Employee Incivility Research Articles

Fly or Fry: Understanding the dynamics of brand hate and consumer resilience in the airline and restaurant industries

AbstractThis study addresses a critical gap in the literature on the consumer–brand relationship by focusing on the under‐investigated concept of attitudinal and behavioural brand hate. This study goes beyond such common determinants as negative experiences and unfair pricing, introducing employee incivility and service quality as overlooked, but significant, antecedents. Employing structural equation modelling, a sample of 593 participants from the airline and restaurant industries was examined. The findings reveal that brand hate significantly impacts brand opposition and emotional forgiveness. Importantly, consumer resilience moderates these relationships, mitigating the negative effects of brand hate. Moreover, the study finds industry‐specific variations in the triggers and outcomes of brand hate, suggesting the need for tailored managerial strategies. The study extends the consumer–brand relationship literature by highlighting new research avenues and making significant contributions. Theoretically, it validates affective event theory and personality characteristics' role in buffering brand hate. In addition, this study carries implications for policymakers and managers to understand the multifaceted nature of brand hate, develop effective strategies to mitigate the negative effects of service failures and build stronger consumer–brand relationships. Furthermore, these insights facilitate the creation of tailored approaches that consider industry‐specific characteristics, thus helping to prevent the harmful impact of brand hate.

Who is to blame for incivility? The influences of family undermining on employee incivility towards customers

Drawing on self-regulation theory, we examined the relationship between family undermining and employee incivility towards customers on a daily basis. We propose that daily family undermining is related not only to daily rumination about family but also to daily anxiety, and in turn, more daily employee incivility towards customers. In addition, we argue that a higher (vs. lower) level of family-supportive supervision at the between-person level weakens the effects of daily family undermining on daily rumination about family and daily anxiety. Multilevel analyses of daily survey data from 247 employees support the hypotheses. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed and future directions for research are suggested.

Customer incivility: cause and effect in the food and beverage industry in Vietnam

PurposeCustomer incivility is a key phenomenon with various harmful consequences for businesses, particularly in the food and beverage industry. This study investigated the antecedents of this issue and explored its outcomes for frontline employees in Vietnam.Design/methodology/approachThis study used quantitative methodology to survey 780 participants who frequently experienced customer incivility in cafés and bubble tea shops. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the data.FindingsThe results revealed three antecedents of customer incivility – employee incivility, selling and customer orientation – as well as outcomes such as revenge motivation, emotional exhaustion, service sabotage and job performance, along with two mediating effects.Practical implicationsManagers can create and enhance additional training classes with varied curricula for different staff groups to foster their perspectives and understand an organization's customer orientation, eliminating vengeance motives, emotional strain, service sabotage and workplace performance.Originality/valueThis study emphasizes the importance of customer incivility and how it can be minimized by examining its causes and consequences in Vietnamese cafés and bubble tea shops.

Stop being mean! Customer incivility influencing employee incivility via employee burnout: a hospitality context

ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of customer incivility on employee burnout and incivility in the restaurant sector. The results showed that supervisory support moderated the relationship between customer incivility and employee burnout but not the relationship between employee burnout and employee incivility. The study also investigated the role of burnout (i.e. emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment) as mediator in the relationship. A sample of 446 Chinese restaurant employees was used, and the results indicated that customer incivility had a significant impact on employee incivility through employee burnout. The study found that supervisory support served to moderate the relationship between customer incivility and employee burnout, but it had no impact on the correlation between employee burnout and incivility. Additionally, it explored the sequential mediating effect of the three aspects of burnout, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment. This study provides insights for restaurant operations to minimize employee incivility, especially for stressful times such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Job insecurity, employee incivility and coaching perception of casino employees: A moderated mediation model

This paper aims to analyze job insecurity (JIS)'s effect on employee incivility by mediating the role of moral disengagement (MD) and the moderating role of coaching behavior in the casino sector. Data was collected from 542 casino employees in Northern Cyprus. The study showed that casino employees’ MD mediated the association between JIS and employee incivility. Additionally, coaching behavior moderated the path of this mediated link. Due to the limited endeavors on the hypothesized relationships, the research contributes to the literature and industry.

