The purpose of this autoethnography was to examine my personal experiences with workplace bullying through the lens of existing research and theory and original inquiry into how other faculty members characterize workplace bullying, their related experiences, and the behaviors and tactics involved. The study involved 2 phases. Phase I employed the use of 2 dyadic interviews garnering an additional tier of qualitative information where descriptors of additional analytical memos emerged, such as the regional and organizational cultural dynamics involved in workplace bullying. Phase II used my own personal experiences with bullying in higher education. Four indepth vignettes were provided chronologically: graduate student-experience, entry-career, midcareer, and doctoral dissertation research. Each vignette was analyzed using constant comparative method between the literature and interviews to confirm and disconfirm my own experience with bullying in higher education. Several themes emerged from this research: (1) The nature of my personal workplace bullying experiences highlighted themes involving: bullying behaviors (both victim and bully), position and power (both victim and bully), organizational structure and cultural constructs, and the impact on the victim. The commonalities between my experiences, the literature, and the bullying experiences of other faculty who provided information in this study were: (1) Organizational culture works to support and protect workplace bullies; (2) Organizations with multi-layered hierarchies support workplace bullying behaviors; (3) Workplace bullying results in reports of significant psychological impact (e.g., feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, humiliation, fear, etc.); (4) Workplace bullying involves overt attacks (e.g., intimidation, recruitment of others, threats, etc.); (5) The context of regional culture may influence workplace bullying (i.e. perceptions, tactics, reactions, etc.); and (6) Power (i.e. positional, legitimate, coercive, reward, referent) is a central element in bullying behaviors.

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore relationships between authentic leadership style, global social power, job demand, job control, and workplace bullying of nurse managers in acute care settings across the United States. Over 30 years of workplace bullying research exists. Consequences are linked to intent to leave, turnover, and harmful emotional and physical effects. Published studies identifying nurse managers as targets of workplace bullying and work environment factors that contribute to nurse managers being recipients of workplace bullying either, downward from their leaders, horizontally from their nurse manager peers, and upwards from their clinical nurses were not identified. A descriptive, cross-sectional design using an online survey was utilized. Descriptive, inferential, and multivariate analyses were used to identify relationships and the likelihood of workplace bullying occurring. Thirty-five percent (n = 80) of nurse managers reported being a target of workplace bullying. Managers sustained occasional (56%, n = 45) and severe (44%, n = 35) levels of workplace bullying, 65% (n = 43) identified their executive nurse leader as the predominate perpetrator. Authentic leadership, job demand, job control correlated significantly (p = < .01) with workplace bullying and job demand demonstrated the strongest likelihood (OR = 3.9) for predicting workplace bullying. Nurse Managers are four times more likely to be a recipient of workplace bullying when their job responsibilities are classified as demanding. This study expanded the science and demonstrated that nurse managers, the backbone of organizations, are recipients of workplace bullying emanating predominately from executive nurse leaders, but also from clinical nurses and their nurse manager peers. Given the harmful consequences of workplace bullying, as 'guardians' of and 'advocates' for their teams, executive nursing leaders, have an ethical and operational responsibility to ensure nurse managers are able to practice in a safe environment.

No description available.

No description available.

The concept of understanding one’s origin or existence spans across almost every sphere of social science; despite its popularity, there is still a lack of research exploring identity in the work setting of developing countries. This thesis aims to contribute to understanding identity processes of workers in developing countries through the lenses of social identity and post-colonialism. The rationale for using these areas lies in the perceived nature of identity processes for people in developing countries by taking into account historical and cultural influences; for social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), the “prototype” and “cohesion, solidarity and harmony” and for post-colonialism (Sen, 2006; Ekeh, 1975; Ekanola, 2006; Mizuno & Okazawa, 2009), “power”, the “dialectics of the colonized mind” and “social formations”. This thesis takes a socio-psychological approach, which is based on a qualitative research method; in particular, 47 in-depth interviews with professionals from the oil and gas sector of Nigeria form a key aspect of the research method. Findings reveal that social identity theory can be used to interpret the propensity of Nigerians to identify with groups. The thesis finds that social identity captures the importance attached to group identification through an understanding of the drivers and benefits of harmony to the self-concept in the chosen context. However the thesis also finds that social identity but does not cater for other integral aspects of identity processes, such as power and identity struggle. The thesis finds that by addressing the perception of perpetuated colonialism produced by the persistent domination of foreign workers in senior roles and their interaction with indigenous workers, post-colonial theory adequately covers issues of power and struggle. In summary, the thesis finds that the integration of social identity theory and post-colonial theory facilitates a more holistic interpretation of identity processes in regions like Nigeria. Hence this thesis contributes to the literature on identity processes in the work setting of a developing country.

Employees who demean and degrade coworkers cost organizations billions of dollars every year. Workplace bullying is a business problem that affects up to 15% of employees, and little empirical research is available to establish the extent of bullying in academia. Bullies flourish in decentralized structures, and universities can be particularly susceptible to bullying behavior because of their decentralized structures of teaching and research that promote the growth of microclimates in segregated silos, from laboratories to small departments. The purpose of this multiple-case, census sample study was to explore the cost-reduction strategies that university human resource (HR) leaders use to manage the consequences of workplace bullying across the 7 universities in Ireland. The conceptual framework focused on power, culture, and leadership, which are central to the discourse on workplace bullying. Data analysis involved using the interpreted interview data that all participants verified for accuracy through the member checking process. Seven themes emerged as the most important to reduce the cost of workplace bullying. Participants identified policy, informal versus formal procedures, and cost as the most important themes pertaining to workplace bullying in their organization. The findings of this study will be a source of valuable information to HR leaders in all Irish universities. In addition, the findings have implications for theory and practice that may help Irish university HR leaders promote positive social change by enabling them to manage the financial and human cost of workplace bullying in Irish universities.

