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- Title
Willingness to Recommend: Does Workplace Incivility Actually Play a Role?
- Authors
Walsh, Benjamin M.; Kabat-Farr, Dana; Matthews, Russell A.; Schulte, Benjamin D.
- Abstract
To prevent workplace incivility, scholars encourage organizations to use reference checks to help eliminate uncivil applicants. However, under certain conditions, reference providers may be willing to recommend their rude colleagues for employment. We test this possibility by studying willingness to recommend, which captures a willingness to serve as a professional reference for a colleague. Based on signaling theory, we hypothesized that colleague incivility is negatively related to willingness to recommend, but this relationship is moderated by colleague in-role performance and job-level factors. In study 1, multilevel modeling of multisource data revealed that colleague incivility negatively related to willingness to recommend, but troublingly, this relationship was weaker among colleagues who were high rather than low performers, regardless of job-level moderators. In study 2, we tested whether organizations can intervene and encourage potential reference providers to pay greater attention to incivility. Regression results showed that providers placed greater weight on their colleague's incivility in relation to willingness to recommend when signals were sent that the hiring organization was unwilling to sacrifice civility for top performance. Our research helps illuminate when incivility instigators are likely to be recommended for employment and demonstrates a way to maximize the use of reference checks for incivility prevention.
- Subjects
OFFENSIVE behavior; BACKGROUND checks; MULTILEVEL models; JOB performance
- Publication
Journal of Business & Psychology, 2021, Vol 36, Issue 5, p841
- ISSN
0889-3268
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10869-020-09710-7