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From our childhood days, we are taught by
our parents and elders at home and our
teachers at school, how to behave before others so that we grow up to be regarded
as civilized human beings. How we behave with others especially in public, forms an
important aspect of our lives which not only enhances
our acceptability in the society, but also
determines our success or failure in personal and
professional life. The civil society in which we live operates
on the basis of unwritten social norms and well- codified written or unwritten laws that tends
to differentiate between good and bad conduct, and generally outlines the range of
acceptable behaviors. Similarly, every organization in a
civil society operates on the basis of certain societal
and organizational norms and nationally-recognized employment laws. The employees are expected
to exhibit behavior in accordance with these
societal and organizational norms. This is what is
ideally expected from employees in organizations, but
like society, the reality in organizations is far from
the ideal situation. Though organizations would rarely admit that the workplace norms are
violated, but workplace violations and incivility in
the workplace is a reality that cannot be wished
away. In this article an attempt has been made to
explore the concept of incivility and its implication at
the workplace.
Though the term incivility is generally applied to people's negative behavior in the society,
the same term has recently come to be applied in
the workplace too, to define deviant behaviors that
are in violation of workplace norms. The term `incivility' is derived from the Latin word
`Incivilis' meaning not of a citizen. In the
organizational context, it would mean a behavior that is
not desired of an employee. As compared to many other negative behaviors such as
criminal behaviors, incivility is considered to be of a
lesser intensity. It is characterized as rude and discourteous behavior that tends to
display disregard for others and generally gets
manifested in the workplace through interpersonal behavior.
Employees in every organization in their day-to-day functioning do face instances, directly
or indirectly, that are indicative of uncivil
behavior. Some common examples of such uncivil
behavior could be as simple as someone talking loudly
on the phone about unofficial matters, eavesdropping, keeping mobile phones on
ringing mode during meetings, engaging in idle
gossip, always finding fault with others, and neglecting
to say thank you or please. Neglecting jobs such
as attending personal work during office hours, taking longer breaks than required or
mandated and other such behaviors also amount to
uncivil behavior. When it comes to looking at incivility
in interpersonal relationships, insults are
considered as a common workplace incivility that
generates reactive responses and provokes revenge from
the target(s) of insult. Insults mainly include
offending remarks that are targeted towards hurting
other(s). What can be observed from the above
stated examples of incivility is that a wide range
of behaviors could be termed as uncivil and there is
a possibility of classifying these behaviors in
terms of general incivility and selective incivility.
The former constitutes misbehavior which is
against workplace rules and regulations while the latter
is specific misbehavior directed towards people
from a particular sociocultural background or gender. |
