Assessing Workgroup Norms for Civility: The Development of the Civility Norms Questionnaire-Brief

Purpose

This research describes the development and validation of the Civility Norms Questionnaire-Brief (CNQ-B), a 4-item measure designed to assess workgroup climate for civility. Climate for civility is defined as employee perceptions of norms supporting respectful treatment among workgroup members.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Five samples (N?=?2,711) of adult employees, including two from distinct organizations and three from multiple organizations, responded to the CNQ-B and additional measures.

Findings

Evidence for the internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity of the CNQ-B was observed. Additionally, evidence for the criterion-related and incremental validity of the CNQ-B was demonstrated as it was a significant predictor of later-assessed incivility experiences and accounted for significant variability in work attitudes beyond incivility experiences and related measures.

Implications

The CNQ-B is a psychometrically sound instrument despite being composed of only four items. The CNQ-B can be used by researchers and practitioners alike to assess climate for civility, to study climate for civility as a precursor to incivility experiences, and to target workgroups that could benefit from interventions (e.g., training) to enhance civility and reduce incivility.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to conduct a rigorous psychometric assessment of a measure of workgroup climate for civility that is grounded in theory and research on workplace civility and incivility. At four items, the CNQ-B is the shortest assessment tool currently available that is designed for this purpose.     

Testing a Moderated Mediational Model of Workgroup Incivility: The Roles of Organizational Trust and Group Regard

The purpose of this study was to examine organizational trust as a mediator of the relationship between workgroup incivility and work outcomes, and whether workgroup regard moderates this mediation. Participants included 90 (61% female, 79% White) employees of a property‐management company who completed measures of workgroup incivility, group regard, organizational trust, job satisfaction, turnover intention, and job burnout. The results showed that trust mediated the relationship between incivility and all 3 work outcomes, and that regard for the workgroup moderated this process. Employees with lower group regard reported less organizational trust when they experienced incivility within their workgroup; lower trust, in turn, related to lower job satisfaction, especially for those with low group regard. Implications for organizations are discussed.     

Food, mood, and attitude: reducing risk for eating disorders in college women.

Food, Mood, and Attitude (FMA) is a CD-ROM prevention program developed to decrease risk for eating disorders in college women. Female 1st-year students (N = 240) were randomly assigned to the intervention (FMA) or control group. Equal numbers of students at risk and of low risk for developing an eating disorder were assigned to each condition. Participants in the FMA condition improved on all measures relative to controls. Significant 3-way interactions (Time x Condition x Risk Status) were found on measures of internalization of sociocultural attitudes about thinness, shape concerns, and weight concerns, indicating that at-risk participants in the intervention group improved to a greater extent than did low-risk participants. At follow-up, significantly fewer women in the FMA group reported overeating and excessive exercise relative to controls.     

THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION, ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR, AND TURNOVER ON ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS: A UNIT-LEVEL, LONGITUDINAL STUDY

This study addresses the issue of whether positive employee attitudes and behaviors influence business outcomes or whether positive business outcomes influence positive employee attitudes and behaviors. We hypothesize that employee satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and employee turnover influence profitability and customer satisfaction. Data were gathered from the units of a regional restaurant chain via employee surveys, manager surveys, customer surveys, and organizational records. Cross-lagged regression analyses show that employee attitudes and behaviors at Time 1 are related to organizational effectiveness at Time 2. Additional cross-lagged regression analyses show no significant relationship between organizational effectiveness at Time 1 and the employee attitudes and behaviors at Time 2. These results add to the evidence that HR outcomes influence business outcomes, rather than the other way around.     

A comparative study of the behavioral, personality, and fire history characteristics of residential and outpatient adolescents (ages 12-17) with firesetting behaviors

Juvenile firesetting behavior has received relatively little research attention and previous attempts to systematically classify this heterogeneous population of children has been only partially successful. Currently there is no literature available that defines treatment and intervention needs of adolescents in residential treatment with problematic firesetting behavior and whether these needs differ from their outpatient cohorts. Data were gathered from a residential (N=17) and outpatient (N=30) sample detailing firesetting history, behavioral functioning, aggression, and personality traits associated with behavioral difficulties. Study subjects were asked to complete the Youth Self Report (Achenbach), Aggression Questionnaire, and Jesness Inventory and to participate in a structured firesetting history interview by project directors. Parents/guardians were asked to complete a Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach). Adolescents in residential care were significantly more likely to come from a single-parent home, display increased delinquent behaviors, greater depressive symptoms, and report significantly more aggressive thoughts and attitudes than those in outpatient settings. Few differences were found on personality characteristics associated with behavior and conduct problems and few differences were found relative to fire history and firesetting characteristics. Implications for treatment and intervention within a residential setting are discussed as well as factors possibly associated with delaying and/or avoiding initial residential placement.     

