DBA Dissertation Proposal: John Good

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SUPERVISOR INCIVILITY AND
SUBORDINATE OUTCOMES:
THE MEDIATING IMPACT OF TRUST AND EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION
MODERATED BY HUMILITY AND ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

JOHN P. GOOD


ABSTRACT


Annually, since 2010, United States employees within the nursing profession experienced annual workplace violence rates more than nine times the national average (Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, 2011, 2016). This rate, since 2010, was rivaled only by law enforcement patrol officers and correctional officers at more than 18 and 22 times the national average, respectively (Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, 2011, 2016). However, Andersson & Pearson (1999) suggests the majority of workplace aggressive behavior is a less extreme form termed incivility. Porath & Pearson (2013) suggests 98 percent of the employees they studied over a 14 year period were the object of this less extreme form. Extant research suggests workplace incivility leads to a 78 percent decrease in organizational commitment, a 66 percent decrease in performance, a 48 percent decrease in “work effort,” a 47 percent absenteeism rate, a 38 percent reduction in work quality, and a 12 percent job turnover rate (Porath & Pearson, 2013). Furthermore, the annual monetary cost to the health care industry of job turnover among nurses is estimated at $11,581 per nurse (Lewis & Malecha, 2011).
The effect of incivility among nurses has been found to lead to emotional exhaustion (Laschinger, Finegan, & Wilk, 2009) and adversely impacts subordinate trust in their manager (Pearson, Andersson, & Wegner, 2001). Subordinate emotional exhaustion (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003) and lack of trust in their manager (Brower, Lester, Korsgaard, & Dineen, 2008) have been shown to have an adverse impact on subordinate task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and intention to quit. While health care industry specific incivility intervention stratgies have been proposed (Leiter et al., 2012, 2011), a sustained and constructive impact has not prevailed within the health care industry (Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, 2011, 2016). However, manager ethical leadership has been shown to have a constructive impact on subordinate emotional exhaustion (Mo & Shi, 2015) and subordinate trust (Brown & Mitchell, 2010). Hence, this study proposes to addresses two research questions in the setting of United States hospitals. Firstly, no research has quantified the mediating effect of subordinate interpersonal trust and emotional exhaustion between nurse manager incivility and nurse subordinate outcomes of task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and intention to quit in United States hospitals. Secondly, this study proposes to fill a literature gap by quantifying these mediating effects between nurse manager ethical leadership and these nurse subordinate outcomes. This study proposes to sample nurse manager-nurse subordinate dyads and samples nurse subordinate peers to assess response agreement. Published scales will be used to measure nurse manager incivility and ethical leadership, as well as nurse subordinate trust in their manager, emotional exhaustion, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and intention to quit. Structural equation modeling will be used to analyze the model and provide model path estimates to assist in hypothesis testing.