The long arm of email incivility: Transmitted stress to the partner and partner work withdrawal

• Date: 01 December 2018
• Author: Verena C. Haun,YoungAh Park
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2289
• Published date: 01 December 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The long arm of email incivility: Transmitted stress to the

partner and partner work withdrawal

YoungAh Park

1

*|Verena C. Haun

2

*

1

School of Labor and Employment Relations,

University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign,

Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A.

2

Psychologisches Institut, Arbeits‐,

Organisations‐und Wirtschaftspsychologie,

Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz,

Mainz, Germany

Correspondence

Verena C. Haun, Psychologisches Institut,

Arbeits‐, Organisations‐und

Wirtschaftspsychologie, Johannes Gutenberg

University of Mainz, Wallstr. 3, 55122 Mainz,

Germany.

Email: verena.haun@uni‐mainz.de

Summary

As email communication becomes increasingly pervasive in the workplace, incivility

can be manifested through work email. Integrating conservation of resources theory

with spillover–crossover frameworks, the authors propose and test a couple‐dyadic

model regarding email incivility's effects on work withdrawal for employees and their

domestic partners. Online survey data were collected from 167 dual‐earner couples at

multiple time points. Results from actor–partner interdependence mediation and

moderation modeling showed that when employees experience more frequent incivil-

ity via work email during a week, they withdraw from work the following week. Fur-

thermore, employees transmit their stress to their domestic partner on the weekend,

and, as a result, the partner also withdraws from work the next week. More important,

employees' negative work reflection during the weekend exacerbates the effects of

email incivility on stress transmission to their partner, whereas the partner's negative

work reflection during the weekend aggravated the effects of transmitted stress on

their work withdrawal. The study sheds light on the stress effects of email incivility

that span work and family domains and affect both employees and their partners.

KEYWORDS

APIM, email incivility, negative work reflection, spillover–crossover, stress transmission, work

withdrawal

1|INTRODUCTION

Workplace incivility refers to rude or insensitive behaviors and com-

ments that convey disrespect to others at work (Andersson & Pearson,

1999). Research has consistently found that incivility adversely

impacts employees' job attitudes, work behaviors, and well‐being

(Schilpzand, De Pater, & Erez, 2016). Despite increasing evidence on

incivility as a significant source of stress, surprisingly, much less atten-

tion has been paid to a common medium through which incivility is

manifested in modern workplaces, namely, work email. Specifically,

many employees rely on email communications for work, and inter-

personal interactions via email are becoming increasingly common

(Purcell & Rainie, 2014). As such, incivility threats can extend to email

incivility—disrespectful or inconsiderate behaviors and messages

exhibited through work email, such as rude messages, time‐sensitive

messages sent with inadequate notice, and ignored requests made

via email (Giumetti, McKibben, Hatfield, Schroeder, & Kowalski,

2012; Lim & Teo, 2009).

Given the increased use of email for work communications, build-

ing scientific knowledge about online incivility is critical to effectively

counteract its potentially negative impacts (Cortina, Kabat‐Farr,

Magley, & Nelson, 2017). A recent study has discovered that distress

from email incivility at work “spills over”to the home domain, continu-

ing to affect employees the next morning (Park, Fritz, & Jex, 2015).

This finding implies that in the “spillover”scenario, negative effects

of email incivility may go beyond target employees to “crossover”to

their significant others at home. This potential crossover phenomenon

warrants an investigation because research to date has mainly treated

incivility as an individual‐level phenomenon rather than as a relational

or dyadic phenomenon that influences those who are not individual

*

Both authors contributed to this paper equally.

Received: 16 May 2017 Revised: 28 March 2018 Accepted: 31 March 2018

DOI: 10.1002/job.2289

1268 Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:1268–1282.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job