Religious Identity,Expression, and Civility in Social Media: Results of Data Mining Latter‐Day Saint Twitter Accounts

This study explores religious self‐identification, religious expression, and civility among projected Latter‐Day Saint Twitter accounts (201,107 accounts and 1,542,229 tweets). Novel methods of data collection and analysis were utilized to test hypotheses related to religious identity and civility against social media data at a large scale. Results indicated that (1) projected LDS Twitter accounts tended to represent authentic (rather than anonymous or pseudonymous) identities; (2) local minority versus majority status did not influence users’ willingness to religiously self‐identify; (3) isolation stigma did not occur when users religiously self‐identified; (4) participants exhibited much lower degrees of incivility than was anticipated from previous studies; and (5) religious self‐identification was connected to improved civility. Results should be of interest to scholars of religion for better understanding participation patterns and religious identity among Latter‐Day Saints and for exploring how these results may transfer to other groups of religious people.     

Rousing the Partisan Combatant: Elite Incivility,Anger, and Antideliberative Attitudes

The claim that elite political incivility can rouse partisan, antideliberative attitudes has many adherents, but the empirical record demonstrating a relationship is surprisingly limited. Yet the extant research suggests that incivility can stimulate aversive feelings, of the sort that discrete and dimensional theories of emotion predict should induce a partisan, antideliberative mode of citizenship among those exposed. Leveraging two online experiments, I address the questions of whether elite incivility provokes anger, rather than enthusiasm and anxiety, and whether the affective reactions induced by incivility yield the changes in deliberative attitudes that theories of emotion predict. I find that elite incivility, when counterattitudinal, rouses anger, which in turn can provoke an active and combative form of partisan citizenship. Despite claims to the contrary, the link between proattitudinal incivility, anger, and antideliberative attitudes is less clear. The results provide insight into the dynamics of discourse in the digital age, when affective polarization is the norm and elites commonly employ uncivil rhetoric.     

White racism,civility, and the obligations of the socially privileged

Civility is a virtue associated with civic life, particularly with politics. This article briefly discusses civility as a moral principle requiring moral actions that give rise to the virtue of civility. Civility requires different practices on the part of persons with differential access to social power. In a white supremacist society, those with white privilege must avoid the temptation to use accusations of incivility to silence black voices. Suggestions are offered about how those with white privilege can fulfill their particular duties of civility in a racist society. Points include listening to hard truths and resisting retreat into white fragility.     

Can Civility Norms Boost Positive Effects of Management Commitment to Safety?

We proposed that civility norms would strengthen relationships between management commitment to safety and workers' safety motivation, safety behaviors, and injuries. Survey data were obtained from working adults in hazardous jobs—those for which physical labor is required and/or a realistic possibility of physical injury is present (N = 290). Results showed that management commitment positively related to workers' safety motivation, safety participation, and safety compliance, and negatively related to minor injuries. Furthermore, management commitment to safety displayed a stronger positive relationship with safety motivation and safety participation, and a stronger negative relationship with minor worker injuries when civility norms were high (versus low). The results confirm existing known relationships between management commitment to safety and worker safety motivation and behavior; furthermore, civility norms facilitate the relationships between management commitment to safety and various outcomes important to worker safety. In order to promote an optimally safe working environment, managers should demonstrate a commitment to worker safety and promote positive norms for interpersonal treatment between workers in their units.     

Testing a measure of instigated workplace incivility

Using a sample of 211 working adults, an instigated workplace incivility measure, distinct from an experienced workplace incivility and general interpersonal deviance measures, was developed. Correlates of instigated workplace incivility were then tested using 162 medical technologists over a 4‐year time frame. Results indicated that Time 1 measures of distributive justice and job satisfaction were negatively related to instigated workplace incivility, while a Time 1 measure of work exhaustion was positively related to such incivility. Furthermore, these three antecedents contributed significantly to explaining instigated workplace incivility, beyond Time 2 measures of these three variables. Future research issues, as well as study limitations, are discussed.     

