Survey: It’s men behaving badly

Researchers find rudeness on the rise in modern offices

The Associated Press

CHICAGO- A co-worker slams down the phone. Someone snags the last of the office coffee without refilling the pot. The boss blows by without so much as a nod to the staff.

Sound like where you work?

Workplace civility has gone downhill in the past 10 years, according to a new study, and researchers say men are mostly to blame.
Although men and women are targets of disrespect and rudeness in equal numbers, researchers say men instigate the rudeness 70 percent of the time.

“Our goal is to make organizations aware of this,” said study co-author Christine Pearson, a management professor at the University of North Carolina business school. “You can calculate the costs.”

Pearson pointed to several broad societal forces as possible reasons for all the ill will: downsizing the growing pressure to “do more with less” and technology- which allows workers to “zap people anonymously.”

Twelve percent of the people who experience rude behavior quit their jobs to avoid the perpetrator, the researchers found. Fifty-two percent reported losing work time worrying and 22 percent deliberately decreased their work effort.

The study, “Workplace Incivility: The Target’s Eye View, “ was presented Tuesday at the Academy of Management’s annual convention. The authors interviewed and surveyed 1,400 workers and generated a list of suggestions to improve the workplace culture.
The majority of those interviewed, 78 percent, said incivility has worsened in the past 10 years. The authors also found that rude people are three times more likely to be in higher positions than their targets.

And, Pearson said, men are seven times more likely by rude or insensitive to underlings than to superiors.
Women are equally rude to superiors and subordinates, the study found.

Fay Taylor, 49, a marketing director in Chicago, said she is not surprised.

“Men are more like bulls in a china shop when they are trying to get a job done,” Taylor said. “Women tend to couch things more carefully.”

But, she added, “If a woman is going to be rude, she’s going to be rude. She’ll butt in at the highest levels and the lowest levels.”
Jane Dutton, a University of Michigan professor who wasn’t involved in the study, said its most important finding was “to make concrete the costs of these small acts of disrespect.”