An Investigation Into the Social and Individual Conditions That Promote Instigated
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Professional and Petty: An Investigation Into the Social and Individual Conditions That Promote Instigated Acts of Workplace Incivility Between Black Professionals DeMarcus A. Pegues Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 DeMarcus A. Pegues All rights reserved ABSTRACT Professional and Petty: An Investigation Into the Social and Individual Conditions That Promote Instigated Acts of Workplace Incivility Between Black Professionals DeMarcus A. Pegues The crabs-in-a-barrel (CIB) mentality—a specialized form of incivility that occurs among members of the same ingroup (i.e., intragroup incivility)—is an understudied yet destructive and consequential intragroup phenomenon. As previous studies on the CIB mentality within the Black community have primarily focused on targets of the deviant behavior, this study trailblazed by serving as the first to employ a mixed methods design to investigate the environmental, perceptual, and affective antecedents of instigated Black-on-Black (B-o-B) incivility in the workplace. More specifically, the present study adopted a social-interactionist approach to investigate whether various aspects of work climate (i.e., institutional discrimination, interpersonal prejudice, and competitive work climate), affective states (i.e., emotional taxation), and workgroup composition factors (i.e., perceived collective and competitive minority threats) were positively associated with instigated B-o-B incivility in the workplace. To that end, a cross-sectional design was employed with a U.S.-based sample of 523 full-time Black professionals across various organizations and industries. The proposed hypotheses were tested using logistic regression analyses. Overall, the results showed that collective minority threat and experienced incivility were the most consistently significant predictors of instigated B-o-B incivility in the proposed model—with experienced incivility showing the greatest effect on the outcome variable between the two. Moreover, participants reported that there were 10 primary reasons and/or justifications for acting uncivilly towards another Black employee at their job within the past year. This study provides further support and validation to the notion that the CIB phenomenon represents another variant of the workplace incivility construct. Additionally, this study broadens the workplace incivility discussion and research stream by offering unique insight into the perspectives of racial minority instigators of uncivil behavior at work. The results hold considerable implications for practitioners and organizations seeking to better understand, and address, the issue of intragroup incivility in the workplace—particularly as it relates to Black professionals. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are also discussed. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... vii DEDICATION ........................................................................................................................... xi Chapter I – INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Workplace Incivility: A Pervasive, Elusive, and Costly Act ........................................... 3 The Crabs-in-a-Barrel Mentality: A Marginal Form of Incivility for Marginal Groups . 6 The Present Study ............................................................................................................ 11 Chapter II – LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES .................................................... 14 Instigators of Workplace Incivility and Aggression: The Psychology Behind the Madness ......................................................................................................... 14 The Plight of Black Professionalism: Flies in the Ointment............................................ 16 Workplace Racial Bias and Competitive Work Climates: Perhaps Madness Is Contagious ................................................................................................ 18 Workplace racial bias as a precursor to B-o-B incivility ............................. 19 Hypothesis 1.......................................................................................... 22 Hypothesis 2.......................................................................................... 22 Competitive work climates as precursors to B-o-B incivility ...................... 22 Hypothesis 3.......................................................................................... 24 The influential role of emotional taxation .................................................... 24 Hypothesis 4.......................................................................................... 25 Hypothesis 5a ........................................................................................ 25 Hypothesis 5b........................................................................................ 25 Hypothesis 5c ........................................................................................ 25 Workplace Composition and Categorical Minority Status: Inhibitors to Ingroup Solidarity ......................................................................................... 25 Collective minority threat ............................................................................. 26 Hypothesis 6.......................................................................................... 28 Competitive minority threat ......................................................................... 28 Hypothesis 7.......................................................................................... 29 Summary of Research Questions ......................................................................... 29 Additional Variables for Consideration ............................................................... 31 Rationale for racial identity centrality as an exploratory variable ............... 31 Rationale for psychological capital as an exploratory variable .................... 31 Chapter III – METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................. 33 Participants ....................................................................................................................... 33 Design .............................................................................................................................. 35 Procedure ......................................................................................................................... 36 i Measures .......................................................................................................................... 39 Instigated Incivility .............................................................................................. 39 Institutional Discrimination ................................................................................. 40 Interpersonal Prejudice ........................................................................................ 40 Emotional Taxation .............................................................................................. 41 Competitive Work Climate .................................................................................. 41 Collective Minority Threat ................................................................................. 42 Competitive Minority Threat ............................................................................... 42 Racial Identity Centrality ..................................................................................... 43 Psychological Capital........................................................................................... 43 Demographic and Control Variables ................................................................... 44 Demographic factors .................................................................................... 44 Prior history of experienced incivility .......................................................... 44 Chapter IV – RESULTS .............................................................................................................. 46 Preliminary Analyses ....................................................................................................... 46 Incidence Rates of Instigated B-o-B Incivility .................................................... 46 Common Method Variance .................................................................................. 47 Psychometric Properties of Major Study Variables ............................................. 48 Histogram of instigated B-o-B incivility ...................................................... 49 Q-Q plot of instigated B-o-B incivility ........................................................ 52 Conclusion of regression violations ............................................................. 53 Means, standard deviations, and correlations of study variables ................. 55 Establishing relevant covariates in the study ..............................................