Developing a management framework to handle employees' experiences of workplace bullying

Abstract

Literature from the past 20 years confirms that workplace bullying is not a new concept. Over this period, researchers have been dedicated to highlighting definitions of bullying, bullying acts, prevalence rates, risk factors and the outcomes of bullying behaviours. Organisations are fully aware of the effect of bullying and of the impact bullying behaviours have on the organisation’s work environments. Although many researchers have noted these aspects, little progress is evident in literature of the management of its occurrence within organisations. Furthermore, few reporting frameworks for the human resource practitioners (HRPs) to handling these experiences are apparent. Research suggests that in most cases where victims experience workplace bullying, the HRPs usually are the key role-players to assist employees to handle their experiences. It was further reported that when victims seek help, the first step is to seek help from the HRP departments, which highlights the important role that the HRPs can play when handling these experiences. This tendency indicates that the HRP needs proper guidelines and frameworks to assist in handling these experiences. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the experiences and causes of workplace bullying through a qualitative systematic review and meta-analysis and to suggest a basic framework for the HRP to be able to identify possible experiences and causes of workplace bullying. Secondly, after identifying the experiences and causes of workplace bullying, the study further attempts to identify handling practices regarding these issues. This was done by conducting an integrative literature review and proposing a framework for the HRP in order to assist in the handling of these experiences and causes. The study followed a qualitative research approach grounded in the social constructivism. The systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted with (n=47) sources and the thematic analysis was done by means of a manual method, which highlighted and organised main themes and phrases. The main findings of this study revealed that experiences of bullying can be categorised into five main themes, these are threat to professional status, threat to personal standing, social exclusion/isolation, overload and destabilisation. Furthermore, findings revealed that workplace bullying causes can be sorted into three main concepts. These concepts are organisational causes, individual causes (which can be individual or perpetrator causes), and societal causes. Finally, an integrative review was conducted that followed the five steps of Whittemore and Knafl (2005) for conducting an integrative literature review. This review entailed 43 sources (n=43) with the main findings revealing 16 handling practices for the experiences and causes of workplace bullying. These practices can be sorted into four main categories and eight main themes that were identified after the systematic and meta-analysis was done