They were uncivil, and now I am too: A dual process model exploring relations between customer incivility and instigated incivility

Abstract

AbstractIncivility from customers is a common occurrence for employees working in service‐oriented organizations. Typically, such incivility engenders instigated mistreatment, both towards customers and colleagues. Not much is understood, however, about the mechanisms underlying the relations between customer incivility and instigated incivility. Answering recent calls from incivility scholars, the present research, drawing from Self‐Regulatory Resource Theory and Stressor‐Emotion models of workplace behaviour, explored cognitive (i.e., self‐regulatory resource depletion) and affective (i.e., negative affect) pathways that would explain relations between customer incivility and instigated incivility towards others. Through two multi‐wave studies with different time lags (N1 = 180, weekly lags; N2 = 192, within‐week lags) and different operationalizations of the instigated incivility construct (i.e., broad [unidimensional] and narrow [multidimensional]), we find consistent support for the mediating effects of the affective pathway. While our first study finds that customer incivility is linked to broad instigated incivility through negative affect, our second study finds that customer incivility is linked to, more specifically, gossip, exclusionary behaviour, and hostility through negative affect. In both studies, however, no support was found for the mediating effects of the cognitive pathway. Implications for both research and practice are discussed, and future research directions are offered.