Workplace bullying. The interactive effects of the perpetrator’s gender and the target’s gender
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-07-2016-0147 |
| Date | 12 February 2018 |
| Pages | 264-280 |
| Published date | 12 February 2018 |
| Author | Darcy McCormack,Nikola Djurkovic,Apollo Nsubuga-Kyobe,Gian Casimir |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Workplace bullying
The interactive effects of the perpetrator’s
gender and the target’s gender
Darcy McCormack
St Mary’s College, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Nikola Djurkovic
Swinburne Business School, Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia
Apollo Nsubuga-Kyobe
Department of Management, Sport and Tourism, La Trobe University,
Melbourne, Australia, and
Gian Casimir
School of Management and Enterprise, University of Southern Queensland,
Toowoomba, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –The purposeof this paper is to examine if the gender of the perpetratorand the gender of the target
have interactiveeffects on the frequency of downward workplace bullying to whichtargets are subjected.
Design/methodology/approach –A cross-sectional designwas used on a sample of 125 schoolteachers in
Uganda. Self-report data on downward workplace bullying were obtained using the Negative Acts Questionnaire.
Findings –The perpetrator’s gender and the target’s gender have interactive effects on the level of
downward bullying to which targets are subjected. Although targets in within-gender dyads reported higher
levels of overall downward workplace bullying than did targets in between-gender dyads, a significant
gender-gender interaction was found for personal harassment and work-related harassment but not for
intimidation nor organisational harassment.
Research limitations/implications –The generalisability of the findings is limited due to the sample
consisting entirely of schoolteachers in Uganda. Self-report data are a limitation as they are subjective and
thus susceptible to various perceptual biases (e.g. social desirability, personality of the respondent).
Examining the interactive effects of gender on workplace bullying helps to provide a better understanding of
the potential influence of gender in bullying scenarios. The findings from research that considers only the
main effects of gender whilst ignoring interactive effects can misinform any theory or policy development.
Practical implications –Organisations need to resocialise their members so that they learn new attitudes
and norms regarding aggressive behaviour in the workplace.
Originality/value –This paper contributes to the literature on workplace bullying by examining the
interactive effects of gender on the frequency of downward workplace bullying.
Keywords Gender, Workplace bullying, Interactive effects
Paper type Research paper
Workplace bullying is a special type of aggressive behaviour (Einarsen et al., 2011) that
occurs worldwide in a broad range of industries (Gonzalez-Mule et al., 2013; Sansone and
Sansone, 2015). Workplace bullying comprises a range of behaviours that can be violent or
non-violent, as well as direct/overt (e.g. humiliating someone in front of others) and indirect/
covert behaviours (e.g. spreading malicious rumours about someone) (Hoel et al., 1999).
Furthermore, targets typically believe that the bullying to which they are subjected is an
intentional effort to undermine, disparage, or injure them either physically or professionally
(Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2009).
Employee Relations
Vol. 40 No. 2, 2018
pp. 264-280
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-07-2016-0147
Received 26 July 2016
Revised 28 February 2017
8July2017
Accepted 31 July 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback and suggestions, which
led to improvements to the paper.
264
ER
40,2
There are numerous antecedents of workplace bullying, which can be classified into
three broad categories: social, organisational, and individual (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2009).
Social antecedents include ideologies or cultures that revere masculinity, individualism,
profit, and power distance (i.e. emphasise power and status differences between individuals)
(Lutgen-Sandvik and McDermott, 2008; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2009). Organisational
antecedents include stressful workplaces characterised by job insecurity, role conflict, and
pressure to perform (Hodson et al., 2006), low job autonomy and high workload
(Baillien et al., 2011); organisational change due to factors such as restructuring, downsizing,
or other crises (Salin, 2003); and organisational cultures that have a high level of internal
competition and a politicised climate (Salin, 2003), and which encourage an adversarial and
aggressive approach to working and interpersonal relationships (Hoel and Cooper, 2000).
Individual antecedents include personal characteristics of both the perpetrator and the
target. Perpetrators are likely to exhibit negative personality traits such as narcissism
(Penney and Spector, 2002) and trait anger (Hershcovis et al., 2007), be impulsive,
emotionally reactive, rebellious (Andersson and Pearson, 1999), low in agreeableness
(Berry et al., 2007), and have been bullied themselves (Hauge et al., 2009). Targets are likely
to have high negative affectivity, low self-determination (Aquino et al., 1999), out-group
membership (Zapf and Einarsen, 2011), and a submissive conflict management style
(Aquino, 2000), and often possess qualities such as popularity or expertise that perpetrators
lack and are thus seen as a threat by perpetrators (Coyne et al., 2003). Bullying provides
perpetrators with a means to remove such threats (Beasley and Rayner, 1997) and some
types of bullying (e.g. work-related harassment) are facilitated by formal authority. Not
surprisingly, perpetrators are likely to have higher hierarchical status than their targets
(Zapf et al., 2011; Cunniff and Mostert, 2012).
Although a considerable body of literature on workplace bullying has developed over the
past few decades, gender effects have received relatively little attention (Hutchinson and
Eveline, 2010; Magley et al., 2010; Leo et al., 2014; O’Donnell and MacIntosh, 2016). Although
the bulk of the literature on workplace bullying has not clearly delineated between gender
and biological sex (McGinley, 2007), in general researchers have treated bullying as gender-
neutral (Hutchinson and Eveline, 2010). There is, however, some evidence that workplace
bullying is not a gender-neutral phenomenon. For example, females tend to be bullied about
their personal values related to emotional-relational factors whilst males tend to be bullied
about their work performance (Campanini et al., 2006), females tend to experience more
verbal abuse and less physical abuse than males (Farrel et al., 2006), female supervisors and
female middle managers are more likely to be bullied than their male counterparts
(Hoel et al., 2001), female senior managers experience more bullying from supervisors,
colleagues and subordinates (Hutchinson and Eveline, 2010), females are more likely to be
bullied by their subordinates (Salin, 2005, cited in Gilbert et al., 2013), females are more likely
to engage in indirect forms of bullying (Hess and Hagen, 2006), and females are less likely to
engage in aggressive interpersonal behaviours (Gonzalez-Mule et al., 2013).
Mixed findings have emerged from those studies that have examined whether the
perpetrator’s gender is related to the target’s gender. There is evidence that males tend to
target males whereas females tendto target females (e.g. Rayner, 1997; Djurkovic et al., 2004;
Lee and Brotheridge, 2011) and that males tend to target both males and females whereas
females generally target only females (e.g. Rayner and Hoel, 1997; Einarsen, 2000). Although
there are mixed findings, we did not find any studies that reported between-gender bullying
(i.e. males bullying females and females bullying males) occurs more frequently than does
within-gender bullying (i.e. males bullying males and females bullying females). One
explanation for the prevalence of within-gender bullying is the segregation of the labour
market basedon gender such that men tend to workwith men and women tend to workwith
women (e.g. most construction worker s are male and most nurses are female) (L eymann, 1996).
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Workplace
bullying
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