Effect of Organizational Cynicism on Job Performance: Evidence from the Rubber Manufacturing Industry in Sri Lanka

Human capital serves as a beacon of any organization in the 21st century. Organizational cynicism, a pervasive negative attitude towards one's workplace, has been recognized as a significant factor influencing employee behavior and outcomes. In the last two decades, the global market has embraced Sri Lanka’s Rubber industry for its value-added products. Since the Sri Lankan context is obsessed with an empirical in exploring the organizational cynicism in the Rubber manufacturing sector, this research aims to ex-amine the impact of organizational cynicism on the job performance of operational-level employees within the rubber manufacturing industry, focusing on Gampaha District. This study is deductive and quantitative, deploying a sample consisting of 170 operational level employees in the rubber manufacturing industry in the Gampaha District, selected through the stratified sampling technique. Data were collected using an online structured survey questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS (version 21). By deploying Pearson Correlation analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis, four hypotheses of the study were tested and three hypotheses were accepted. The thorough investigation of these hypotheses collectively confirms the detrimental influence of organizational cynicism on the job performance of operational-level employees in Sri Lankan Rubber manufacturing firms. Two facets of cynicism—cognitive, and behavioral—exerts a distinct yet interconnected role in mitigating job performance while the affective component was removed from the model. These revelations advocate for a paradigm shift in organizational strategies, urging managers to not only address the visible symptoms but also delve into the root causes of cynicism.