Mitigating the adverse impact of coworker incivility on organizational deviance: The self-regulatory roles of trait conscientiousness and gender

Abstract

Despite the current knowledge about the influence of peers in the workplace, we still know relatively little about the boundary conditions that may strengthen or weaken the adverse impact of coworker-initiated incivility on targets' behavioral outcomes. Drawing upon self-regulation impairment theory, this study aims to shed light on the impact of coworker incivility on targets' organizational deviance (e.g., working slower and taking longer breaks) and proposes that trait conscientiousness and gender can serve as self-regulatory resources that jointly buffer its adverse impact. Survey data were collected from 401 employees nested in 83 teams in a large public organization in Thailand. The hypotheses were tested using multilevel structural equation modeling. Two-way interaction analyses revealed that the effect of coworker incivility on supervisor-rated organizational deviance was less pronounced among those with high levels of conscientiousness and among female targets. Three-way interaction effects on both self-rated and supervisor-rated organizational deviance were also observed. Specifically, the results showed that targets with high levels of conscientiousness, regardless of gender, showed lower tendencies to engage in organizational deviance. Conversely, among targets with low conscientiousness levels, men were most likely to engage in organizational deviance, while women were also prone to do so, albeit to a lesser extent. The present findings emphasize the importance of considering individual differences in self-regulation when addressing the detrimental effects of incivility.