Human Resource Professionals’ Responses to Workplace Bullying

Kelly Rae and Annabelle M. Neall ()
Additional contact information
Kelly Rae: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Annabelle M. Neall: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia

Societies, 2022, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-16

Abstract: Workplace bullying manifests in significant costs to individuals and organisations. The obligation to resolve such cases largely falls on Human Resource Professionals (HRPs). Little is known, however, about the antecedents to HRPs’ helping behaviour in these scenarios. Using the attribution–emotion model of stigmatisation, this study explored how HRPs are influenced in their response to workplace bullying. Australian HRPs ( n = 84) were assigned to one of four experimental vignette scenarios, differing in target (approach/avoidance coping) and perpetrator (effort vs. non-effortful response) behaviour. The results revealed that targets who fail to act to resolve situations of bullying were regarded as more responsible and less likely to receive help, but HRPs were more sympathetic and inclined to help non-responsive perpetrators when the targets also avoided the situation. The findings indicate two key areas for training and development that could improve HRPs evaluations and management of workplace bullying.

Keywords: workplace bullying; human resources; intervention; bystander (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/6/190/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/6/190/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:12:y:2022:i:6:p:190-:d:1004009

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().