Workplace Incivility Toward Individuals with Disabilities, Secure Attachment Style, and Mental Health: Focus on Mediator and Moderator Effects
Abstract
Despite the value of workplace civility, civility has been replaced by social exchanges that include statements and behaviors deemed largely unacceptable and undeniably rude. One type of rude behavior that appears innocuous is called workplace incivility, yet incivility disturbs efficient functioning among employees, intensifies work stress, and poses a grave financial hazard to an organization. Literature expressly on incivility toward individuals with disabilities is virtually non-existent, although emerging literature reveals that employees with disabilities are at a greater risk of experiencing workplace mistreatment vis-à-vis employees without disabilities. This quantitative study investigated the role of workplace incivility with respect to individuals with disabilities, its relation to mental health, and the role of secure attachment as a moderator and incivility as a mediator. While incivility that an employee experiences was expected to facilitate mental health decline, an employee’s secure attachment style was expected to buffer against it. Sequential hierarchical regression and structural equation model analyses were conducted to construe relationships among observed variables of two hypothetical models in this non-experimental design. The models included both direct and indirect paths consisting of mediator and moderator effects. The study indicated that (a) having a disability was linked to increased incivility encounters, (b) incivility encounters had a negative effect on target’s mental stability, (c) encountering incivility intensified the negative link between having a disability mental stability, (d) attachment security moderated or weakened the negative link between having a disability and incivility encounters, (e) increased levels of attachment security increased workplace mental stability, and (f) having a disability was significantly linked to decreased workplace mental stability. The study revealed that employees with disabilities were vulnerable to damaging mental health-related outcomes of incivility but that secure attachment shielded them against incivility encounters.
Subject Area
Adult education|Continuing education|Bilingual education
Recommended Citation
Heikkila, Mia Riikka, "Workplace Incivility Toward Individuals with Disabilities, Secure Attachment Style, and Mental Health: Focus on Mediator and Moderator Effects" (2019). ProQuest ETD Collection for FIU. AAI29327229.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/dissertations/AAI29327229