Upsetting Behavior: Reactions to Personal and Bystander Sexual Harassment Experiences

The current research was designed to examine objective and contextual factors related to the appraisal of potentially sexually harassing situations. Working female participants (n = 208) from a mid-sized southwestern university completed a workplace experiences survey in small groups. The majority of participants were Hispanic/Latina (77.9%). We predicted that characteristics of personal harassment experiences (e.g., number of distinct types of behaviors experienced, frequency, duration) and bystander harassment experiences would contribute independently to how upset women were by their own sexual harassment experiences. Results indicated that characteristics of personal harassment experiences and bystander experiences did predict how upset women were by their own gender harassment and by unwanted sexual attention experiences. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering multiple types of workplace stressors (e.g., personal and bystander sexual harassment experiences) and their relation to the appraisal process.     

Can mindfulness overcome the effects of workplace ostracism on job performance?

ABSTRACT

With a basis in the transactional theory of stress and coping, this study investigates the relationship between employees’ exposure to workplace ostracism and their job performance, while also considering the mediating role of acquiescence silence and the moderating role of mindfulness. Multisource, three-wave data from employees and their peers in Pakistani organizations reveal that ostracism in the workplace hinders job performance because employees passively withhold relevant ideas about their work due to feelings of acquiescence. The mediating role of acquiescence silence is mitigated if employees can draw from their mindfulness trait. This study accordingly identifies a key mechanism – the passive withholding of pertinent ideas, based on submission – by which workplace ostracism hampers job performance, and it reveals how this process might be contained by encouraging employees’ receptive attention and awareness focused on present experiences.     

Le harcèlement : évolution du droit français et problématiques de l’évaluation des victimes

Medical doctors are often asked by patients victim of harassment, or even by the authorities, to establish medical certificate. Harassment is a complex phenomenon, covering a wide range of behaviours occurring in multiple situations. The writing of such a certificate can prove to be difficult, can be a cause of legal proceedings for clinicians, especially at a disciplinary level. Moreover, the evaluation is all the more complex since the qualification of harassment by the judge sometimes requires an evaluation of the impact on the victims under the form of a Total Work Incapacity (TWI) duration, but not under all the circumstances existing in French law. In this article, we first propose to address general consideration towards the writing of the certificate, before doing a systematic review of the successive evolutions of French penal and labour law regarding harassment in its most frequent forms. Finally, we propose to address the matter of victims evaluation, especially towards TWI duration evaluation, which does not seem to us an adapted tool regarding the fact that harassment is usually a chronical and durable phenomenon.     

Abusive supervision, intentions to quit, and employees’ workplace deviance: A power/dependence analysis

We conducted a two-study examination of relationships between abusive supervision and subordinates’ workplace deviance. Consistent with predictions derived from power/dependence theory, the results of a cross-sectional study with employees from three organizations suggest that abusive supervision is more strongly associated with subordinates’ organization deviance and supervisor-directed deviance when subordinates’ intention to quit is higher. The results also support the prediction that when intention to quit is higher, abusive supervision is more strongly associated with supervisor-directed deviance than with organization-directed deviance. These results were replicated in a second study, a two-wave investigation of people employed in a variety of industries and occupations.     

Lack of sleep and unethical conduct

We draw from the Ego Depletion model and research on sleep physiology to predict a relationship between lack of sleep and individuals’ unethical behavior. Laboratory studies showed that sleep quantity is positively related to self-control resources and negative associated with unethical behavior. In a cross-sectional field study examining unethical behavior in a variety of work settings, low levels of sleep, and low perceived quality of sleep, were both positively related to unethical behavior as rated by the supervisor, and cognitive fatigue mediated the influence of sleep quantity. In an experience sampling field study, we found similar effects within-individuals. We discuss the role of lost sleep in better understanding unethical behavior in organizations.     

