LAUSR

Workplace incivility is a growing challenge because occurrence of uncivil behavior at work results in toxic work environments that are not conducive to employee learning and development (Ghosh, Dierkes, and Falletta 2011; Pearson and Porath 2005). Andersson and Pearson (1999) define workplace incivility as “low intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect” (p. 457). Incivility has negative influences on those who directly experience uncivil encounters at work, as well as those who witness uncivil behavior toward others or the organization (Montgomery, Kane, and Vance 2004). Organizational scholars have noted numerous detrimental outcomes of workplace incivility such as poor employee health, low job satisfaction, low organizational productivity and commitment, and high employee turnover (Andersson and Pearson 1999; Johnson and Indvik 2001; Lim and Cortina 2005; Porath and Erez 2007). While uncivil behavior at work has emerged as a substantive area in its own right in the western world (Schilpzand, De Pater, and Erez 2016), with considerable literature on its antecedents and outcomes at individual and organizational levels (Adams and Webster 2013; Bunk and Magley 2013; Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, and Cooper 2011; Reio and Ghosh 2009; Ghosh, Reio, and Bang 2011; Keashly and Harvey 2004; Miner-Rubino and Reed 2010; Trudel and Reio 2011), the phenomenon has not received much academic attention in the Asian context despite its pervasive occurrence (Yueng and Griffin 2008). Only a few studies have examined the impact of workplace incivility in China (Chen, Ferris, Kwan, Yan, Zhou and Hong 2013; Wu, Zhang, Chiu and He 2013), Korea (Kim and Shapiro 2008), and Singapore (Lim and Lee 2011) and a few others have explored the related constructs of workplace deviance in Malaysia (Alias, Mohd Rasdi, Ismail and Abu Samah 2013) and bullying in the ITES-BPO (Information Technology Enabled Services-Business Process Outsourcing) sector in India (D’Cruz and Rayner 2012; D’Cruz and Noronha 2009). However, these studies have mostly used scales and measures that have been developed in the West (e.g., Cortina, Magley, Williams and Langhout 2001; Griffin 2010; Lim and Lee 2001) and hence, have not shed much light on the socio-cultural perspective of workplace incivility in Asia and human resource development (HRD) professionals’ roles in addressing uncivil behaviors at work in Asia. Montgomery et al. (2004) suggested that differences in shared norms of respect may lead to different thresholds of tolerance towards workplace incivility. These differing thresholds could be due to dissimilarities in social and cultural orientations implying that “the conceptualization and operational definition of workplace incivility may be culture specific” (Lim and Lee 2011, p. 107) and may vary across nations. What constitutes uncivil behavior in the western countries may not be considered uncivil in HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL, 2017 VOL. 20, NO. 4, 263–267 https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2017.1336692