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1. Introduction
India has a thriving IT industry, including services, consulting and outsourcing, responsible for the employment of nearly half a million people (Shinde, 2022). The revenue of the Indian IT industry is expected to increase by 15.5% and reach US$245bn in FY 2022–2023 [1]. Currently, the Indian IT industry is experiencing noticeable layoffs due to “moonlighting”. Side hustling or moonlighting is a phenomenon in which employees hold two separate employments (George and George, 2022). The COVID-19 outbreak forced several enterprises to urge their employees to work remotely, which further facilitated the IT employees in India getting involved in side hustles. Moonlighting or side hustles are not legal in India, and employers do not appreciate them either. Especially in the IT industry, the major reasons why employers resent people who hold two jobs concurrently are data and confidentiality breaches as well as missed productivity (Outlook, 2022). In the same context, Wipro laid off 300 employees in India [2]. Businesses have voiced opposition to the trend of double employment, arguing that having employees juggle multiple roles reduces efficiency (Ishwarbharath, 2022). This has resulted in employees being scrutinized by their respective employers, and this may become the source of uncivil behaviour from superiors as well as from co-workers. At the workplace, open humiliation and suspicion towards an employee’s opinion, their judgement or their behaviour may be considered hostile or active uncivil behaviour (Carmona-Cobo et al., 2021).
Currently, the employees of the Indian IT industry are witnessing challenging times, including the scrutinizing attitude of others, high time pressure and technological stress due to round- the-clock working of international clients. In the same context, they are experiencing ill treatment owing to ambiguous role assignments by managers, a propensity for personal prejudices resulting from organizational politics and favouritism, and many more (Prabhu et al., 2022). Such evidence in the Indian organizational framework could be credited to a high-power distance culture in which the employees seem to be pro-civil in accepting the disparities and treatments (Hofstede Insights, 2020). At the workplace, condescending remarks, putdowns, unpleasant or harsh behaviour and unfavourable gestures by others are termed as workplace incivility (Anjum et al., 2021). The notion of workplace incivility has been a source of concern in enterprises due to its...