In today’s fast-paced and competitive business world, employees are often treated as tools rather than humans. Existing research on objectification within organizations primarily highlights the detrimental implications of perceived organizational objectification. However, a comprehensive understanding of how and when perceived organizational objectification influences employee outcomes remains underdeveloped. Building on system justification theory and self-affirmation theory, we investigate both the maladaptive and adaptive consequences of perceived organizational objectification. Through the self-deprecation pathway, perceived organizational objectification prompts employee self-objectification, leading to increased facades of conformity and reduced work engagement. Conversely, the self-affirmation pathway involves employees engaging in social worth affirmation, thereby enhancing their provision of emotional and informational support to regain their perceived social worth. Moreover, employees’ occupational identity centrality moderates these effects: higher occupational identity centrality reinforces the self-affirmation pathway while mitigating the self-deprecation pathway. Empirical support for the model comes from an experiment with 197 participants (Study 1) and a three-wave, multi-source field study involving 401 teachers and 1,203 students in senior high schools in Mainland China (Study 2).
