How Rude! Linking supervisor incivility to subordinates’ discretionary work effort

Although past research has looked into myriad consequences of workplace incivility, little attention has been paid to the effects of supervisor incivility (SI) on employees’ sense of vitality and their discretionary work effort (DWE). Moreover, the mechanisms that drive the harmful effects of SI remain largely unknown. The current study seeks to address these gaps in the literature. In particular, this study aims to examine how SI culminates in decreased DWE.

Adopting a cross-sectional survey design, data for this study were gathered from 151 employees of two large companies in the financial services sector of Pakistan. A number of analysis techniques (e.g. confirmatory factor analysis and bootstrapping) were used to analyze the data.

As predicted, SI was found to be negatively associated both with subordinates’ sense of vitality and DWE while vitality was found to be positively associated with DWE. Findings also indicated that one way in which SI negatively affects subordinates’ DWE is by decreasing their sense of vitality.

This study offers several useful implications for management practice in relation to preventing SI and mitigating its effects and bolstering employees’ sense of vitality.

To the best of the knowledge, this study is the first to unpack the relationship dynamics of SI, vitality and DWE, and to introduce a mechanism by which SI translates into reduced DWE.