Introduction

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in understanding incivility in the workplace and its effects on employees’ psychological outcomes and job performance (e.g., Cortina 2008; Sakurai and Jex 2012; Sliter et al. 2012). The concept of workplace incivility refers to “low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others” (Andersson and Pearson 1999, p. 457). Due to its inherent nature of low intensity and ambiguous intent, the negative consequences of workplace incivility are often underestimated compared to bullying or violence which clearly indicates intent to inflict harm on the targets (Tepper 2000). Nonetheless, past research reveals that repeated exposure to and experience of workplace incivility may escalate into more intense conflict and workplace violence (Andersson and Pearson 1999; Felblinger 2008).

Coworker incivility has been found to be a particularly important predictor of job stress (Sakurai and Jex 2012; Spence Laschinger et al. 2010), decreased job performance and well-being, and increased turnover intention (Lim and Cortina 2005; Lim et al. 2008). Since coworker incivility takes place between fellow workers, it tends to have profound negative effects (Felblinger 2008). Therefore, understanding and managing such uncivil behaviors toward coworkers becomes crucial for building and maintaining a healthy workplace and employee well-being.

With a focus on coworker incivility, this study examines how incivility experienced among fellow workers negatively relates to their psychological state and eventually job performance. Despite the growing interest in the phenomenon of workplace incivility, only a few recent studies have examined mediating mechanisms such as negative emotion (Sakurai and Jex 2012), perceptions of injustice (Caza and Cortina 2007), organizational trust (Miner-Rubino and Reed 2010), job satisfaction, and mental health (Lim et al. 2008).We contribute to this line of research by empirically testing a research model, based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004) and Affective Events Theory (AET) (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996), which predicts that coworker incivility may negatively influence job performance through the draining of emotional resources or emotional exhaustion.

We further extend previous findings by theorizing and empirically testing the boundary conditions that may mitigate the negative outcomes of coworker incivility. Although a few studies highlight the circumstances that alleviate the negative impact of coworker incivility (Miner-Rubino and Reed 2010; Penny and Spector 2005; Sakurai and Jex 2012; Taylor and Kluemper 2012), relatively little is known about the buffering effect of personal and job resources. We draw on the JD-R model (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004), which explains the effects of working conditions on employees’ health and job outcomes, and its recent extension involving personal resources (Boudrias et al. 2011; Karatepe and Olugbade 2009). In fact, there is a growing interest in the notion of personal resources including self-efficacy, optimism, and self-esteem (Fernet et al. 2012; Karatepe and Olugbade 2009; Xanthopoulou et al. 2007). There is evidence that personal resources equip individuals with the willpower and positive perspectives to overcome hardships and barriers (Luthans and Youssef 2007). We propose that self-efficacy as a personal resource is likely to alleviate the level of emotional exhaustion in the context of coworker incivility.

In addition, we further suggest the importance of job resources in buffering the negative outcomes of coworker incivility. Job resources such as autonomy and fair treatment foster positive thoughts and feelings, which leads to the experience of well-being in the workplace (Demerouti and Bakker 2011). We focus on compassion experienced in the workplace as a key job resource which involves sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress and suffering, and caring for those others (Kanov et al. 2004). A body of research demonstrates that compassionate acts promote psychological well-being and commitment to the organization (Dutton et al. 2002; Lilius et al. 2008). We suggest that compassion at work can help reduce the level of emotional exhaustion experienced from coworker incivility.

This study aims to better understand the psychological mechanism involved in workplace incivility by extending the findings of previous research. First, we suggest emotional exhaustion as a key psychological mechanism underlying the relationship between coworker incivility and job performance. We show that uncivil behaviors, despite their low intensity and ambiguous intent, can reduce job performance through heightened emotional stress and tension. Second, researchers have paid little attention to the role that personal and job resources play in mitigating the negative effects of workplace incivility. We fill this gap by examining the moderating effect of self-efficacy and experienced compassion at work on the relationship between coworker incivility and job performance. In doing so, we address the call for research into ways to help employees cope with the detrimental effects of coworker incivility (Cortina 2008; Sakurai and Jex 2012). Finally, this study aims to deepen our understanding of workplace incivility using the JD-R approach. Coworker incivility is clearly an interpersonal stressor that most likely demands and depletes resources and energy on the job. Only recently, however, has workplace incivility research taken the JD-R perspective in explaining the customer and employee incivility relationship (e.g., van Jaarsveld et al. 2010). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use the JD-R perspective to theorize and empirically test ways to buffer the negative effects of workplace incivility. This study sheds light on how the coworker incivility dynamic plays out through emotional exhaustion and through personal and job resources as buffers against its negative effects.

Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

The notion of workplace incivility is largely drawn from the research into counterproductive workplace behavior which includes a wide range of voluntary behaviors that harm the interests of an organization and its members (Spector and Fox 2002), including mistreatment, aggression, bullying, harassment, deviance, and antisocial behaviors (Jackson et al. 2002). Workplace incivility is a relatively less direct and less severe form, but it is more pervasive than bullying or social undermining (Sliter et al. 2012).

According to Andersson and Pearson (1999), workplace incivility can be differentiated from other counterproductive workplace behaviors by its low intensity. It includes relatively less intense interpersonal mistreatment that implies disrespectfulness and disregard for others’ feelings. Ignoring or excluding fellow workers, speaking to coworkers in a rude and condescending manner, or spreading rumors about coworkers are examples of workplace incivility (Lim and Cortina 2005; Pearson et al. 2001).

Another key aspect of workplace incivility pertains to its ambiguous intent. Uncivil behaviors may arise from motivation to harm the target or simply due to the instigator’s insensitivity or oversight without clear intent to harm the victim. Hence, it is much more difficult to identify workplace incivility and the instigators responsible for the situation (Vickers 2006). The subtlety and attributional uncertainty inherent in workplace incivility is likely to increase a victim’s level of stress because the victim tends to agonize over the interpretation of the uncivil incident while contemplating an appropriate response to the event (Cortina 2008; Lim and Cortina 2005).

Workplace incivility is described as an escalating exchange of behaviors between colleagues which most likely leads to more intense behaviors such as bullying, violence, deviance, or antisocial behavior (Andersson and Pearson 1999; Glomb and Liao 2003). It is notable that while most examples of counterproductive workplace behaviors approach the process from the instigators’ perspective (Bowling and Beehr 2006; Fox and Spector 2005), research findings of workplace incivility mainly report the negative job-related psychological and somatic outcomes from the victims’ viewpoint (Cortina et al. 2001). For example, an experience of workplace incivility has been associated with decreased work effort and physical health, low job satisfaction and performance, decreased flexibility, creativity and citizenship behaviors, and increased turnover intention (Pearson et al. 2000; Porath and Erez 2007; Reio and Ghosh 2009).

While workplace incivility can occur during interactions between any of the stakeholders in the workplace including supervisors, subordinates, and customers, we focus on coworker incivility in particular because workplace incivility occurs most often between coworkers (e.g., Smith et al. 2010). It is a significantly damaging phenomenon because the negative effects of coworker incivility range from experiencing tension and stress to being unable to regulate emotion (Spence Laschinger et al. 2010), thus having a profound effect on employee cognition, emotion, and behavior.

The Relationship Between Coworker Incivility and Job Performance via Emotional Exhaustion

A growing interest in the workplace incivility literature pertains to uncovering the psychological mechanisms that explain how and why coworker incivility result in unfavorable outcomes (Lim and Cortina 2005; Miner-Rubino and Reed 2010; Sakurai and Jex 2012). We draw on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004) and Affective Events Theory (AET) (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996) to suggest how coworker incivility can negatively influence job performance through emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is a “state caused by psychological and emotional demands made on people” (Bacharach et al. 1991, p. 44) due to the high demands of time and energy and elevated stress levels on the job (Boles et al. 1997). Emotionally exhausted individuals experience depletion of physical and psychological resources.

The JD-R model posits that excessive job demands such as interpersonal conflict play an important role in the creation and elimination of stress, tension, and burnout (Bakker and Demerouti 2007; Schaufeli and Bakker 2004). Ladebo and Awotunde (2007) specifically showed how job demands drained employees’ emotional resources and increased emotional exhaustion, which led to low job performance. We suggest that coworker incivility is a critical source of job strain or demand that drains energy, which likely results in emotional exhaustion. Previous findings have shown the link between coworker incivility and occupational stress, psychological strain, and depersonalization (Laschinger et al. 2009; Sliter et al. 2012), thus corroborating our proposition. Relatedly, Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll 2002) proposes that people strive to obtain, retain, and protect valued resources and that having insufficient resources to meet job or social-interactional demands heightens the level of stress which often causes feelings of burnout and emotional exhaustion. In addition to the emotional consequences of coworker incivility, a target may incur an additional cognitive burden as he/she makes an effort to interpret the subtle and ambiguous intent of the incident (i.e., Andersson and Pearson 1999). As a result, employees experiencing socio-emotional stressors such as the uncivil acts of their fellow workers may expend considerable emotional and cognitive resources in response, only to be left with insufficient energy and resources to fulfill their job requirements.

