The dark side of co-worker friendship in the restaurant context: roles of gender and promotion focus

Purpose This paper investigates the focal role of close co-worker friendship in reducing incivility. Furthermore, this paper examines negative workplace gossip as a mediator and gender and promotion focus as moderators. Design/methodology/approach Using a time-lagged approach, 553 full-service restaurant front-line co-workers in Greater Cairo responded. Further, the data were analyzed using SmartPLS v.4. Findings Promotion focus weakened close co-workers’ friendships, causing them to speak negatively about each other with other co-workers. Multi-group analysis showed that males were more likely to spread negative gossip about their close co-workers and thus were subjected to incivility-related behaviors by their co-workers. Originality/value This paper is an early attempt to explore the focal role of promotion focus in the full-service restaurant context. This paper adds to affective events theory (AET) with a limited understanding of explaining and predicting co-worker incivility.