Linking Supervisor Incivility With Job Embeddedness and Cynicism: The Mediating Role of Employee Self-Efficacy

Applying the conservation of resources theory and the self-efficacy theory, this study investigates the relationship between supervisor incivility, self-efficacy, cynicism and the job embeddedness of employees in the hotel industry. The role of self-efficacy, as an important variable that mediates the relationship between the predictor and the criterion variable, is significantly evaluated. A non-probability sampling technique was used to collect 245 questionnaires from frontline employees of five- and four-star hotels in Nigeria. The findings reveal that supervisor incivility has a negative effect on self-efficacy and a positive effect on cynicism, and that self-efficacy negatively affects cynicism. There was no significant relationship with job embeddedness in the study. Importantly, the investigation establishes that self-efficacy is a mediating variable between supervisor incivility and cynicism. The study noted the importance of adopting a policy that introduces periodic seminars and professional training for both employees and supervisors, as a means for curbing incivility and cynicism. The study concludes with theoretical and practical implications, leaving room for further investigation.


Introduction
Workplace incivility is a challenging issue for both employees and management at every level of an organization. The quest to mitigate uncivil behavior and the effect it has on employees, is on the increase according to company managers, practitioners and researchers. There is no doubt that incivility is a global issue that encompasses all fields of endeavor and is apparent in many countries, inter alia, in: the Philippines (Scott et al., 2013), Australia (Kirk et al., 2011), This study makes three specific contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, the study presents an empirical and theoretical account of the effect of supervisor incivility on employees' health, work outcome and performance. The study is novel because no existing literature relates supervisor incivility with job embeddedness (for instance, see Abubakar et al 2016; Riasat. and Nisar, 2016;Kim and Beehr, 2017). Connecting the structure between supervisor incivility, job embeddedness and cynicism is essential for both theory development and building/establishing other necessary interventions for the study. Secondly, the study will depart from the existing strand of literature by testing the direct effect of supervisor incivility on cynicism and job embeddedness. This improves the scholarly understanding of the relationships between the variables without the mediating variable. Thirdly, whereas the extant literature has focused on the nexus between incivility and organizational outcomes (Hur et al., 2015), this study steers clear of the extant literature by articulating the mediating effect of self-efficacy on supervisor incivility, job embeddedness, and cynicism. Notable studies extend the strand of literature by focusing on, inter alia: emotional exhaustion (Hur et al., 2016), job performance (Nelson et al., 2017;Sharma and Singh, 2016), job satisfaction and turnover intention (Haider et al. 2018;Lim et al., 2016;Alola et al., 2018). Employee positive self-efficacy is widely acknowledged; the study tested the mediating effect of employee self-efficacy, which might have an effect on an employee. If this happens to be the case, developing employee positive self-efficacy is compelling and timely for and in the hotel industry.
The rest of the study is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the theoretical framework and testable hypotheses in the light of the extant literature. The research methodology is covered in Section 3, while Section 4 discusses the empirical results and corresponding implications. We conclude in Section 5 with future research directions.
