#4495. Willingness to Recommend: Does Workplace Incivility Actually Play a Role?

August 2026publication date
Proposal available till 16-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

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Journal’s subject area:
Business, Management and Accounting (all);
Psychology (all);
Business and International Management;
Applied Psychology;
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Abstract:
To prevent workplace incivility, scholars encourage organizations to use reference checks to help eliminate uncivil applicants. However, under certain conditions, reference providers may be willing to recommend their rude colleagues for employment. We test this possibility by studying willingness to recommend, which captures a willingness to serve as a professional reference for a colleague. In study 1, multilevel modeling of multisource data revealed that colleague incivility negatively related to willingness to recommend, but troublingly, this relationship was weaker among colleagues who were high rather than low performers, regardless of job-level moderators. In study 2, we tested whether organizations can intervene and encourage potential reference providers to pay greater attention to incivility. Regression results showed that providers placed greater weight on their colleague’s incivility in relation to willingness to recommend when signals were sent that the hiring organization was unwilling to sacrifice civility for top performance. Our research helps illuminate when incivility instigators are likely to be recommended for employment and demonstrates a way to maximize the use of reference checks for incivility prevention.
Keywords:
Job performance; Multilevel; Reference checks; Willingness to recommend; Workplace incivility

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