Will the real mistreatment please stand up? Examining the assumptions and measurement of bullying and incivility

Using two diverse cross-sectional samples (n = 361, 579), the authors investigated measurement impediments in current behavioural methods of operationalising workplace mistreatment by examining perceived intensity and intention attributions. Results indicated that bullying and incivility, assessed using common measures and analytical techniques, have moderate negative effects on employees that are not significantly different in effect size from one another, which is consistent with prior research. Using a separate measure of workplace aggression, participants were categorised using latent class clustering into groups reporting: 1. no mistreatment over the prior month (representing no mistreatment), 2. low intensity and low intentional mistreatment (representing incivility), and 3. high intensity and high intentional mistreatment (representing bullying). One-way ANOVAs with Tukey post-hoc tests indicated that those who experience bullying consistently reported more strain than the other two groups across both samples. Those reporting incivility reported significantly different turnover intentions from the other groups, but did not differ with regard to affective commitment and psychological strain. These results highlight the need for more attention to be paid to construct validity and advanced analytic techniques in mistreatment research, particularly with regard to incivility. Implications for the measurement of mistreatment constructs are discussed.

Automated summary

The study found that bullying and incivility have similar negative effects on employees, with the bullying group reporting more strain and the incivility group reporting different turnover intentions compared to the other groups.