AET provides another useful framework (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996). The theory postulates that negative workplace events such as interpersonal incivility are expected to trigger negative emotions of unhappiness, anger, sadness, or disappointment (Domagalski and Steelman 2005; Pearson et al. 2001). Compared to other types of affective responses such as mood or feelings, negative emotions are short-lived but more intense and therefore tend to interrupt the ongoing work process (Zajonc 1998). Also, negative emotions are associated with an enhanced propensity to disengage from job duties (Schat and Kelloway 2000) because they tend to consume emotional and cognitive resources that could otherwise be directed at the job (Weiss and Cropanzano 1996). Past research has indeed reported predominantly negative outcomes for emotional exhaustion. In order to prevent additional resource loss (Shirom 2003), emotionally exhausted employees often exhibit decreased organizational commitment, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors (Cropanzano et al. 2003). Hence, we hypothesize as follows:

Hypothesis 1

Emotional exhaustion will mediate the relationship between the experience of coworker incivility and job performance, such that the experienced coworker incivility will be positively related to emotional exhaustion, which in turn will be negatively related to job performance.

The Moderating Effect of Self-Efficacy and Compassion at Work

Mounting evidence reveals the negative consequences of coworker incivility directly related to job performance and targets’ well-being (Cortina et al. 2001; Pearson and Porath 2009). Accordingly, a growing research interest focuses on finding ways to alleviate the negative impact of interpersonal stressors in the workplace (Miner-Rubino and Reed 2010; Sakurai and Jex 2012; Taylor and Kluemper 2012). A recent development in the JD-R model suggests the importance of personal resources in coping with a draining work environment (Boudrias et al. 2011; Karatepe and Olugbade 2009). Personal resources refer to the psychological capacities which enable individuals to be flexible and adaptable to resource-draining circumstances (Hobfoll 2002), in this case an uncivil work environment. Past research suggests that the extent to which job demands result in emotional exhaustion depends on the store of personal resources (Van der Doef and Maes 1999).

As a core component of personal resources, we focus on individuals’ job-related self-efficacy, that is, the beliefs in one’s competence and ability to do the job (e.g., Bandura 1997). Feelings of efficacy have been associated with self-directed motivation, energy, and positive expectations of success based on the belief in one’s competence and abilities (Avey et al. 2010). Employees equipped with job-related self-efficacy are likely to have sufficient motivational and psychological capabilities to withstand unfriendly work situations that otherwise drain emotional resources and energy (e.g., Stajkovic and Luthans 1998) by viewing stressors as less threatening (Schreurs et al. 2010). Such positive perspectives and motivation may enable employees to view coworker incivility as less threatening, and may leave them feeling less emotionally exhausted. Hence, we hypothesize as follows:

Hypothesis 2

Employee self-efficacy belief will moderate the relationship between the experience of coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion, such that the positive relationship between the experienced coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion will be weaker for employees with a high level of self-efficacy belief.

A second moderator believed to help reduce the level of strain experienced from interpersonal incivility is compassion at work, which is a kind of resource employees may find on the job. The JD-R model defines job resources as “those physical, psychological, social, organizational aspects of the job that are either/or (1) functional in achieving work goals, (2) reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs, and (3) stimulate personal growth, learning, and development” (Bakker and Demerouti 2007, p. 312). Job resources include materials (i.e., salary), interpersonal relationships (i.e., supervisor support), work characteristics (i.e., autonomy), and organizational characteristics (i.e., career development opportunities). Since coworker incivility is a socio-emotional stressor, we assume that interpersonal job resources such as compassion at work are more likely to buffer its negative effects than other types of job resources (e.g., de Jonge and Dormann 2006).

Compassion at work is defined as an interpersonal process of noticing another person’s suffering, experiencing an emotional empathy for his or her pain, and behaving in some way that alleviates that pain (Dutton et al. 2002; Frost et al. 2000). The notion of compassion at work is most relevant in the workplace incivility context because it assumes a sufferer’s experienced and expressed suffering (Dutton et al. 2014), in our case possibly due to coworkers’ uncivil treatment. Such an explicit assumption of pain and suffering together with a focus on the interpersonal process of cognition, emotion, and behavior is what differentiate compassion at work from other related concepts (Dutton et al. 2014; Lilius et al. 2011). For instance, social support generally refers to “the functions performed for the individual by significant others… including instrumental, informational, and/or emotional assistance” (Thoits 1995, p. 64). While both compassion at work and social support are considered as coping resources, the notion of compassion at work tends to be more specifically about the relational process between the sufferer and the focal actor who initiates a compassionate act, which fits well with our research context of coworker incivility that is inherently relational (Dutton et al. 2014).

Experiencing compassion at work helps employees see their workplace in a positive light as a source of energy and healing (Frost 2003). The draining effect of coworker incivility can be counteracted by the uplifting experience of compassion at work, thus attenuating its negative effect. Experiencing compassion at work can trigger positive emotions such as joy and happiness through the feeling of connectedness and belongingness (Lilius et al. 2008). Because positive emotion tends to broaden the scope of the cognition and thought repertoire (Fredrickson 1998), compassion at work can enable employees to interpret coworker incivility in a less negative light and to therefore feel less emotionally exhausted. Fredrickson (2001) additionally contends that positive emotions can create a reservoir of emotional resources that help individuals bounce back from negative situations. Elsewhere, research has shown that experiencing compassion allowed people to recover physically from illness (Brody 1992), helped employees feel valued (Dutton et al. 2014), and reduced anxiety and fostered positive mindsets (Lilius et al. 2011).

