Abstract
Human resources personnel, inclusive of vice presidents, directors, diversity officers, and their staff often find themselves as the intake person for workplace bullying complaints. Though workplace bullying in the United States is still legal, when a target of workplace bullying can link the aggression and harassment to a protected class status, the organization can become the center of a Title VII complaint. To clarify the perspective of human resources personnel in the midst of workplace bullying problems on campus, I have collected 96 human resources open-ended comments to conduct a qualitative content analysis. By using Krippendorf’s content analysis procedures (1989) and applying Bolman and Deal’s (2017) structural frame about organizations, I examine the human resources personnel’s remarks. The central research question for this study was: RQ 1 What are the common insights that human resources personnel offer in regard to workplace bullying on their perspective campuses? The qualitative content analysis lead to four themes: Theme #1- Leadership is Key, Theme #2- Lacking Training, Theme#3- Reflection on Law/Policy, and Theme #4- Faculty Abuse of Tenure. Considering the four themes, the cumulative commentary is that a cogent higher education structure has leadership that will empower human resources to engage and conduct training for themselves and supervisors. Resultantly, the organization could be proactive in avoiding lawsuits that materialize from bullying and instead cultivate a work environment where even tenured faculty are coached to avoid aggressive and disrespectful work behaviors.
Presenters
Leah HollisVisiting Professor, Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Value of Culture and the Demand of Change
KEYWORDS
HUMAN RESOURCES, WORKPLACE BULLYING, QUALITATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS
