The validation of a workplace incivility scale within the South African banking industry

Abstract

Workplace incivility is a phenomenon which has become of significant concern to managers, researchers and industrial psychology practitioners due to the harmful effects it has on individual and organisational outcomes. The prevalence of deviant behaviour within organisations is on the increase and employees are reportedly experiencing this type of behaviour at least once a week. Workplace incivility is a form of deviant workplace behaviour which is of a lower intensity. However, no workplace incivility scale has been validated and shown to be reliable for measurement within the South African working environment. Therefore, the study aimed at validating an adapted workplace incivility scale within the South African banking industry in order to provide a reliable and applicable measure for use within the specific context. The general objective of this study was to validate a workplace incivility scale for the South African banking industry by investigating the factor structure, convergent validity, discriminant validity and predictive validity of a workplace incivility scale. As a measure is required to be reliable in order to be valid, the reliability of the scale was also explored. In terms of the research approach, a cross-sectional survey design was utilised in which the participants (N = 345) within the South African banking industry were selected based on their availability and willingness to participate, i.e. convenience sampling. To confirm the three-factor structure which was proposed in the study, confirmatory factor analysis was utilised to investigate the most appropriate factor structure for the scale given the fit of these models to the data. The three-factor structure was indeed shown to be the best fit. Furthermore, in order to establish the reliability of the scale; it was necessary to calculate the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient values for the construct(s). Next, convergent validity was established between workplace incivility and other constructs which are similar - as well as establishing discriminant validity in terms of constructs from which it is supposed to differ, i.e. that of workplace bullying. Finally, predictive validity was shown by considering the significant regression relationships between workplace incivility and outcome variables such as work engagement, organisational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention in a structural model. Workplace incivility was confirmed to be a three-factor structure within the South African context and provided acceptable reliability coefficients (internal consistency). A positive relationship was found between workplace incivility and workplace bullying. Acceptable discriminant validity was also established which indicates that workplace incivility and workplace bullying are not the same phenomenon. Furthermore, the investigation into predictive validity established relationships between supervisor incivility and all the outcome variables, while instigated incivility negatively predicted job satisfaction only. However, it was also found that no significant regression relationships existed between colleague incivility and any of the outcome variables. In terms of the practical application and future research possibilities pertaining to the phenomenon of workplace incivility, recommendations were made accordingly