The Effect of Perceived Workplace Incivility on Empolyee Satisfaction

Today, communication problems may arise between employees due to intense work tempo, personal problems, increasing expectations from employees, work-life imbalances and life conditions that compel relatively low paid employees, and sometimes every employee may exhibit discourteous behaviors in the working environment. Organizations are structures consisting of employees with different personal and cultural characteristics, different ethnic backgrounds and living conditions, and therefore it is seen that employees with unique feelings, thoughts, attitudes and perceptions can sometimes exhibit rude and discourteous behaviors. However, such behaviors can have negative effects on employee satisfaction, which is defined as positive or negative general attitude towards employees. When employees sense of happiness towards their work and environment is negatively affected, a significant loss of efficiency and inefficient performance results may occur. In this context, the effects of perceived workplace incivility on employee satisfaction were tried to be determined in this study. For this purpose, an empirical study was carried out on 265 research assistants working at Selcuk University. In the study, questionnaire technique which is one of the quantitative data collection techniques, was used. The data obtained from the sample were analyzed with SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) packaged software. According to the results of the correlation analysis, it was found that there was a moderate negative and statistically significant relationship between perceived workplace incivility and employee satisfaction. There are two dimensions of employee satisfaction: Internal satisfaction and external satisfaction. It was found that there was a moderate negative and significant relationship between perceived workplace incivility and “internal satisfaction”, while there was a moderate negative and significant relationship with “external satisfaction”. As a result of the regression analysis; the effect of the perceived workplace incivility on the satisfaction of the research assistants was found to be negative and significant. In addition, it was found that the “exclusionary behavior” dimension of perceived workplace incivility variable negatively affected employee satisfaction. “Hostility”, “privacy invasion” and “gossiping” dimensions of workplace incivility did not have a significant effect on employee satisfaction. It is thought that the results of the research will make significant contributions to the managers of businesses or institutions and academicians working in this field.