Increasing help-seeking for eating pathology among collegiate athletes: An examination of a novel,customized intervention

Athletes experience elevated risk for eating pathology (EP), but evidence lower levels of help seeking for EP than the general population. Indeed, athletes experience general (e.g., stigma) and athlete-specific (e.g., “push past physical and mental pain” attitude) barriers to help-seeking. Although general mental health help-seeking interventions have improved help seeking outcomes in athlete samples, no study has developed an intervention to increase EP help-seeking among athletes. The current study examined the effects of a 75-min mental health literacy and stigma reduction intervention among 107 collegiate athletes (54.2% female) randomly assigned to an intervention or control group. All athletes completed measures of help-seeking stigma, attitudes, intentions, and behavior at baseline, post-intervention, and six-week follow-up.At post-intervention, the intervention group demonstrated significant improvements in attitudes and intentions towards seeking help for EP and general mental health, relative to the control group. No significant differences in stigma were found between the groups. At six-week follow-up, the intervention group demonstrated higher rates of help-seeking and/or referring a friend for help than the control group. However, sustained improvements in help-seeking attitudes and intentions were not present in the intervention group compared to the control group, apart from EP help-seeking attitudes. Findings support the effectiveness of a customized intervention to improve EP help-seeking variables among athletes.     

The relationship among the transtheoretical model of behavioral change,psychological distress,and diet attitudes in obesity: Implications for primary care intervention

Obesity is prevalent but undertreated in primary care. Family practice volunteer outpatients (N=454) were administered the Stage of Change for Weight (URICA), the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), and the Diet Readiness Test (DRT) to assess the relationship between these variables and obesity. The body mass index (BMI) was used to classify obesity revealing 197 patients with elevated BMI's. There was no significant difference between the obese and the nonobese on any of the psychological measures. The obese reported significantly more difficulty setting diet goals and less control over their eating, ate more to emotional situations, and exercised less than the nonobese. The obese sample (46.7%) reported being in the Action stage of change for weight management. Implications for intervention in primary care include targeting attitudes (DRT) and dispelling physician attitudes that obese individuals have increased levels of psychological distress. Addressing Stage of Change for weight management can facilitate tailoring the appropriate intervention when used in concert with the DRT variables.     

Experiencing Incivility in Organizations: The Buffering Effects of Emotional and Organizational Support1

Research shows that being a target of organizational incivility is associated with negative outcomes, including declines in job satisfaction, physical health, and psychological well‐being. Two studies (90 property management company employees; 210 undergraduate students) were conducted to examine whether 2 types of social support—emotional and organizational—act as buffers of the relationship between incivility and outcomes in workplace and academic contexts. Two types of incivility were also examined: general workplace incivility and gendered incivility. Consistent with the hypotheses, the results of both studies indicated that employees and students who experienced higher levels of incivility reported better outcomes when they felt organizationally and emotionally supported. Implications for organizations are discussed.     

Responses to formal performance appraisal feedback: the role of negative affectivity

This study examined the effects of performance appraisal feedback on job and organizational attitudes of tellers (N = 329) in a large international bank. Negative affectivity moderated the link between favorable appraisal feedback and job attitudes. Among the higher rated performers, attitudes were improved 1 month after being notified of favorable appraisal results (Time 2). Improved attitudes persisted 6 months after the performance appraisal (Time 3) among tellers with low negative affectivity but not among those with high negative affectivity. Among the lower rated performers, mean levels of attitudes did not change significantly during the study.     

Effects of group prenatal care on psychosocial risk in pregnancy: results from a randomised controlled trial

Few interventions have succeeded in reducing psychosocial risk among pregnant women. The objective of this study was to determine whether an integrated group prenatal care intervention already shown to improve perinatal and sexual risk outcomes can also improve psychosocial outcomes compared to standard individual care. This randomised controlled trial included pregnant women ages 14-25 from two public hospitals (N = 1047) who were randomly assigned to standard individual care, group prenatal care or integrated group prenatal care intervention (CenteringPregnancy Plus, CP+). Timing and content of visits followed obstetrical guidelines, from 18-week gestation through birth. Each 2-h group prenatal care session included physical assessment, education/skills building and support via facilitated discussion. Using intention-to-treat models, there were no significant differences in psychosocial function; yet, women in the top tertile of psychosocial stress at study entry did benefit from integrated group care. High-stress women randomly assigned to CP+ reported significantly increased self-esteem, decreased stress and social conflict in the third trimester of pregnancy; social conflict and depression were significantly lower 1-year postpartum (all p-values < 0.02). CP+ improved psychosocial outcomes for high-stress women. This 'bundled' intervention has promise for improving psychosocial outcomes, especially for young pregnant women who are traditionally more vulnerable and underserved.     

