Customer incivility and employee work engagement in the hospitality industry: roles of supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence

Abstract

PurposeIn this paper, the impact of customer incivility on work engagement was investigated. The authors also explored whether supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence moderated the impact of customer incivility on work engagement in the Nigerian context.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a time-lagged design to collect data from 258 frontline casual dining restaurant employees across city centers in South-eastern Nigeria who completed Time 1 and Time 2 paper surveys after a one-month interval.FindingsStructural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that while customer incivility was negatively lx`inked to work engagement, supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence were positively linked to work engagement. It was also found that both supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence moderated the negative connection between customer incivility and work engagement.Practical implicationsOne proactive way to forestall the negative impact of customer incivility on work engagement is for managers to devise approaches to decrease the impact of uncivil customer behaviors, such as developing an atmosphere that engenders friendship and speaking positively to subordinates about other employees' work behaviors.Originality/valueAlthough increased scholarly attention has been paid to workplace incivility, customer incivility has not been sufficiently addressed. Earlier research on workplace gossip is influenced by the widely-held belief that gossip is often negative, with far less attention given to the sunny side of gossip. This study is one of the earliest efforts to examine the moderating roles of supervisor positive gossip and workplace friendship prevalence in the negative link between customer incivility and work engagement in the hospitality industry.