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.     

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.     

Confucian ritual and modern civility

The Confucian notion of civility has for thousands of years guided all aspects of socio-ethical life in East Asia. Confucians express their central concern for civility in their notion of li, which is commonly translated ‘ritual’ and refers to the conventions and courtesies through which we submit to the socio-ethical order, as we do, for example, in performing sacrifices, weddings, and funerals, and various daily acts of deference. Since the rise of China and other East Asian countries as economic powers, it has been suggested that we have in East Asia a ‘Confucian’ ritual-based culture that is opposed to the law-based culture of the West, a culture of rites opposed to a culture of rights, and that this ritual-based culture can be carried into modernity as another way to secure social harmony. I argue that the values central to Confucian ritual – deference, repayment, and harmony – are incompatible with the freedom enacted in modern civility. It is unlikely, therefore, that Confucian ritual can be carried into modernity and, as some suggest, remedy the fragmentation, and indeed lack of civility, characteristic of modern societies.     

Intolerable Cruelty: A Multilevel Examination of the Impact of Toxic Leadership on U.S. Military Units and Service Members

We examined the effects of toxic leadership on unit and employee outcomes. Based on Bandura’s social learning theory (1977), we predicted that toxic leadership would have a direct impact on unit civility and that unit civility would mediate the relationship between toxic leadership and job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We also predicted that within-unit variability in perceptions of toxic leadership, or toxic leadership congruence, would moderate these effects such that the relationship between toxic leadership and unit and employee outcomes would be stronger when unit members had similar perceptions of their leader’s engagement in toxic behavior. Results indicate that toxic leadership behavior is negatively related to unit civility and that unit civility mediates the relationship between toxic leadership and job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Contrary to expectations, toxic leadership congruence did not moderate any of the effects of toxic leadership behavior. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

工作场所文明行为：从内隐的自我提升到外显的组织优化

工作场所文明行为是一种在组织文化下, 基于社会和组织角色义务的, 传达礼貌和尊重的主动性行为, 是一种向内要求自我控制, 向外主张尊重传达的行为, 它对于个体自身性格的塑造、组织中人际关系的改善以及文明氛围的培养都具有积极意义。在员工-员工、领导-下属、员工-顾客等关系中, 工作场所文明行为发挥着增进同事情谊、促进合作、增强领导力、建立信任、提升绩效等作用。未来的研究应该进一步厘清工作场所文明行为与不文明行为的关系, 运用动态视角研究它们发生、发展和被感知的机制, 以及这两种行为能否相互转化等问题。     

论公民美德

In accordance with the basic characteristics of civic virtues'political and public nature,this essay holds that civic virtues such as sense of justice,civility,tolerance,patriotism and public participation are essential to a modern democratic society. Sense of justice is the border of citizens'free movement; civility reflects citizens'attitudes,moderation and elegance are used to deal with strangers in public life; tolerance is a way of existence that citizens have in the face of the diversity resulted from...     

The impact of civility interventions on employee social behavior, distress, and attitudes

Although incivility has been identified as an important issue in workplaces, little research has focused on reducing incivility and improving employee outcomes. Health care workers (N = 1,173, Time 1; N = 907, Time 2) working in 41 units completed a survey of social relationships, burnout, turnover intention, attitudes, and management trust before and after a 6-month intervention, CREW (Civility, Respect, and Engagement at Work). Most measures significantly improved for the 8 intervention units, and these improvements were significantly greater than changes in the 33 contrast units. Specifically, significant interactions indicating greater improvements in the intervention groups than in the contrast groups were found for coworker civility, supervisor incivility, respect, cynicism, job satisfaction, management trust, and absences. Improvements in civility mediated improvements in attitudes. The results suggest that this employee-based civility intervention can improve collegiality and enhance health care provider outcomes.     

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.     

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.     

The hard way

In order to model civility, progressive Christians must go against the grain and take “the hard way.”     

Language, Love, and Healing: A Psychoanalyst's Perspective

This lecture addresses the task of psychotherapy as enabling both patient and therapist to feel personally alive, sensibly responsible and to be able to experience compassion and civility. Freud's notion of the end of analysis issuing in a capacity for common unhappiness is examined. The metaphorical nature of psychotherapy is the frame for understanding these concepts.He is associate editor of     

Confucianism, Democracy, and the Virtue of Deference

Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary democratic societies and the citizens who constitute them.     