The relationships between self-leadership and enhanced psychological, health, and work outcomes.

Two cross-sectional studies were conducted to examine the correlations between the concept of self-leadership (as described within the framework of the internal family systems model) and enhanced psychological, health, and work outcomes. In Study 1, self-leadership was significantly related to higher psychological functioning (e.g., effective coping style, greater optimism and hardiness, and less ineffectiveness and interpersonal distrust) and better health status (e.g., greater perceived wellness, less perceived stress, and fewer symptoms of illness) in a sample of university students (N = 270). In Study 2, in which a sample of corporate employees (N = 160) was examined, self-leadership was significantly related to greater perceptions of work satisfaction, enhanced communication, quality management, effective work relationships, and in terms of health outcomes, greater perceived wellness and less work stress. Implications of the relationships between self-leadership and psychological, health, and work outcomes are discussed.     

Partially testing a process model for understanding victim responses to an anticipated worksite closure

This study partially tested a recent process model for understanding victim responses to worksite/function closure (W/FC) proposed by Blau [Blau, G. (2006). A process model for understanding victim responses to worksite/function closure. Human Resource Management Review, 16, 12-28], in a pharmaceutical manufacturing site. Central to the model are the Kubler-Ross [Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York: Macmillan] grieving stages, which have not been formally measured and applied to downsizing research. Following Blau (2006), individual grieving stages were successfully measured and clustered into more general grieving categories, i.e., negative (denial, anger, bargaining depression) and positive (exploration, acceptance). Across four waves of data 53 respondents constituted the complete data sample. The Time 1 personal factors had minimal impact on any type of response. However, Time 1 situational factors did have an impact, paced by higher perceived contract violation leading to greater strain, work incivility, organizational deviance, and intent to sue employer, and lower transactional obligations and employer endorsement. Earlier Time 2 grieving stages were used as individual antecedents in regression analyses to explain Time 3 (N = 77) victim responses (general strain, work incivility, interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, transactional obligations, relational obligations) and also Time 4 (N = 53) prior to closure responses (intent to sue employer, employer endorsement). Within negative grieving, results indicated that greater anger was the most influential grieving stage, since it led to greater strain, work incivility, organizational deviance, and intent to sue, as well as lower transactional obligations and lower endorsement. Within positive grieving acceptance was the most influential, since it led to lower strain, lower work incivility, lower organizational deviance, and lower intent to sue. Study limitations and future research issues are discussed.     

Partially testing a process model for understanding victim responses to an anticipated worksite closure

This study partially tested a recent process model for understanding victim responses to worksite/function closure (W/FC) proposed by Blau [Blau, G. (2006). A process model for understanding victim responses to worksite/function closure. Human Resource Management Review, 16, 12–28], in a pharmaceutical manufacturing site. Central to the model are the Kubler-Ross [Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York: Macmillan] grieving stages, which have not been formally measured and applied to downsizing research. Following Blau (2006), individual grieving stages were successfully measured and clustered into more general grieving categories, i.e., negative (denial, anger, bargaining depression) and positive (exploration, acceptance). Across four waves of data 53 respondents constituted the complete data sample. The Time 1 personal factors had minimal impact on any type of response. However, Time 1 situational factors did have an impact, paced by higher perceived contract violation leading to greater strain, work incivility, organizational deviance, and intent to sue employer, and lower transactional obligations and employer endorsement. Earlier Time 2 grieving stages were used as individual antecedents in regression analyses to explain Time 3 (N = 77) victim responses (general strain, work incivility, interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, transactional obligations, relational obligations) and also Time 4 (N = 53) prior to closure responses (intent to sue employer, employer endorsement). Within negative grieving, results indicated that greater anger was the most influential grieving stage, since it led to greater strain, work incivility, organizational deviance, and intent to sue, as well as lower transactional obligations and lower endorsement. Within positive grieving acceptance was the most influential, since it led to lower strain, lower work incivility, lower organizational deviance, and lower intent to sue. Study limitations and future research issues are discussed.