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Purpose Drawing on organizational support theory, this article explores why people feel they do not matter in the workplace and why they are “anti-work.” Design/methodology/approach Text-mining analysis of over 50,000 posts on the r/antiwork subreddit from the social media platform. Reddit was used to uncover relationships among organizational support constructs and anti-mattering sentiment. Findings Anti-mattering comments are present in r/antiwork discussions. Additionally, anti-mattering is significantly related to several important areas of organizational support (e.g. job satisfaction, abusive supervision and employee well-being). Research limitations/implications The data for the study relies on a single subreddit and is constrained to pre-2023, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Additionally, the use of correlational methods prevents conclusions about causal relationships. However, our data and analysis add to understanding anti-work sentiment, anti-mattering and its related constructs. Additionally, our study places the construct of employee anti-mattering within a nomological network of constructs related to organizational support. Practical implications Employers will benefit from this research by gaining an improved understanding of how to reduce employee anti-mattering at work. As anti-mattering sentiment is less common in discussions related to retention and total rewards (vs. abusive supervision, for example), we highlight the importance of addressing anti-mattering via employee interventions at the individual and interpersonal level. Originality/value Using data from social media and a mixed-methods approach, the study answers calls to investigate anti-work sentiment.
Doll et al. (Tue,) studied this question.