Abstract
Indirect cronyism a practice of granting non-merit-based favours to a subordinate based on third-party relations is present in the Pakistani organizational context, yet not examined systemically. The favoured subordinate group is referred to as a “triadic in-group” and the unfavoured group as a “triadic out-group”. Thus, a model is tested to find out the downstream impacts of indirect cronyism on the relational energy and quiet quitting of the triadic out-group subordinates, where relational energy differentiation is used as a conditional factor. The current examination through a multi-study approach (scenario experiment n=98, time-lagged field study: n=543) tested the hypothesized associations using t-tests, ANOVA, and PROCESS model 7. The findings were confirmed and the implications for theory and practice were given for minimizing indirect cronyism and quiet quitting via enhancing the relational energy.