. In this setting, which experienced a successful wildcat strike
during the period of ethnographic observation, workers constantly relive battles
with management:
In the early years at Halewood the day to day life of the plant was virtually
one endless battle over control. . . . If the steward wasn’t up to the job he was
replaced. . . . Where a steward stuck with the job, he and the men on his section
were involved in a perpetual battle with foremen and management. . . .
The stewards in the Paint Trim Assembly plant met each other regularly. They
ate their meals together in the works canteen and drank together after meet-
ings. They were friends. Occasionally they arranged social evenings to which
they took their wives. On all these occasions they joked and told stories about
people and events, about the city and the factories. . . . These stories in particu-
lar were always told to newcomers (the same stories were told to me dozens of
times during the months when I cam to know them). (Beynon 1975:74–5, 145)

Similar exacerbating effects are also found for the interaction between super-
visory conflict and employee involvement. That is, the increased knowledge and in-
volvement created by employee involvement actually yields increased dissatis-
faction under conditions of supervisory conflict. This finding may partly reflect
a strengthening of the importance of the work role under employee involvement
programs, which makes the impact of negative conditions on the work role even
more troubling. Further, and similar to supportive coworker relations, employee
involvement programs may also increase opportunities for “grousing,” with po-
tential aggravating effects on the perception of workplace problems.
The following description of assembly-line automotive work in the American
Midwest illustrates how employee involvement can actually erode job satisfaction
among workers already experiencing supervisory conflict. Chronic conflict with
management results in workers treating employee involvement as a charade and
using the cohesion generated by team meetings to underwrite solidarity among
workers against management demands:
The advice to play along is similar to the charade that workers participated in
during the hiring process. Once again, workers complied with company de-
mands only on the surface. They relied on their wits to portray the necessary

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 472 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

qualities that the company was expecting, all the while reassuring other work-
ers that they were not the real “team players” that they appeared to be. (Gra-
ham 1995:57)

DISCUSSION
The observed relationships support prior understandings of the negative impact
of supervisory conflict on job outcomes. The important role of lack of autonomy as
a key toxic working condition is also confirmed. Organizational chaos also appears
to have a far-reaching negative influence on job outcomes. It appears that many
employees are highly stressed by chaos and that the frustrations and uncertainties
of chaos, incompetence, and uncertainty are a key cause of reduced satisfaction,
commitment, and meaning at work.
The models presented here provide support for the buffering effects of known
moderators of toxic conditions. However, we also find at least as much support for
moderators acting as “exacerbating factors.” Coworker relations and employee in-
volvement provide an opportunity for supportive social interactions in the work-
place, but they also intensify the effects of negative conditions on job outcomes in
many situations. The narrative accounts suggest that at least in part the reason is
that social relations on the job intensify the importance of the work role for the em-
ployee and, consequently, the negative effects of assaults on this role. In situations
where workers have limited ability to change the sources of job stress, such as in a
job with supervisory conflict, social interactions may not increase self-efficacy but,
rather, highlight the experience of a lack of self-efficacy in the workplace.
Our findings also suggest the need to expand the study of supportive social
relations in the workplace outside of the informal workgroup to include more in-
stitutionalized venues such as employee involvement programs. In spite of their
formality, such settings appear to have important implications for the effects of
working conditions on job outcomes. The mixed findings for employee involve-
ment are consistent with an important stream of research on employee partici-
pation summarized in the following quote: “I find only occasional evidence of
increased worker integration or incorporation. . . . Indeed, by drawing attention
to the limited authority that workers were actually allowed, team systems tended
to heighten worker suspicion and distrust and to foster patterns of solidarity that
were difficult for managers to control. The most significant feature of the new pro-
duction systems . . . [may be] the tensions and contradictions they introduce into
work organizations” (Vallas 2003:204).

Limitations
The systematic analysis of organizational ethnographies faces certain challenges
and limitations concerning both the nature of the data and the available cases to be
analyzed. Categorization, coding, and quantification result in the loss of some of
the richness of the original observations (Levinson and Malone 1980:9). The data
used are therefore potentially less sensitive and less precise than the data analyzed
in individual case studies. This sacrifice in the depth and validity of indicators

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 473

occurs as part of a trade-off to achieve increased generalizability beyond a single

case or a handful of cases. In the current situation, however, since the narratives
are available for reanalysis, we have had the opportunity to return to these ac-
counts in an attempt to regain, in a targeted fashion, some of the depth of observa-
tion and insight they embody.

