ABSTRACT
Although organizational life can be a place to find and forge important relationships, craft and nurture a valued identity, and experience a deep sense of accomplishment, it can also be the source of trauma and stigmatization, emotional and psychological pain, and workloads that grind down even the toughest workers. Organizational discourse and meanings that serve certain interests at the expense of others are noteworthy, particularly when these result in human and organizational damage. Increased demands at work and the accompanying “pressure cooker” environments created by those demands mark communication at and about work in increasingly negative ways. The destructive side of organizational communication is evidenced through incivility, harassment, and abuse of power, among other things. In such environments, individual and organizational drives for control, power, or capital usually outweigh human concerns. Moreover, injustice and incivility often underscore communicative interactions and illegal, unethical, and reprehensible interactions sadly become the norm. Destructive interactions at work, in which people are harmed, workgroup communication deteriorates, and trust and cooperation decline, are of central importance and are the issues the authors explore in this volume. Although this volume provides accounts of mostly American workplaces, there are a number of studies that point to a growing epidemic of workplace incivility in Europe as well. Many such instances are cited throughout the book.
