1. The study of workplace incivility is new to the management and organizational literature. For the first academic treatment of the topic that establishes the construct through multidisciplinary roots, readers might consult “Tit-for-Tat: The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace,” by Andersson and Pearson, Academy of Management Review 1999, July, 452–471.
2. Stepping outside the management literature, we recommend Civility by Stephen L. Carter (Basic Books, 1998, New York, NY) for broad-based treatment of the topic. For those interested in insights about the escalation of aggression, in particular, we suggest Violence, Aggression, and Coercive Action (American Psychological Association, 1994), in which psychologists Tedeschi and Felson provide thoughtful insight regarding the social interactionist perspective.
3. For those interested in the significance of spirals and tipping points, we recommend two treatments: “The Tipping Point,” by Gladwell, The New Yorker (1996) and “Vicious circles in organizations,” by Masuch, Administrative Science Quarterly (1985).