Workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment research: Time to pause, ponder…and practice?

Seminar summary

Research on workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment, which began in the 1990s in Scandinavia and the UK, is currently burgeoning rapidly across the entire globe. The extant body of knowledge has yielded rich insights into various aspects of the phenomenon, such as prevalence, course, process, consequences and actors including targets, bullies, bystanders, leaders, HR managers, unionists, interventionists, significant others and so on. Yet, despite concerted research and intervention, including the recent ILO Convention 190 and national legislation in some countries, the problem persists worldwide.  This leads to numerous pressing questions…Is the phenomenon being grasped accurately? What needs to be considered in order for the phenomenon to be grasped accurately? In this talk, in an attempt to address these questions, I speak to (a) the multi-faceted nature of workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment, captured through D’Cruz and Noronha’s ‘Variety of Workplace Bullying’ framework, and (b) the multi-dimensional context within which workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment unfolds. Through these twin foci, I draw attention to two essential features of workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment, namely, relationality and institutionalization.  Illuminating these four complex aspects, I attempt to provide some insights into how research on the phenomenon of workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment can inform practice, so as to enhance the efficacy of intervention.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

We welcome you to join us online on Wednesday 21 February 2024 at 9am.

Speaker bio

Professor Premilla D’Cruz

Premilla D’Cruz is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. Her research interests include workplace bullying, technology and work, emotions at work, self and identity at work, informal/precarious work and employment, whistleblowing at work, positive organizational scholarship, and workplace controls. Premilla is the Chief Co-Editor of the Handbooks of Workplace Bullying, Emotional Abuse and Harassment, Volumes 1-4 (Springer, 2021). Her recent co-edited book focuses on Asian Perspectives on Workplace Bullying and Harassment (Springer, 2021). She has published numerous papers in reputed peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, Information and Organization, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Personnel Review, Economic and Industrial Democracy and International Journal of Human Resource Management, among others, and made several international conference keynote addresses and oral presentations. Premilla is currently an organizing committee member of the UN-PRME World Tour Research Paper Development Programme and the section editor of Labour Relations and Business Ethics at the Journal of Business Ethics. You can read more about her and her research work online.