Abstract

Research to date has largely been unclear about the relationship between supervisor incivility and employee revenge. In the current research, based on the negative norm of reciprocity, we examine the extent to which hostile attribution moderates the relationship between supervisor incivility and employee revenge. Collecting 319 employee's data, we show that supervisor incivility is associated with employee revenge. Moreover, we find that hostile attribution moderates the main effect positively, such that the higher employees with hostile attribution, the stronger the association between supervisor incivility and employee revenge; the lower employees with hostile attribution, the weaker the association between supervisor incivility and employee revenge; Implications for theory and practice are discussed.