개인-동료 간 OCB 프로파일 유사도가 무례경험에 미치는 영향 연구

Purpose - Studies have been continuously carried out by researchers so far to clarify the factors influencing employee's incivility at work. However, the behavior of employees who are the target of incivility not much has been revealed which behavior affects the experience of incivility. Among them, it is interesting that the effect of OCB, a representative of employees' positive behavior in the workplace, on their experienced incivility has not been investigated. Therefore, this study attempted to clarify the relationship between OCB and experienced incivility that previous studies have not yet discovered. Design/methodology/approach - In the process, the concept of profile similarity was introduced and based on this, it was assumed that the OCB profile similarity between individual and colleagues, not the absolute level of OCB, would affect the experienced incivility and demonstrated this. The analysis was conducted by applying the survey data obtained from 205 employees to hierarchical regression analysis. Findings - As a result of the analysis, it was examined that the absolute OCB value used in previous studies did not significantly affect the experienced incivility, but the higher the similarity level, the less experienced incivility. The implications obtained based on this and future research directions are discussed together in the conclusion. Research implications or Originality This study is the first one that considers OCB’s profile similarity as a antecedent of experienced incivility. OCB profile similarity concept was only treated as a theoretical issue even in very early stage of OCB research stream, but this study examines the significant effect of OCB profile similarity. Moreover, behavioral antecedents of experienced incivility has not been identified well, but this study finds out that OCB can be a behavioral antecedent of experienced incivility.

The effects of customer incivility and employee incivility on depersonalization: The mediation effect of forgiveness

This study examined the effect of customer incivility and employee incivility on depersonalization as well as the mediation role of forgiveness in the effects of customer incivility and employee incivility on depersonalization. The study was conducted with 352 employees of five-star hotels in Antalya, Turkey. The results show that customer incivility and employee incivility increase hotel employees’ depersonalization while forgiveness partially mediates the impact of customer incivility and employee incivility on depersonalization. These findings indicate that hotel managers should encourage employees’ tendency to forgive, increase managerial support and training for employees, and learning about different cultures.

Exploring the Moderating Role of Employee Entitlement: Insight into the Social Support Paradox

This study examined the interface of paradoxical responses (i.e., employee entitlement and job satisfaction) to social support in the form of employee orientation in hospitality contexts. A large-scale, multi-source, survey-based field study on restaurant employees and customers was conducted. The findings showed that employees who received support developed a sense of entitlement that ultimately undermined the benefits of job satisfaction on limiting employee incivility toward customers. This understudied entitlement perspective is insightful for justifying the paradoxical negative effect of social support in hospitality service settings. Practical implications for hospitality managers to handle the social support paradox and employee entitlement, as well as study limitations and future research directions, are all discussed.

Conflict-solving as a mediator between customer incivility and service performance

ABSTRACT The customer incivility literature has primarily focused on emotional exhaustion and burnout as emotion-focused mediators that channel the effect of customer incivility. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, the current research proposes a new problem-solving-focused mediator, namely, conflict-solving behavior. The authors test the mediating role of conflict-solving behavior between customer incivility and customer service performance while controlling for emotional exhaustion and employee incivility as parallel mediation mechanisms. The results from three studies provide strong support for a negative relationship between customer incivility and conflict-solving behavior and for conflict-solving behavior as a full mediator between customer incivility and customer service performance. Furthermore, the negative effect of customer incivility on conflict-solving behavior is mitigated when customer service employees are promotion-focused and as investment in customer relationship building increases. The findings extend the scope and generalizability of customer incivility research from the business-to-customer to the business-to-business context. Managerial implications for employee training and hiring as well as the importance of cultivating customer relationships as a buffer to dampen the effect of customer incivility are discussed.

Such a high cost: the positive effect of leader humor on employee incivility via psychological safety

Such a high cost: the positive effect of leader humor on employee incivility via psychological safety

Workplace spirituality and employee incivility: Exploring the role of ethical climate and narcissism

This study aimed to examine how and when the practice of workplace spirituality fosters a civil work atmosphere in the Indian hotel industry. Grounded in social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) and theory of threatened egotism and aggression (Baumeister et al., 1996), ethical climate was proposed to mediate the relationship of workplace spirituality with instigated and experienced incivility, and narcissism was hypothesized to moderate this mediated linkage. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of hotel employees in India using a time-lagged two-study investigation. The findings revealed that workplace spirituality relates negatively with instigated as well as experienced incivility and this relationship is mediated by ethical climate. Nevertheless, the relationship between workplace spirituality and incivility via ethical climate was not the same for all employees. The indirect effect of workplace spirituality on instigated and experienced incivility was stronger for employees with high narcissistic characteristics. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed.

