Venting and complaining are common forms of social interaction that have unique interpersonal and intrapersonal functions. Nonetheless, research has made limited headway into understanding venting and complaining among employees within organizations. The present research, therefore, aims to provide three key contributions to existing literature. Firstly, this study potentially challenges the widely held underlying assumption that venting only results in negative consequences.

By viewing the act of complaining through the lens of social exchange theory, I also examine how leader complaining behavior can serve as a social bonding mechanism to enhance the leader-follower relationship, which leads to subsequent prosocial behaviors towards each other. Secondly, I would like to investigate how leaders downward complaining towards their followers can serve as an emotional outlet to promote leader well-being. Lastly, via the norm of reciprocity, I also examine the potential benefits of receiving complaints from one’s leader. Given that the socioemotional benefits generated from complaining, I also test to see if leaders develop a higher level of trust and repay the favour to employees. I will test my research questions through field studies that use the dyadic experience sampling method and experiments with real business simulations.

For this experience sampling field study, I will be using a multi-wave multi-source survey involving leader-follower dyads in various companies. Additionally, to better understand the causal link between complaining and the social bonding process, I will manipulate how individuals complain to others by putting participants into a business simulation using e-confederates.