Organizational civility: Issues, problems and solutions to creating environments of civility in the workplace.

Abstract

Scholars have just begun to research the issue of incivility in the workplace. The research focusing on a proactive approach of creating civility is even more sparse. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine if employees view incivility as a problem. If so, what do they think their role is in developing a more civil environment? Also, what do they think the organization's responsibilities are for establishing civil environments? This study utilized focus group research techniques as a qualitative research effort. The participants were from large bureaucratic companies in a moderate-sized southwestern city.

The term respect was most often used to discuss civility followed by the golden rule, responsibility, communication and politeness. The participants' statements indicate that the solutions to reducing incivility and creating civil environments involved issues of personal responsibility, leadership responsibility, and organizational guidance and policies consisting of: defining acceptable behavior, establishing policy, and enforcing rules, and communication and training.

The research findings indicate that employees do recognize incivility to be a problem. The terms most often used to discuss incivility were disrespect, violence and rudeness. The participants believed that the differences between people were the single most important cause of incivility followed by lack of training, lack of good people skills, differences in perception, and ego.

As a result of the literature review and the data collected, a definition of Organizational civility (OC) was developed to help direct future organizational attempts at creating civil environments. Organizational Civility is defined as: that aspect of the an organization's culture that embraces a norm of mutual respect and responsibility and enhances a person's ability to recognize their own behavior and its impact on the organization.