Predicting incivility behaviours in the public sector: What role does organisational context play?

Workplace incivility may seem minor compared to bullying or harassment, but its cumulative impact is profound, eroding employee well‐being, team dynamics, and organisational productivity. Incivility reflects low‐level behaviours and actions (e.g. being rude), which are still detrimental because they contravene workplace norms around manners and respect and can be cumulative. Unlike bullying and abusive supervision, incivility is likely to be ignored because it is seen as inconsequential. Despite this, incivility has strong evidence of having detrimental consequences. A major gap in the literature is around why employees might experience incivility. Further, unlike other destructive social behaviours, incivility has a personal focus, with incivility likely to be experienced from supervisors and peers, but also to be personally instigated. The present study explores organisational‐based self‐esteem to determine whether personal disposition protects public sector employees from incivility experienced and instigated. Further, high‐performance work systems and perceived organisational support are included as moderators (including together) to better understand the role of organisational context in shaping incivility. Using a sample of New Zealand and Australian public sector employees ( n  = 356), we find strong support for our hypotheses, although interaction effects typically show that only one form of organisational context is most beneficial. We discuss the implications for the sector.

Points for practitioners

Public sector employees receive incivility from supervisors and peers at low levels and engage in such behaviours even less.