Employee cynicism. Kuo’s (2010) scale was adopted to measure the experiences of
ECN in the workplace. This scale was developed in line with ECN (Cole, Bruch, & Vogel,
2006) and workplace cynicism (Dean et al., 1998). There were total eight items (a ¼ 0.90)
and all items were preceded by a statement: ‘In the place/company I work for ... ’. Itemsincluded (1) some colleagues are suspicious of other people’s opinions and behaviours;
(2) some colleagues only look after their own business and interests; (3) some colleagues
deliberately let you make mistakes without telling you what’s going wrong; (4) some
colleagues look down on others due to their seniority or authority; (5) some colleagues
resent when being oppressed by the organisation; (6) I disdain people when they play
games against my performance; (7) some colleagues deliberately criticise and/or sneer at
others; and (8) some colleagues adopt a muddle-along approach to deal with
unreasonable demands. Responses were recorded using a six-point Likert scale
(1 ¼ extremely disagree, 6 ¼ extremely agree). Higher scores represent more experiences
of ECN in the workplace.