Creating Civil and Respectful Organizations Through the Scholar-Practitioner Bridge

Abstract

The Problem

Incivility, also referred to as bullying, emotional abuse, and mobbing, has increasingly become an issue in today’s workplace. It is widely recognized that workplace incivility has significant negative impact on both individuals and organizations. Nevertheless, there is a lack of general research attention to this topic within the human resource development (HRD) community. Such lack of essential understanding may hinder HRD practitioners’ capability of recognizing uncivil behaviors at work and designing effective HRD interventions to address them. Further, within the HRD practitioner community, there is a dearth of knowledge of how to use findings of research on workplace incivility to inform practice and help creating a civil work environment.

The Solution

This study presents a real-life case in which scholarship has informed and enhanced practice. It demonstrates how Estes and Wang’s (2008) research on workplace incivility has been used to assist one college in the United States to address issues related to civility. This scholarly informed initiative resulted in the inclusion of workplace civility in the College’s strategic plan, as well as development and delivery of workplace civility training workshops to over 800 employees across the College. Due to the success of the initial program, more efforts are being made to develop additional trainings.

The Stakeholders

Findings of this case study will benefit multiple stakeholders. This case of success provides valuable lessons which can be helpful to organizational leaders, policy makers, and human resource developers in their own endeavor to identify/address incivility related issues and foster a civil and healthy work environment for employees. In addition, this case study demonstrates how research can be applied to enhance practice, therefore showing both scholars and practitioners one way to bridge the gap between research and practice.