Incivility has been identified as a prevalent and crucial issue in workplaces and one that may be associated with detrimental effects on employees and organizational outcomes, such as turnover intention. Many studies have been published regarding the effects of incivility, but there is a lack of integrative reviews and meta-analyses. The aim of the present study is to conduct an early meta-analysis of the relationship between employees’ perceptions of workplace incivility and their turnover intentions. Six databases, including ISI Web of Science, PsychInfo, Scopus, Emerald, Hospitality & Tourism Complete, and Soc Index, were searched to identify empirical articles for this meta-analytical paper. The results of statistical meta-analyses and meta-regression suggest that there is a positive relationship between perceived incivility and turnover intentions in employees and that relationship is consistent across different sources of workplace incivility. However, we did observe a possible interaction effect of “supervisor” and “coworker incivility”. The results also suggest that the relationship between workplace incivility and turnover intention is stronger in the academic sector than in other industries and stronger in the United States than in other countries.

Drawing upon ethical climate theory and conservation of resource theory, this study provides a theoretical model to explain the effect of a perceived caring climate in the workplace on the employees’ turnover intention through the serial multiple mediation of workplace incivility (caused by coworkers) and employees’ emotional exhaustion. A total of 291 frontline employees from the service industry in Norway participated in this study, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data. The findings indicated that a caring climate has a significant negative effect on turnover intention. The mediating effect of coworker incivility was not supported in the multiple mediation model; however, it was supported if it was considered as the only mediator in the relationship between caring climate and turnover intention. Moreover, emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between caring climate and turnover intention. The serial mediation effect of coworker incivility and emotional exhaustion was also supported in the relationship between caring climate and turnover intention. The results of this study enable managers to create a caring climate in the workplace and minimize the detrimental effects of incivility and turnover intention in the service industry.

Employee turnover is a big issue in the service industry, which can be significantly affected by job stressors including workplace incivility. This exploratory study aims to identify the frontline service employees’ profiles exploring to what extent individuals may have different perceptions of incivility and social supports at work and showing different reactions (job outcomes). In a cross-sectional study, 291 completed questionnaires from a sample of Norwegian frontline service employees were subjected to correlation analysis, K-means clustering, and post hoc ANOVA analysis with Bonferroni correction. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct clusters of employees with different profiles, which indicated that those who perceived the highest level of workplace incivility and the lowest level of social supports at work showed the highest turnover intention compared to that of others. Moreover, employees with longer tenure and the highest perception of social supports at work coped better with workplace incivility and showed the lowest turnover intention.

Workplace incivility and workplace polarization represent two increasingly significant challenges in contemporary organizations. Although both phenomena have been studied extensively, their interrelationship remains underdeveloped in organizational behavior research. This conceptual study develops an integrative multilevel framework proposing how workplace incivility and workplace polarization may become reciprocally connected over time within the organizational context. Drawing on the Incivility Spiral Model, Organizational Justice Theory, and Social Identity Theory, the study proposes that repeated interpersonal incivility may contribute to identity-relevant interpretations and identity threat, which may, in turn, strengthen in-group/out-group differentiation. Trust erosion and emotional contagion may complement this process through relational and affective-transmission mechanisms, creating conditions that may support the emergence of workplace polarization. In turn, workplace polarization may reshape civility norms across perceived group boundaries and make expectations of respectful treatment increasingly group-contingent, thereby increasing the likelihood that subsequent workplace incivility will be directed toward perceived out-group members. The central contribution of this study is to explain how ambiguous interpersonal mistreatment may become interpreted as group-based disrespect and theorize how workplace polarization may make expectations of respectful treatment increasingly contingent on perceived group membership. The proposed model further identifies ethical leadership, organizational justice, psychological safety, and diversity climate as distinct contextual conditions that may influence different stages of the incivility-to-polarization pathway, rather than uniformly moderating the entire reciprocal process. By conceptualizing workplace incivility and workplace polarization as potentially reciprocally linked cross-level processes, this study contributes to theory development on workplace mistreatment, intergroup dynamics, and organizational division. It also outlines directions for longitudinal, experimental, multilevel, and network-based research to empirically examine the proposed relationships and highlights practical implications for fostering more respectful, cohesive, and inclusive work environments.