Cyber Incivilities and the Creation of Vulnerabilities at Work
Keywords:
leadership, accountability, ethics, vulnerability at work, cyber incivility at work, communication at work, psychosocial risks, organizational communicationAbstract
In this article, we fall back to four years of field research to show the links between cyber incivilities in the context of professional relations and the creation of vulnerabilities at work.
Our different analyses show that the interactions between the two phenomena can be considered in two ways: on the one hand, uncivil digital communication practices make individuals and groups at work vulnerable, on the other hand, the vulnerability of individuals and groups at work opens the way to the generation of cyber incivilities. These incivilities can then appear as signs of adaptation to new work contexts or of disengagement from the company, the work group or work in general.
In the end, we show that uncivil work environments and the process of developing vulnerabilities at work can appear as two phenomena that participate in the same negative work spiral, one leading to the other and vice versa.
