Customer Incivility and Counterproductive Work Behaviors in Egyptian Healthcare Service: Does Workplace Social Support Buffer?

Abstract

Employees in the healthcare industry encounter a high volume of challenging and stressful events, particularly in light of global health disasters. Customer incivility is frequently occurring in the healthcare industry which severely depletes both psychological and physical resources. Anecdotal evidence suggests that customer incivility leads to counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). Based on the assumptions of the conservation of resources theory and stressor-strain framework, this study demonstrates empirically the impact of customer incivility on the two most common forms of CWB among Egyptian healthcare professionals. Moreover, this work sheds a spotlight on whether workplace social support (WSS) may buffer against the damaging consequences of customer incivility. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data collected from 343 professionals employed in public—government and parastatal—hospitals in Dakahlia Governorate in Egypt. The findings demonstrate that customer incivility increases both interpersonal-targeted and organizational-targeted CWB. However, the role of WSS as a protective mechanism against the adverse consequences of customer incivility remains contingent on the form of CWB.