Bullying in the Workplace

Causes, Symptoms, and Remedies

John Lipinski, Laura M. Crothers, John Lipinski, Laura M. Crothers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135126445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

Bullying in the workplace is a phenomenon that has recently intrigued researchers studying management and organizational issues, leading to such questions as why it occurs and what causes such harassment. This volume written by experts in a wide range of fields including Industrial and Organizational psychology, Counseling, Management, Law, Education and Health presents research on relational and social aggression issues which can result in lost productivity, employee turnover and costly lawsuits. Understanding this phenomenon is important to managers and employee morale.

Part I

Introduction: The Problem of Workplace Bullying

1

Organizational Misbehavior

Janie Harden Fritz

Duquesne University

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1990s, increased attention has been paid to the description of “bad” workplace conduct, and this increased awareness has spawned several conceptual families mapping the “dark side” of organizational behavior (Griffin and Lopez, 2005; Griffin and O'Leary-Kelley, 2004). In one of the first broad conceptual treatments of the area, Vardi and Wiener (1996) offered the general phrase “misbehavior in organizations” for a newly acknowledged but ubiquitous element of organizations. This phrase encompassed employee theft, unconventional practices at work, counterproductive behavior in organizations, issues of management ethics, white-collar crime, whistle-blowing, professional deviant behavior, concealing pertinent information, substance abuse, sexual harassment at work, and vandalism (Vardi and Wiener, 1996:152).

In a later treatment, Vardi and Weitz (2004) highlighted a number of recently emergent terms that they considered part of the domain of organizational misbehavior, including aggressive, antisocial, counterproductive, deviant, and dysfunctional behavior and specific manifestations of these constructs. By that time, several of these terms had gained conceptual status in their own right. This chapter hopes to clarify the conceptual landscape of problematic interpersonal workplace behaviors by examining how theorists have grappled with the use of different labels to refer to what some researchers consider to be the same behaviors, identifying recent representative terms related to this area, and situating workplace bullying within three specific conceptual areas.

SIGNIFICANCE AND THEORY: THE MULTIPLICATION OF TERM TERMS

The various elements in what has now become a kaleidoscopic terminological array referring to problematic behavior in the workplace differ widely in developmental status, scope, and specificity (Griffin and Lopez, 2005; O'Leary-Kelly et al., 2000). O'Leary-Kelly et al. (2000) conceptualized antisocial work behavior to include employee deviance, organization-motivated aggression, organizational retaliatory behavior, and workplace aggression as four constructs that have been most clearly defined and developed theoretically and/or empirically. Just five years later a review of relevant literature found that the terms of deviance, workplace aggression, antisocial behavior, and violence had received the most research attention; but even with the increased attention, these terms still had the greatest likelihood for “theoretical and operational confusion and ambiguity” (Griffin and Lopez, 2005: 989).

Some researchers consider these different terms to refer to what are essentially the same phenomena (e.g. Sagie et al., 2003), while others argue for their distinctiveness (e.g. Robinson and Bennett, 1995). Bennett and Robinson (2003) believe that the specific meanings of terms such as workplace aggression, antisocial behavior, counterproductive behavior, and workplace deviance are unlikely to converge. Due to the vast array of terms whose meanings are only slightly different, it is vital that researchers maintain consistency in their terminology and approach so that findings will continue to be useful and able to contribute to our knowledge of this complex and important area.

The importance of consistency and clarity is even more important today as the number of terms used to describe organizational misbehavior continues to grow through further development, refinement, and application of these concepts and their subcategories within and across disciplinary lines (e.g. Henle et al., 2009; Jelinek and Ahearne, 2010; Kidwell and Martin, 2005; Kidwell and Valentine, 2009; Thau et al., 2007). Additionally, more conceptualizations of problematic behaviors or umbrella terms for subsets of problematic or “detrimental behaviors and experiences in the workplace” have been newly identified or developed through reconceptualization of prior terms during the last few years, further expanding the phenomenal domain of the area and offering additional ways to frame such behaviors (Spector and Rodopman, 2010: 273).

This dilemma of labeling and definitions, or “battle of competing constructs” (Bies and Tripp, 2005: 69), has prompted calls for integration and unification necessary for systematic conceptual development (Fox and Spector, 2005; Keashly and Jagatic, 2011; Neuman and Baron, 2005; O'Leary-Kelly et al., 2000; Robinson and Bennett, 1995; Robinson and Greenberg, 1998; Vardi and Weitz, 2004). In response, researchers have attempted to systematize this plethora of concepts, either as a way to refine and/or reconceptualize the general area (e.g. Griffin and Lopez, 2005; O'Leary-Kelly et al., 2000; Robinson and Greenberg, 1998; Vardi and Weitz, 2004), which often takes the form of putting forth a preferred term as the domain's label (e.g. Griffin and Lopez, 2005; Neuman and Baron, 1997, 2005), or as a precursor to addressing a more specific term to provide conceptual and/or operational distinction (e.g. Fritz, 2009; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007).

Many different umbrella terms have been developed to help describe the broad range of actions or behaviors that comprise organizational misbehavior. Fox and Spector (2005) argue for the encompassing label “counterproductive work behaviors” as a grouping term for the several problematic behavioral phenomena in organizational settings. Under this umbrella term, they then go on to map out how other labels have been developed. They describe how an “actor” perspective of the behaviors led to the development of such terms as aggression, antisocial behavior, delinquency, deviance, retaliation, and revenge, while a “target” based perspective was responsible for the labels of abuse, bullying, incivility, and mobbing (Fox and Spector, 2005:4).

