Antecedents and consequences of employee organizational cynicism: A meta-analysis

•We meta-analytically examine the nomological network of organizational cynicism.•Both employees' dispositions and contextual aspects predict organizational cynicism.•We determine the relative importance of organizational cynicism and trust.•Organizational cynicism relates more positively to attitudes than trust.•Organizational cynicism relates more negatively to performance than trust.

We propose an integrative framework to investigate the extent to which employees' organizational cynicism is predicted by individual differences (positive and negative affect, trait cynicism) and positive (e.g., organizational support) and negative (e.g. psychological contract violation) aspects of the work environment. We also examine the extent to which organizational cynicism predicts employee attitudes and performance. We investigate these relationships based on 9186 individuals across 34 statistically independent samples from 32 primary studies. Using both new meta-analytic effect sizes from the current study and effect sizes from prior meta-analyses, we test whether a negative antecedent, organizational cynicism, has a predictive advantage over a positive one, organizational trust, in predicting employees' attitudes and behaviors. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the nomological network of organizational cynicism and its relationship with organizational trust.