Hence, employees experiencing compassion at work are likely to feel emotional exhaustion to a lesser degree in the face of coworker incivility, presenting the following hypothesis. Figure 1 depicts our conceptual model.

Fig. 1
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Conceptual model

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Hypothesis 3

The compassion at work will moderate the relationship between the experience of coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion, such that the positive relationship between the experienced coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion will be weaker for employees experiencing a high level of compassion at work.

Research Methods

Data Collection and Participant Characteristics

We collected data from frontline employees at a five-star hotel in South Korea on two different occasions. We chose a time lag of 3 months because research has demonstrated that stressors tend to influence employee outcomes such as job performance within a shorter (i.e., 2 or 4 months) rather than a longer (e.g., 6 or 8 months) time period (Liu et al. 2015; Meier and Spector 2013). The first survey was administered from August to September and the second one in December, which coincided with the annual performance evaluation period, thus enhancing the reliability of the job performance measurement (e.g., de Lange et al. 2003).

For both surveys, paper-and-pencil questionnaires were given to the HR managers for distribution to the 450 frontline employees in several departments (e.g., reservations, restaurant, front-desk, and call-center) with more than a year’s work experience. Participating employees each received a package containing a cover letter and the self-administered questionnaire, together with a small gift (a $5 gift voucher) to raise the response rate. The cover letter explained that all responses would be kept confidential and anonymous and that participation was voluntary. The questionnaire contained two questions the answers to which (i.e., e-mail address and the final 4 digits of a phone number) allowed us to match the Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) responses of a given participant while maintaining as much anonymity as possible. After closing the survey, all of the identification information (e-mail address and the final 4 digits of a phone number) was deleted.

In the T1 survey, participants were asked to recall details of a time when they had been treated in an unfavorable, unfriendly, or contentious manner by coworkers. They also reported the extent of their emotional exhaustion, job-related self-efficacy, compassion at work, and trait positive and negative affectivity. In the T2 survey, participants rated their job performance. A total of 223 employees participated in the T1 survey (49.6 % response rate), and of those employees, 217 participated in the T2 survey (48.4 % response rate), producing a final sample size of 217. Only the responses of the employees who participated in both the T1 and T2 surveys were included in the analyses on the basis of full information maximum likelihood (FIML), previous studies having found that the exclusion of missing cases (i.e., listwise deletion) can lead to biased results (Asendorpf et al. 2014).

A preliminary analysis revealed that 51.2 % of the subjects were female. The average age was 31.20 (SD = 5.88) years, ranging from 19 to 59. The majority of the participants had a university education (53.7 %), followed by a college education (33.3 %), a graduate-level education (6.9 %), and a high school education (6.0 %). The respondents, on average, had 5.88 (SD = 4.87) years of work experience.

Measurement Scales

Following Brislin’s (1970) recommendation, we first translated the original version of the questionnaire into Korean and then asked two bilingual individuals to translate it back from Korean to English. Two organizational behavior researchers reviewed this translation to ensure the validity of our measurement.

Coworker Incivility

Coworker incivility was measured with four items adapted from Sliter et al. (2012). The scale measured the relative frequency of interpersonal conflict that a person experienced at work over the previous month, and was modified to focus on interpersonal conflict rather than overt interpersonal mistreatment. Sample items are “How often do coworkers ignore or exclude you while at work?” and “How often do coworkers raise their voices at you while at work?” Items were rated along a five-point interval scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often).

Emotional Exhaustion

We used three items based on Maslach and Jackson (1981) to measure emotional exhaustion. Sample items are “I feel used up at the end of the workday.” and “I feel like I am at the end of my rope.” The items were rated on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”).

Job Performance

Service performance scales by Liao and Chuang (2004) were used to measure self-reported job performance. Sample items are “I am friendly and helpful to customers” and “I point out and relate item features to meet a customer’s needs.” Each of the seven items were rated on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”).

Job-Related Self-Efficacy

Job-related self-efficacy was measured by a four-item scale used by Karatepe and Olugbade (2009) on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”). Sample items are “My job is well within the scope of my abilities” and “I feel confident that my skills and abilities equal or exceed those of my colleagues.”

Compassion at Work

We measured compassion at work with a three-item scale from Lilius et al. (2008) using a five-point interval scale (1 “never” to 5 “very often”). The respondents were asked how frequently they experienced compassion (a) on the job, (b) from their supervisor, and (c) from their coworkers. We chose not to provide a definition of compassion at work in the survey, following the recommendation by Lilius et al. (2008), to refrain from restricting respondents’ thinking to only certain kinds of behavior (e.g., Chu 2016; Hur et al. 2016; Moon et al. 2014). Sample items include “How frequently have you experienced compassion on the job?” and “How frequently have you experienced compassion from your supervisor?”

