Development and Description of the Organizational Civility Scale (OCS)

Workplace incivility is a challenging problem for individuals and organizations resulting in employee absenteeism, psychological distress, physical disease, job dissatisfaction, and increased turn-over rates. The economic and human costs can be devastating and far-reaching. Empirical instruments are needed to effectively measure workplace incivility. This article describes the development and description of the Organizational Civility Scale (OCS) which measures employee perceptions of civility, stress, coping, job satisfaction, the extent to which incivility is perceived to be a problem, factors which contribute to it, and solutions to address the problem. Seven items on the OCS emerged as predictors of organizational civility including items referring to respect, collegiality, satisfaction with direct supervisor, whether the workplace environment appeared judgmental, civility expressed in mission/vision statement, emotionality in coping strategies, and frequency of abused authority