Importantly, as resources are depleted, adverse outcomes ensue. Conversely, as resources are accumulated and protected, positive outcomes are more feasibly realized. Although the COR theory is conceived to be a general motivation theory (Hobfoll, 1989), where accumulation, protection, and the allocation of resources act to energize, direct and sustain employee behavior. This theory has often been applied to stress (Halbesleben, 2006;Harvey et al., 2007;Halbesleben et al., 2014); it has also been applied to the exchange-based relationships found in an organizational context (e.g, Perrwe et al., 2004;Treadway et al., 2005;Wright and Cropanzano, 1998). In the view of Pizam (2008), in the hospitality industry, employees are usually stressed during service delivery. Emotional support resources and cognitive resources are noted to be of high value to an employee; (Trougakos et al., 2014). Furthermore, the study of Shao and Skarlicki (2014) investigated the effect of stress on employees. The findings are broadly consistent with studies in the extant literature, notably that employee stress originates from diverse sources, inter alia: long working hours (Kensbock et al., 2015), or contact with other employees (Ineson et al., 2013), which drains the employees' psychological strength and triggers organizational negative outcomes, such as emotional exhaustion and the turnover intention (Lee and Ok, 2014). Moreover, the theory postulates that employees are able to withstand both negative and positive adverse working conditions, and at the same time protect their resources. Transforming disappointing and unfavorable situations into conditions that are favorable and positive, to create job satisfaction and thus reach the organizational objectives, is of benefit to the organization. It is in the light of this ability to transform uncomfortable situations into promising avenues that employees with high level efficacy absorb emotional energy and remain immune to a supervisor's uncivil behavior. This builds on the fact that the theory is based on resources' depletion (Hoges and Park, 2013). Adding to the COR theory, the self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977) is defined as "people's judgments of their capacity to organize and execute the courses of action required to attain the designated type of performance" (Bandura, 1986, P. 391). Bandura suggests that the cause of people's actions is predetermined by an initial decision to behave in a certain way. Self-efficacy is an important aspect of human behavior. Several researchers have conducted studies linking self-efficacy to human behavior (Taylor et al., 1984;Stumpf et al., 1987, Alola et al., 2018. In this respect, a study by Burger (1989) suggested that events can go beyond an individual's control, leading to a negative Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 outcome. He went further to add that when this is within the individual's control, a positive outcome emerges. According to Litt, (1988), the positive aspect of self-efficacy is evident under high levels of self-efficacy, while the negative aspect of self-efficacy is more evident under low levels of self-efficacy. Therefore, we propose that when an individual with low self-efficacy is faced with an unfavorable situation, a negative outcome is likely to emerge and vice versa. The study tries to determine the effect of self-efficacy under conditions of stress at work, as a mediator which received minimal attention (Schaubroeck and Merritt, 1997). In addition to the purpose of the study, the study tries to check the validity of self-efficacy as a mediating factor in relation to the role of supervisor incivility on cynicism and job embeddedness.

