The Relationship between Workplace Incivility and Helping Behavior: Roles of Job Dissatisfaction and Political Skill

Abstract

This article investigates the mediating role of job dissatisfaction in the relationship between employees’ perceptions of workplace incivility and their helping behavior, as well as the buffering role of political skill in this process. Three-wave, time-lagged data collected from employees and their supervisors revealed that employees’ exposure to workplace incivility diminished their helping behavior through their sense of job dissatisfaction. This mediating role of job dissatisfaction was less salient, however, to the extent that employees were equipped with political skill. For organizations, this study accordingly pinpoints a key mechanism—namely, unhappiness about their job situation—through which rude coworker treatment links to lower voluntary workplace behaviors among employees, and it reveals how this mechanism can be better contained in the presence of political skill.

Keywords:

• Workplace incivility
• helping behavior
• job dissatisfaction
• political skill
• conservation of resources theory

Notes

1 In the regression models that included the control variables (Models 1 and 4 in Table 2), only education had a significant relationship with job dissatisfaction. Following Becker’s (2005) recommendations for control variables, we performed a robustness check by comparing the regression results with and without the inclusion of insignificant control variables. The results were completely consistent between the two sets of regression equations.

2 Even if the absolute values of these correlations are not very high, particularly for the correlation between workplace incivility and job dissatisfaction—which might be the case due to the relatively small sample size—they are significant and in the predicted direction.

3 Consistent with our theoretical framework, the tested model includes the moderating effects of political skill on the relationships between workplace incivility and job dissatisfaction and between job dissatisfaction and helping behavior.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dirk De Clercq

Dirk De Clercq is an professor of management in the Goodman School of Business at Brock University, Canada. He is also a research professor in the Small Business Research Centre at Kingston University, UK. His research interests are in entrepreneurship, organizational behavior, and cross-country studies.

Inam Ul Haq

Inam Ul Haq is an associate professor in Lahore Business School at the University of Lahore, Pakistan. His research interests are in employee stress, attitudes and behaviors.

Muhammad Umer Azeem

Muhammad Umer Azeem is an assistant professor in the School of Business and Economics at University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan. His research interests are in organizational behavior and human resource management.

Haq Nawaz Ahmad

Haq Nawaz Ahmad is a lecturer in the Lyallpur Business School at Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan. His research interests are in organizational behavior.