Workplace bullying caused business owners to lose about 80 million employees' workdays each year. Workplace bullying can cost an organization up to $300 billion for increased medical claims, lost productivity, and employee turnovers, and up to $23 billion in additional expenses, such as costs for employee absenteeism and legal costs. The purpose of this single case study was to explore successful strategies to address workplace bullying used by 7 human resource (HR) managers and executives in 1, small-to-medium-sized organization in Central Florida. The HR managers and executives had 5 or more years of HR experience. The risk management framework and theory of planned behavior were the conceptual frameworks that guided exploration of the phenomenon. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with HR managers and executives and from company artifacts, such as HR and risk management policies. Member checking and transcript review strengthened trustworthiness of data analysis and interpretations. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Five themes emerged from the data analysis: enhanced training, encourage reporting, develop HR business partner model, implement policies and guidelines, and enforce zero-tolerance policy. The findings of this study may contribute to positive social change by building awareness of workplace bullying for employees, organizations, and society, and by providing strategies to reduce the number of bullied victims and enrich social harmony within organizations and communities.

Workplace environments and the dynamics that exist within them affect everyone involved, especially coworkers. Although research has investigated how workplace bullying impacts its victims and the organization, little research has examined the effects of workplace bullying from the role of the bystander. Fewer have investigated how Perceived of Organizational Support (POS) may affect the employee's work engagement of those witnesses. The goal of this quantitative study was to determine the effect of POS on work engagement in the employees who witness workplace bullying. An online survey was used with the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised, (NAQ-R), Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) and POS instruments. It was launched on LinkedIn and 152 respondents participated and were asked to snowball the link. The study employed the affective events theory that presupposes that the occupational atmosphere influences those in proximity to negative behaviors. Regression results showed that only POS (t (150) = 5.14, p < 0.001) predicted employees' work engagement. On the other hand, witnessing workplace bullying (t (150) = -0.69, p = 0.49) did not affect employees' work engagement. This study provides a useful framework to illustrate how the environment of workplace bullying affects an organization's human and fiscal resources, contributing to the body of knowledge that can benefit organizations by helping to affect social change.

This study addresses the question of how an individual’s perception of the safety of his or her institutional space impacts on shame management skills. Shame has been widely recognised as a core emotion that can readily take the form of anger and violence in interpersonal relationships if it is unresolved. When shame is not acknowledged properly, feelings of shame build up and lead to shame-rage spirals that break down social bonds between people. Some might consider the total avoidance of shame experiences as a way to cut the link between shame and violence. However, there is a reason why we cannot just discard the experience of shame. Shame is a self-regulatory emotion (Braithwaite, 1989, 2002; Ahmed et al., 2001). If one feels shame over wrongdoing, one is less likely to re-offend in the future. That is to say, shame is a destructive emotion on the one hand in the way it can destroy our social bonds, but on the other hand, it is a moral emotion that reflects capacity to regulate each other and ourselves. This paradoxical nature of shame gives rise to the necessity of managing shame in a socially adaptive way. A group of scholars in the field of shame has argued that institutions can be designed in such a way that they create safe space that allows people to feel shame and manage shame without its adverse consequences (Ahmed et al., 2001). This means that people would feel safe to acknowledge shame and accept the consequences of their actions without fear of stigmatisation or the disruption of social bonds. Without fear, there would be less likelihood of displacing shame, that is, blaming others and expressing shame as anger towards others. The context adopted for empirically examining shame management in this study is workplace bullying. Bullying has become a dangerous phenomenon in our workplace that imposes significant costs on employers, employees, their families and industries as a whole (Einarsen et al., 2003a). Teachers belong to a professional group that is reputed to be seriously affected by bullying at work. Teachers from Australia and Korea completed self-report questionnaires anonymously. Three shame management styles were identified: shame acknowledgement, shame displacement and (shame) withdrawal. The likely strengths of these shame management styles were investigated in terms of three factors postulated as contributions to institutional safe space: that is, 1) cultural value orientations, 2) the salience of workgroup identity, and 3) problem resolution practices at work. The present thesis suggests that further consideration should be given to institutional interventions that support and maintain institutional safe space and that encourage shame acknowledgement, while dampening the adverse effect of defensive shame management. The evidence presented in this thesis is a first step in demonstrating that institutional safe space and shame management skills are empirically measurable, are relevant in other cultural contexts and address issues that are at the heart of the human condition everywhere........ [For the full Abstract, see the PDF files below]

The present study intends to examine the influence of workplace bullying incidents on the organizational justice perceptions of targets and by-standers with respect to organizational procedures, supervisory treatment and distribution of pay/reward schemes together with the performance of organizational citizenship behavior. For this purpose, six different public institutions in Ankara and Izmir are selected. A total of 288 white-collar public employees filled out the questionnaire where one third of the participants label themselves as being exposed to workplace bullying behavior in the last six months. As hypothesized, findings support the view that workplace bullying experience plays a significant negative role in organizational justice and citizenship behavior perceptions after controlling the significant effect of demographic variables. Besides, within this context, the ultimate effect of bullying on employees is bifurcated in terms of whether an individual has either target or bystander status.