This study addresses the question of how an individuals 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]
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216833 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Shin, Hwayeon Helene, helene.shin@abs.gov.au |
| Publisher | The Australian National University. Research School of Social Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.anu.edu.au/legal/copyrit.html), Copyright Hwayeon Helene Shin |
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