FAMILY UNDERMINING AS A PRECURSOR TO WORKPLACE INCIVILITY: A SPILLOVER-CROSSOVER PERSPECTIVE

Workplace incivility has vast organizational consequences yet little is know about the impact of the family domain on these behaviors. We expand the field by integrating the workplace mistreatment and work-family literatures. More specifically, using a sample of 412 dual-earner couples we used the actor-partner independence model to account for interdependent data of dyads to examine the role of family undermining (at home) on a target’s workplace incivility through relationship tension and sleep quality. Results indicate that both a target’s perceptions of family undermining and partner perceptions of family undermining contribute to relationship tension, reduced sleep quality, and are ultimately related to greater engagement in incivility at work. This held for both partners capturing the spillover and crossover effects occurring within the couple.