Posts Tagged ‘impact on bullied targets’

Research: Impact of abusive supervision — direct and vicarious

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

A new academic study is added to the burgeoning research literature related to workplace bullying. It explores the impact of both direct and indirect (vicarious) exposure to bullying bosses.

Kenneth J. Harris , Paul Harvey , Ranida B. Harris & Melissa Cast (2013): An Investigation of Abusive Supervision, Vicarious Abusive Supervision, and Their Joint Impacts, The Journal of Social Psychology, 153:1, 38-50.

The most impressive aspect of the study was a credible and clever technique to recruit survey respondents. Rather than rely on the opinions of young college students with very limited real world work experience, the researchers asked employed students taking a management course to ask fellow employees to complete the survey as long as respondents worked in organizations with more than 10 workers and who worked full-time. The resulting sample included 233 individuals with an average age of 42.61 years, a group capable of evaluating real workplace incidents.

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