Omari, M.

Paull, M.

English

Research Repository

                                                BOOK OF PROCEEDINGS   COPENHAGEN 2012    The 8th International Conference on Workplace Bullying and Harassment -Future Challenges   12-15 June 2012, University of Copenhagen, Denmark                                    123 which is frequently presented by the media when reporting distressing crimes, this is not a position held by many psychologists and researchers who suggest that the concept of evil is unhelpful in explaining or dealing with antisocial or unethical behaviours. The position taken in this presentation is that to understand and address the harm caused by cruel and callous acts it is necessary to look beyond a simple naming and blaming of the individual identified as the wrongdoer or perpetrator. Regardless of the reason for unethical and damaging behaviours it is clear that in the workplace these behaviours can have a detrimental impact on health and wellbeing of the victims, witnesses and unwilling perpetrators as well as on the organisation itself.   This presentation will look at workplace ethics and wellbeing from a psychological perspective and will touch on four areas:  1. A review of the evolution of emotions and the development of the brain's circuitry and processes involved in the recognition and expression of ethical behaviours.  2. The dynamics involved in the suppression, projection and recognition of positive and negative emotions  3. The results of a survey designed to identify whether a link exists between unethical behaviours and mental health  4. Suggestions on the actions or interventions which can be taken to help to create more compassionate and sane workers and organisations    Bystanders in workplace bullying: Roles, impact and responsibilities Megan J Paull1, Maryam Omari2 1Murdoch University, MURDOCH, Australia 2Edith Cowan University, JOONDALUP, Australia   Bystanders have received only a small portion of the research attention paid to workplace bullying. The act of bullying has, until recently, typically been seen as a dyadic interaction between victim and perpetrator. Recognition of the roles of bystanders in the school based bullying literature led Twemlow et al. (2004, 220) to consider it not as a dyadic interaction but in 'triadic terms, as an interactive effect between bully, victim and bystander, in which the responses of each directly affect the harmfulness of the outcome'. This presentation will argue that bystanders have integral roles in workplace bullying scenarios, which are therefore accompanied by significant responsibilities.   Bystanders are not always detached third parties. They are often involved on the side of bully or victim, either actively or passively. Individual bystanders can take on more than one role at a time, different roles in different circumstances or move between roles as the course of a series of bullying events or issues evolves. Some roles have positive outcomes while others are negative. Whether the role is active or passive contributes to the extent to which it may contribute to the outcome.   Victims have been shown to invite, escalate or deflect bullying behaviours (e.g. Omari 2007; Zapf and Einarsen 2011) and a bully's motivation and mental state has been shown to contribute to his or her propensity to engage in bullying (e.g. Hoel and Cooper 2001; Zapf and Einarsen 2011). The roles and actions or inactions of bystanders, whether active or inactive, contribute to the escalation or diminution of bullying. From this perspective, bystanders are not just bystanders but participants.   124  Drawing on work to develop a typology of bystander roles (e.g. Paull, Omari & Standen, in press) in workplace bullying, this presentation considers the responsibilities of organisations to educate staff about the significance of their roles in bullying scenarios. It also considers how it might be possible to encourage staff to take personal responsibility for their individual roles.   Bullying needs to be seen as more than an interaction between bully and target. Bystanders may consciously or unconsciously take sides and their response will influence the outcomes and the wider impact of the bullying behaviour. Education of employees on their power and responsibilities as bystanders would therefore be one aspect of creating an environment that discourages bullying.     Bullies as actors in bullying. Charlotte Bloch Department of Sociology, COPENHAGEN, Denmark   Research on workplace bullying has become an international field of research in the course of the last few decades. This research, however, has primarily been carried out on the basis of the experiences and perspective of the victim. We know only little about how bullies experience the process of bullying and how they contribute to this process. The present paper focus on bullying among colleagues, i.e. horizontal bullying and the objective of the present paper is to explore bullies' experiences and how they contribute to the bullying process. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with bullies and on theories of interaction and emotions. In the analysis four analytical themes are identified: moral classification of victims, emotions, actions and micropolitics and power and morals. The analysis shows how bullies classify the victims as violators of basic conditions for interaction and key moral codes. It is also shown how these experienced violations trigger moral emotions such as contempt, anger, vengeance and disgust. Emotions are converted into actions, and here the analysis identifies different negative actions through which the bullies downgraded victims within the informal microhierarchy. The precondition for bullying as social process is that the bullies' interpretation of and negative actions are collectively confirmed and justified. Here the analysis points to different types of justification-seeking practice. The paper concludes by summing up the results and places them within the interactional dynamics between victims, witnesses and bullies, which is the breeding ground of bullying.         

Bystanders in workplace bullying: Roles, impact and responsibilities

https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/38729/1/bystanders-in-workplace-bullying.pdf

Bystanders in workplace bullying: Roles, impact and responsibilities

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