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For many, the sole source for news content is social media, where passionate opinions are posted at an alarming speed. These opinions can cross the line from differing opinions shared in a public forum onto uncivil dialogue and even hate speech. Such online discourse threatens democratic values and creates a hostile environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine such incivility using the case of four congresswomen known as “The Squad”.

The authors conducted a content analysis examining 20,563 replies to tweets sent by the four congresswomen. The social media data analysis and library, Brandwatch, was used to aggregate tweets posted by the four representatives, as well as all the replies posted to these tweets. The replies were coded to understand the types of incivility against each of the four congresswomen, whether the topics of a tweet can predict the types of incivility received in response, and the impact of Trump's tweet against the congresswomen.

The study findings show that the majority of replies contained uncivil language. The most common types of incivility are related to name-calling, stereotypes, threats to individual rights and vulgarity. Tweets about immigration and the Muslim ban, as well as tweets with negative tones received more replies. Following Donald Trump's Twitter attack on the representatives, replies to the congresswomen's tweets almost doubled. Mainly two types of incivility were observed to have increased significantly – the use of stereotypes and threats to individual rights.

The study examines incivility on Twitter against four black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) congresswomen as an exploratory case to observe and understand the growing phenomenon of uncivil language which feeds a polarized society and threatens democratic values. “The Squad” is more than an isosteric case study. It captures key changes in American politics. In the context of democratic discourse, the attack by the former president on these congresswomen and the response on social media address key issues of gender, religion and race in the United States.

The purpose of this study is to present an empirical account of the prevalence and socio-demographic determinants of workplace incivility (experienced and instigated) in the Indian workplace.

The study sample consisted of 1,133 employees working in service organizations mainly banks, hotels, academic institutions and information technology firms. The authors tested the proposed model on the same set of respondents in two different studies. The phenomenon of instigated incivility and its determinants were examined in Study 1, while Study 2 looked at experienced incivility and its antecedents. The data were analyzed using univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical operations in SPSS 24.

The results of both studies revealed that employees’ age, gender, educational qualification, position, nature of the organization, type of the organization and duration of working hours significantly predict the onset of workplace incivility. Nevertheless, marital status and tenure failed to predict the manifestation of uncivil behaviors in the organization.

The scope of this study was restricted to the Indian service sector with a focus on only two types of workplace incivility (instigated and experienced).

The managers are advised to be mindful of employees’ socio-demographic differences while devising interventions to tackle the issues of uncivil acts at work.

This study is one of the pioneer attempts to explore the impact of socio-demographic factors on employees’ tendency to instigate and experience incivility at work in India. In doing so, the study enriches the scant literature on workplace incivility by establishing the role of individual differences in determining the occurrence of incivility in the workplace.

Over the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in incivility within the higher education sector, potentially due to mounting pressure and demands on academics, both collectively and individually. The effects on various aspects of academia, such as knowledge and learning, however, remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this research is to fill the gap by performing a theoretical trend analysis and subsequently empirically investigating the impact of workplace incivility on research scholars’ learning engagement and knowledge sharing intentions, including the mediating role of self-esteem.

This study uses a three-stage methodological process: first, a thorough theoretical (bibliographic) analysis of scientific publications, using Biblioshiny, to identify the trends of workplace incivility; second, an empirical, qualitative exploration of the emergent themes and subthemes based on 102 in-depth interviews with research scholars, using NVivo 12 Plus; and third, quantitative testing, using 154 responses and structural equation modeling.

The authors verify a visible negative association between incivility and learning engagement, incivility and knowledge sharing intentions as well as self-esteem’s mediating effect on this relationship. Also, the thematic analysis revealed three distinct themes: the type of incivility; reasons for such incidences; and the impact of such incidences on research scholars.

The research bears implications both to theory and practice. Regarding the former, the gravity and graveness of incivility versus knowledge and learning, within the academic workplace environment, are not simply highlighted, but analyzed and refined, with explicit findings of both scholarly and practicable worth; that also provide solid foundations and avenues for future research.

Further to its primary findings, the research contributes to extant knowledge by elucidating and explicating the topic, both theoretically and empirically, as well as by presenting implications for theory and practice. Regarding practical implications, this research sheds light on how to develop an appropriate organizational culture that facilitates learning engagement and increases knowledge sharing intentions, by nurturing the identified explicit and underlying motivators of civility.

The domain of digital service not only includes digital service products made available for purchase but also the provision of digital customer service, such as customers seeking support on brands' social media channels. This type of digital customer service introduces new challenges not found in offline service recovery situations. This research highlights one such occurrence by investigating customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions during digital service recovery. In particular, dysfunctional dialog, such as online incivility (e.g. rude and insulting comments), directed at a complainant by a fellow customer is investigated.

