Negative behaviours in the workplace

Abstract

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the need to treat negative workplace behaviours which are not perceived as bullying as seriously as those which are. The paper also aims to examine whether or not the National Health Service (NHS) appears to experience a higher level of negative behaviour than private sector organisations and whether lower frequency behaviour has similar levels of effect as higher frequency behaviour. Design/methodology/approach-A mixed-method approach is used whereby a mainly quantitative questionnaire is complemented by the inclusion of qualitative questions and the collection of qualitative data collected within the two NHS Trusts concerned. Findings-The evidence collected draws attention to the considerable impact that workplace incivility, which may or may not be classed as bullying, has on the well-being of employees and the effectiveness of organisations. Where aggression is present, the levels of effect are shown to be higher and the behaviour is always classed as bullying. The evidence also shows that the NHS does appear to experience a higher level of negative behaviour than private sector organisations, and that lower frequency behaviour does indeed appear to have similar levels of effect as higher frequency behaviour. Originality/value-This article shows that the focus placed by many researchers and organisations on countering/eliminating behaviour purely perceived as bullying is unlikely to be effective unless they also adopt a similar approach to the full range of negative behaviours that employees experience/witness in organisations.

Coworker incivility and incivility targets' work effort and counterproductive work behaviors: The moderating role of supervisor social support.

“…In contrast, Time 2 coworker incivility was negatively correlated with Time 2 work effort (r ϭ Ϫ.30). These outcomes replicate previous studies which found that targets of workplace incivility tend to report affective (Pearson et al, 2001) and behavioral strains (Burnes & Pope, 2007;Penney & Spector, 2005).…”

“…For example, Burnes and Pope (2007) reported that more than one third of employees have either witnessed or experienced incivility incidents at least several times a month. Nevertheless, only a fraction of incivility targets file a formal complaint (i.e., 6%; Pearson & Porath, 2009).…”

“…Regardless, what makes workplace incivility noteworthy is its associations with employee behaviors that would hinder the effective employee performance. Research indicates that employees who experienced incivility tend to engage in CWBs (Penney & Spector, 2005) and report lower levels of commitment to the organization (Burnes & Pope, 2007), while some actually change jobs to get away from the instigator of the incivility (Lim et al, 2008). …”

Editorial

“…Similar findings have been reported globally in a range of public sector occupations, such as medical work (Quine, 1999;Burnes and Pope, 2007;Bentley et al, 2009), education (Fox and Stallworth, 2005;Lewis et al, 2009) and public administration (Fevre et al, 2012). Violence also features strongly in numerous studies, with health and social work and public administration faring particularly badly as a result of violent encounters with members of the public (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2007;Jones et al, 2011).…”

A realist analysis of hospital patient safety in Wales: applied learning for alternative contexts from a multisite case study

“…This issue is compounded when viewing (as we do) health-care organisations as comprising multiple cultures/cultural frames, rather than as a single culture of care. These points notwithstanding, research indicates that five aspects of culture are of particular salience to patient safety: (1) the need for a culture of compassion in care; 81 (2) the problematic intra-and interprofessional hierarchies, which privilege a perceived elite at the expense of the broader health-care team; 41,[90][91][92] (3) the culture of blame that retards the promotion of adverse incident reporting and disclosure of harm to patients; 42,[93][94][95] (4) the culture of bullying [96][97][98] that, regrettably, appears to be widespread across the NHS; [99][100][101][102][103][104] and (5) the culture of unrelenting pressure to attain government targets, which creates a range of unintended and dysfunctional consequences.…”