Workplace Incivility and Employees’ Personal Initiative: A Moderated Mediation Model of Emotional Exhaustion and Meaningful Work

Abstract

Workplace incivility has many negative effects, but its impact on personal initiative and related mechanisms are still unclear. Drawing from conservation of resource theory, we tested the relationship between workplace incivility, emotional exhaustion, meaningful work, and personal initiative. The results from three-wave lagged and multisource data ( N = 229) indicated that workplace incivility was negatively correlated with personal initiative, and this relationship was mediated by emotional exhaustion. In addition, meaningful work attenuated the relationship between workplace incivility and personal initiative. The findings reveal that workplace incivility hurts employees’ personal initiative in the organizational context by depleting individuals’ emotional resources, leading to emotional exhaustion, while meaningful work is a critical cognitive resource that can buffer this relationship. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.