Unravelling the antecedents of loneliness in the workplace

By Sarah Wright, Anthony Silard. 2020

151 citations recorded by the source corpus.

‘I am lonely’, ‘I feel lonely’, ‘I am all alone’, ‘I feel lonely at work’. Each statement conjures up different sentiments about loneliness and speaks to the myriad ways one can arrive at the conclusion that they are lonely. This everyday language gives us insight into the mechanics of what loneliness is, what it is not, how it can manifest, and how being lonely is variously perceived in our social environments. Loneliness indicates that our relational life is unsatisfying in some way and implies a yearning for connection. The perception of loneliness is magnified in social contexts such as the workplace, yet because loneliness is often perceived as a shameful topic that is stigmatised, trivialised, or ignored, it is not something we often hear revealed within organisations. How does loneliness develop in the workplace? This article introduces a process model to help us understand how loneliness at work can manifest. Because the literature on workplace loneliness is far from mature, we use multidisciplinary research on various aspects of loneliness, relationships, and organisations to help develop a conceptual model of loneliness in the context of the workplace. Lastly, the article outlines future research directions for the study of workplace loneliness.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/437b8e56edc849e546a03e70db6ea9304742238f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Achieving Effective Remote Working During the COVID‐19 Pandemic: A Work Design Perspective (2020, background): “However, our study shows that online social interactions are not necessarily sufficient for reducing loneliness; “a psychological pain of perceived relational deficiencies in the workplace” (Ozcelik & Barsade, 2018; Wright & Silard, 2020).”