Suzy Fox’s research while affiliated with Loyola University Chicago and other places

Purpose The purpose of this research was to clarify how Human Resource Professionals (HRPs) in the United States (U.S.) understand their roles in bullying situations and how they perceive others (targeted employees and senior management) understand their roles. It is important to understand these role expectations as HRPs are integral actors in bullying situations and are often evaluated negatively by those in bullying situations. Design/methodology/approach Strauss & Corbin’s grounded theory approach was used to uncover HRPs role perceptions. Narrative and respondent in-depth interviews were conducted with HRPs and revealed an evolving HR role that clashed with perceived target and senior management role expectations. Findings This research has revealed a theoretical model of the progressive role HRPs play in bullying situations. We discovered HRPs play several important roles in bullying situations and they link these roles in a temporal and situational manner. They first play the role of 1) a trust listener, 2) an objective, neutral third party investigator, 3) a management advisor; and lastly 4) a mediator/ trainer/coach. Throughout this role execution they also became an emotional labourer. This model was often in contention with the HRP’s perceptions of targets and senior management expectations in bullying situations. Originality/value This research revealed a more detailed, nuanced view of the roles HRPs play in bullying situations and called existing research on U.S. HRPs and their roles in bullying situations into question. How HRPs view their roles and role expectations is revealing of why and how they deal with allegations of bullying the way they do. This research has practical value for HR, management, targets, and organizations in general.

Human resource professionals (HRPs) in the US are important actors in workplace bullying (WB) situations. Most WB research currently focuses on the target but fails to include the individual most often left to interpret and respond to complaints of bullying – the HRP. We argue that because HRPs must work to identify, understand and deal with victims and bullies; HR should have a voice in assessing WB. The difficulties HRPs report in effectively responding to employee complaints of WB have been attributed to a number of factors, including conflicts among multiple HR roles in the organisation, a paucity of specific organisational policies and guidelines for dealing with bullying, and ambiguous definitions and criteria for behaviour to be considered bullying. The impetus for the study reported here was the need to clarify the definition of bullying incorporating the HR perspective, determine what behaviours and criteria are seen as bullying by HRPs. Scale use and limitations are discussed as well as theoretical and practical implications.

Studies have shown a strong negative correlation between counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) and organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and opposite correlations with hypothesized antecedents. Such observed correlations may have been erroneously caused by three measurement artefacts: items measuring absence of CWBs, rather than behaviours that exceed requirements or expectations in OCB scales; supervisory halo; and agreement rather than frequency response format. A new OCB scale, the OCB-checklist (OCB-C) was used that did not have these artefacts. Contrary to prior expectations from the literature, positive relations were found between CWB and OCB, and stressors and OCB. Theoretical explanations for positive CWB/OCB relations (demand-elicited OCB, social loafing, work process problems, rater perceptions and attributions, and aggravated job stress processes) are discussed.

An experiment investigated whether measurement features affected observed relationships between counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and their relationships with other variables. As expected, correlations between CWB and OCB were significantly higher with ratings of agreement rather than frequency of behavior, when OCB scale content overlapped with CWB than when it did not, and with supervisor rather than self-ratings. Relationships with job satisfaction and job stressors were inconsistent across conditions. We concluded that CWB and OCB are likely unrelated and not necessarily oppositely related to other variables. Researchers should avoid overlapping content in CWB and OCB scales and should use frequency formats to assess how often individuals engage in each form of behavior.

This study looked at factors that moderate responses to violence, bullying, and other stressors among public school teachers in the US. Grounded in stressor-emotion-control/ support (SEC/S) theory, the study emphasized the relevance of specific forms of control and support to specific stressors in analyzing moderation effects. A total of 779 teachers completed an online survey of their perceptions of their work environments. Pervasive bullying and violent acts were associated with strains in zero-order correlations, but when regressed, pervasive bullying rather than violence was associated with strains. Relations between violent acts and strains were moderated by satisfaction with the administrations’ handling of violent acts.This has important implications for the development of public and educational policy. Finally, co-worker social support interacted with supervisory/principal bullying, but, contrary to expectations, showed a reverse buffering effect.