CONCLUSIONS
The analysis of data content coded from the population of book-length workplace
ethnographies provides an opportunity to triangulate important prior research
findings. The current analysis confirms the negative consequences of interpersonal
and occupational conditions such as supervisory conflict and lack of autonomy.
The availability of in-depth ethnographic data across a range of organizational
settings also allows the consideration of several new workplace conditions and
the opportunity to generate new insights. The significance of organizational chaos
is particularly noteworthy in this regard. The model of toxic working conditions
and job outcomes that emerges from a systematic consideration of ethnograph-
ic-based data highlights the roles of supervisory conflict, lack of autonomy, and
organizational chaos as key toxic factors. Both informal coworker relations and
more formal social involvement through employee participation programs serve
as important moderating mechanisms to condition the effects of toxic working
environments. We find, however, that they act at least as often as exacerbating fac-
tors as buffering factors.
The ability to provide meaningful interpretations of these moderating and exac-
erbating effects is made possible by reimmersion in the narrative accounts that are
the original source of the data analyzed. In this way, we are able to integrate quali-
tative and quantitative approaches to generate theoretical advances toward un-
derstanding toxic workplace conditions and the buffering of their consequences—
a methodological strategy long called for in organizational analysis but too infre-
quently met. We find that immersion in social relations often operates to exacer-
bate stress through heightening group awareness of grievances and powerlessness
rather than to reduce stress through providing support. The practical implications
are not that one should prefer isolation at work but rather that one should be
aware that social relations can be both functional and dysfunctional—just as in life
outside work.

Acknowledgments:  This material is based on work supported by the National

Science Foundation, Sociology and Innovation and Organizational Change
Programs under Grant 0112434. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

NOTES
1. For more information about the coding process, including the codesheet, protocol, data,
and reliability statistics, please see http://www.sociology.osu.edu/people/rdh/Work-
place-Ethnography-Project.html.

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 474 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES  Volume 53, Number 4, 2010

2. The analysis was also run by industry to test for differences between service and manu-
facturing work. There were no significant changes from the base model for service and
only one change for manufacturing. The interaction between coworker support and
chaos becomes negative (–.26) in manufacturing firms, suggesting that, in the face of
chaos in manufacturing work, coworker relations become negative grousing instead of
support and thus exacerbate the tension undermining commitment.

APPENDIX
Scale Construction, Organizational Ethnographies (N = 212).

Factor
Variables Coding Scores M SD
Supervisory conflict 1st and 2nd eigenvalues = 2.91, .73; 0.00 1.00
alpha = .83
  Contentious interaction (1) never, (2) infrequent, (3) average, .81 3.01 1.06
   with Supervisors (4) frequent, (5) constant
  Contentious interaction (1) never, (2) infrequent, (3) average, .76 2.92 1.05
   with Management (4) frequent, (5) constant
  Supervisory abuse (1) never, (2) rarely, (3) sometimes, .77 2.45 1.15
(4) frequently, (5) constantly
  Leadership (1) exceptional, (2) good, (3) ade- .78 2.95 .99
quate, (4) marginal, (5) catastrophic
  Communication (1) good, (2) average, (3) poor .70 2.13 .79
Organizational chaos 1st and 2nd eigenvalues = 1.54, .46; 0.00 1.00
alpha = .70
  Organization of (1) exceptional, (2) good, (3) ade- .57 2.94 1.01
  production quate, (4) marginal, (5) catastrophic
  Repair (1) good, (2) average, (3) poor .57 1.78 .76
Coworker support 1st and 2nd eigenvalues = 2.02, .87; 0.00 1.00
alpha = .65
  Cohesion (1) absent, (2) infrequent, (3) average, .77 3.63 1.04
(4) widespread, (5) pervasive
  Mutual defense (1) little or none, (2) average, (3) strong .77 2.14 .82
  Social activities (0) no, (1) yes .56 .92 .28
  Friendships at work (0) no, (1) yes .72 .75 .43

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 Toxic Work Environments: What Helps and What Hurts 475

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