The role of customer perceived ethicality in explaining the impact of incivility among employees on customer unethical behavior and customer citizenship behavior

Incivility among employees in frontline encounters is prevalent, but little is known about its impact on customers’ ethics-related perceptions and behaviors. Drawing upon the stimulus-organism-response paradigm, this study examines how witnessing incivility among employees can serve as a social atmospheric cue to influence customers’ perceived ethicality of an organization and their subsequent behaviors. According to our results, in response to employee-to-employee incivility witnessed during frontline encounters, customers perceive the uncivil employees’ organization to have a lower level of ethicality. In turn, customers engage more in unethical behavior (i.e., opportunistic behavior) and less in customer citizenship behavior (i.e., customer tolerance of employee-induced errors). We further demonstrate that the negative effect of uncivil employee-to-employee interactions on customers’ perception of the ethicality of an organization is amplified when customers have an a priori perception that the organization is competent. The findings hold theoretical and practical implications for the management of employee-to-employee incivility and unethical customer behavior during frontline encounters.