Workplace incivility and its socio-demographic determinants in India

Purpose The purpose of this study is to present an empirical account of the prevalence and socio-demographic determinants of workplace incivility (experienced and instigated) in the Indian workplace. Design/methodology/approach The study sample consisted of 1,133 employees working in service organizations mainly banks, hotels, academic institutions and information technology firms. The authors tested the proposed model on the same set of respondents in two different studies. The phenomenon of instigated incivility and its determinants were examined in Study 1, while Study 2 looked at experienced incivility and its antecedents. The data were analyzed using univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical operations in SPSS 24. Findings The results of both studies revealed that employees’ age, gender, educational qualification, position, nature of the organization, type of the organization and duration of working hours significantly predict the onset of workplace incivility. Nevertheless, marital status and tenure failed to predict the manifestation of uncivil behaviors in the organization. Research limitations/implications The scope of this study was restricted to the Indian service sector with a focus on only two types of workplace incivility (instigated and experienced). Practical implications The managers are advised to be mindful of employees’ socio-demographic differences while devising interventions to tackle the issues of uncivil acts at work. Originality/value This study is one of the pioneer attempts to explore the impact of socio-demographic factors on employees’ tendency to instigate and experience incivility at work in India. In doing so, the study enriches the scant literature on workplace incivility by establishing the role of individual differences in determining the occurrence of incivility in the workplace.

How Knowledge-Hiding Behavior Among Manufacturing Professionals Influences Functional Interdependence and Turnover Intention

Objectives: Knowledge hiding is inappropriate behavior of employees at the workplace that makes the entire organization suffer a subtle yet significant loss. Lack of sharing makes the journey of learning an arduous process. This, in turn, gives rise to a series of uncivil behaviors, hence resulting in a decrease of functional interdependence (FI). The cascading result toll is a turnover intention (TI), resting only after turnover—an actual separation from the employer. Statistical analysis of the empirical data collected depicts the intensity of influence of FI and TI as a result of the knowledge-hiding behavior.Methods: Three hundred sixty-three executives employed in three public and two private manufacturing organizations in eastern India were the respondents in our study. To analyze the difference in variables of the study, a t-test was carried out. The statistical findings suggest no significant difference among study variables. This specifies that, despite a considerable difference in levels of management, there was no significant difference in perceiving workplace incivility, knowledge-hiding behavior, FI, and TI items of our instruments.Results: Correlation findings show a negative association between workplace incivility and functional interdependence (r = −0.37 when the value of p is <0.01) and a positive association among workplace incivility and turnover intention (r = 0.32 when the value of p is <0.01). The condensed effect of workplace incivility (β = −0.59 when the value of p is <0.001) along with an important presence of knowledge-hiding behavior (β = −0.68 when the value of p is <0.01) when the dependent variable is FI indicates that knowledge-hiding behavior is mediating a partial association among workplace incivility and FI. Similarly, the effect of workplace incivility (β = 0.43 when the value of p is <0.01) is decreased when the impact of knowledge-hiding behavior (β = 0.66 when the value of p is <0.001) was sizeable with TI being the dependent variable.Conclusion: The effect of knowledge hiding is inversely proportional to FI, whereas sharing has a direct relation with TI. An exhaustive data sample and a rigorous statistical analysis may give a clear picture of the amount of impact of TI and FI due to the lack of knowledge sharing and/or knowledge hiding.

Leader negative mood and employee-instigated incivility: the role of mood contagion

PurposeGiven the harmful effects of workplace incivility and the calls for revealing the antecedents of instigated incivility, this study examines how employee-instigated incivility unfolds as a result of negative mood contagion from leaders to employees.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon affective events theory, the authors hypothesized that leader negative mood is contagious and has an indirect relationship with employee-instigated incivility through employee negative mood. For hypothesis testing, data were collected from 243 leader-employee dyads and tested using bootstrapped mediation analysis.FindingsAs hypothesized, leader negative mood was associated with employee-instigated incivility indirectly through employee negative mood. This finding supports that negative mood of the leader is contagious and might unintendedly trigger employee-instigated incivility toward other at work.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the cross-sectional design of this study, causal inferences could not be drawn. The direction of relationships between the variables is based on the theoretical assumptions, rather than a test of the causal ordering of the variables.Originality/valueThis study advances the limited literature on the antecedents of employee-instigated incivility by demonstrating the impact of negative mood experienced by leaders on uncivil behaviors of employees.

