How rude of you! Workplace incivility paths to wellbeing and job attitudes.

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As occupational health psychologists, we have the resources to design organizational development processes for promoting positive social capital (Baker & Dutton, 2007) consisting of personal relationships with high-quality connections and reciprocity at work. Using the discourse of the victim precipitation theory, we fail to notice the precipitation factors created by the actual organizational context that set employees up to predate on each other (e.g., pitting employees against each other, creating conflicting roles and expectations, rewarding competitive behaviors; Köhler et al., 2018). Previous research on masculinity context cultures (MCC; Berdahl et al., 2018) characterizes organizational cultures according to varying levels of toxic masculinity values. We offer the possibility that workplace incivility may be a symptom that emerges when organizations, based on MCCs and built on kyriarchal societal systems (i.e., intersectional systems of oppression, domination, and submission, Schüssler Fiorenza, 1992), cannot adapt to the current challenges of engaging a more diverse and inclusive workforce. The implication is that solutions should rise above the individual or group-level, and involve a transformative effort with bottom-up and top-down practices that disrupt toxic organizational cultures. We can use relational theory and practices characterized by connection, interdependence, collectivity, empathy, mutual empowerment, vulnerability, and mutual responsibility (Fletcher, 1998) and consistent with empirical research approaches such as companionate love cultures (Barsade & O’Neill, 2014). The ultimate goal should be to displace the toxic precipitation factors of MCCs (Berdahl et al., 2018) and to increase the positive social capital that enables respectful engagement (Dutton, 2003) as relational behavior that conveys presence, communicates affirmation, listens effectively, and communicates supportively (Dutton, 2003) and that prevents disrespectful and uncivil interactions.

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