What is Coercive Action

This chapter intends to inform the readers about workplace incivility, which is being rude to one's colleagues, with no apparent intention to harm. It is regarded as the basic level of counterproductive work behavior that might be tremendously injurious to an organization and its members. Not greeting subordinates, making sarcastic grimaces while talking with a coworker, and spreading rumors about the supervisor are few examples to incivility. The progenitors of workplace incivility research are two prominent organizational scientists from the USA, Lynne Andersson and Christine Pearson. They coined this term and published about this concept in a 1999 article. In the 17 years since its introduction, lots of researchers from different countries published about diverse aspects of incivility, its antecedents, consequences, measurement methods and interventions. Since incivility researchers tested myriad theories mainly from psychology, health, and criminology disciplines using both experimental and empirical methods, currently there is a huge accumulation of data.