Enduring, Strategizing, and Rising Above: Workplace Dignity Threats and Responses Across Job Levels

Jacqueline Tilton (), Kristen Lucas (), Jennifer J. Kish-Gephart () and Justin K. Kent ()
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Jacqueline Tilton: Appalachian State University
Kristen Lucas: University of Louisville
Jennifer J. Kish-Gephart: University of Massachusetts–Amherst
Justin K. Kent: Appalachian State University

Journal of Business Ethics, 2024, vol. 195, issue 2, No 8, 353-374

Abstract: Abstract Despite a growing body of literature focused on understanding experiences of workplace dignity, attention has centered almost exclusively on employees with lower-level jobs. As a result, little is known about how workplace dignity and indignity are experienced by employees with middle- and upper-level jobs and how their experiences differ from those with lower-level jobs. We address these absences by interviewing employees from a diversity of lower-, middle-, and upper-level jobs about their experiences of indignity at work. We outline common dignity threats, along with typical emotional responses and recourses employees use at each level. We find lower-level employees experience chronic dignity threats from being disrespected, devalued, demeaned, and dehumanized, to which their most typical response is endurance. Middle-level employees experience periodic dignity threats due to undermining of their work, confidence, and reputation. For them, the typical response is strategizing. Finally, on the rare occasions upper-level employees experience dignity threats, it usually is due to a disregard of their special expertise or denial of special rights, to which they respond by rising above.

Keywords: Dignity; Diversity; Humanistic management; Inequality; Occupations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05672-5

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