Workers’ Observation of Uncivil Leadership: Is Tolerance for Workplace Incivility a Gendered Issue?

Abstract

In the context of organizational psychology, this study aimed to examine workers’ gender biases in tolerance when observing leaders’ incivility in the workplace. Based on role congruity theory, this paper proposes analyzing the gender differences in workers’ evaluations of awareness and tolerance of workplace incivility considering the gender of a leader who commits different incivility behaviors against an employee. Moreover, we posit that the type of incivility is also gendered. A sample of 547 workers (male and female) randomly played the roles of observers whereby they rated a scenario describing a leader (male or female) who publicly humiliates and openly doubts an employee’s judgment (overt incivility—agentic), or leaves out and pays little attention (covert incivility—communal) to an employee. The results indicate that male workers tolerated incivility less when role incongruence occurred, such as when male leaders used covert incivility. In contrast, female workers were consistently less tolerant when role congruence occurred with the leader’s gender, such as when male leaders were overtly uncivil. Furthermore, compared to males, female workers were more aware and less tolerant of incivility when a female leader was overtly or covertly uncivil. This paper provides empirical insights and fulfills an identified need to study how gender bias in workplace incivility can be enabled in organizations. The implications for practice can drive the development of prevention strategies within the field of management and human resources.

I am done now! Linking workplace incivility to job search behaviour and employee silence

“…This has resulted in employees being scrutinized by their respective employers, and this may become the source of uncivil behaviour from superiors as well as from co-workers. At the workplace, open humiliation and suspicion towards an employee’s opinion, their judgement or their behaviour may be considered hostile or active uncivil behaviour (Carmona-Cobo et al , 2021).…”