An Investigation of Organizational and Regulatory Discourses of Workplace Bullying

Abstract

Organizations use policies to set standards for employee behaviors. Although many organizations have policies that address workplace bullying, previous studies have found that these policies affect neither workplace bullying for targets who are seeking assistance in ending the behaviors nor managers who must address incidents of bullying. This article presents the findings of a study that used critical discourse analysis to examine the language used in policies written by health care organizations and regulatory agencies to regulate workplace bullying. The findings suggest that the discussion of workplace bullying overlaps with discussions of disruptive behaviors and harassment. This lack of conceptual clarity can create difficulty for managers in identifying, naming, and disciplining incidents of workplace bullying. The documents also primarily discussed workplace bullying as a patient safety concern. This language is in conflict with organizations attending to worker well-being with regard to workplace bullying.

Understanding Needs, Breaking Down Barriers: Examining Mental Health Challenges and Well-Being of Correctional Staff in Ontario, Canada

“… 1 While the terms “bullying” and “harassment” are often used interchangeably in scholarship and society, in the current article, we define bullying as per Johnson et al (2015 , p. 452) who use bullying to refer to “frequent and persistent negative acts directed toward one or more persons in the workplace.” Although harassment is similar to bullying, insofar as one person hurts another through cruel, offensive, or insulting behaviors, we define harassment in the current article as “unwanted conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information” ( United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, n.d. , p. para 2). …”

Standing up against workplace bullying behavior: Recommendations from newly licensed nurses

“…Results indicated a wide variety of terms (e.g., disruptive behavior, harassment, bullying, intimidation, verbal abuse, threatening behaviors, inappropriate behavior) were used across the guideline, regulatory, and policy and procedures documents examined. [30] Moreover, most documents did not provide a clear definition of the term used. One way to create a positive work environment is through the development and adoption of organizational policies and education that use consistent terminology, define what behaviors constitute WB, and outline organizational-level sanctions of WB.…”

Factors counteracting nurses' bullying in healthcare organizations: An applied study in King Abdul-Aziz University Hospital in Jeddah Province

“…[52,56,57] A global move led by the WHO initiated guidelines for all countries' HCOs to use to assist in counteracting healthcare workplace bullying behaviours, [55] but inconsistencies in nurses' awareness of the policy and a lack of concise and clear detailed information, contribute directly to the prevalence of bullying among HCO staff. [23,59,60] The majority (63%) of respondents agree that bullying can be prevented, and an overwhelming majority (86.4%) strongly agree that it is necessary to have formal structured education and training programs to develop nurses' knowledge and skills to assist them in dealing with bullying and its issues in the workplace, [64,67,75] to improve the role of managers so that they are proactive in mitigating uncivil behaviours [36] and to give nurses the opportunity to evaluate their nurse colleagues by the means of mandatory annual peer reviews.…”

“…[12,13] In order for a written policy to be effective in preventing and resolving workplace behavioural issues, it must precisely differentiate staff roles, clearly distinguish bullying from harassment and physical violence, have detailed steps that are easy to implement, and be accessible to all of the organization's staff. [59,60] At a time when the healthcare workforce is declining, a hostile working environment will not contribute to the retention of staff. [18] The involvement of upper management is essential, since the literature shows that direct nursing managers are highly implicated in the bullying of their staff.…”

“…In addition, the study used published data from qualitative research studies as follows: the strategies to counteract bullying, including the role of the immediate supervisor, coworkers and upper management in imposing a humanistic value system against bullying and raising awareness of bullying; [36] an interview studying nurse managers' interpretation and implementation of the workplace bullying policy; [59,60] a report of Australian sequential qualitative studies that identified immediate and higher management roles as important in mitigating against bullying behaviours [48] and an exploratory design with an applied intervention study which showed that an overwhelming majority (96%) of registered nurses recommended that all hospital nurses should be educated about workplace lateral violence. [24] The questionnaire was divided into four sections.…”