Does Inclusive Leadership Break the Silence? How Perceived Organisational Support Explains the Relationship between Inclusive Leadership and Workplace Ostracism

Workplace ostracism, an employee's perception of being ignored or excluded by others at work, remains a pervasive and organisationally costly form of mistreatment in Nigerian federal public sector research institutions, where hierarchical structures and weak feedback pathways may be associated with exclusion. This study investigates the relationships among inclusive leadership, perceived organisational support, and workplace ostracism among employees of the National Metallurgical Development Centre (NMDC), Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. Drawing on Inclusive Leadership Theory, Organisational Support Theory, Social Exchange Theory, and Belongingness Theory, the study hypothesises that inclusive leadership is negatively associated with workplace ostracism, positively associated with perceived organisational support, and that perceived organisational support is negatively associated with workplace ostracism. Data were collected from 211 valid respondents across the Centre's seven functional offices using a cross-sectional census survey design, and analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS Version 4 with bootstrapping of 5,000 subsamples. The results show that inclusive leadership is significantly and negatively associated with workplace ostracism, significantly and positively associated with perceived organisational support, and that perceived organisational support is significantly and negatively associated with workplace ostracism. Perceived organisational support also partially mediates the statistical relationship between inclusive leadership and workplace ostracism. The study offers a theoretically integrated account of the statistical pathway linking relational leadership, organisational support perceptions, and workplace ostracism, with implications for leadership development and human resource policy in hierarchical public sector research institutions.