How to cope with the impact of workplace loneliness on withdrawal behavior: the roles of trait mindfulness and servant leadership

Workplace loneliness has emerged as a prevalent phenomenon, garnering the interest of numerous researchers. Until now, few studies have explored the effects of workplace loneliness on employee withdrawal behavior and factors that might moderate this relationship. In this research, guided by the conservation of resources theory, we posit that emotional exhaustion acts as a mediator linking workplace loneliness to employee withdrawal behavior. Furthermore, we investigate a crucial personal resource and job resource—namely, trait mindfulness and servant leadership, respectively—that could potentially jointly moderate the indirect effect. We collected survey data from 296 pairs of subordinates and their immediate supervisors at three time points. The analysis revealed workplace loneliness affects employee withdrawal behavior via emotional exhaustion, and this process is jointly moderated by trait mindfulness and servant leadership. Specifically, workplace loneliness had a stronger relationship with emotional exhaustion when trait mindfulness and servant leadership were low rather than high, and the indirect effect was stronger and significant under conditions of low trait mindfulness and low servant leadership. However, it became nonsignificant when trait mindfulness or servant leadership was high. This study expands the existing literature on workplace loneliness and offers practical recommendations for organizations to reduce the negative impact of work loneliness.