The Benefits of Uncivil Leadership: Competitive Incivility Promotes Organizational Cohesion

Authors:

Abstract: In this article, we explore the consequences of leaders’ use of uncivil communication about competitors. We define competitive incivility as verbal expressions that boast about the organization or insult a competing organization. Although prior work has found that incivility produces detrimental consequences, we identify some important functional benefits for leaders who express incivility about competing organizations. Across our studies, we examine whether competitive incivility boosts organizational identity and intra-organizational prosocial behavior. In Study 1, executives who generated competitive uncivil messages about rival organizations forecasted that their employees will identify with their organization more strongly and engage in prosocial behavior that benefits the organization. In a field experiment, Study 2 found that, compared to leaders who engage in neutral communication, leaders who express competitive incivility about rival organizations are more likely to promote organizational identification and prosocial behavior among their employees. In a lab experiment, we replicated the effect of competitive incivility on prosocial behavior, and we also found that targets of competitive incivility are more likely to allocate resources to punish instigators, relative to targets of neutral communication. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that leaders who communicate competitive incivility elicit intra-organizational prosocial behavior among their employees, but also trigger inter-organizational aggression from the targets of their uncivil communication.

Track: COMM

Keywords: Incivility, Competition, Rivalry