So you think you are an ally? Effects of (in)congruence between men's self-perceptions and women's perceptions of men's values and allyship on women's inclusion and vitality

As public consciousness of sexism is increasing in the workplace (e.g., #MeToo movement), labelling oneself as an ally (e.g., UN HeforShe campaign) is becoming more socially desirable for men. However, do women agree with such men in their assessments of being allies? Importantly, how does women's agreement (or not) with men's self-assessments of allyship affect women's inclusion-relevant outcomes? Using a multi-informant design and data from 101 men–women colleague pairs, this study considered men's self-perceptions and women's other-reports of men's key allyship-relevant characteristics—justice, moral courage, civility and allyship. Polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed differential impacts of (in)congruence between men's and women's perceptions on women's sense of inclusion and vitality. Simply, when women perceived men as higher (or the same) in justice, moral courage and civility than men reported themselves, it positively predicted women's outcomes. This suggests that humble self-presentation by men on characteristics that are parallel to allyship (but not allyship) may be ideal. Yet, both under- and overestimation by men on allyship itself predicted poorer outcomes for women, suggesting that the ideal is for men to have an accurate assessment of their own strengths and weaknesses as an ally.     

CHRISTIAN HUMILITY, COURTLY CIVILITY, AND THE CODE OF THE STREETS

Within both contemporary inner‐city street life and early modern courtly civility, persons acquire value through being acknowledged by others. Though dependent on others for a sense of self‐worth constructed by external tokens of respect, they are unable to experience dependency as gift. Humility thus appears as an admission of lack of worth, rather than as a confession of the dependent character of one's worth. What might contemporary Christians retrieve from the Augustinian critique of an ethic of glory in attempting to diagnose and respond to contemporary social dislocations, and how might churches contribute productively to disrupting the zero‐sum competition for respect?     

Achieving Subjective Well-Being Around the World: The Moderating Influence of Gender,Age and National Goals for Socializing Children

We propose that one’s subjective well-being (SWB) arises from the satisfaction of one’s basic needs, but that the importance of attaining specific needs will vary according to one’s gender, age, and national culture. We argue that the role of one’s national-cultural background in that process can best be unpackaged in terms of the emphasis of a nation’s citizens on the goals for socializing children, namely, self-directedness versus other-directedness and civility versus practicality. Accordingly, we analyzed the responses of 65,025 persons across 50 nations to questions on the World Values Survey about their perceived state of health, financial satisfaction, trust of in-group members, and sense of personal control over events. Using HLM analysis, we showed that all four factors were significant predictors of SWB pan-nationally, but that the linkages of financial satisfaction and trust of in-group members to SWB were moderated by a nation’s self-directedness and civility; those of financial satisfaction and health were moderated by age. These results indicate that the socialization emphases characterizing one’s national culture operate to make some of the key contributors to one’s SWB more or less predictive. Cross-national studies are thereby vindicated in their capacity to reveal nation-specific formulas for psychological processes leading to SWB.     

Reproduction,Ethics, and the Law: Feminist Perspectives (Book)

It is often claimed that if technology becomes too intrusive it can be reigned in by better technologies and laws that restrict access. This article argues through a series of propositions and observations why these standard solutions will invariably fall short, and why civility--and the placed communities out of which civility arises--is our best hope against technological assaults on privacy. The article ends with a brief discussion of what sorts of personal and professional commitments a civil culture entails.     

The Varieties of Retributive Experience

Retribution is often dismissed as augmenting the initial harm done, rather than ameliorating it. This criticism rests on a crude view of retribution. In our actual practice in informal situations and in the workings of the reactive (properly called 'retributive') sentiments, retribution is true to the gravity of wrongdoing, but does aim to ameliorate it. Through wrong-doing, offenders become alienated from the moral community: their actions place their commitment to its core values in doubt. We recognize this status in blaming, a withdrawal of civility and solidarity which symbolizes the moral distance wrongdoers have put between them and us. Atonement is the means by which they make themselves 'at one' again with the community. Retribution is properly understood as a cycle which recognizes disruption and alienation, but aims at reconciliation.     

Are Faculty Strikes Unethical?

It has been argued that strikes are morally objectionable in the university context. They injure third parties – the students – and for this reason ought to be rejected. More generally, the strike weapon has led to a reduction of the power of Boards of Governors to adjust universities to changing times. And furthermore, the use of the strike weapon and the ensuing conflicts can injure the collegial form of governance that is essential to higher education. It is here argued that these arguments are hardly conclusive, and that there are virtues to having the strike as a means to resolve disputes. But keeping things on track requires both parties to adhere to the moral and social virtue of civility.     

The Diversity–Segregation Conundrum

There is a long literature extolling the virtues of diversity for both the civility and economic performance of nations and cities. On the most basic level, diversity helps nations and cities attract the wide range of creative talent that drives innovation and economic growth. Yet similarly, there is a large amount of literature on the sorting and segregation of different types of people into distinct communities. This in turn undermines the very mixing of people and groups required for economic prosperity to flourish. This essay looks at the conundrum between diversity and segregation. It argues that both are increasingly salient, interdependent, and interconnected features of large, advanced cities or metropolitan areas. This diversity–segregation conundrum is increasingly a core feature of our social and economic landscape. It reviews several recent studies that highlight this problem, as well as some of my own very recent empirical findings on the issue.