Deciding To Speak Up Or To Remain Silent Following Observed Workplace Incivility: The Role Of Organizational Cynicism

Interpersonal mistreatment at work often occurs in the presents of third parties,however,not much empirical research has been conducted on examining effects of witnessing incivility.Employees who observe incivility in the workplace must decide whether to speak up or remain silent.Despite the prevalence of wrongdoing in organizations,little is known about the decision-making of employees in this context and,in particular,the role of emotions in this process.We fill this void by proposing a model that specifies how discrete emotions influence employees’ decisions to engage in silence and prosocial voice.Drawing on theoretical model of Dual Threshold,we argue that employees’ emotional reactions to perceived wrongdoing involve a complex decision-making process.Specifically,we analyze the potential role of expressed and suppressed anger in this process,arguing that expressed anger predicts third parties’ prosocial voice,whereas suppressed anger is negatively related to prosocial voice.Further,we suggest that organizational cynicism moderates the way employees respond emotionally and behaviourally following an episode of perceived wrongdoing.