Who strikes back? A daily investigation of when and why incivility begets incivility.

Abstract

Incivility at work-low intensity deviant behaviors with an ambiguous intent to harm-has been on the rise, yielding negative consequences for employees' well-being and companies' bottom-lines. Although examinations of incivility have gained momentum in organizational research, theory and empirical tests involving dynamic, within-person processes associated with this negative interpersonal behavior are limited. Drawing from ego depletion theory, we test how experiencing incivility precipitates instigating incivility toward others at work via reduced self-control. Using an experience sampling design across 2 work weeks, we found that experiencing incivility earlier in the day reduced one's levels of self-control (captured via a performance-based measure of self-control), which in turn resulted in increased instigated incivility later in the day. Moreover, organizational politics-a stable, environmental factor-strengthened the relation between experienced incivility and reduced self-control, whereas construal level-a stable, personal factor-weakened the relation between reduced self-control and instigated incivility. Combined, our results yield multiple theoretical, empirical, and practical implications for the study of incivility at work. (PsycINFO Database Record

The indirect relations of workplace incivility with emotional exhaustion and supportive behaviors via self‐blame: The moderating roles of observed incivility and trait emotional control

“…These results provide support for the allegation that self‐blame can potentially allow targets to perceive self‐responsibility for improving their predicament (Janoff‐Bulman, ), and when coupled with high emotional control can galvanize employees into reacting in a prosocial manner toward their coworkers. Importantly, our findings extend prior research that has generally portrayed targets of workplace incivility as passive recipients of mistreatment who eventually succumb to emotional distress (Schilpzand, Leavitt, & Lim, ) or engage in withdrawal behavior or hostile responses such as retaliating or behaving in an uncivil manner to innocent others (Foulk et al, ; Gallus et al, ; Rosen et al, ).…”

“…Despite its low intensity, workplace incivility has high incidence in the workplace, with as much as 71% of employees reporting to have experienced uncivil behaviors at work within a 5‐year period (Cortina, Magley, Williams, & Langhout, ). Research commonly associated the experience of workplace incivility with both psychological and behavioral detriments for the targets, such as the experience of greater anxiety and depression (Lim, Cortina, & Magley, ), and the exhibition of similar ill‐mannered behaviors (Foulk, Woolum, & Erez, ; Gallus, Bunk, Matthews, Barnes‐Farrell, & Magley, ; Rosen, Koopman, Gabriel, & Johnson, ) or withdrawal behaviors (Schilpzand, Leavitt, & Lim, ; Sliter, Sliter, & Jex, ). These findings reinforced incivility as a highly unfavorable relational phenomenon in the workplace.…”

Putting time in perspective: How and why construal level buffers the relationship between wait time and aggressive tendencies

“…Importantly, we also contribute to the small but growing body of research that has identified maladaptive outcomes for high CL. Although most studies have found that fostering a high CL results in better outcomes like lower incivility (Rosen et al, ), higher organizational learning (Reyt & Wiesenfeld, ), and better joint negotiation outcomes (Henderson & Trope, ), this study shows that in the context of waiting, a high CL may result in more aggressive tendencies.…”

Daily mistrust: A resource perspective and its implications for work and home

“…The parametric bootstrap uses parameter estimates and standard errors from the analyses to estimate a sampling distribution for the indirect effects and create 95% bias‐corrected confidence intervals (e.g., Selig & Preacher, ). This approach has been used to estimate multilevel mediation in several recently published manuscripts (Lanaj et al., ; Rosen, Koopman, Gabriel, & Johnson, ). We allowed the disturbances between our dependent variables to covary (Kline, ); however, their elimination does not change our results.…”