Supervisor Incivility and Employee Self-Efficacy
Adopting ideas from the conservation of resources theory, employees tend to conserve resources, and in a situation where the deposited resources are not regained, stress is inevitable (Hobfoll, 1989). According to Schreurs et al., (2010), employees that distance themselves from a supervisor's rude behavior conserve the acquired resources; this drains their emotions and transforms job stresses into strengths (Schreurs et al., 2010). It is interesting to note that one of the causes of supervisor incivility is the high level of power associated with the supervisor's job description (Cortina et al., 2001). Following the trend of research, scholars have established that incivility causes more harm than good (Schilpzand et al., 2016;Itzkovich and Heilbrum, 2016).
Self-efficacy is related to employee motivation, which aids employees in accomplishing a given task. According to the work of recent scholars (Alola, Avci and Ozturen, 2018;Taylor and Kluemper, 2012;Sakurai and Jex, 2012), the mechanisms that alleviate the negative effect of supervisor incivility in the workplace are on the increase, and one such measure is to increase the employees' self-efficacy. Therefore, since employee self-efficacy is a positive psychological capital, and it will possibly reduce the effect of supervisor incivility on employees, we proposed the following hypothesis.

Supervisor Incivility and Job Embeddedness and Cynicism
In recent decades, renowed scholars (Sliter et al., 2012;Sakurai and Jex, 2012) became interested in finding ways to curtail supervisor incivility and its effect on employees.
Supervisor incivility is characterized by the uncivil behavior of a supervisor toward an employee; this harmful act includes avoiding the employee, and gossiping and uttering negative comments about him/her (Reio and Sanders, 2011); this is detrimental to both the employee and the organization. Supervisor incivility is more harmful than other forms of incivility (customer incivility and co-worker incivility) because of the organizational authority vested in the supervisor to manage several concerns, including behavioral issues. Most often, when low-intensity incivility is not controlled, it affects organizational outcomes (Holm et al., 2015). Furthermore, incivility is linked with poor behavior at work. For example, workplace incivility causes a decline in job performance and an increase in employee turnover intentions (Porath and Pearson, 2012;Wilson and Holmvall, 2013;Haider et al. 2018), decreased work engagement (Chen et al., 2013) and increased levels of absenteeism (Sliter et al., 2012). In the extant literature of Bunk and Magley (2013), they pointed out that incivility leads the target to reciprocate in an uncivil way. The study by Haider et al. (2018), into the effect of bad leadership on the turnover intention in pharmaceutical companies, found out that destructive leadership is positively related to deviant behavior and turnover intention. Also, Sliter et al. (2012) andTaylor et al. (2012) noted that incivility makes employees less creative and eventually decreases citizenship behavior, which can trigger anger and distrust in the organization (Bunk and Magley, 2013). Job embeddedness is negatively related to turnover and influence's employee behavior and their working attitude (Crossley et al., 2007). Although job embeddedness is positively correlated with job satisfaction (Lee et al., 2014), Crossley et al., (2007), added that employees stick with their job as a result of positive experiences they have with their organization, community, and supervisor. Therefore, we argue that linking job embeddedness and supervisor incivility will have a negative association, since there is a strong indication that job embeddedness is the thing that unites an employee with his/her organization. On the other hand, cynicism is the defensive attitude of an employee toward an unhealthy behavior, either by the top management or by the organization (Abraham, 2000). It is a feeling that the organization cannot be trusted and lacks integrity (Bernerth et al., 2007). The COR theory suggests that an employee uses a defense mechanism in response to a supervisor's uncivil behavior. In addition, a cynical employee badmouths the organization (Wilkerson, Evans and Davis, 2008), and tries to reduce organizational commitment and organizational performance (Bernerth et al., 2007).
It is reasonable to state that supervisor incivility has an effect on employees' attitudes. A negative attitude towards the organization warrants the employee to exhibit unruly behavior.
Hence, we propose the following underpinning hypotheses.

Employee Self-Efficacy, Job Embeddedness, and Cynicism
Instructively, Bandura (2012) and Ho and Gupta (2014) posited that self-efficacy is the capacity to carry out a given task effectively and ensure a successful outcome despite challenges. It is a motivational construct that influences an employee's behavior, attitude, and choice of activity in a range of contexts. The regulation of effort constitutes one of the core characteristics of selfefficacy. Several studies have linked self-efficacy with a multitude of outcomes, inter alia positive organizational outcomes ( Van et al., 2011), work engagement and intrinsic motivation (Brown et al., 2014), self-identity and training performance (Fan and Lai, 2014) and effective work outcomes (Judge and Bono, 2001). Additionally, self-efficacy is associated with persistent and positive organizational outcomes (Salanova et al., 2011). On the other hand, the previous literature has positively linked job embeddedness with positive organizational outcomes, like satisfaction (Ferreira et al., 2017), innovative work behavior (Haider and Akbar, 2017), creative performance (Karatepe, 2016) and work engagement (Arasli et al., 2017). Job embeddedness has on-the-job and off-the-job factors associated with an individual's links, fit, and sacrifice (Mitchel et al., 2001). Suffice to say that efficacious employees are "goal-getters" (Bandura, 2012), finding a positive alternative to every situation (Hannah et al., 2007). Conversely, cynicism negatively affects organizational outcomes by lowing organizational citizenship behavior (Jung and Kim, 2012) and employee performance (Bommer et al., 2005). A negative ripple effect is believed to ensue from a cynical employee to other employees and the organization at large. Therefore, since self-efficacy influences behavior, this study proposed that self-efficacy will Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 have an effect on both job embeddedness and cynicism. The study proposed that self-efficacy has a link with job embeddedness and cynicism. H4: Self-efficacy positively influences job embeddedness. H5: Self-efficacy negatively influences cynicism.

