Incivility and Its Impact on Individual and Organizational Performance in Developing Countries: An Examination of the Ghanaian Situation

The workplace is a place where different types of behaviours are expressed, with varying consequences to the individuals and the organization. These behaviours affect both organizational performance and inter-personal... [ view full abstract ]

The workplace is a place where different types of behaviours are expressed, with varying consequences to the individuals and the organization. These behaviours affect both organizational performance and inter-personal relations and cooperative sense of employees. These behaviour usually fall within the constructs of the norms of the organization. These norms, which constitute aspects of non-material culture, are behaviour, languages, principles, and postulations that are expected to allow the workplace to function as a suitable environment for individual and organizational performance. Hence, every member of an organization is expected to exhibit appropriate behaviour based on the accepted language and principles which are established by management for the achievement of organizational objectives. This is because the key to any organization’s success is its competitive workforce.
Unfortunately, some employees exhibit certain behaviours that go contrary to the established norms and behaviours of the organization. Such behaviours, have been as incivility and constitute what in literature refers to as counterproductive work behaviour
Incivility, which involves acting with disregard for others and violation of workplace norms for respect affects employees and organizational performance significantly. In order for management to adequately deal with such behaviours, there is the need to find how employees feel about them.
Unfortunately, while a number of scholars have examined the impact of incivility on both individual and organizational performance, these studies have focused more on developed world where formality is the norm, with little studies in developing countries where informality permeates organizational life. It is this gap that this present study attempts to fill. Does incivility have the same impact in the developing countries where informality pervades organizational life?
The study assesses and analyzes the problem of incivility and its impact on performance from selected public and private organizations in Ghana. The study is qualitative in nature and uses standardized open-ended interviews technique to collect data from 3 public and 3 private organizations. A sample size of 60 respondents comprising 30 each from both public and private organizations was used for the study. Cluster, convenience and purposive sampling techniques were adopted in this study.
The findings indicate that incivility seriously affects individual and organizational performance. It affects the building of cordial and workable employee relationships; psychologically impact on such employees; disturbs the concentration of victims and hinders the flow of effective communication.
It was also found that employees are highly demoralized as a result of such behaviours, leading to a high turnover rate for these organizations. It was also found that while some organizations do not have rules to address uncivilized behaviours, others do not handle victims of such behaviours properly.
The study proposes that in order to ameliorate the negative effect of such behaviours, management should adhere to the established rules and regulations, and settle issues on incivility appropriately. Where such rules do not exist, management should make every effort to establish them to guard employees from exhibiting such negative behaviour. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in the area of employee behaviour in organizations in developing countries.