Work group: studypath SHOP

In this work group we discussed the article of Escartin et al (2011). The article can be found by Escartín, J., Salin, D., & Rodríguez-Carbaillera, Á. (2011). Conceptualizations of workplace bullying. Gendered rather than gender neutral? Journal of Personnel Psychology, 10, 157-165. https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5888/a000048. 

The researchers investigate what the significance of gender is for how employees define bullying and how severe they rate different forms of bullying to be. They form four hypotheses: 

1. Hypothesis 1: Women are more likely to include person-related forms of bullying (emotional abuse and social isolation) in their definitions of bullying.
2. Hypothesis 2: Men are more likely to include work-related forms of bullying (the other categories) in their definitions of bullying.
3. Hypothesis 3: Women rate the severity of bullying behavior as more severe than men do.
4. Hypothesis 4: Gender differences in perceptions of severity vary across the different forms of bullying.

Hypothesis 1 and 2 are tested in study 1 and hypothesis 3 and 4 are tested in study 2. 

The researchers do not specifically mention the population to which they want to generalize the results of the research. However, they do state that 'One should always be cautious when generalizing findings from one specific country or region'. It therefore seems likely that they want to generalize to the general working population, but that they do realize that they are dealing with a specific research group. 

The sample of study 1 is a convenience sample of 246 employees (154 women, 92 men). Participants were recruited in two different ways: (1) one set of participants (109 employees) were recruited at workshops on the prevention of workplace bullying held by one of the authors and (2) a second set of participants (137 employees) were recruited via administrative services. The sample of study 2 is also a convenience sample of employees. Participants were recruited via email from four different organizations, 39.9% of the questionnaires were actually filled in (300 employees; 191 women, 109 men).

The research procedure of study 1 is not completely described. All we know is that as part of the study participants were asked to think about their own definition of bullying. How participants were asked to do this was not mentioned (questionnaire on paper, digital, interview?). It is also unclear when the data was collected (this is particularly interesting for the participants who were recruited at the workshops on the prevention of workplace bullying, did they answer the questions during the workshops? At which moment?). We do know that the data has been collected (partly) qualitatively, but was processed quantitatively. In study 2, employees from various branches of four organizations were sent a questionnaire by e-mail. In this questionnaire, all participants were asked questions about background information and they had to assess the severity of different types of bullying.

They performed two statistical analyses: logistic regression and hierarchical regression analyses. The researchers report nothing about the assumptions of the analyses. However, in both studies they did not include age as a predictor in the analyses because this variable strongly correlates with work experience (which could have caused problems with multicollinearity).

The results of study 1 showed that gender was a significant predictor for three of the six bullying categories, meaning that men and women defined workplace bullying differently. Women mentioned emotional abuse and professional discredit more often than men did. Men mentioned abusive work conditions more often than women did. The differences were either of small or medium effect size. The results of study 2 showed that gender was a significant predictor of the severity of three of the six bullying categories as well as for the overall severity rating. Women rated isolation, emotional abuse and professional discredit as significantly more severe than men did. For all regression analyses, the proportion of explained variance is small (between 1.7% and 6.3%). 

Hypothesis 1 is partially confirmed. Women are more likely to include emotional abuse in their definitions of bullying. This effect was not found for social isolation). Hypothesis 2 is partially confirmed. Men are more likely to include abusive work conditions in their definitions of bullying. However, contrary to hypotheses, women are more likely to include professional discredit in their definitions of bullying. Also, for the devaluation of professional role no difference was found. Hypothesis 3 is confirmed. Women rated the severity of all bullying items together as more severe than men did. Hypothesis 4 is also confirmed. Women rated isolation, emotional abuse and professional discredit as significantly more severe than men did. For the other bullying categories, no gender differenced were found.

There are a few limitations:

• Conservative criteria for statistical significance were used, although the samples were not very large.
• The samples were female-dominated.
• Most of the data were collected in one country, that is, Spain.

Workplace bullying poses a threat to employee wellbeing. It is important to prevent and solve this problem, but in order to do so it is important to know how workplace bullying is conceptualized. This is of relevance to society. “Gender differences in conceptualizations of bullying have significance for how and when HR managers and line managers of either gender think it is necessary to take measures against negative behavior and what kind of measures they deem appropriate for specific offences”.

There is a knowledge gap in the literature, which this research is trying to fill. “The aim of this paper is to address one of the existing gaps in the literature, by looking at how employees themselves define bullying and how they rate the severity of different acts.”