Employee Self-Efficacy as a Mediator
Specifically, self-efficacy is associated with job satisfaction (McNatt and Judge, 2008), turnover intentions (Avey, Luthans, and Jensen, 2009), task performance (Avey, Reichard, Luthans, and Mhatre, 2011) and OCBs (Walumbwa, Hartnell, and Oke, 2010). We drew from the conservation of resources theory and the self-efficacy theory to explain our hypothetical relationship. The regulation of one's behavior requires extra deposition (e.g. self-efficacy) to withstand emotional absorption as a result of a negative organizational outcome (such as a supervisor's incivility).
Employees in the hospitality industry are at the center of the depression in service delivery (Pizam, 2008). Shao and Skarlicki (2014) carried out research into the application and effect of stress on frontline employees and established a negative correlation. Employee stress emanates from diverse sources, inter alia: long working hours (Kensbock et al., 2015), contact with other employees which drains the employees' psychological strength (Ineson et al., 2013) and triggers negative outcomes (Lee and Ok, 2014). This theory proposed that employee self-efficacy protects individual resources since the theory is based on the depletion of resources (Hoges and Park, 2013). Applying the self-efficacy theory, Bandura (1977) maintained that action is predetermined, stressing that the theory stipulates that since self-efficacy is an important aspect of human behavior, control over any reaction to organizational stress is easily obtainable.
Researchers linked self-efficacy to other variables (Taylor et al., 1984;Stumpf et al., 1987, Alola et al., 2018 and found a positive relationship. In this respect, a study by Burger (1989) reviewed that events can go beyond an individual's control, leading to a negative outcome. On the other hand, Jex et al., (2001) opined that self-efficacy influences employee behavior through the way they react to events (coping). Stating that employees with low self-efficacy use more emotionally focused coping than employees with high self-efficacy. Researchers have reported that employees with high self-efficacy report less stress and less mental distortion whereas employees with low self-efficacy often display job dissatisfaction, the turnover intention and emotional Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 depression (Judge and Bono, 2001;Semmer, 2003;Siu et al., 2007). Therefore, applying the COR theory and the self-efficacy theory to our model, we propose the following hypotheses: H6: Self-efficacy mediates the relationship between supervisor incivility and job embeddedness. H7: Self-efficacy mediates the relationship between supervisor incivility and cynicism.

Measurement
This study adopts a quantitative approach to analyze the data. Questionnaires were designed and separated into five parts, namely; demographic variable, supervisor incivility, employee selfefficacy, job embeddedness, and cynicism. Data were collected from four-and five-star hotels in the two major Nigerian cities: Lagos and Abuja. With a non-probability sampling technique, the sample for the study is selected from a given population that represents the whole population.
Investigation of the subset of the population was the most appropriate approach for the data's collection (Wang and Wang 2017;Bornstein et al., 2013). The sample size was determined based on the researcher's judgment, since no data was available to determine the survey population's size (Darvishmotevali et al., 2017). In addition, the researcher used only hotel employees that have direct contact with the customers.
In order to test the validity of the questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted with 30 respondents, to establish face validity. A total of 450 questionnaires were distributed to customer contact employees. Prior to the distribution of the questionnaires, a letter was sent to the management of

Cynicism Job Embeddedness
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 the relevant hotels to ask for permission, and to assure them of the confidentiality of their identities. The questionnaires were sealed after collection to make the responses anonymous and to decrease the potential threat of common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Out of the 450 questionnaires that were distributed, only 245 questionnaires were completed and returned, excluding the ones that were half-completed or incorrectly completed, yielding a response rate of 54.4% (Locke, et al., 2013;Karatepe, Ozturk, and Kim, 2019).

Measures
Measures were adopted from previous studies, the employees were asked to explain what happened in their encounter with their supervisor and how this encounter affected their personality and their relationship with the organization.

3.2.1
Supervisor incivility: adopted from the work of Hur et al. (2016) with five items (for example, (i) the supervisor was condescending to me, (ii) the supervisor showed little interest in my opinions, (iii) the supervisor made demeaning remarks about me).