The Dark Side of Humor: The Positive Effect of Leader Humor on Employee Incivility

While much research has focused on the positive effect of leader humor on improving individual and organizational performance, little is known about how leader humor produces negative outcomes, such as employee incivility. Through the multi-time point investigation data analysis, the moderated mediation model proposed in this study has obtained the support of observation data in the Chinese context. Specifically, first, leader humor was positively related to employee incivility. Second, employee psychological safety mediated the relationship between leader humor and employee incivility. Third, employee moral identity moderated the relationship between leader humor and employee psychological safety, as well as moderated the mediating effect of employee psychological safety between leader humor and employee incivility. These findings are conducive to further understanding of the psychological mechanism and boundary condition of employee incivility from the perspective of leader humor, and provide practical guidance for organizations to effectively control employee incivility in the workplace.

Are frontline employees punching bags? The relationship between interpersonal workplace incivility and employee incivility toward customers

This study aims to find the impact caused by influential behaviors such as incivility emanating from three stakeholders of the Frontline employees' role, including customers, coworkers, and supervisors, to frontline employees. This study aims to explore the causal relationship between interpersonal incivility in the workplace, surface acting, emotional exhaustion and employee incivility toward customers, and the moderating effect of role identity in the restaurant industry. This study adopted self-reported questionnaire which has good reliability and validity (five-point Likert scale) by considering common method variance problem prevention at the same time to measure the variables’ levels in incivility, surface action, emotional exhaustion, and role identity. This study fills in the research gap in explaining the interactive mechanisms among frontline employees' incivility towards customers, and the incivility behaviors that frontline employees received from supervisors and coworkers, as well as the theoretical and practical roles that surface acting and emotional exhaustion play during the mechanism, in which the perspectives of revenge psychology and Conservation of Resource Theory were applied and discussed inside this study. Specially, to help develp relevant research, according to the theoretical and practical conclusion of this study, the atuhors developed two new propositions and one conceptual framework according to the hindrance-challenge theory and slow and fast thinking theory.

An institutional perspective on workplace incivility: case studies from academia

PurposeThis research study looks at issues such as why does incivility occur, dynamics responsible for incivility with an emphasis on causes stimulated by the general context and its influence on the behavior of individuals, groups and organizations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides a fresh perspective on workplace incivility by integrating institutional theory with empirical data from two case studies from academic institutions located in different continents to understand incivility in organizations. A comparative case analysis across two different geographical regions is used to validate the argument that institutional antecedents can influence micro-level organizational events such as employee incivility despite variance in geographical locations and cultural dimensions.FindingsThe findings of the study reveal that academic institutions are subject to uncivil behaviors, which could be a direct offshoot of the historical and cultural beliefs of the society. The general context of the studied cases led to workplace incivility mainly in the form of racial prejudices and sectarianism transferred to the organizational day-to-day practice. The paper suggests a pragmatic view for possible interventions to humanize workplaces where it is better not to adopt a “one size fits all” recipe to deal with such a complex phenomenon.Originality/valueThis paper provides a macro-level analysis of workplace incivility by assuming an institutional perspective to explore the relationships if any between incivility experienced by employees within an organization and the wider political and historical structuration of the society.

Employees’ burnout and emotional intelligence as mediator and moderator in the negative spiral of incivility

PurposeThis paper aims to study how the negative spiral of incivility from customers to employees happens by measuring the mediating effect of employees’ burnout. Moreover, it investigates how to mitigate the detrimental influences of customer incivility by assessing the moderating effect of employees’ emotional intelligence.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional questionnaire survey using MTurk was conducted, targeting full-service restaurant employees. Descriptive statistic, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analysis were applied.FindingsThe results presented that there is a direct relationship between customer incivility and employee incivility toward customers and coworkers. Additionally, employees’ burnout significantly mediates the relationship between customer incivility and employee incivility. Moreover, it presented the significant moderating effect of employees’ emotional intelligence on the relationship between customer incivility and employee incivility.Research limitations/implicationsExperiences of customer incivility during a service encounter directly trigger employee incivility. Moreover, customer incivility indirectly leads to employee incivility by increasing employees’ burnout. In addition, employees’ emotional intelligence mitigates a negative spiral of incivility from customers to employees. However, this study has limitations that provide suggestions for future research.Originality/valueThis research shows how customer incivility causes employee incivility in the workplace. It also shows a significant moderating role of employees’ emotional intelligence to mitigate the influence of customer incivility on employee incivility.

