Leader negative mood and employee-instigated incivility: the role of mood contagion

Purpose Given the harmful effects of workplace incivility and the calls for revealing the antecedents of instigated incivility, this study examines how employee-instigated incivility unfolds as a result of negative mood contagion from leaders to employees. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon affective events theory, the authors hypothesized that leader negative mood is contagious and has an indirect relationship with employee-instigated incivility through employee negative mood. For hypothesis testing, data were collected from 243 leader-employee dyads and tested using bootstrapped mediation analysis. Findings As hypothesized, leader negative mood was associated with employee-instigated incivility indirectly through employee negative mood. This finding supports that negative mood of the leader is contagious and might unintendedly trigger employee-instigated incivility toward other at work. Research limitations/implications Given the cross-sectional design of this study, causal inferences could not be drawn. The direction of relationships between the variables is based on the theoretical assumptions, rather than a test of the causal ordering of the variables. Originality/value This study advances the limited literature on the antecedents of employee-instigated incivility by demonstrating the impact of negative mood experienced by leaders on uncivil behaviors of employees.