Project AIMSS (Abusive Supervision, Workplace Incivility, Mobbing, Sexism and Sexual Harassment) has the following objectives:
- To identify and describe manifestations of different workplace mistreatment forms in a non-Western cultural context.
- To develop instruments that measure mistreatment types with high level psychometric quality in non-Western cultural contexts using qualitative and quantitative methods.
- To identify consequences of different workplace mistreatment types.
- To develop prevention and intervention programs to raise awareness of, prevent the occurrence of and minimize the damages caused by different types of workplace mistreatment.
- To demonstrate the effectiveness of these prevention and intervention programs.
Employees at work can be exposed to many different types and levels of workplace mistreatment such as workplace incivility, mobbing, abusive supervision, sexism, and sexual harassment. The extent and prevalence of workplace mistreatment can have negative consequences for employees, organizations, and society. Studies conducted in Turkey point to the pervasiveness of workplace mistreatment especially in the form of mobbing and abusive supervision.
While these studies point to the seriousness of the issue, in most of them scales developed in different cultural contexts have been used, and the focus was on a single type of workplace mistreatment in relation with an antecedent or outcome variable. Even though the types of workplace mistreatment include some universal behaviors, each workplace mistreatment type may also have cultural aspects. Therefore, there is a need for methodologically sound, comprehensive, and culturally compatible studies on workplace mistreatment and preventive intervention programs supported by empirical studies.
To fill the above-stated gaps in the literature, with Project AIMSS we seek to understand the different types of workplace mistreatment and their consequences in the workplace by using measurement tools that also reflect the cultural context. Moreover, we also aim to develop prevention and intervention programs to address different mistreatment types.
Workplace mistreatment
Workplace mistreatment refers to one or more employees exhibiting negative behaviors and attitudes towards a person working in the same environment and/or depriving the same person of positive behaviors and attitudes in a way that is beyond socially acceptable limits/norms (Sümer, 2014). Workplace mistreatment encompasses a wide variety of behaviors ranging from mild and covert behaviors to openly aggressive behaviors that harm the target person. Workplace mistreatment can be in different directions: Downward (from superiors to subordinates), upward (from subordinates to superiors), and lateral (between peers). Presence of one form of workplace mistreatment in an organization creates a climate that facilitates the emergence of other forms of workplace mistreatment. At the same time, these types of workplace mistreatment negatively affect the physical and psychological health of individuals. Therefore, understanding workplace mistreatment is very important.
Workplace incivility refers to anti-social behavior which is implicitly displayed and has ambiguous/unclear intent to harm the target person. Due to its small dose and ambiguous nature, incivility is the most common type of mistreatment in the workplace.
Ignoring the person, interrupting, not making eye contact, not returning to their messages, not sharing information, mocking, not recognizing their success, and refusing to work together are some examples of workplace incivility (Cortina, 2008; Estes & Wang, 2008).
Some of the negative consequences of workplace incivility include decrease in job satisfaction and organizational commitment and increase in withdrawal behavior and turnover. Studies have also shown that more serious and negative forms of workplace mistreatment such as sexual harassment are more likely to occur in organizational environments with workplace incivility (Lim & Cortina, 2005), and that incivility may be a precursor to aggression and violence in the workplace (Lutgen-Sandvig, 2003). In time, workplace incivility may evolve into more severe types of workplace mistreatment such as mobbing easily (Yang et al., 2014).
Mobbing can be defined as “regularly repeated emotionally damaging behaviors such as intimidating, oppressing and ignoring the other party and/or efforts to remove them from the workplace” (as cited in Davenport et al., 2005). In other words, mobbing encompasses all kinds of attitudes, behaviors and approaches that are systematically displayed, that threaten the physical and mental existence of an individual in the workplace, and that harm his/her self-esteem (Sümer, 2014).
Mobbing can be performed by superiors, peers, or subordinates. A triggering event usually initiates the mobbing process. Mobbing is systematic and repetitive. The mobbing behavior is often not overtly offensive: The target person is directly or indirectly exposed to this behavior.
Mobbing behaviors are discussed in five groups. These behaviors are prevention of freedom of expression, disruption and the infringement of communication, exclusion, behaviors that damage dignity, behaviors that hinder professional development and negatively affect quality of life, and behaviors that threaten physical health (Kırel, 2007).
The negative consequences of mobbing include the decrease in physical health or well-being of employees (Lim & Lee, 2011), the decrease in job performance (e.g., Cortina et al., 2001; Schat & Frone, 2011), the decrease in organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and the increase in the intention to leave the job (e.g., Yang et al., 2014) and negative effects on mental health such as depression and anxiety symptoms (Verkuil et al., 2015).
Abusive supervision is defined as managerial behaviors perceived as unpleasant, hurtful, and offensive by employees (Tepper, 2000).
For example, managers making offensive remarks, using offensive mimicry, or derogatory gestures can be counted among abusive supervision behaviors. In addition, behaviors such as blaming an employee unfairly, showing anger for no reason, and/or ignoring the employee are a part of abusive supervision behaviors. However, according to Tepper's definition, behaviors involving physical contact or physical harm are not a part of abusive supervision behaviors.
