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The purpose of this paper is to explore how witnessing workplace incivility from coworkers and supervisors relates to instigating incivility toward others. A further aim was to investigate if witnessed incivility is indirectly related to instigated incivility via perceived stress and low job satisfaction. An additional aim was to study if control, social support and job embeddedness moderate the relationships between witnessed and instigated incivility.

A total of 978 individuals, sourced from a Swedish trade union, completed an online questionnaire.

The results showed that witnessed incivility, mainly from coworkers but also from supervisors, was related to instigated incivility. Although witnessed incivility was related to both perceived stress and low job satisfaction, witnessed incivility was not linked to instigated incivility via perceived stress or low job satisfaction. In addition, the results showed that participants who had witnessed coworker incivility and at the same time perceived high levels of control, social support (from coworkers) or job embeddedness on average reported higher levels of instigated incivility. Similarly, participants who had witnessed supervisor incivility and at the same time perceived high levels of control, social support (from coworkers and supervisors) or job embeddedness on average reported higher levels of instigated incivility.

The findings expand the literature on bystander workplace incivility and highlight the importance of including experienced psychosocial work factors in models of incivility.

Global virtual teams (GVTs), also known as transnational or distributed teams, are increasingly common as organizations strive to maintain a global presence, find top and diverse talent, and cope with economic constraints. Despite increasing adoption of GVTs, there is a dearth of research addressing whether GVTs are an effective coping strategy for dealing with the world economic crisis and if there are unintended negative consequences on employee well-being as a result of their use. Thus, a focal question guiding the development of this chapter is whether or not GVTs are a sustainable solution for organizations? In this chapter we present a generic framework depicting the cycle by which macroeconomic demands impose changes on organization's structures, which trickle down to the level of the individual who has to cope with the demands the new structure has imposed. We discuss GVTs as an intervention (or cure) for organizations’ dealing with the current world economic crisis and how this organizational intervention inevitably becomes the context (or cause) for the kinds of stressors or demands employees face.