EVENTS

May 2009: Politics in the pub!

Anne and Carlo will be speaking at Politics in the Pub in Sydney on Friday May 8. The topic is "Workplace bullying: A serious and growing occupational hazard" . It should be a great evening, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Time: 6pm-7.45pm

Location: The Gaelic Club, level 1, 64 Devonshire St., Surry Hills.

More information on this talk and the other interesting talks held every Friday at Politics in the Pub can be found at www.politicsinthepub.org.au

Beyond Bullying Workshops in 2009

Following the success of our Beyond Workplace Bullying Workshop held in August 2008, we will be offering some workshops again in 2009.

The details for the new workshops will be advised in due course.

The topics will include:

• What is ‘workplace bullying’?
• What isn’t it?
• Cases (including legal cases) of workplace bullying behaviour.
• The latest Australian statistics regarding workplace bullying.
• The costs of workplace bullying to individuals and organisations.
• What does the law say about workplace bullying?
• What are some of the options in relation to managing workplace bullying behaviour?
• Where to go for advice.

Various factors will be considered, including:

• Organisations at risk
• Antecedents of bullying behaviour at work
• Is there a ‘bully profile’?
• Is there a ‘target profile’?
• Perceptions of and reactions to people who are targeted by bullying behaviour.

If you are located in other regions or Australian cities and would like to host or recommend one of our workshops, please let us know.

2008: Carlo's report from Montreal 

I recently attended the 6^th International Conference on Workplace Bullying and Harassment, in Montreal. It was a wonderful conference, with many of the leading researchers in the field in attendance. Over 200 papers were submitted for inclusion in the conference program, indicating the growth of inquiry in this field since previous conferences. There were also lots of practitioners and industry representatives present.

One of the most significant outcomes of the conference was the formation of the International Association for Workplace Bullying. The association had existed informally prior to this conference, but elections were held for the inaugural board, and the items of the constitution were debated and accepted. We’ll have more information about the association here on the website as soon as it becomes available.

The opportunity to share perspectives from around the world was one of the highlights of the conference. Several of the papers were about the differences in how bullying and harassment are treated as a function of wider cultural, political and socio-economic influences. Usually we talk more about the organisation’s influence. What organisations do is of course important, but differences in workers’ compensation systems across different nations, for example, can affect the motivation of organizations to act on bullying. Other papers considered the legal frameworks in place around the world: Quebec has anti-bullying laws that are starting to be used, and there is a robust campaign in the USA to establish laws specific to workplace bullying. Much discussion was had about how these laws were developed, how they reflect (or sometimes don’t reflect, for practical reasons) what bullying is considered to be, and how different legal frameworks could work in concert to support or undermine a bullying claim.

Some areas that need to be focused on in future research were also outlined by various speakers. These included investigating the role of the bystander in bullying, and looking at upwards and horizontal bullying, rather than simply bullying by a manager to a subordinate (downwards bullying). Identifying the relationships between bullying, harassment and violence were also identified as areas of need, and these are something that Anne and I are currently working on. Informing our work with approaches from several disciplines is important, as is the use of multiple research methods (e.g., case study, qualitative methods, as well as traditional quantitative methods).

One issue which appeared to create a lot of interest was that of “the bully” and how they may be treated. We often talk about the response of targets, the effects of bullying on targets etc. That focus is important and appropriate. However, work on “the bully” is usually restricted to typologising them (which is usually not based on any evidence), and in some cases, victimising them. Attempts to understand what is happening with the person/people using bullying behaviours, how those behaviours might be changed or challenged is important to a comprehensive research program on bullying. This is also consistent with the issues raised above, of looking at the wider cultural, socio-economic and political influences on the bullying process.

It was good to see some Australian researchers at the conference. Australia has an important history in workplace bullying research, with several researchers from Queensland having contributed early work on this issue. We hope to strengthen ties between Australian researchers in this field through our symposium at ANZAM, and other events which may flow from it.

We look forward to the next international conference in 2010 (location undecided), and will post details about it here as soon as they become available!