Background & Purpose:Despite the importance of polite workplace interactions, the management literature remains conceptually and ontologically ambiguous about organizational politeness, often reducing it to an intentional, agent-centered behavior. This reduction has fragmented empirical findings and weakened theoretical coherence. This study aims to clarify the concept of organizational politeness and distinguish it from workplace civility.
Methodology: Adopting an interpretivist paradigm and a constructivist approach, this study conducted a systematic literature review of 107 articles published between 1990 and 2026. The literature was qualitatively analyzed using Walker and Avant's (2005) eight-step concept analysis framework.
Findings: Organizational politeness is not merely a moral virtue or reactive behavior but an interactional, communicative, and instrumental mechanism that facilitates workplace interactions through four defining attributes: the strategic use of linguistic resources, context-sensitive face management, institutional embeddedness, and task–relationship balance. Unlike workplace civility, which emphasizes moral values and respect for human dignity, organizational politeness focuses on linguistic strategies, communicative competence, and the management of power relations and social distance to mitigate face threats. The concept has also evolved from a linguistic construct into a multidimensional framework applicable to digitally mediated interactions.
Conclusion: The study reconceptualizes organizational politeness as a communication mechanism and establishes its theoretical linkage with knowledge management. By reducing interactional risk and strengthening psychological safety, organizational politeness mitigates defensive knowledge hiding, enhances intellectual capital flows, and provides a foundation for preventing workplace incivility and sustaining human capital.