Neuroimaging and neuroenergetics: Brain activations as information-driven reorganization of energy flows

There is increasing focus on the neurophysiological underpinnings of brain activations, giving birth to an emerging branch of neuroscience – neuroenergetics. However, no common definition of “brain activation” exists thus far. In this article, we define brain activation as the information-driven reorganization of energy flows in a population of neuroglial units that leads to an overall increase in energy utilization in this population. On the basis of this definition, the key aspects of modern biochemical and biophysical approaches to neuroenergetics are considered from the perspective of the links between these approaches within the context of the free energy minimization principle and the neurophysiological conception of deviance detection. In this light, we consider brain basal activity as subserving internal representations of the environment (predictive coding), and brain activation as reflecting the level of deviance from predictive coding.     

Workplace Violence and Worker Injury in Elderly Care Settings

Abstract

Many incidents of injury, assault, and abuse occur in health care settings. To better examine the situational context of the workplace, this paper examines whether workers providing care to elderly persons experience injuries that are consistent with the “for-profit” and “interpersonal conflict” explanations of elder abuse or neglect. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, results indicate that nursing home workers and home health care workers have higher rates of workplace injuries resulting from assaults and overexertion than do other workers. The data suggest that there are unique structural and situational factors present in the nursing home, which create a work setting vulnerable to conflict, violence, and elder abuse.     

Supervisory interpretation of safety climate versus employee safety climate perception: Association with safety behavior and outcomes for lone workers

Research has shown that safety climate predicts safety behavior and safety outcomes in a variety of settings. Prior studies have focused on traditional work environments in which employees and supervisors work in the same location and the mechanisms through which safety climate affects behavior are largely understood. However, the nascent research examining safety climate among lone workers suggests that safety climate may have some uniqueness in this context. Based on leadership theories and utilizing an exploratory approach, this study increases our understanding of the lone worker context by examining employee perception of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate; how similar or different they are, and how they are related to important safety outcomes. Surveys were administered to a matched sample of 1831 truck drivers and their 219 supervisors at four different trucking companies. Objective data on employee injuries were collected six months after survey administration. The results provided support for the measurement equivalence of the Trucking Safety Climate Scale at the organization level for both employee and supervisor respondents. For both organization- and group-level safety climate, employee perceptions of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate were significantly different, such that supervisors provided higher ratings for both safety climate sub-scales. Further, only employee safety climate perceptions significantly predicted self-reported safety behavior (directly) and objective injury outcomes (indirectly). This suggests that when trying to gauge and improve upon a trucking company’s safety climate, we should rely on employee perspectives, rather than supervisory interpretation, of safety climate.     

Leader mistreatment,employee hostility,and deviant behaviors: Integrating self-uncertainty and thwarted needs perspectives on deviance

Integrating self-uncertainty management and thwarted needs perspectives on leader mistreatment and workplace deviance, we examine when and why leader mistreatment is associated with workplace deviance. We propose that competence uncertainty strengthens the relationship between leader mistreatment and workplace deviance and that hostility mediates this interactive effect. Four field studies and one experiment support the hypotheses. The first two studies provide evidence for the predicted interaction between leader mistreatment and competence uncertainty, and the next three studies demonstrate that hostility mediates this interactive effect. We discuss an extended social exchange explanation of workplace deviance and highlight the psychological interplay between motives, cognition, and affect in reciprocating leader mistreatment.     

Incivility at work,upset at home? Testing the cross‐level moderation effect of emotional dysregulation among female nurses from primary health care

Workplace incivility is a growing problem in nursing. However, most studies that explore this psychosocial risk and its consequences do so considering a single level and a between‐person perspective. The aims of the study were to explore whether the effects of experiencing incivility during work‐time could explain the daily levels of well‐being of nurses at home; and to analyze if that relationship could be moderated by their levels of emotional dysregulation as a trait. This is a multilevel study with diary methodology. The study was carried out in 18 primary health‐care centers belonging to Madrid and the Basque Country, in Spain. Ninety‐four nurses completed a general questionnaire and 54 of them a diary booklet over five consecutive working days in two different moments, immediately after work and at bedtime. The results showed that nurses’ emotional dysregulation moderated the relationship between daily workplace incivility and daily fatigue, and positive affect at night at home. However, there were no direct effects of daily incivility on these outcome variables. In conclusion, the presence of difficulties in emotional regulation among nurses can increase the negative effects of daily workplace incivility on their health and well‐being.