Reclaiming civil discourse in the workplace

Blue-Collar Discourses of Workplace Dignity: Using Outgroup Comparisons to Construct Positive Identities

“…While New-man (1999) points out that workers at the "bottom of the pyramid" in the United States' highly stratified occupational structure often bear the brunt of disrespectful interaction (e.g., fast-food workers facing insults, verbal ridicule, and harassment), blue-collar workers deal with a kind of disrespect that is far more subtle than bad manners. While the disrespect may not come in the form of verbal shout-outs, the snubbing received from higher-status members of society cuts deep, as ignoring and exclusion also are forms of incivility (Sypher, 2004).…”

“…Dignity is a central thread that runs implicitly throughout several prominent lines of current organizational communication scholarship: civility (Sypher, 2004), employee emotional abuse (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006), and sexual harassment (Keyton, Ferguson, & Rhodes, 2001), to name only a few. At its most basic denotative level, dignity refers to inherent worth and value and/or being deserving of respect.…”

Friends and Enemies in Organizations

“…Workplace incivility is noted for both its deceptive banality, given its seemingly innocuous, low-level nature (Sypher, 2004), and its prevalence (Buhler, 2003;Pearson & Porath, 2004). For example, in Cortina et al's (2001) research on 1,180 public sector employees, 71% of the respondents reported experiencing incidents of incivility during the last five years.…”

“…Incivility, sometimes defined operationally as one of its defining attrib-170 Friends and Enemies in Organizations utes, rudeness (Johnson & Indvik, 2001a, 2001bPorath & Erez, 2007), damages persons and organizations through direct and indirect means, creating a toxic work climate (Kimura, 2004) and affecting productivity through distractions that take the focus of attention away from work Pearson, Andersson & Porath, 2000;Sutton, 2007). Incivility gathers broad interest, given its connection to its opposing term, civility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999;Sypher, 2004), the domain of manners, constructive dialogue in the public domain (Arnett, 2001), and issues connected to the functioning of diverse communities in a world that has lost a sense of shared common good or purpose (e.g., Arnett, 2001;Arnett & Arneson, 1999;Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler & Tipton, 1985;Carter, 1998;MacIntyre, 1981;Putnam, 2000).…”

“…Current research on workplace incivility is exploring correlates such as status and gender (e.g., Porath, Overbeck & Pearson, 2008) and the role of mediating variables such as negative affectivity (Penney & Spector, 2005) on outcomes associated with workplace incivility. Although emerging from the management literature in its initial development and elaboration, the nature of incivility as an interactive public interpersonal communication behaviour has been addressed insightfully by communication scholars (e.g., Alberts, Lutgen-Sandvik & Tracy, 2005;Darr, 2005;Heinemann, 1996;Sypher, 2004;Tracy & Tracy, 1998) and scholars within in a number of other fields, including health care (Hutton, 2006) and public administration (Vickers, 2006). The communication field is a natural home for research on incivility and its potential remedy, professional civility (Arnett, 2006;Arnett & Fritz, 2001), and can contribute to further understanding of this multidisciplinary concept and effective means of addressing it.…”