Cynicism (Depersonalization)
: cynicism was adopted from the study of Maslach et al. (1996) with five items (for example, (i) I feel I treat some recipients as if they were inhuman, (ii) I have become more callous toward people since I took this job, (iii) I worry that this job is hardening me emotionally).

3.2.4
Job embeddedness: job embeddedness was adopted from the study of Karatepe (2013) with seven items (for example, (i) I feel attached to this hotel, it would be difficult for me to leave this hotel, (ii) I am too caught up in this hotel to leave, (iii) I feel tied to this hotel).
All four measures were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree = one to strongly agree = five.

Descriptive Statistics of the Respondents
Out of the 245 questionnaires that were used for the study, 165 were from males and 80 were from females. Almost all the respondents were less than 42 years old, only 18 were 42 years old and above. More than half of the respondents were single, accounting for 51.8%, while the rest were either married, divorced or widowed. Nearly two-thirds (or 59.6%) of the respondents have a master's degree, two have a primary school certificate and the rest have either a secondary school or an undergraduate certificate. Of the total respondents, 97 have worked for between 4-6 years, and 63 have worked for seven years and above, while the rest have worked for less than four years.

Model Fit Indexes
To further test the model's fit, In addition, Cronbach's alpha was tested to determine the internal consistency of the variables.
Specifically, the Cronbach's alpha scores ranged from 0.877 to 0.798 respectively. The results indicated that all the coefficients' alpha scores were greater than 0.70, hence the measures are considered reliable (Nunnally, 1978).
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 The result of the CFA are shown in Table 3, the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for the entire construct were higher than the cutoff point of 0.50 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981;Cavana et al., 2001). The result established the evidence of convergent validity. For the composite reliabilities, the scores ranged from 0.799 to 0.881, exceeding the cutoff point of 0.70 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) indicating adequate internal consistency. The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) is higher than the square correction (R 2 ) between the pair of constructs, establishing discriminate validity. In Table 4, the means, standard deviation, and correlations of the variables are presented. The result shows that supervisor incivility is negatively correlated to self-efficacy, (r = -0.293**, p < 0.01) and job embeddedness (r = -0.235**, p < 0.01) but positively correlated to cynicism (r = 0.322*, p < 0.01). On the other hand, self-efficacy is negatively correlated to cynicism (r = -0.334**, p < 0.01), but positively correlated to job embeddedness (r = 0.365**, p < 0.01), whereas cynicism is negatively correlated to job embeddedness (r = -0.331**, p < 0.01).
The results above show that the first three conditions of Baron and Kenny's (1986) thesis were established.  Table 5, the hypotheses (that supervisor incivility will have a negative effect on employee self-efficacy and job embeddedness, but a positive effect on cynicism) results were presented.
From the proposition that self-efficacy will have a positive effect on job embeddedness and a negative effect on cynicism, our result shows that self-efficacy has no effect on job embeddedness (β = 0.045) but it is negatively related to cynicism (β = -0.342**, p < 0.01).
Therefore, Hypothesis 4 (i.e. that self-efficacy is positively related to job embeddedness) was rejected and Hypothesis 5 ( i.e, that employee self-efficacy is negatively related to cynicism) was accepted. We tested for the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the study model. There was a reduction in the size of the model when self-efficacy was added, and the result was not significant (β = 0.081), but there was significant evidence of an increment in R 2 (0.004, versus 0.006). This initial result was later confirmed using the Sobel test calculation (z = 0.9409). The findings failed to support the argument that self-efficacy mediates the relationship between supervisor incivility and job embeddedness, and as such Hypothesis 5 was rejected. On the other hand, there was mediation for Hypothesis 6, as shown in Table 6 above. When the mediating variable (selfefficacy) was inputted into the model, the size of the model significantly reduced (β = 0.225 p < 0.05) and there was a significant reduction in R 2 (0.083 versus 0.057). Then the Sobel test (z = 3.174 p < 0.01) confirmed and supported our initial assumption that self-efficacy mediates the relationship between supervisor incivility and cynicism, hence Hypothesis 6 was accepted. For the demographic variables, age, educational qualifications and organizational tenure all have significant negative relationships with supervisor incivility. Educational qualifications have a negative significant relationship with self-efficacy. This further explains why frontline employees who are older and have a good education with longer tenure at an organization exhibit stronger self-efficacy and withstand supervisor incivility better. Also, employees that are highly educated are likely to be less self-efficacious.

