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Does supervisor mistreatment lead to subordinates’ incivility at work? Evidence from a cross-cultural daily diary

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Abstract

Employees all around the world are affected by the problem of workplace mistreatment. However, little is known about how people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds react to mistreatment. Adopting an ego-depletion theory, the current study aimed to investigate how a supervisors’ mistreatment leads to next-morning instigated incivility against supervisors via increased subordinates’ self-regulatory resource depletion between Chinese and Pakistani employees. A snowball technique was employed to collect data, involving 90 Chinese and 95 Pakistani employees across 2 work weeks. Measurement invariance analysis revealed that both groups were significantly different in experiencing workplace mistreatment and its outcome. Findings from multigroup path analysis revealed that Chinese employees showed a greater positive direct effect of supervisors’ mistreatment on subordinates’ instigated incivility against supervisors via subordinates’ resource depletion as compared to Pakistanis. Additionally, the positive relationship between supervisors’ mistreatment and the subordinates’ resource depletion was mitigated by a higher level of trait mindfulness. Furthermore, the positive association between the subordinates’ resource depletion and instigated incivility was also buffered by a higher level of trait mindfulness. These effects were also stronger in Chinese than in Pakistani employees. It was concluded by the study that employees’ cultural values may either render them more or less vulnerable to the effects of workplace rudeness.

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Data availability

The datasets processed and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding/first author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the managers at the organizations for their invaluable efforts in supporting the ongoing data collection procedures that made this work possible. We are also very grateful to the participants who agreed to the use of their information for research purposes.

Funding

This research is funded by the National Social Science Fund Project of China. “Research on Organizational Uncivilized Behavior” (project number: 22FGLA006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Mujahid Iqbal, Yu Yan, Silu Shrestha, Kaichen Zhao & Zhaoxue Cao

  2. School of Psychology, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, China

    Xi Zheng

  3. Department of Psychology, International Islamic University, Islamabad, 44800, Pakistan

    Mazhar Iqbal Bhatti

  4. PharmacoTherapy, - Epidemiology and -Economics, Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy, University of Groningen, Groningen, 9713AV, The Netherlands

    Sumaira Mubarik

  5. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Sumaira Mubarik

Authors
  1. Mujahid Iqbal
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  2. Xi Zheng
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  3. Yu Yan
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  4. Silu Shrestha
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  5. Kaichen Zhao
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  6. Zhaoxue Cao
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  7. Mazhar Iqbal Bhatti
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  8. Sumaira Mubarik
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Contributions

Mujahid Iqbal: Conceptualization; Formal analysis; Methodology; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing. Xi Zheng: Methodology; Investigation; Validation; Visualization; Writing - review & editing. Yu Yan: Funding acquisition; Investigation; Project administration; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Visualization. Silu Shrestha: Data curation; Writing - review & editing; Investigation. Kaichen Zhao: Review & editing; Investigation. Zhaoxue Cao: Review & editing; Investigation. Mazhar Iqbal Bhatti: Data curation; Software; Writing - review & editing; Investigation. Sumaira Mubarik: Formal analysis; Investigation; Validation; Visualization; Writing - review & editing.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yu Yan or Sumaira Mubarik.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was performed by the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the first authors’ University Ethics board committee.

The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

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Iqbal, M., Zheng, X., Yan, Y. et al. Does supervisor mistreatment lead to subordinates’ incivility at work? Evidence from a cross-cultural daily diary. Curr Psychol 43, 18592–18611 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05589-8

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