We present an attribution-based explanation about how helpful organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and harmful counterproductive work behavior (CWB) are positively related under some circumstances. Attributions concerning controllability and locus of causality are important factors. Controllability attributions for OCB-eliciting demands, such as coworker lack of performance, organizational constraints, or supervisor expectations, can lead to CWB. Conversely, controllability and internal attributions for one's own CWB can lead to OCB. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract).

We question the common supposition that active acts of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and organisational citizenship behavior (OCB) are negatively related in that people who perform one tend not to perform the other, and that they tend to relate oppositely to potential antecedents. We argue that under some circumstances these active behaviors may occur together or sequentially. Using an emotion focused framework, we discuss five situations that lead from one form of behavior to the other: Understimulation at work, co-worker lack of performance, organisational constraints, lack of expected rewards for OCB, and unjustified (to the actor) acts of CWB. Finally, we provide suggestions for studying these behaviors episodically as opposed to aggregating frequencies of behavior over extended periods of time. Nous mettons en doute l'idée commune selon laquelle les actions relevant d'un comportement professionnel contre-productif (CWB) et les conduites citoyennes dans l'organisation (OCB) sont négativement corrélées en ce sens que les individus qui adopteraient les unes auraient tendance à se détourner des autres et qu'elles seraient liées en sens contraire aux antécédents potentiels. Nous pensons que dans certains cas ces comportements actifs peuvent émerger conjointement ou à la suite les uns des autres. A partir d'un schéma centré sur l'émotion, nous analysons cinq situations qui orientent d'une forme de comportement vers l'autre: le manque de stimulants au travail, les médiocres performances d'un collègue, les contraintes organisationnelles, l'absence des gratifications attendues pour l'OCB et des actions de CWB injustifiées (contre l'acteur). Nous proposons enfin d'étudier ces conduites sur des laps de temps définis plutôt que d'additionner des occurrences de comportement sur de longues périodes.

Workplace bullying is behavior that threatens, intimidates, humiliates, or isolates people at work, or undermines their reputation or job performance. Moving beyond research, academics and employment practitioners are beginning to address the need to design and implement organizational antibullying policies, training, conflict management programs and systems, and possibly, antibullying public policy and legislation. Consultants will play a key role in helping organizations develop and implement internal organizational programs. In this paper the authors describe alternative dispute resolution systems and workplace training. Key objectives include arriving at a clear definition of workplace bullying, fostering individual, organizational, and societal awareness of the prevalence and consequences of workplace bullying; and providing specific guidance and mechanisms for individuals, managers, human resource departments, corporate leadership, union representatives, attorneys, physicians, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists, for preventing and handling bullying incidents.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare women's mentoring experience in nine countries within the Americas, and to explore linkages between personal characteristics, mentoring practices, mentoring functions, and consequences of being mentee. Design/methodology/approach A total of 1,146 successful women are questioned about their mentoring experiences as a mentee: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 from Chile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, and St Vincent). Findings Most of the women have more than one mentor. Across all countries mentoring practices are more strongly linked to career mentoring function while the age and gender of the mentor are more strongly linked to psychosocial mentoring. Mentoring from the perspective of mentee has the same directional relationship with situational and individual variables, but the significance of those relationships vary by country. A possible cultural difference is detected between Spanish and non‐Spanish speaking countries on the issue of mentoring practice. Research limitations/implications The fact that the paper focuses only on successful women in this paper means the findings are not necessarily generalizable to other groups of women or men. The paper is also limited because mentoring functions are constrained to two: psychosocial and career. There may be more functions that mentoring could fulfill for the mentee. Practical implications Companies' interest in fostering mentoring among their members, particularly women, should be aware that different mentoring functions are influenced by different factors. For example, formal mentoring programs appear to have a greater impact on career mentoring functions than on psychosocial mentoring functions. To support women in their careers, companies should institute formal mentoring programs; this is especially important in South American countries. Moreover, mentoring programs must be designed to be adaptive since the analyses indicated that there are significant differences by country in terms of many mentoring issues. Originality/value In the literature review, the paper finds linkages between culture, mentoring practices, characteristics of mentors and mentees, and mentoring functions, but no evidence that these linkages have been studied with a group of professionally successful women from different American countries, particularly non‐English speaking American countries.