Control Variables

In testing the hypotheses, we controlled for age (in years), gender, job tenure as a hotel frontline employee (in years), education (in years), and trait positive and negative affectivity. These variables have been found to influence emotional exhaustion (e.g., Chi and Liang 2013; Zapf et al. 1996) and job performance (e.g., Kaplan et al. 2009). We measured trait positive and negative affectivity using PANAS (Watson et al. 1988) and used four items each in our analysis. The selection was made from 10 items each for trait positive and negative affectivity based on the model fit statistics, factor loadings of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and threshold level of Cronbach’s alpha (.70) (see Table 1). Hair et al. (2006) recommended that 3–5 items for a construct are optimal and that increasing the number of items may increase measurement errors and decrease the reliability and validity of a construct. Respondents indicated the extent to which they generally felt each negative emotion (e.g., nervous, hostile) and each positive emotion (e.g., enthusiastic, active) on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”).

Table 1 Scale items and construct evaluation
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Results

Reliability, Validity, and Common Method Bias Testing

The resulting measurement scales were subjected to a commonly used validation process to assess their reliability and validity. First, the reliability of the constructs was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients (see Table 2). The reliability coefficients for the variables ranged from .79 to .88, which is considered satisfactory (Nunnally 1978). Next, we conducted a CFA to verify the convergent and discriminant validity of the measures using M-plus 7.31 software (\(\chi^{2}_{(356)}\) = 608.77, p < .05; CFI = .92, TLI = .91, RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .06) (see Table 1). Across our measurement models, factor and item loadings all exceeded .58 with all t values greater than 2.58, thus providing evidence of convergent validity among our measures. All measures exhibited strong reliability with CR (composite reliabilities) ranging from .80 to .89 (see Table 2). Finally, we checked the condition for discriminant validity among the constructs (Fornell and Larcker 1981). All average variance extracted (AVE) were larger than the squared correlation between the construct and any others (see Table 2). Overall, our constructs exhibited sound measurement properties with discriminant validity.

Table 2 Means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients
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Although our data were collected at two different time points, there remained a possibility that common method bias might still influence some of the postulated linkages in the model. Following the recommendations by Podsakoff et al. (2012), we implemented procedural remedies by protecting respondent anonymity, reducing evaluation apprehension, improving item wording, and separating the measurement of the predictor and outcome variables. As a statistical remedy, we applied a confirmatory factor-analytic approach to Harman’s one-factor analysis. All measures of the goodness of fit indicated a worse fit for the one-factor model than for our original measurement model (\(\chi^{2}_{(377)}\) = 2147.47; p < .05, CFI = .45, TLI = .41, RMSEA = .15, SRMR = .13).

In addition, we employed the ex post procedure recommended by Podsakoff et al. (2012) in which an additional common method factor is introduced to the measurement model. This factor did not account for any substantial variance in the indicator variables (2.6 %) given that an average of 18–32 % of the variance in a typical measure is attributable to method variance (Podsakoff et al. 2012). The standardized factor loadings of all items were below .50 for the common method factor, and only 55 % of the factor loadings of the manifest variables on the latent common method factor were significant at the 5 % level, not satisfying the convergent validity criteria. In addition, the convergent validity and construct reliability of the common method factor were not supported either (CR = .50; AVE = .04), which altogether indicate that a single method-driven factor does not represent our data. Therefore, we concluded that our results were not seriously compromised by common method bias.

Hypotheses Testing

We tested our hypotheses in two interlinked steps. First, we examined a simple mediation model (Hypothesis 1). Second, we integrated the proposed moderating variables into the model (Hypotheses 2 and 3) and tested the overall moderated mediation analysis post hoc. Prior to the analyses, all continuous variables were mean-centered (Aiken and West 1991). To estimate the mediation, moderation, and moderated mediation effects, we used an SPSS PROCSS macro 2.15 designed by Hayes (2015).

First, Hypothesis 1 suggested an indirect model, whereby the negative relationship between coworker incivility and job performance was expected to be mediated by emotional exhaustion. We used bootstrapping (N = 5000), a statistical resampling method which estimates the standard deviations of a model from a sample (Hayes 2013). The results showed that, controlling for gender, age, education, job tenure, and trait positive and negative affectivity, the indirect (mediated) effect of coworker incivility on job performance through emotional exhaustion was significant (b = −.04, 95 % CI (confidence interval) [−.08, −.01]) while the direct effect of coworker incivility on job performance was no longer significant (b = −.04, 95 % CI [−.13, .06]). These results showed that the relationship between coworker incivility and job performance was fully mediated by emotional exhaustion, thus supporting Hypothesis 1 (see Table 3).

