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The thin line between bystanders and interveners: Factors explaining people reactions in case of workplace bullying

par Dal Cason, Davide
Président du jury Van De Leemput, Cécile
Promoteur Hellemans, Catherine
Co-Promoteur Casini, Annalisa
Publication Non publié, 2018-02-15

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

Bystander approach is widely used in violence and bullying prevention programs as it encourages the witnesses to become aware of abusive conducts and take action against them. Given the recent implementation of this approach in organizational contexts, the present work aims at understanding factors supporting or discouraging witnesses to intervene on behalf of the victims of workplace bullying.Organizational ethics literature highlights the prominent role of morality in fostering bystander intervention at work. This moral component is discussed in the theoretical part of this doctoral dissertation, along with moral courage, a concept that corresponds to the ability to take moral actions despite knowing that they lead to adverse consequences for the intervener. Because of its characteristics, we claim that moral courage is as a particularly appropriate construct to help bystanders stopping workplace bullying. Therefore, we analyzed this concept and developed a scale to measure it, namely the MC@W scale.Afterwards, we used some of the concepts previously discussed to analyze bystander intervention against bullying as the result of a process that involves personological and contextual factors. In a frst study, drawing from vignette methodology, we explored the relationship among personological antecedent factors, such as moral courage, and different typologies of bystander intervention. As a stimulus, in this study we used a video that we designed and shot to represent a workplace bullying episode.In a second study, we developed and validated a model explaining the process that leads workplace bullying bystanders to act or not. Based on works about the “bystander effect”, the BI@W model highlights the key role of individual factors, such as assumption of responsibility and moral identity, and contextual ones, such as socio-moral climate, in influencing the behavioral process of intervention.These studies follow the research line that seeks to better understand witnesses’ behavior with the practical purpose to help HR professionals and organizations to develop more effective strategies against workplace bullying.