The Role of Co-Workers’ Solidarity as an Antecedent of Incivility and Deviant Behavior in Organizations

Abstract

Drawing on the social exchange theory this study assesses the relationship between co-workers' solidarity as an antecedent of incivility and deviant behavior. More specifically we hypothesize that reduced co-workers' solidarity will increase not only incivility but also deviant behaviors of employees. An additional hypothesis predicts that incivility will enhance coworkers' deviant behavior. Data was collected in 15 organizations of various types using an online questionnaire in 2014. We analyze the data using structural equation modeling. Our findings reveal interrelationships between all three variables. Co-workers' solidarity reduces uncivil and deviant behaviors of employees, whereas incivility increases organizational deviance. Moreover, we found that the explained variance of property deviance by incivility was twice as high compared to production deviance. ARTICLE HISTORY

Organization Sustainability through Human Resource Capital: The Impacts of Supervisor Incivility and Self-Efficacy

“…Understanding the effect of incivility is vital because it operates as both causes and outcomes. Following the trend of research on incivility, scholars have found out that incivility causes more harm than good [47,48]. According to the work of recent researchers Taylor & Kluemper [49] and Sakurai & Je [2], the call to increase the search and ending supervisor's incivility in the workplace is on the increase.…”

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors as Influenced by Supervisor Communication: The Role of Solidarity and Immediate Behaviors

“…Although solidarity has been studied mostly in the interpersonal context, it has also been demonstrated to influence the workplace. Itzkovich and Heilbrunn (2016) found that a lack of solidarity among co-workers was associated with increased workplace incivility, which led to increased deviant behavior toward the organization. MacDonald et al (2014) and Kelly and MacDonald (2016), found that supervisor solidarity led to increased job satisfaction, which ultimately decreased subordinates' sense of burnout.…”

Can Incivility Inhibit Intrapreneurship?

“…Still, despite the profound research centring on incivility, to date little is known concerning its antecedents or outcomes (Schilpzand et al, 2016). Focusing on its outcomes, scholars found that incivility increases deviant behaviours, such as production and property deviance (Itzkovich & Heilbrunn, 2016;Schilpzand et al, 2016), and also absenteeism and a wide range of withdrawal behaviours (Cortina, Magley, Williams & Langhout, 2001;Lim & Cortina, 2005;Martin & Hine, 2005;Sliter, Sliter, Withrow & Jex, 2012), such as turnover intentions (Wilson & Holmvall, 2013) and actual turnover (Porath & Pearson, 2012).…”

“…Third, social exchanges often result from voluntary correspondence, mainly based on the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960). Cropanzano and Mitchel (2005) reviewed diverse exploitations of SET and noted that although the norms of reciprocity are originally used for explaining interpersonal relations between individuals, they can also be utilised to explain social relations between various assemblages of actors including, but not limited to, interactions between employees and organisations (Aryee, Walumbwa, Mondejar & Chu, 2015;Cropanzano & Mitchel, 2005;Itzkovich & Heilbrunn, 2016). This extended approach of SET was later embraced by scholars who investigated the impact of justice perceptions of employees on performance (Aryee et al, 2015) or the impact of support on intentions to leave (Paillé, Grima & Dufour, 2012).…”

“…Individuals reciprocate the organisation in an affirmative manner once they value the exchange (Aryee et al, 2015;Paillé et al, 2012;Schoenherr, Narayanan & Narasimhan, 2015). Similarly, on the grounds of the same but now adverse norm of reciprocity, which was established by Helm, Bonoma and Tedeschi (1972), if one of the parties perceives the reciprocation as deleterious, as in the case of incivility, he/she will reciprocate negatively (Cropanzano & Mitchel, 2005;Itzkovich & Heilbrunn, 2016;Sakurai & Jex, 2012) or to the least, will delay positive initiatives such as but not limited to intrapreneurial behaviours. Centring on intrapreneurship, it is safe to assume that when managers encourage and support employees' innovative efforts, in line with the principles of SET, these endeavours will result in intrapreneurial behaviours initiated by the employees, who aim to positively reciprocate the organisation (Alpkan et al, 2010;Hornsby, Kuratko & Zahra, 2002;Quinn, 1985).…”