The spillover effects of management influence tactics on customer-directed outcomes

Following the development of the service-profit chain (Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994), there has been enthusiasm to empirically investigate inside-organizational activities in the context of marketing. Riding this trend, the present study examines how various management influence tactics focused on employees interact to affect customer-directed noncompliance through the intervening mechanism of employees’ job satisfaction. Based on multi-source survey design, data were collected from 873 restaurant frontline employees and 2,619 customers in China. The results support that job satisfaction fully mediated the associations between job fit (non-coercive tactics) and employee incivility (customer-directed noncompliance), and between employee orientation (soft-coercive tactics) and employee incivility. Moreover, the strength of the job satisfaction-employee incivility linkage varies depending on levels of organizational formalization (hard-coercive tactics). This study is among the first attempts to focus on the spillover effects of manager influence tactics on outside-organization outcomes.

A theoretical model of antecedents of customer-directed incivility

The present research aimed at developing a theoretical model for antecedents of customer-directed incivility. The research was conducted in form of three consecutive studies. In study 1, the data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with 42 supervisors and employees the Social Security Organisation of Iran, and analysed by thematic analysis method. Then, study 2 began to determine the interrelationship between the identified antecedents and to design a theoretical model through gathering and analysing 20 scholar experts' opinions using DEMATEL method. This model demonstrates how experienced customer incivility, witnessed customer incivility, job demands, job satisfaction, organisational justice, work/non-work interference, emotional exhaustion, employee prejudices/biases, personality traits and interpersonal skills of frontline employees as antecedents could directly or indirectly instigate employee incivility toward customer. In study 3, we conducted a quantitative study to examine the proposed model. Finally, after discussing the results, limitations and practical implications, we recommended empirical studies for future research.

A theoretical model of antecedents of customer-directed incivility

The present research aimed at developing a theoretical model for antecedents of customer-directed incivility. The research was conducted in form of three consecutive studies. In study 1, the data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with 42 supervisors and employees the Social Security Organisation of Iran, and analysed by thematic analysis method. Then, study 2 began to determine the interrelationship between the identified antecedents and to design a theoretical model through gathering and analysing 20 scholar experts' opinions using DEMATEL method. This model demonstrates how experienced customer incivility, witnessed customer incivility, job demands, job satisfaction, organisational justice, work/non-work interference, emotional exhaustion, employee prejudices/biases, personality traits and interpersonal skills of frontline employees as antecedents could directly or indirectly instigate employee incivility toward customer. In study 3, we conducted a quantitative study to examine the proposed model. Finally, after discussing the results, limitations and practical implications, we recommended empirical studies for future research.

The Effects of Experienced Customer Incivility on Employees’ Behavior Toward Customers and Coworkers

This study investigates how customer incivility is related to employee incivility toward both customers and coworkers by assessing the effects of emotional job demands and burnout. The target population of this research is frontline employees working in the full-service restaurant segment in the United States. Convenience sampling was used to select participants for an online survey. The results show that employees’ experienced customer incivility is positively associated with both emotional job demands and burnout. In addition, emotional job demands mediate the association between experienced customer incivility and burnout. Moreover, it presents the positive relationships not only between burnout and employee incivility toward customers but also between burnout and employee incivility toward coworkers. This study provides theoretical and practical implications by investigating the detrimental influence of customer incivility as a stressor to trigger emotional job demands and burnout, which can lead to deviant behaviors toward both customers and coworkers.

Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can also hurt me: The relationship between customer verbal aggression and employee incivility.

Customer service employees tend to react negatively to customer incivility by demonstrating incivility in return, thereby likely reducing customer service quality. Research, however, has yet to uncover precisely what customers do that results in employee incivility. Through transcript and computerized text analysis in a multilevel, multisource, mixed-method field study of customer service events (N = 434 events), we found that employee incivility can occur as a function of customer (a) aggressive words, (b) second-person pronoun use (e.g., you, your), (c) interruptions, and (d) positive emotion words. First, the positive association between customer aggressive words and employee incivility was more pronounced when the verbal aggression included second-person pronouns, which we label targeted aggression. Second, we observed a 2-way interaction between targeted aggression and customer interruptions such that employees demonstrated more incivility when targeted customer verbal aggression was accompanied by more (vs. fewer) interruptions. Third, this 2-way interaction predicting employee incivility was attenuated when customers used positive emotion words. Our results support a resource-based explanation, suggesting that customer verbal aggression consumes employee resources potentially leading to self-regulation failure, whereas positive emotion words from customers can help replenish employee resources that support self-regulation. The present study highlights the advantages of examining what occurs within customer-employee interactions to gain insight into employee reactions to customer incivility. (PsycINFO Database Record