Southern Civility

Originally published 1/20/08

Have you ever been the victim of an abusive boss? A recent survey by the Employment Law Alliance found that nearly 45% of us have had (or have seen) a boss that engages in cruel behavior aimed at their subordinates.
The survey defined abusive behavior in a way that captures a wide variety of actions including criticizing an employee in front of co-workers, spreading rumors, and inappropriate physical contact.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the negative effects of abusive behavior in the workplace. But, scientists have indeed studied the consequences of abusive supervision.
As you would expect, subordinates working for abusive bosses have lower job satisfaction, lower commitment to the organization, greater intent to leave the company, lower job performance, greater psychological distress, and more work-family conflict.
The most interesting part of the Employment Law Alliance survey, however, was the observation that abusive bosses were less common in the South and more common in the Northeast.
When we talk about cultural diversity in business management, we’re usually not talking about this kind of diversity. But I certainly think there are regional differences in how people interact with their co-workers that are worth understanding.
Having grown up in the South, surveys like this one make me proud; but they also remind me of the “other side” of Southern civility.
Several years ago, social scientists Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett conducted a number of studies that also confirmed the general courtesy shown by people in the South. In a variety of different ways, however, they also found that Southerners were actually more abusive toward others when they had been insulted or challenged.
Cohen and Nisbett explain this through the “culture of honor.” They argue that Southerners are taught from an early age that violence against others is perfectly acceptable when one’s honor has been challenged.
I decided to conduct my own investigation of this phenomenon in a setting that I use for much of my research: professional baseball.
I wondered if major league pitchers born in the South were more likely to hit batters in situations that might be threatening to their identities.
Sure enough, pitchers from the South were not more likely, overall, to hit batters. But in a few situations, pitchers from the South were more likely to hit batters than were pitchers born in other regions of the US.
Pitchers from the South, for example, were more likely to hit batters after their own teammates had been hit by the opposing pitcher. If you’re from the South, you’re probably thinking that this is an admirable show of loyalty to one’s teammates.
Pitchers from the South were also more likely, however, to hit a batter immediately after giving up a homerun. They were also more likely to hit a homerun hitter the next time he came up to bat. This kind of retaliation isn’t quite as admirable.
So what’s the point? I think our lessons about cultural diversity in the workplace are missing an important aspect of culture. There’s enough evidence to suggest that people in the South (including your co-workers) are more sensitive to insults and challenges than are people in other parts of the country.
This means that abusive bosses are even more dangerous to your company in the South than they are anywhere else.