Table 3 Path coefficients and indirect effects for mediation models
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Concerning Hypotheses 2 and 3, we predicted that employees’ self-efficacy and compassion at work would moderate the relationship between coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion. We used the procedures to test the moderated mediation effects in order to account for the possibility of statistically significant indirect effects being contingent on the value of the proposed moderating variables (Hayes 2015).

As Table 4 shows, employees’ self-efficacy moderated the relationship between coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion (b = −.22, p < .05). The positive relationship between coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion was weaker for employees with high self-efficacy compared to those with low self-efficacy (see Fig. 2). A follow-up simple slope analysis (plotting simple slopes at ±1 SD of the mean of the moderator) showed that coworker incivility was positively related to emotional exhaustion for employees with low or average levels of self-efficacy (low: b = .38,95 % CI [.28, .53]; average: b = .25, 95 % CI [.11, .39]). In contrast, coworker incivility did not increase emotional exhaustion for employees with high levels of self-efficacy (high: b = .13, 95 % CI [−.08, .33]). Hence, Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Table 4 Moderated mediation analyses predicting emotional exhaustion and job performance
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Fig. 2
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Interaction effects of coworker incivility and self-efficacy

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In an additional analysis, the indirect effect of the experienced coworker incivility on job performance via emotional exhaustion was mitigated by self-efficacy (b = .02, 95 % CI [.01, .05]). The results in Table 5 show that the negative indirect effect of coworker incivility on job performance was not significant and weaker when employees’ self-efficacy was high (high: b = −.01, 95 % CI [−.04, .00]). In comparison, when employees’ self-efficacy was low or average, the negative indirect effect of coworker incivility on job performance was significant and stronger (low: b = −.04, 95 % CI [−.08, −.01]; average: b = −.02, 95 % CI [−.06, −.01]), thus confirming support for Hypothesis 2.

Table 5 Conditional indirect effects of coworker incivility on job performance at different self-efficacy levels
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Finally, Hypothesis 3 predicted that compassion at work would moderate the positive relationship between coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion. The results in Table 4 indicate that the positive relationship between coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion was not weakened by compassion at work (b = .01, p > .05). Therefore, Hypothesis 3 was not supported.

Discussion

The purpose of the present study was to explore the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in the relationship between coworker incivility and job performance, and further to examine how the negative outcomes of coworker incivility may be mitigated by employees’ job-related self-efficacy and by the experience of compassion at work. We suggested emotional exhaustion as a key psychological mechanism and showed how everyday forms of disrespect can lead to burnout and lower perceptions of job performance. This finding adds to a growing body of research that focuses on revealing the psychological mechanisms underlying workplace incivility (Caza and Cortina 2007; Miner-Rubino and Reed 2010; Sakurai and Jex 2012). Despite the low intensity and ambiguous intent of workplace incivility, it is likely to cause the targets to suffer from stress and emotional tension.

Coworker incivility followed by emotional exhaustion can be particularly damaging to workers with emotionally demanding jobs. As in our case of hotel employees, high-contact service requires intense interactions between customers and employees, in which employees are expected to manage the way they express emotion to customers (Hochschild 1983). Such job demands termed “emotional labor” have often been associated with occupational stress and emotional exhaustion (Brotheridge and Grandey 2002; Grandey 2003). An uncivil work environment that depletes already exhausted service workers may heighten the frequency and the extent to which they exhibit withdrawal behaviors such as low-quality service and negative work attitudes (e.g., Hobfoll 2002). Future research may consider the additive effect of emotional job demands (e.g., as measured by the Demand-Induced Strain Questionnaire (DISQ)) (de Jonge et al. 2004) on the effect of coworker incivility. On the other hand, the literature on positive work environments suggests how positive relationships at work can produce the feelings of mutual caring and safety in times of distress (Dutton and Ragins 2007; Roberts 2007) that help service employees to sustain the draining work of emotional labor. The idea of building a positive work environment to tackle workplace incivility and its significance in service settings opens up an interesting avenue for future research.

Additionally, while our focus was on the emotional consequences of coworker incivility, it may hamper the target individuals’ cognitive processes likewise. The subtlety of uncivil acts with ambiguous intent naturally leads the victims to agonize over the uncivil incident and to engage in an arduous sense-making process (Andersson and Pearson 1999). Intermittent acts of coworker incivility are likely to interrupt the cognitive flow of work and further result in cognitive overload due to the effort to make sense of the unfavorable situation. Evidence shows that work interruption and cognitive overload heighten the rate of errors and mistakes (Bailey and Konstan 2006), and necessitate a considerable amount of time to refocus on the ongoing task (Jackson et al. 2003), which often results in an increased level of stress and fatigue and poor performance with longer work hours (Perlow 1999). Future research will be necessary to examine the extent to which workplace incivility may disrupt the emotional and cognitive processes of victims as well as instigators.