Survey data from an online panel are utilized to test the hypothesized relationships between dysfunctional customer behavior (i.e. online incivility), C2C interactional justice, customer perceived service climate and three forms of experiential value using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results show that customer perceptions of the firm's service climate are negatively affected by online incivility but only when such incivility produces C2C injustice. This outcome is notable due to the strong relationship found between customer perceived service climate and the following three forms of online experiential value: sociability, hedonic and pragmatic value. Thus, a weakened service climate subsequently leads to weakened experiential value for complainants.

The theoretical implications of two nascent constructs, C2C interactional justice and customer perceived service climate, are further developed with reference to digital customer service situations. In particular, given that prior research has focused on customer perceptions of service climate in core consumption situations of enjoyable face-to-face service experiences, it has only considered optimal or extremely positive service climate assessments in non-digital contexts. This study expands the understanding of the customer perceived service climate construct by examining the implications of a sub-optimal service climate in a digital customer service situation of an unenjoyable service experience. The limitations include a small sample size, the use of hypothetical scenarios and a failure situation limited to a single industry.

Managers who oversee social media channels or online communities must be prepared to act upon C2C online incivility. Deeming such communications as innocent online chatter not worthy of company intervention is a mistake, as the results of this study show that such inaction may lead to negative customer perceptions of the digital service environment and harm the customer experience.

This work develops a greater understanding of the importance of C2C interactional justice and customer perceived service climate in online customer service situations that prior research has yet to establish. In particular, previous studies have not investigated the negative effects of a situation that produces sub-optimal customer perceptions of a service climate.

Due to volatile changes and crises in the business environment, frontline service employees (FSEs) are faced with increasing work stressors in the new service marketplace. Of these, customer incivility has been found to negatively affect their work outcomes. This study aims to examine the moderating effect of experiencing an imminent environmental crisis (i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic) on the relationship between customer incivility, work engagement and job crafting, using pre- and postpandemic samples.

The authors administered two-wave surveys to 276 FSEs (prepandemic sample) in July and October 2019 and to 301 FSEs (postpandemic sample) in March and April 2020.

Moderation analyses showed that the relationship between customer incivility, work engagement and job crafting varied between FSEs who experienced the pandemic and those who did not; the relationship was stronger for the postpandemic than the prepandemic sample. There was a positive relationship between work engagement and job crafting; it was weaker for the postpandemic sample.

The deleterious effect of customer incivility exacerbated after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, the authors did not explore why the pandemic aggravated the negative effect. The mechanism underlying the moderating effect of the pandemic and the effect of more diverse types of incivility should be explored in future research.

It is critical to provide FSEs with instrumental and emotional support to cope with the crisis brought on by the pandemic. Service organizations must monitor customers’ uncivil behaviors to identify their causes and develop interventions to improve service quality. Furthermore, service organizations are advised to enhance the coping capabilities of FSEs by using diverse interventions, such as emotion regulation training, debriefing sessions, short breaks and job crafting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to reveal the moderating effect of the pandemic on the relationships between customer incivility, work engagement and job crafting, using pre- and postpandemic samples. This study offers necessary insights to improve FSEs’ engagement at work and enhance their job crafting in the new service marketplace.

Focusing on the sociological clarification based on structural pluralism, this study explores the degree to which social media users who comment on the news posts of local newspapers use uncivil remarks and words that reflect their moral foundations.

This computer-assisted data collection produces three types of datasets that include numerous social media comments. To explore the association between moral foundations and incivility, both quadratic association procedure (QAP) and multiple regression QAP (MRQAP) are implemented.

The findings suggest that social media users who comment on the news posts of urban-located newspapers tend to use more uncivil words compared to social media users who comment on the news posts of suburban and rural-based newspapers. Individuals who comment on the news posts of urban-based newspapers tend to show a wider range of moral foundation spectrums than those who comment on the posts of rural and suburban newspapers. Lastly, there are significant associations between moral-vice components and incivility in response to urban- and suburban-located newspapers' social media posts.

The employed bag-of-words may not completely capture incivility given that social media users can use nuanced and metaphoric terms instead of explicitly uncivil terms. Even though this study systematically selected local newspapers' social media accounts, the contextual factors of other newspapers in politically slanted communities could be different.

The findings of this study provide meaningful and practical implications for journalists and news reporters. The inherent rudeness and aggressiveness of social media users can drive them to use uncivil and moral-harm words against a particular person or group.

Under the circumstance that fake news and politically slanted news content are widely distributed in the United States, social media users may easily express negative emotions toward news stories or the journalists who post the stories.