Humanness Is Not Always Positive: Automatic Associations between Incivilities and Human Symbols

Uncivil behavior involves an attack on social norms related to the protection of public property and respect for community life. However, at the same time, the low-frequency and relatively low-intensity damage caused by most of these behaviors could lead to incivilities being considered a typically human action. The purpose of this set of studies is to examine the automatic associations that people establish between humanness and both civic and uncivil behaviors. Across three studies, uncivil behaviors were more strongly associated with human pictures than animal pictures (study 1) and with human-related words than animal-related words (study 2). We replicated study 2 with uncivil behaviors that do not prime graphically human beings (study 3). Overall, our results showed that uncivil behaviors and civic behaviors were clearly associated with human concepts. Our findings have direct implications for the conceptualization of humanness and its denial.

Descriptive and Injunctive Incivility Norms in Political Campaigns: Differences Across Behavior Type, Candidate Gender, and Candidate Party Position

Despite evidence that a majority of people in the United States say that they want more civil politics, candidates still use incivility strategically during campaigns. Distinguishing between descriptive and injunctive norms may help explain this apparent contradiction. This study presents an experiment conducted with participants recruited at 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus rallies that tested whether (a) individuals differ in their descriptive and injunctive normative beliefs about a variety of uncivil behaviors and (b) candidate characteristics such as gender and insider/outsider status in a party influence respondents’ normative beliefs. Findings suggest that, while descriptive and injunctive norms align for some campaign behaviors, they do not for all behaviors, such as sharing false information and using insults. Additionally, men and women candidates, as well as political insider and outsider candidates, are expected to behave differently but are held to the same injunctively normative standard when uncivil behaviors are attributed to them. Future incivility researchers should continue investigating descriptive and injunctive norms to investigate whether voters dismiss descriptively common behaviors during campaigns, even if they perceive those behaviors as inappropriate and uncivil.

Stigma Consciousness and Work Outcomes of Senior Woman Administrators: The Role of Workplace Incivility

Stigmas and incivility are common across all facets of sport, yet empirical examination is lacking, especially when it comes to women in leadership positions. In intercollegiate athletics, the senior woman administrator position is designated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association as the highest ranking woman serving the athletic department, so this study examined the extent to which stigma consciousness and workplace incivility impact the work outcomes of 234 senior woman administrators. Structural equation modeling and open-ended responses demonstrated that stigma consciousness is associated with higher perceived incivility, which is associated with lower job satisfaction and perceived organizational opportunity. Thus, stigma consciousness and workplace incivility not only operate as influential independent factors within the workplace setting, but stigma consciousness also serves as an antecedent to workplace incivility. Managerial strategies empowering professionals may help reduce stigmas, prevent uncivil behaviors in the workplace, and ultimately, improve outcomes.

Thoughts on Incivility: A Preliminary Study to Identify Uncivil Behavior in Indonesian Higher Education

This preliminary study aims to identify an item list of uncivil behaviors in the Indonesian educational environment. The study comprises three phases: first, a panel of experts assessed each item to ensure their content validity for items pool. The second phase used a cross-sectional design and convenience sampling to recruit 524 students and faculty members in seven provinces in Indonesia using an online survey. The third phase involved ten students from the second phase and several faculty representatives were randomly selected to complete the open-ended questionnaire. Principal component analysis (PCA) identified four factors, including disregard for instructors/annoyances, disrespect for others (verbal and non-verbal), misconduct and integrity violation, and use of cell phones. Furthermore, the results indicate that "getting up during a class,leaving and returning,” “arriving late and/or leaving early," “not paying attention in the class,” “texting,” “packing books before the class is dismissed,” “cheating during an exam,” and “sleeping during the class” were the top seven highest recurring behaviors. This study provides tentative support for a preliminary scale in identifying uncivil behavior among college populations in Indonesia.