Relying on an individual “feeling bullied” as meaning “being bullied” is a very subjective basis on which to conduct a quantitative study. It raises concerns as to participant’s honesty, interpretations of events and individual differences, i.e. sensitivity to conflict situations. One person’s perception of bullying will differ from another’s. The time delay between the incident and the reporting could allow modification of meanings and the reality of the event. An example of this would be where justified performance management processes are later reconstructed by the recipient as “bullying” in order to bolster self esteem, modify other’s interpretations or cover up negative work histories.
The “scene setting” prologue to the questionnaire could also modify participant’s interpretations such that an event not previously seen as bullying matches aspects of the prologue therefore would be reported as bullying. This coupled with the fact that participants were not separated or monitored during completion of the questionnaire and could possibly have cross referenced their experiences and be influenced in assigning meanings does bring the reliability of the study into question. However it must be acknowledged that if an individual feels bullied then that feeling is valid even if only caused by the use of an inappropriate management style, i.e. autocratic (Vroom-Jago 1988), on that individual. This also links to Attribution theories where an individual perceives bullying, as opposed to justified management, as a result of unconsciously trying to explain their own negative behaviours.
Participants with perception, sensitivity or honesty issues could be filtered out by using a robust attitudes test with good construct validity. If a participant shows negativity with relation to these issues then their responses could be rejected. These issues could be defended by asking whether bullying causes negativity or vice versa. Although the report states that an attitude test is used in part 1 of the questionnaire it is not available for inspection of its comprehensiveness or construct validity. A robust attitude test and filtering of participants would lend weight to subsequent findings. The study aimed to measure the incidence of workplace bullying and some interesting results were drawn from the data using SPSS.
A reasonable sized sample (≈1100) was tested. There was a good gender mix (table 1) but 88% of respondents were under 40 years old therefore biased towards younger people. 53% reported being bullied at work (table 2) and 77% reported witnessing workplace bullying. Statistics showed significant differences between the gender of the bully, supporting males as the predominant perpetrators both on male or female victims, whilst females bullying males was very low at 6% (table 3). This is supported by school bullying evidence, (e.g. Boulton and Underwood 1992). The report does acknowledge the possible effect of low percentages for females in management positions (≈25-30%) which is supported by the results in tables 4 and 5. Most victims were at staff level (74%) and most bullies were managers (71%). Unexpected results relating to duration of bullying experience (table 9) highlighted bullying of groups (81%) as a phenomenon contradicting anecdotal evidence that supports bullying of individuals as predominant. The report points to the increased resilience against bullying by individuals when bullied in groups, interestingly citing “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger1962) or “group think” (Turner & Prakanis 1994) as possible explanations for this behaviour. Table 10 shows that 27% of victims leave their jobs to escape bullying which if correct has ramifications for individuals and organizations. Future research into these effects would provide practical applications.
Some concerns are also raised by table 11 which lists descriptors of bullying behaviours. The report doesn’t clearly state whether these descriptors were created by the team as a guidance for respondents or were derived from respondents descriptions of their worst working situations. There are no other like studies to compare with and thus measure congruent validity with their descriptors although this studies descriptors can be seen as having common sense validity and are reasonable starting points to use. There is an issue of interpretations in that at least half of the descriptors could relate to justifiable performance management or robust management styles; e.g. persistent criticism, work overloading, bawling out. Again these ambiguities could cause reconstruction of events in the participant’s mind and categorizing of non-bullying behaviours as bullying. These issues allow questions to be asked of the reliability and validity of the descriptors, therefore the results obtained and the significance of this study. A final concern with this study lies in the participant age bias towards youth (88% under 40). It could be argued that as age increases sensitivity to conflict decreases and the ability to resolve conflicts increases through experience. Therefore a more representative sample of the population would arguably produce results that show less incidence of bullying than this study does and must be conducted before any generalizations can be legitimately made or accepted.
In summary it is evident that this study raises questions about its design, methodology, and conclusions drawn from the results. However it must be remembered that although the report never specifically identifies the study as exploratory or preliminary it does hint at this. The lack of previous research on adult-adult bullying does not allow for a specific hypothesis therefore the team sensibly looked to discover if workplace bullying existed as a significant issue. The report recognizes some of the study’s limitations and acknowledges the need for refinement. Taking these limitations into account the study has produced some interesting and significant results that lend themselves to further research. The report highlights group bullying and staff retention as particular important areas of study which would give good practical applications for any significant findings. The results were clearly set out and generally explained well although some tables contained information that could have been left out, i.e. table 10. Table 11 would have been easier to understand if a copy of the questionnaire had been included, or linked to, in the report. Inclusion of the questionnaire might have clarified/settled some of the issues around reliability and validity.
This study therefore should be viewed as an important first step towards understandings the effects and dynamics of workplace bullying. The study sits firmly at the “questions” stage in the cycle of enquiry indicating areas of interest that can be hypothesized and used to drive further research. The potential practical applications for any findings from research into group bullying and staff retention could be used to convince businesses and organizations to allow studies in ecologically valid environments.
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References
Adams, A. (1992) in Rayner (1997) p1
Bassman, E. (1992) in Rayner (1997) p1,10
Batch, G.M. & Knoff, H.M. (1994) in Rayner (1997) p1
Besag, V. (1989) in Rayner (1997) p1
Boulton, J.J. and Underwood, K. (1992) in Rayner (1997) p1,10
Einarssen, S. (1991) in Rayner (1997) p1
Festinger, L. (1962) in Rayner (1997) p11
Leymann, H. (1992) in Rayner (1997) p1
Munthe, E. (1989) in Rayner (1997) p1
Turner, M.E. & Prakanis, A.R. (1994) in Rayner (1997) p11
Vroom, V.H. and Jago, A.G. (1988) in Lawthom, R. (2003) p390
Rayner, C. (1997) in Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, (1997), vol.7, pp.199-208.
Lawthom, R.(2003), ch7, Relationships at work in Brace, N. and Westcott, H. (eds) (2003), Applying Psychology, Milton Keynes, The Open University.
