Unraveling social undermining at the workplace: A systematic review of past achievements and future promises

Abstract In the contemporary landscape of organizational dynamics, it is imperative to understand the nuance of social undermining behaviors in the workplace for effective strategy and decision‐making. In this regard, this study reviews, identifies, and critically evaluates the social undermining literature and offers new avenues for future research. The systematic literature review methodology has been used to select and critically review 65 studies on this topic. The analysis and findings of this review are presented in three sections, as follows, (i) research profiling—to highlight the current status of research on social undermining in management literature, (ii) literature synthesis—to highlight key theories and conceptions of social undermining as well as discuss the antecedents and outcomes of social undermining, and (iii) critical analysis—to highlight knowledge gaps in existing research and set future agenda. This review is the first comprehensive review on social undermining at the workplace and serves as a knowledge base by presenting a comprehensive literature review as well as extending further development of knowledge on this topic. A key contribution of our review is the proposal of a comprehensive framework of literature synthesis to provide a bird's eye view on this scholarly domain. Our study contributes to organizational behavior and strategic management discourse by offering crucial insights on human dynamics that shape organizational strategy, and change.