The impact of employees’ status on incivility, deviant behaviour and job insecurity

Purpose – Drawing on the exchange model and the multidimensional approach to job insecurity, the purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship between perceived incivility and two possible outcomes: job insecurity and employee deviance, while differentiating between two separate groups of targets, namely targets who possess high employment status and targets with low employment status. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected in 2014 in Israel. An on-line questionnaire method was used, through which 648 valid responses were collected and analyzed using structural equational modeling. Findings – H1 and H2 maintained that incivility would have a positive impact on job insecurity and employee deviance. The other three hypotheses maintained that the perception of incivility, as well as the relationship between incivility and both job insecurity and employee deviance, would be stronger for employees working under less favorable employment conditions. The model’s fit indices indicated a good fit, suggesting that all five hypotheses were accepted. Originality/value – This study elaborates on previous studies by showing that incivility can predict job insecurity and employee deviance. Data related to the potential deviant outcomes of incivility are relatively rare. Additionally, the current research framed incivility, which is a micro-level behavior, in a wider context of employment relations. As precarious employment arrangements are on the rise, it is necessary to understand its hidden implications and threats to both employees and organizations. From a methodological point of view, this study introduced a shorter version of Robinson and Bennett’s (1995) workplace deviance scale, which pertains to the authors’ theoretical model.