Supervisors’ Role in Mitigating Coworker Incivility: Implications for Workplace Ethics
Lopullinen julkaistu versio - 821.35 KB
Sarfraz, M., Degbey, W.Y., Sufyan, M. , Kundi, Y. M., & Laker, B. (2026). Supervisors’ Role in Mitigating Coworker Incivility: Implications for Workplace Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-026-06346-0
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Pysyvä osoite
Kuvaus
Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory and an appraisal perspective of justice, this study investigates how and when coworker incivility impairs employee psychological well-being. We propose and test a moderated mediation model where perceived job stress mediates the negative effect of coworker incivility on psychological well-being, and this indirect effect is buffered by supervisor interpersonal justice. We tested our model across three studies: a three-wave survey establishing mediation (Study 1; N = 144), a cross-sectional field study of the full moderated mediation model (Study 2; N = 172), and a vignette experiment establishing causality (Study 3; N = 225). Results consistently showed that coworker incivility diminishes psychological well-being by increasing employees’ perceived job stress. Importantly, this indirect effect is attenuated when supervisors demonstrate high levels of interpersonal justice. This study expands the literature on workplace incivility and psychological well-being by empirically demonstrating that employees perceive their jobs as more stressful and experience poorer psychological well-being after interacting with uncivil coworkers; yet supervisors can play a critical role in mitigating these effects. Furthermore, we highlight the ethical implications by emphasizing the contingency effect of supervisors’ interpersonal justice in mitigating incivility and fostering an ethical workplace for all employees.
Emojulkaisu
ISBN
ISSN
1573-0697
0167-4544
0167-4544
Aihealue
Kausijulkaisu
Journal of business ethics
OKM-julkaisutyyppi
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä (vertaisarvioitu)