Whether or not a manager’s behavior is perceived as abusive can vary across employees. In other words, one employee may describe a manager's behavior as unpleasant and/or offensive, while the behavior may not be described by another employee in this way. In this respect, abusive supervision is defined and diagnosed by the perceptions of the employees, and therefore, it has a subjective character (Demircioğlu, 2017; Tepper, 2000). In addition, in order for a manager to be said to be an abusive supervisor, a manager must exhibit the specified behaviors consistently.
Negative consequences of abusive supervision include decrease in job and life satisfaction (e.g., Tepper, 2000), increase in work-family conflict (e.g., Carlson et al., 2012), increase in employee depression and anxiety (e.g., Hobman et al., 2013; Tepper, 2000; Velez & Neves, 2016), increase in sleep problems (Rafferty et al., 2010), decrease in job performance (e.g., Aryee et al., 2007), decrease in creativity and intrinsic motivation (e.g., Jiang & Gu, 2016; Liu et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2014), and increase in feelings of burnout (Carlson et al., 2012). Abusive supervision is also associated with negative results for the organization. Decrease in employees' normative and affective commitment to the organization (e.g., Tepper, 2000), decrease in organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g., Zellars et al., 2002) and increase in counterproductive work behaviors (e.g., Chu, 2014; Liu et al., 2010) are the most negative organizational outcomes revealed by research.
Sexism is a concept that defines negative attitudes and behaviors that lead to discrimination against women in different areas of daily life (Glick & Fiske, 1996), and it is a subjective experience based on individuals' perceptions (Dick, 2013).
Sexism results in biases in the employee selection process (Good & Rudman, 2010), micro-aggression behaviors (Basford et al., 2014), disadvantageous promotions for women (Feather & Boeckmann, 2007), glass cliff (Acar & Sümer, 2018; Ryan & Haslam, 2005), glass ceiling (Masser & Abrams, 2004), wage inequality (De Pater et al., 2014) and exposure to workplace incivility (Cortina, 2008).
Women who are exposed to sexism report an increase in job stress (Manuel et al., 2017) and a decrease in job satisfaction (Zurbrügg & Miner, 2016). Sexism is one of the most important predictors of sexual harassment at work, which is another type of workplace mistreatment (e.g., O'Connor et al., 2004; Russel & Trigg, 2004; Sakallı-Uğurlu et al., 2010; Wiener et al., 1997).
Sexual harassment in the workplace is defined as unwanted and disturbing sexual behavior in the workplace (Fitzgerald, 1993).
In a study conducted in Turkey, Toker and Sümer (2010) found that women can perceive behaviors as sexual harassment that can be grouped under four different dimensions. These dimensions are physical sexual harassment including touching, rubbing, forced intercourse; sexual coercion and bribery that involves a superior forcing a subordinate to enter into a romantic or sexual relationship with the promise of reward or the threat of punishment; hostile environment harassment including exposing the target of harassment to sexually explicit speech, sexually explicit jokes, anecdotes, or images; and insinuation of interest. The insinuation of interest dimension has not been revealed in the studies conducted in the West, but in the study of Toker and Sümer was found as a cultural-specific sexual harassment dimension. It includes behaviors that indicate being interested in the opposite party but without any explicit sexuality (such as frequently asking for a date, calling a woman employee such as “sweetie”, frequently calling the target person in their office to talk about non-work matters, and frequently asking questions about the opposite party’s private life).
As the frequency of exposure to sexual harassment in the workplace increases, women's job satisfaction decreases, their general health status worsens (e.g., headache, shortness of breath, and sleep disorders) and their psychological health worsens (e.g., depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder), and life satisfaction decreases (Wasti et al., 2000). It was found that deterioration of psychological health affects general health which in turn leads to work withdrawal. Decreased job satisfaction was found to be associated with withdrawal behaviors such as taking long breaks, leaving work early, missing meetings, and intention to leave.
Negative consequences of sexual harassment are not only limited to those who personally experience the harassment, but to those who observe or hear about the harassment (Glomb et al., 1997).
Discrimination at work is defined as “any disparate treatment, exclusion or preference made on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, national origin, or social origin (among other characteristics) that has the effect of impairing equality of opportunity and treatment in employment or occupation” (ILO Convention 111, 1958). According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), applicable laws protect the employee from unfair treatment in the workplace, harassment, failure to make reasonable adjustments to the employee's needs, inappropriate questions about personal matters or disclosure of personal information to employees, and retaliation in response to an employee's complaint. Discrimination can be in explicit or implicit forms. Discrimination in business life is mostly based on sexism, appearance (such as physical attractiveness, weight, disability, etc.), age, pregnancy, sexual orientation, political opinion, and marital status.
Institutionalized workplace mistreatment is when an organization engages in behavior that abuses and exploits its employees through its institutionalized systems, practices, rules, and policies.
Institutional mistreatment includes the organization itself being rude and abusive towards employees. This type of workplace mistreatment is independent of the personal views and actions of supervisors and other employees. It is the institution itself that exhibits the mistreatment. The institution itself is seen as responsible instead of the individuals. Institutional workplace mistreatment is rooted in organizations’ institutionalized practices and policies.
The sub-dimensions of institutional workplace mistreatment, which arises from the general practices of the institution instead of the responsibility of a specific person or people in the workplace, are as follows: Committing fraud and usurping employees’ rights, undocumented overtime work, ignoring employees' work-related problems, employing minor and/or uninsured workers, and recording/following the activities of the employees without their knowledge.