Lynn Bowes-Sperry

• Ph.D. Business Administration
• Professor (Full) at Western New England University

Interpersonal anxiety (i.e., the fear of negative consequences from interacting with someone) may be more prominent in post-#MeToo organizations when interacting with someone of a different gender. Initial exchanges may particularly trigger this anxiety, obfuscating key organizational decisions such as hiring. Given humor’s positive, intrapersonal...

In accordance with the conference theme, "Understanding the Inclusive Organization," our panel will address the following question posed in the call for submissions: How do organizational structures, cultures, and/or identities contribute to, or detract from, organizational inclusiveness? We will discuss the ways in which current organizational pra...

Although establishing gender equality in board and managerial positions has recently become more important for organizations, companies with low levels of gender diversity seem to perceive an ethical dilemma regarding the ways, in which they attempt to attain it. One way that organizations try to move toward gender equality is through the use of th...

Women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of management in most countries. Despite the effectiveness of identity conscious initiatives for increasing the proportion of women, many organizations have been reluctant to implement such initiatives because potential employees may perceive them negatively. Given the increasing competition for labo...

To attract a gender diverse workforce, many employers use diversity statements to publicly signal that they value gender diversity. However, this often represents a misalignment between words and actions (i.e., a diversity mixed message) because most organizations are male dominated, especially in board positions. We conducted 3 studies to investig...

Despite significant expenditures on organizational responses to sexual harassment, it remains a persistent challenge. We argue that the legal environment has unduly and negatively influenced the ways in which organizations address the problem of sexual harassment and offer an alternative. Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is an action-oriented approach...

Despite significant expenditures on sexual harassment awareness training, sexual harassment is a persistent challenge for organizations. In accordance with the theme of “Opening Governance,” we argue that the legal environment has unduly and negatively influenced the ways in which organizations address the problem of sexual harassment and offer an...

Women are underrepresented in the upper echelons of management in most countries. Despite the effectiveness of identity conscious initiatives for increasing the proportion of women, many organizations have been reluctant to implement such initiatives because potential employees may perceive them negatively. Given the increasing competition for labo...

Racial slurs are prevalent in organizations; however, the social context in which racial slurs are exchanged remains poorly understood. To address this limitation, we integrate three intergroup theories (social dominance, gendered prejudice, and social identity) and complement the traditional emphasis on aggressors and targets with an emphasis on o...

Extant literature on diversity training programs continues to yield little evidence of their overall effectiveness. Whereas the most common approach to diversity training entails justifying the value of diversity on the basis of its contribution to the organization's bottom line, we argue that approaching diversity training from an ethical perspect...

Racial slurs are prevalent in organizations; however, the social context in which racial slurs are exchanged remains poorly understood. To address this limitation, we integrate three intergroup theories (social dominance, gendered prejudice, and social identity) and complement the traditional emphasis on aggressors and targets with an emphasis on o...

Although there is an increasing focus on the importance of incorporating team projects into business curricula, the way team projects are implemented varies significantly among instructors. Student team literature has explored different methods for effectively teaching teamwork; less is known about student attitudes toward these methods, in particu...

This paper is the first to explore the impact of culture on the acceptability of workplace bullying and to do so across a wide range of countries. Physically intimidating bullying is less acceptable than work related bullying both within groups of similar cultures and globally. Cultures with high performance orientation find bullying to be more acc...

This review examines research addressing workplace sexual harassment (SH) since the last major review in a management journal in 1995. The authors examine several aspects of recent research: current definitions, labeling of SH, antecedents to SH, responses to SH, and consequences resulting from SH. They then make suggestions for future research, us...

This chapter will review the prevalence of sexual harassment (SH) in the workplace, major theoretical models of SH, and major empirical studies investigating SH. In addition, we will review the connection between theoretical and empirical research to point the way for future SH research.

Student peer evaluations are a form of student voice. However, research has not determined if the positive outcomes associated with voice in other contexts (e.g., judicial system, workplace) are also present in the student team environment. We collected data from student teams in business schools in the United States and Hong Kong to examine the wa...

Efforts to end sexual harassment that rely primarily on target reporting are unlikely to be successful because most targets do not report their experiences. Thus, we explore an alternative mechanism for controlling sexual harassment - observer intervention. We examine observer intervention in sexual harassment using the literature on bystander inte...

Student peer evaluations are a form of student voice. However, research has not determined if the positive outcomes associated with voice in other contexts (e.g., judicial system, workplace) are also present in the student team environment. We collected data from student teams in business schools in the United States and Hong Kong to examine the wa...

Despite the existence of formal organizational and legal policies, anecdotal literature suggests that sexual harassment remains prevalent. Harassers continue to harass, targets of harassment often respond passively, and observers seldom take action to prevent harassment by the harasser or help the target. This article uses accountability theory to...

‘While animals mostly fight physically, and young children include verbal means in their aggressive repertoire, adult humans harm their enemies in much more subtle and sophisticated ways’ (Bjorkqvist, Osterman and Lagerspetz, 1994, p. 32). Since adult humans spend a large portion of their waking hours at work, it should not be surprising that their...

This article examines sexual harassment phenomena from an ethical perspective. Specifically, it argues that sexual harassment may occur less frequently if actors are encouraged to regard sexually harassing behavior as involving a moral component. Jones' work on moral intensity is used to describe reasons why, given the nature of sexual harassment p...

The role of observers has been generally ignored in prior theories and research on social-sexual behavior at work. This study proposed and tested an ethical decision making model of individuals’ reactions to social-sexual behavior that they witness at work. Full-time employees responded to vignettes regarding an incident of social-sexual behavior....

This chapter examines the literature on sexual harassment, differentiating between subjective perceptions and objective occurrences, and presents a multiperspective framework that integrates two lines of research, one by legal scholars and one by psychological and organizational scholars. A framework is developed that answers 5 crucial questions: 1...

The influence of defensive impression management and perceived loafing on group effectiveness was investigatedfor 49 groups of 204 undergraduate business students working for 3 months on a team interdependent task The interaction between perceived loafing and defensive impression management was also tested. Results demonstrated that both independen...

Social role theory suggests that how managers respond to employees seeking help depends on the manager's gender. Consistent with social role theory, we found that women managers tended to use significantly more gender-consistent helping behaviors, such as understanding, and less masculine-related behaviors, such as evaluating, than their male count...

Examined the influence of a person's sex on the type of justice most salient to that person. 50 male and 30 female undergraduates were asked to place themselves in the role of an employee who had just received a pay raise and to rate how likely they would be to consider distributive, procedural, and interactional justice when evaluating the fairnes...

Analyzes the exclusivity of the workers' compensation which preclude a victim of sexual harassment from seeking damages in the United States. Consideration of sexual harassment as part of employment relationship; Relationship between workers' compensation and sexual harassment; Sufferings of sexual harassment victims