About this Research Topic
Research on workplace bullying and harassment spanning over three decades has established a strong link with ill-health, both as a cause and a consequence. While the extant literature now evidences greater understanding in terms of cause and effect of this complex phenomenon, relatively less attention has been paid to the largest group of individuals who are exposed to such behaviors, that is, bystanders. While bystanders often unwittingly have an active or passive role in the cycle of bullying and harassment, less realized is that they are also affected by it. Bystanding is a complex behaviour, it is multi layered and operates at both individual and organizational levels. Bystanders have a role to play in how bullying affects targets, bystanders themselves and organizational culture. This Research Topic will forge new ground by deepening the interrogation of bystanding from individual and organizational perspectives.
Despite the long-standing evidence of the substantial negative impact that workplace bullying has on individual health, productivity, and organizational costs, organizations have had limited success in addressing the problem or developing effective preventative interventions. The ineffectiveness of workplaces in protecting workers is evident from qualitative and quantitative studies. While systematic reviews have identified some effective interventions, they highlight the potential role of bystanders in changing the course of mistreatment. However, the challenges that bystanders face in intervening and the cost of interventions, i.e. that doing nothing is a rational self-preservation choice for bystanders warrants deeper interrogation. The literature also suggests that organisational responses are also poor. We argue that this, coupled with blind enforcing of policy may also be an institutional form of bystanding.
This challenge is further compounded by the restriction of narrow preconditions before organisations will engage in effective intervention, lack of genuine management commitment to address it or worse potential risk exposure for managers to engage in genuine resolution. Lack of tailoring interventions to the organizational context, where micro-political behaviour, power abuse, and even some forms of violence are institutionalized is also at issue. A potential further complication is the changing nature of interactions between humans and AI which presents additional complexities but also perhaps opportunities.
The goal of this theme’s Research Topic is to provide an issue that will interrogate the complex terrain of interventions and bystanders in bullying from an organisational psychology and organizational culture perspective.
Our focus is on the implications of bystanders in mitigating or exacerbating bullying and harassment or any other manifestation of mistreatment, such as incivility or abusive supervision. Our focus is also on a multi layered bystanding phenomenon both at individual and organizational levels. Given the complex nature of this issue, we welcome:
• Empirical papers explore the various roles of bystanders in the complex equation of mistreatment, including but not limited to those who look at bystanders as victims by proxy, intervening populations, effectiveness of organizational use of policy as intervention; policies as technologies of power and organizational/individual facilitators of bullying.
• Conceptual papers that offer new thinking on this complex phenomenon or that shed light on emergent issues that might prompt empirical research or that apply various frameworks that acknowledge the different roles of bystanders in promoting health and safety, psychosocial conditions, supportive working environments, or those presenting the dark side of bystanders' involvement.
• Papers that explore how AI can mitigate or facilitate bullying and harassment.
Despite the long-standing evidence of the substantial negative impact that workplace bullying has on individual health, productivity, and organizational costs, organizations have had limited success in addressing the problem or developing effective preventative interventions. The ineffectiveness of workplaces in protecting workers is evident from qualitative and quantitative studies. While systematic reviews have identified some effective interventions, they highlight the potential role of bystanders in changing the course of mistreatment. However, the challenges that bystanders face in intervening and the cost of interventions, i.e. that doing nothing is a rational self-preservation choice for bystanders warrants deeper interrogation. The literature also suggests that organisational responses are also poor. We argue that this, coupled with blind enforcing of policy may also be an institutional form of bystanding.
This challenge is further compounded by the restriction of narrow preconditions before organisations will engage in effective intervention, lack of genuine management commitment to address it or worse potential risk exposure for managers to engage in genuine resolution. Lack of tailoring interventions to the organizational context, where micro-political behaviour, power abuse, and even some forms of violence are institutionalized is also at issue. A potential further complication is the changing nature of interactions between humans and AI which presents additional complexities but also perhaps opportunities.
The goal of this theme’s Research Topic is to provide an issue that will interrogate the complex terrain of interventions and bystanders in bullying from an organisational psychology and organizational culture perspective.
Our focus is on the implications of bystanders in mitigating or exacerbating bullying and harassment or any other manifestation of mistreatment, such as incivility or abusive supervision. Our focus is also on a multi layered bystanding phenomenon both at individual and organizational levels. Given the complex nature of this issue, we welcome:
• Empirical papers explore the various roles of bystanders in the complex equation of mistreatment, including but not limited to those who look at bystanders as victims by proxy, intervening populations, effectiveness of organizational use of policy as intervention; policies as technologies of power and organizational/individual facilitators of bullying.
• Conceptual papers that offer new thinking on this complex phenomenon or that shed light on emergent issues that might prompt empirical research or that apply various frameworks that acknowledge the different roles of bystanders in promoting health and safety, psychosocial conditions, supportive working environments, or those presenting the dark side of bystanders' involvement.
• Papers that explore how AI can mitigate or facilitate bullying and harassment.
Keywords: bystanders, upstanders, intervention, victims by proxy
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