While workplace incivility is, in general, defined from the victim’s perspective (Andersson and Pearson 1999), relatively little is known about the instigator’s perspective. For example, uncivil treatment from customers was found to be related to employee incivility toward customers through emotional exhaustion (van Jaarsveld et al. 2010). Further exploration of the negative spiral of workplace incivility is warranted to better understand the underlying psychological mechanisms of how victims of incivility become inclined to engage in uncivil acts. Moreover, it is likely that the negative consequences of workplace incivility extend beyond the targeted employee. There is evidence that mere observation of uncivil verbal and nonverbal behaviors can damage employees by fostering negative thoughts and emotions (Porath and Erez 2009), and further increase burnout and turnover intentions, and reduce job satisfaction and commitment (Miner-Rubino and Cortina 2007). Such negative consequences on those who witness workplace incivility necessitate further exploration of the downward spiral of workplace incivility and the underlying psychological mechanisms that not only involve victims and instigators but also expand to witnesses and by-standers.

In terms of the buffering effects of job-related self-efficacy and the experience of compassion at work, the results show that for employees with a high level of self-efficacy, coworker incivility was not related to emotional exhaustion as strongly as in the case of those with a low or an average level of self-efficacy. Equipped with beliefs about their work competence, employees with a high level of job-related self-efficacy may suffer less from coworkers’ uncivil acts. On the other hand, employees with low job-related self-efficacy may have interpreted coworkers’ incivility as being consistent with their incompetent self-image, which likely increases emotional strains. This finding is consistent with prior research on general self-efficacy, which suggests that employees with low self-efficacy tend to be vulnerable to emotional exhaustion (Schaubroeck et al. 2000) and less likely to adopt appropriate coping strategies (Bandura 1997).

A fruitful avenue to extend the current study would be the notion of psychological capital as a personal resource that has the potential to help the victims to cope with the energy-draining encounters with uncivil coworkers. Comprised of four elements (efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience), psychological capital has been found to enable better coping, positive perspectives, proactivity, growth and learning in the workplace (Karatepe and Olugbade 2009; Luthans and Youssef 2007; Roberts 2007). Victims with psychological capital may view the situation in a positive light and exert self-directed motivation to endure the stressful circumstances. They may also try diverse pathways to resolve the unfavorable situation, and view the challenging experience as a learning opportunity, which altogether are likely to encourage the victims to bounce back from the uncivil incidents. We encourage researchers to further investigate other kinds of resources as a buffer against the negative consequences of workplace incivility. The matching principle proposed by de Jonge and Dormann (2006) contends that the buffering effects will be maximized when stressors-resources-strains are of the same kind (i.e., cognitive, emotional, or physical). In the case of coworker incivility as a socio-emotional stressor, job or personal resources of a socio-emotional nature such as supervisor support or trait positive affectivity may help the victims to cope with emotional strains most effectively.

Unexpectedly, the buffering effect of compassion at work on the positive relationship between coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion was not significant. We suspect that this may be partly due to the correlation between the two moderators—compassion at work and job-related self-efficacy (r = .41, p < .01).Footnote 1 A few studies have shown that the motivational and personal growth effect of job resources (i.e., compassion at work) can build and strengthen personal resources (i.e., job-related self-efficacy) (Karatepe and Olugbade 2009; Xanthopoulou et al. 2007), thus indicating a significant relationship between job resources and personal resources. The literature on positive work environment as a job resource also highlights its positive effect on the development of personal resources including self-efficacy and proactivity (Roberts 2007). One logical step for future research might be to further explore how job and personal resources function as a coping mechanism jointly as well as separately.

Alternatively, the nonsignificant moderating effect of compassion at work may be due to the fact that we did not distinguish between different sources of compassion at work. There is evidence that people are less likely to be receptive to friendly gestures by an antagonist than the same gestures made by an in-group member (Ross and Ward 1995). This is partly because they do not wish to acknowledge the adversary’s offer or because they are suspicious of that person’s intentions (Menon et al. 2014). In this scenario, if an act of compassion was offered by a coworker who instigated incivility, the act is likely to be perceived in a negative light and backfire. Future research may parse out the effects of compassion at work from different sources such as supervisors, coworkers, or subordinates, and discover how compassion received from the instigator of incivility may have different outcomes compared to the compassion received from a third person.