Discussion
With the increasing complexity of organizational structures and the negative externalities associated with the underlying complexity, support from both supervisors and organizations is crucial for employees, especially customer-contact employees. According to Hom et al. (2009), employees who feel fairly treated have strong ties with their organization. Since supervisors embody the organization and give directives (Eisenberger et al., 2010), fostering good relationships with employees is crucial for establishing and promoting good behavior (Collins, 2017;Collins et al., 2014). As evident in the present study, supervisor incivility negatively affects employee self-efficacy, as affirmed in previous studies into self-efficacy and bullying Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 (Mikkelsen and Einarsen, 2002;Roberts et al., 2011). According to Taylor and Kluemper (2012) and Sakurai and Jex (2012), self-efficacy is one major mechanism that mitigates supervisor incivility. This suggests that a self-efficacious employee's copying capability increases with the perception of supervisor incivility. Therefore, human resource managers should develop mechanisms for the enhancement of self-efficacy. Nevertheless, while supervisor incivility was significantly correlated with job embeddedness, no significant relationship was found between self-efficacy and job embeddedness, therefore the predicted hypotheses did not support the assumption. The notion that employees detach themselves from the organization limits the potency of job embeddedness and increases cynical behavior. Our study could not find any study linking supervisor incivility with job embeddedness. It is worthwhile noting that individuals that experience supervisor incivility are not embedded in an organization. Rather, according to Smidt et al. (2016) when organizational commitment decreases as a result of incivility in the workplace, employees may engage in deviant behavior, "cynicism". Also, our findings are consistent with the work of Laschinger et al. (2008), which established that employees who experience supervisors' uncivil acts are most likely to be cynics. This study is also in line with the works of Erdogan (2002) and Colquitt et al. (2001)  incivility. This reduces the ability of frontline employees to identify with the organization and they tend toward cynical behavior (Elsbach and Bhattacharya, 2001). Organizations do not tolerate cynical behavior because of its harmful effect on both the organization and the employees. Also, Chiaburn et al. (2013) pointed out that employees that do not display cynical behavior have greater job satisfaction and perform better at work. Therefore, incivility should neither be tolerated nor accepted in an organization. It is interesting to note that the study could not establish a direct relationship between self-efficacy and job embeddedness. Unfortunately, employees who are self-efficacious are not likely to be embedded, and there is no significant relationship between supervisor incivility and job embeddedness. Less embedded employees are not likely to feel the influence of any unfair treatment by their supervisors. This makes the frontline employees that are affected less interested in the organization and they tend toward cynicism (Elsbach and Bhattacharya, 2001).

Theoretical Implications
The conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) and the self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977) provide an insight into the present study. This theory applies the significance of the employees' accumulation, protection, and allocation of valued resources in response to their work demand (Hobfoll and Freedy, 1993). The study employs this theoretical finding to contribute significantly in different ways to the current literature on supervisor incivility and self-efficacy. Our study investigates the effects of supervisor incivility on job embeddedness and cynicism, and the mediating effect of self-efficacy. Cynicism represents an effective reaction to the gradual depletion of the psychological powers and wellbeing that frontline employees encounter from their supervisors' incivility (Maslach et al., 2001). The tested hypotheses in this study contribute to the theory-building, since it is vital for established theories to withstand empirical scrutiny across time and scope, in order to remain relevant to organizations, corporations, and society in general.