Structural pluralism particularly specializes in explaining why and how the contextual factors of news stories differ depending on community complexity. Building on the reasoning of structural pluralism in the social media context, this study investigates the degree to which social media users who comment on the news posts of local newspapers employ uncivil remarks and moral foundation words.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2020-0522.

This study aims to reveal the association between task conflict and job satisfaction with the mediating role of incivility and the moderating role of self-esteem. In addition, the data collected from the UK and Turkey were analyzed separately, and the aim was to contribute to the literature in this field by analyzing the research model in a cultural context.

This research focuses on the relationship between managers and subordinates in organizations. In this study, a survey method was applied to 708 subordinates, both UK and Turkish citizens, working in nine different industries. The obtained data were first analyzed in combination; then, the data of both countries were analyzed separately, and the effect of cultural differences on the research model was investigated.>

According to the results obtained, the relationship between task conflict and job satisfaction is negative, and subordinates’ perceptions of incivility play a mediating role in this relationship. In addition, subordinates’ self-esteem level has a moderating role in the effect of task conflict on job satisfaction through incivility. However, there is no evidence of an effect of culture on this model.

This study contributes to the literature by presenting new evidence on the antecedents of job satisfaction. In addition, it is one of the pioneering studies that provides evidence of the impact of the perceptions and personal characteristics of disputants in a task conflict on task conflict outcomes. Furthermore, this study contributes to the limited cross-cultural studies in the conflict and job satisfaction literature.

Challenges with acculturation in organizations may make employees an easy target of workplace incivility and awareness of what constitutes uncivil behaviors at work can influence the association between acculturation and incivility. The current study examined the links between acculturation, incivility and tested mentor holding behavior as a moderator.

Survey data including responses to incivility vignettes were collected from 163 full-time first- and second-generation immigrant employees in the southeastern United States. The data were analyzed through moderated hierarchical regression analysis.

The results indicated that those experiencing separation or marginalization in trying to acculturate into the dominant culture reported experiencing uncivil behaviors from supervisors and coworkers. Also, one's awareness of incivility moderated the positive relationship between experience of separation and experiences of incivility, such that this relationship was stronger for those who had higher awareness of what constitutes uncivil behavior. Additionally, the effect of marginalization on reported incivility was dampened with higher levels of mentor holding behavior.

This study’s findings extend the application of the selective incivility theory beyond the minoritized categories of race and gender to the immigrants struggling with acculturation in organizations. Also, our study lends support to widening the theoretical lens for mentoring to include relational systems theory.

Incivility is widespread in the workplace and has been shown to have significant affective and behavioral consequences. However, the authors still have a limited understanding as to whether, how and when discrete incivility events impact team performance. Adopting a resource depletion perspective and focusing on the cognitive implications of such events, the authors introduce a multi-level model linking the adverse effects of such events on team members’ working memory – the “workbench” of the cognitive system where most planning, analyses, and management of goals occur – to team effectiveness. The model which the authors develop proposes that that uncivil interpersonal behavior in general, and rudeness – a central manifestation of incivility – in particular, may place a significant drain on individuals’ working memory capacity, affecting team effectiveness via its effects on individual performance and coordination-related team emergent states and action-phase processes. In the context of this model, the authors offer an overarching framework for making sense of disparate findings regarding how, why and when incivility affects performance outcomes at multiple levels. More specifically, the authors use this framework to: (a) suggest how individual-level cognitive impairment and weakened coordinative team processes may mediate these incivility-based effects, and (b) explain how event, context, and individual difference factors moderators may attenuate or exacerbate these cognition-mediated effects.

This study aims to examine the effects of coworker incivility on employees' behaviors using a moderated mediation model that conceptualizes coworker exchange (CWX) as a mediator and servant leadership as a moderator.

The data were collected using a multi-temporal research design. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 1,272 participants using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), hierarchical regression analysis and moderated path analysis. In addition, supervisor incivility was added as a control variable to partial out the potential influence on employees' behaviors.

The results of CFA ensured that all measures had discriminant and convergent validity. In addition, the results of hierarchical regression analysis and moderated path analysis indicated that CWX mediates the relationship between coworker incivility and employees' behaviors. Furthermore, servant leadership exacerbates the negative relationship between coworker incivility and CWX.

Leaders and practitioners should invest in communication training programs for developing employees' communication skills to avoid incivility. In addition to viewing incivility as inappropriate behavior, leaders and practitioners should understand the meaning beyond those incivilities.

This study utilized incivility spiral theory to examine how coworker incivility affects employees' behaviors. The mediated path analysis found that CWX mediates the relationship between these variables, which has been ignored by previous research. Furthermore, this study introduced servant leadership as a moderator to account for the “when” in incivility spiral theory, i.e. what kind of social context facilitates or inhibits the influence of coworker incivility on CWX.