Does supervisor mistreatment lead to subordinates' incivility at work? Evidence from a cross-cultural daily diary

Employees all around the world are affected by the problem of workplace mistreatment. However, little is known about how people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds react to mistreatment. Adopting an ego-depletion theory, the current study aimed to investigate how a supervisors' mistreatment leads to next-morning instigated incivility against supervisors via increased subordinates' self-regulatory resource depletion between Chinese and Pakistani employees. A snowball technique was employed to collect data, involving 90 Chinese and 95 Pakistani employees across 2 work weeks. Measurement invariance analysis revealed that both groups were significantly different in experiencing workplace mistreatment and its outcome. Findings from multigroup path analysis revealed that Chinese employees showed a greater positive direct effect of supervisors' mistreatment on subordinates' instigated incivility against supervisors via subordinates' resource depletion as compared to Pakistanis. Additionally, the positive relationship between supervisors' mistreatment and the subordinates' resource depletion was mitigated by a higher level of trait mindfulness. Furthermore, the positive association between the subordinates' resource depletion and instigated incivility was also buffered by a higher level of trait mindfulness. These effects were also stronger in Chinese than in Pakistani employees. It was concluded by the study that employees' cultural values may either render them more or less vulnerable to the effects of workplace rudeness.