Practical Implications
The study provides vital information for human resource managers in the hotel industry as well as managers in other related sectors. The rapid rise in supervisor incivility has constantly led to deviant organizational behavior (cynicism) in recent years, and this has raised concerns in researchers. The quest to control supervisors' and employees' negative behavior is on the increase. This study contributes to practical advancements in the hospitality management industry by empirically testing the relationship between supervisor incivility, cynicism, job embeddedness and the mediating role of self-efficacy. In practical terms, human resources managers need to constantly train and educate supervisors on the benefits of polite interactions with other employees. According to Mackey et al. (2017), employees who are trained behave better than their untrained counterparts. Supervisors are expected to develop a cordial relationship with their subordinates, in order to influence their constructive and positive behavior. Educating supervisors is done through seminars and workshops. Researchers have agreed that employee education is very vital for any organization, and the benefits out-weigh the costs (Bowers and Martin, 2007;Eisingerich and Bell, 2008). Also, supervisors' behavior can also be checked in the following way: Firstly, supervisors will receive performance appraisals at the end of each month, these include the employees' confidential ratings of them. This monitoring exercise will enhance the supervisors' positive behavior. In turn, supervisors with the worst performance scores can be called to order, while promoting and rewarding those with the highest scores. This mechanism will not only be of benefit to the frontline employees, but also to the organization, because supervisors' incivility negatively affects the employees' emotions (Halbesleben and Bowler, 2007). Also, unruly behavior by a supervisor is checked, to avoid it escalating into cynicism (Abubakar et al., 2017). Secondly, since the hotel industry constantly faces very stiff competition, frontline employees are of the utmost importance to every service organization. Hence, fair policies that will be of benefit to the frontline employees should be enacted to prevent the employees' frequent turnover intentions. Most employees who are involved in cynical behavior might end-up quitting the organization and the cost of retaining an employee is less than that of training a new employee. Thirdly, employee embeddedness is important to an organization, frequent supervisor-employee positive interactions buttress the fact that an organization has the best interests of its employees at heart (Collins, 2017). Therefore, both the supervisors and the managers should give employees a sense of belonging, by making the employees feel that they are not just working for the organization, but they are part of the organization. Employees can be empowered by making them part of the decision-making process, especially in vital decisions that affect their roles in the organization. This approach has been established to decrease employees' cynical behavior (Abubakar et al., 2017). Finally, selfefficacy, which is the self-consciousness of one's ability and beliefs, is increased through employee education, appraisals, and promotions, which strengthen the employees' emotional states to withstand their supervisors' incivility and increases positive organizational behavior.

Conclusion, Limitations and Future Research Recommendations
This study examined the effect of supervisor incivility on job embeddedness and cynicism via the mediating role of self-efficacy. A convenience sampling technique was used to collect data from frontline employees of five-star and four-star hotels in the cities of Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria. The study used a cross-sectional method for the collection of data and a quantitative approach with SPSS and AMOSS 20 to analyze the data. The assessment of the various underpinning relationships has broadly shown that supervisor incivility is detrimental to both the employees and their organizations. Also, the findings show that supervisor incivility leads to cynical behavior by the employees. Seven hypotheses have been tested, and based on the findings human resources managers were advised of the benefits of employee self-efficacy and the protective role of self-efficacy against supervisor incivility and cynicism. These results are encouraging because self-efficacy can be supported or promoted by proactive human resources managers. Human resources manages can endeavor to create working conditions that reduce supervisor incivility and subsequently curtail cynicism, which is detrimental to both the employees and the organizations at large.
Although this study contributes to the extant literature by linking supervisor incivility, self-efficacy and cynicism in the hotel industry, limitations to this work cannot be ruled out. The present study made use of cross-sectional data; other studies can use longitudinal data. As more data become available, the temporal and geographical scopes of the study can be broadened in the light of a longitudinal approach to the data's analysis, in order to assess if the established findings withstand further empirical scrutiny. The study was conducted in the Nigerian hotel Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3509787