Another possible explanation pertains to the research context. Research has found cultural differences in emotional display rules with Asians being less frequent and less intense in their emotional expression (Eid and Diener 2001; Matsumoto 1990). Considering the act of compassion partly as display of emotions such as sympathy and love (Dutton et al. 2002), it is likely that Koreans engage in the act of compassion sparingly unless the severity of the situation is high. Since compassion at work assumes pain and suffering of the victims that are visible enough for compassionate actors to notice (Dutton et al. 2002), it may be that a mild degree of incivility may go unnoticed and that only a high degree of coworker incivility is associated with compassion at work. We recommend that researchers further explore whether employees’ inclination to engage in the act of compassion is bounded by cultural constraints. In addition, identification of other boundary conditions would be interesting, such as the level of emotional intelligence or workgroup cohesion that may work as effective intervention mechanisms between workplace incivility and burnout.

Finally, we sought to add to the literature on the JD-R approach to workplace incivility. Our focus on the JD-R model resonates with the study by van Jaarsveld et al. (2010) that showed how service employees perceived customer incivility as job demands, which in turn motivated them to reciprocate uncivil treatment toward the customers. We add to the literature by revealing the role of personal resources, and potentially job resources, in mitigating the draining consequences of coworker incivility, and by suggesting the importance of personal or psychological resources in bouncing back from the negative work environment.

Practical Implications

The current research has practical implications for mitigating the negative outcomes of coworker incivility such as decreases in targets’ well-being and organizational effectiveness. While coworker incivility is known to be pervasive in the workplace, it is often unnoticed or unreported because of its subtlety and ambiguity in interpreting the instigators’ intent (Sliter et al. 2012). Nevertheless, given the negative consequences of coworker incivility, employers need to institute various measures to minimize such incidents and to help victims cope with them.

Managers need to find ways to cultivate job-related self-efficacy beliefs in employees. For example, organizations may provide some job-related resources such as job autonomy (Wang and Netemeyer 2002) or flexibility (Kohn and Schooler 1978). Because individuals tend to rely on personal resources to cope with job stressors (de Jonge and Dormann 2006), the importance of nurturing job-related self-efficacy becomes paramount.

A more general approach to prevent and cope with workplace incivility may involve establishing systematic and institutionalized practices and policies (Hur et al. 2015). For instance, training and developmental programs can enhance organization-wide sensitivity to the issue of workplace incivility (Reio and Ghosh 2009). CEOs and top management teams may communicate often with employees about company rules and policies regarding workplace incivility (Cortina 2008). Offering a free counseling service and stress-management program for the victims of workplace incivility may also help to reduce the level of emotional strains (Ferguson 2012). Providing human resource hotlines or instituting conflict mediators can be effective as well in preventing workplace incivility (Andersson and Pearson 1999).

Limitations and Future Research

Our research contributions should be qualified in light of the following limitations, several of which suggest directions for future research. First, our study participants were drawn from a single organization in South Korea, which reduces external validity. Korea belongs to the East Asian cluster characterized as a high power-distance culture (Kirkman et al. 2009) in which uncivil acts of the powerful toward the powerless may not be unusual. Because the perspective of victims can vary across different cultures, what is considered an uncivil act in Western culture may not be perceived the same way in East Asian culture. Hence, subsequent studies need to verify the current findings in diverse cultural and industrial settings.

Second, we relied on self-reported scales for the analyses including self-reported job performance. To address concerns about potential common method bias, we administered surveys at two different time points (e.g., Sakurai and Jex 2012) and applied procedural and statistical remedies (Podsakoff et al. 2012). We also controlled for the effects of demographics and trait positive and negative affectivity. Yet the findings still need to be interpreted with caution since self-reported data from a single source can inflate the relationship between predictor and dependent variables. Also, our use of a correlational design makes it difficult to assume causal relationships and rule out alternative explanations for the observed relationships. In fact, past research has reported that role stressors such as role conflict predicted being a victim of bullying and bullying enactment 12 months later by developing a destructive work environment that triggered the escalation of bullying (Balducci et al. 2012). Future research may attempt to avoid the common method bias problem and the reverse-causality issue by collecting data from different sources or by using a full two-wave panel design (Zapf et al. 1996). Another option is to include more objective performance outcomes in the analyses such as sales volume, service quality or customer satisfaction scores, or supervisor evaluations of job performance. Behavioral outcomes could be used as well, such as turnover and absenteeism rate or tardiness (Sliter et al. 2012).

Third, although emotional exhaustion is known to be a major dimension of burnout (Lee and Ashforth 1996), it might be valuable to investigate how coworker incivility influences the other two dimensions (i.e., depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment) or the three components of burnout differently. Fourth, previous findings indicate that general social support (e.g., organizational, supervisor, and coworker support) as well as compassion at work function as job resources (Ng and Sorensen 2008). In order to identify a more concrete effect of compassion at work, an inductive approach such as controlling for general social support is recommended. Finally, while we mainly focused on incivility instigated by coworkers, uncivil acts by supervisors, subordinates, or family members may potentially have different psychological effects on the target. Future research might usefully identify how power differences or the spillover effect between work and family plays out in the realm of workplace incivility.