The Construal and Consequences of Workplace Incivility in an Honor Culture

Most research on workplace incivility has been conducted in the United States, where cultural logics of dignity prescribe that individuals’ worthiness be determined in reference to self-set standards. This study investigated the construal and consequences of workplace incivility in Turkey, characterized by the contrasting logics of honor collectivism, where an individual’s worth is largely dependent on the esteem of others. In Study 1, using items generated by Turkish employees and multidimensional scaling analysis, we found that being insulted or scolded by the supervisor were perceived as highly honor threatening. Drawing on the recent conceptualization by Cross and her colleagues (2014), we argued that supervisor incivility in the form of an insult is honor threatening because it attacks all three components of honor, namely, self-respect, morality, and social respect. We hypothesized that in the context of hierarchical work relations, employees would resort to both self-defensive and self-promotional behaviors to restore their honor. We further argued that employees for whom honor concerns were more salient would be more likely to be concerned with honor restoration. These hypotheses were tested using an online experimental vignette study and the results showed that Turkish employees who were the target of uncivil (i.e., insulting) task feedback from their supervisors were more likely to retaliate with interpersonal aggression and also to engage in impression management tactics compared to those who received negative or neutral task feedback. Furthermore, they were more likely to do so when primed for honor.