Workplace bullying research has frequently drawn on psychological and social-psychological perspectives (Fevre et al., 2012; Hutchinson et al., 2010; Vickers, 2012), with a focus on interpersonal aggression and on individually focussed behaviours and interventions. While the role of organizational factors has been identified in the literature (Baillien et al., 2011; Salin and Hoel, 2011), it is often done through correlations or through mediating factors, thereby maintaining research focus on change at the level of individual behaviour. The role of culture is likewise often discussed (Archer, 1999; Hodgins and Mannix McNamara, 2017; Salin and Hoel, 2011; Vickers, 2012), and this also has not as yet translated meaningfully into effective organizational-level interventions. Fevre et al. (2012) maintain that the reason we have failed to resolve workplace bullying is because bullying is frequently (almost always) cast as a “private” trouble, requiring an individualized solution (albeit provided by the organization such as training, education, awareness raising). There can be no doubt that in order to meaningfully address the problem of workplace bullying, there is need to challenge the assumption that workplace ill-treatment is a private event.
The negative impact of bullying on health and well-being has been measured, documented, indeed deplored for at least 30 years with Leymann's (1990) pioneering work as the starting point. Decades of research notwithstanding, relatively few studies have emerged from the academic community that address intervention. The dearth of successful interventions is linked in no small measure to the limitations of the individualistic focus taken on workplace bullying and incivility. We present this special issue as an opportunity to reframe the problem in ways that may stimulate new thinking and generate actionable concepts for intervention for the protection of workers from the abusive behaviour and practices that constitute bullying, harassment and related forms of ill-treatment.
This resonates with the settings approach in health promotion, which advocates that health and, therefore, ill-health, is created within a given setting, in the interactions between people, in the processes and the structures employed, and that improving the health of individuals in a setting (such as a workplace) requires intervention at the level of the setting itself, in this case the work organization (Dooris, 2012; Hodgins, 2012). A consideration of the multiple, interacting components that make up a whole system, and developing interventions that address the whole system, as advocated by the settings approach, has the potential to inform meaningful alternatives and potentially more productive approaches to interventions. Such an approach reorients focus from the detection of specific, adversarial actions such as bullying, to focussing instead on the creation of benign working conditions that foster a positive working environment. Focussing on proving that bullying has or has not occurred has not served employees well (Klein and Martin, 2011). Indeed advice to monitor and document incidences has in many cases, exacerbated isolation and mental health issues. Bullying is just one manifestation of the larger phenomenon of workplace ill-treatment, which takes many forms. Incivility, sexual harassment, physical violence, punitive or unreasonable management, insensitive bureaucratic communication or unfair allocation of resources are all manifestations of workplace ill-treatment (Fevre et al., 2012). While these are not conceptually identical, they stem from the same root, i.e. culture that permits abuse of power at an individual level and subsequently mobilizes institutional power to undermine anti-bullying procedures, effectively silencing victims and whistleblowers. The “power and politics” of the workplace is germane to the problems of workplace ill-treatment. If organisations are to effectively address workplace ill-treatment, then balancing exercises of power with a humanising culture is not some utopian ideal, but by necessity is core to creating a supportive working environment, free from abuse where employees can flourish. Such reframing is timely, given the many calls for acknowledgement of the relevance of organizational antecedents and need for higher order understanding in this area (e.g. Hodgins and Mannix McNamara, 2017; Ironside and Seifert, 2003; Jenkins, 2011; Johnson, 2011; Keashly and Jagatic, 2011; Mannix McNamara et al., 2017; Omari, 2007; Salin and Hoel, 2011).
This special issue brings together studies in workplace bullying research from global academics that provide deep insights into organisational interventions. The first paper by Hogan, Hodgins, Lewis, MacCurtain, Mannix-McNamara and Pursell, The prevalence of ill-treatment and bullying at work in Ireland, examines the role of organizational factors in bullying and ill-treatment in a national representative sample of workers. Their study indicates that despite increases in what is known about workplace bullying and incivility, a significant number of Irish workers still experience ill-treatment at work. Workplace bullying does not appear to have decreased since the last national study was conducted in Ireland. The data certainly make the case for the need to reorient organizational thinking in addressing this issue.
Hodgins, MacCurtain and Mannix McNamara take a critical view of the frequently offered “solution” to workplace bullying – the anti-bullying policy. Their paper draws on their work across several studies in a variety of work contexts and utilizes power theory to understand why organizations appear to do little, if indeed anything at all, in the face of their employees' experiences of workplace bullying. The authors articulate the increasingly recognised problematic that anti-bullying policies and procedures are themselves an exercise of institutional power that serve to protect, reinforce and reproduce dominant and abusive power structures. They advocate for realistic assessment of the role of both individual and organisational power in the creation and maintenance of workplace ill-treatment and that this realism need to underpin efforts to create appropriate and effective interventions.
Sharp, Peng and Jex, in their paper entitled Exclusion in the workplace: a multi-level investigation, explore the interaction between the team climate of civility, individual experience of exclusion and their combined effect on a target's organization-based-self-esteem. The construct “ethical work climate” is a fairly recent but welcome inclusion in workplace bullying research, as is organization-based self-esteem, or the extent to which employees perceive themselves as important, meaningful, effectual and worthwhile within their organization. Itzkovich, Dolev and Shnapper-Cohen in their paper make the link between witnessing/experiencing incivility, perceptions of ethical climate of the work environment and perceived quality of their work–life. The authors stretch incivility theory beyond its dyadic boundaries, positioning incivility as an organizational problem. Interestingly, the authors also offer evidence-based support for the multidimensionality of incivility, while advocating the need for what they term construct cleanup in incivility research. Ethical climate certainly offers a conceptual anchor upon which the foundations of effective intervention can be built.
Murray, Branch and Caponecchia's paper explores intervention from another perspective, as it were, identifying critical success factors for workplace bullying interventions, and the authors confirm the importance of providing a supportive infrastructure upon which to base interventions. Management commitment and buy-in are advocated as essential for successful intervention. The authors draw much needed attention to implementation factors. The link to the preceding authors is in the case that arguably, these factors are more likely to be successful when there is an ethical work climate.
Linked to Murray, Branch and Caponecchia's argument that management commitment and buy-in are advocated as essential for successful intervention, Fahie, in the final paper on this issue reveals the profoundly negative effects of toxic leadership and the absence of acceptable redress despite the existence of policies to the contrary. Where poor, even toxic leadership exists there are adverse physical and psychological impacts as well as adverse repercussions for career trajectories. His paper reminds the reader of the central importance of ethical leadership and the deleterious consequences for the individual and for organisations when it is absent.
This special issue draws together the latest thinking, research and evidence in workplace ill-treatment. It sets the scene for reframing how we currently think about these issues. The relevance of organizational antecedents is now clear and as such has been a game changer for how interventions are conceptualized and implemented. The collective thinking of these international researchers will serve as a springboard to prompt further discourse on setting, organisational context, ethical work climate, organizational responsibility and ethical leadership. Placing focus on organisational responsibility does not absolve bullies of accountability for their actions but it does reorient our understanding of why bullying flourishes and why we have to date achieved little success in its eradication.