Under the Fox and Spector (2005) conceptualization, many researchers have turned to actor-based terms to describe the negative behaviors that often occur in the workplace. Researchers have used terms such as “organizational deviance,” “antisocial behavior” (Griffin and O'Leary-Kelly, 2004), “dysfunctional behavior” (Griffin and Lopez, 2005), or “workplace deviance” (Robinson and Bennett, 1995) to provide broad headings that encompass a large number of more specific negative workplace behaviors. These terms are so closely associated with each other that in the eyes of some researchers they are treated as synonymous (e.g. Van Fleet and Griffin, 2006). Recent research, however, shows that the term “workplace deviance” is gaining in popularity among researchers and has gained a prominent focus of research and application as the preferred label for the area (e.g. Kidwell and Martin, 2005).

In order to encompass specific negative behaviors, Neuman and Baron (2005: 14) argue for “workplace aggression” as the best overarching term or “integrating construct.” They use this term to address such behaviors as mobbing, bullying, psychological terror, emotional abuse, petty tyranny, abusive supervision, social undermining, revenge and retaliation, counterproductive, unreliable, and deviant workplace behavior, delinquency, organizational misbehavior, and workplace incivility as instances of aggression. Bies and Tripp (2005) also note the term “workplace aggression” does not invoke any managerial bias that is inherent in terms such as “counterproductive” behavior.

Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007), in their article on workplace bullying, organize the area of problematic workplace behavior through a tripartite division of superordinate, intermediate, and subordinate phenomena of harmful communication and behavior at work (pp. 837–8). They list counterproductive workplace behavior, organizational injustice, organizational misbehavior, workplace aggression, workplace deviance, antisocial work behavior, and workplace violence as parallel superordinate categories. Workplace bullying falls into the intermediate category, along with emotional abuse, mobbing, social undermining, and workplace harassment and mistreatment. These intermediate phenomena fall under the umbrella of one or more of the superordinate phenomena and manifest elements of the subordinate phenomena, which include incivility, petty tyranny, social ostracism, verbal abuse, verbal aggressiveness, and victimization.

Given all of these terms that can range from recognizably different to functionally synonymous to painfully specific, it may seem as though understanding the theories present in this field of study is a hopeless task. Bennett and Robinson (2003) note, however, that despite differences in conceptual starting points, labels, orientations, and emphases for much of this research, the end results of the labels or definitions are highly consistent – almost all of the behaviors are perpetrated by organizational members, directed at the organization and its members, and are (potentially) harmful and intentional.

Although the “construct profusion and confusion” (Keashly and Jagatic, 2011: 43) surrounding the study of hostile work behaviors continues, Keashly and Jagatic (2011) note that the workplace aggression and workplace abuse literatures are moving toward increased connection and cohesion and that attempts at integrative work are beginning to succeed as researchers seek to understand the interrelationships among these concepts. For example, the term “emotional abuse,” which seemed to measure the similar phenomena of workplace bullying, harassment, and mistreatment, was reconceptualized to incorporate the findings of related research that developed since the initial proposal of that construct (Keashly and Harvey, 2005; Keashly et al., 1994), and now seems to have been subsumed under the bullying construct (Keashly and Jagatic, 2011). It is within this conceptual ferment of interpersonal problematic behaviors that research on bullying in the workplace has emerged and taken its place as a distinct scholarly and applied focus.

SALIENT FEATURES: MISBEHAVIOR IN THE WORKPLACE

Here, I adopt the organizing term “organizational misbehavior” (Vardi and Wiener, 1996; Vardi and Weitz, 2004) as a conceptual anchor for a brief review of three clusters of related terms relevant to problematic behaviors in the workplace within which workplace bullying emerges as a distinct phenomenon. Organizational misbehavior refers to “any intentional action by members of organizations that defies and violates (a) shared organizational norms and expectations, and/or (b) core societal values, mores and standards of proper conduct” (Vardi and Wiener, 1996: 153).

Conceptualized by Vardi and colleagues as a negative counterpart to the benign organizational behavior supporting managerial interests and advancing organizational goals, organizational misbehavior encompasses terms ranging from antisocial behavior and counterproductive workplace behavior through dysfunctional behavior in organizations, employee deviance, and employee misconduct to organizational and workplace aggression. Workplace misbehavior functions as organizational vice (Moberg, 1997), another broad term with connections to Spector et al.'s conceptualization of problematic behaviors as “counterproductive” and “deviant” (Spector and Fox, 2002; Robinson and Bennett, 1995), and Baron and Neumaris (1998) workplace aggression, inasmuch as these terms contrast with “goods” that an organization seeks to protect and promote (e.g. Arnett et al., 2009), specifically, goods of productivity, place (the organization), and persons (see Fritz, forthcoming).

Workplace bullying is part of the larger context of an organization's interactive culture (e.g. Salin and Hoel, 2011), a phenomenon situated within the matrix of an organization's interpersonal, structural, and communicative practices. From this perspective, the multifaceted conceptual and operational family of organizational misbehavior is a breeding ground for workplace bullying. Bullying emerges within the context of these problematic behaviors, holding a particular relationship to each term's conceptual framing. In some cases bullying is an element or subcategory of the concept, such as workplace deviance, aggression, or misbehavior. In others, bullying is a parallel phenomenon that is neit...