Chapter 2 Literature review part one: theoretical framework
2.4 Forms and directions of harassment and violence
Researchers concerned with harassment and occupational violence have also collaborated in the development of definitional and policy terms within the auspices of the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO). An ILO Code of Practice finalised in 2004 states that workplace violence is
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Any action, incident or behaviour that departs from reasonable conduct in which a person is assaulted, threatened, harmed, injured in the course of, or as a direct result of, his or her work.
Internal workplace violence is that which takes place between workers, including managers and supervisors.
External workplace violence is that which takes place between workers (and managers and supervisors) and any other person present at the workplace. (ILO, 2003:4).
Table 2-1 presents a very broad matrix of forms and directions of workplace harassment and violence.
45 Table 2-1: Forms and directions of workplace harassment and violence
Top-down Internal
Lateral Internal
Bottom-up Internal
To client From client To external other From external other
Physical Attack
Assaults on staff by manager or
supervisors, physical punishment, torture.
Staff-on-staff violence, retaliation, initiation rituals, or pranks.
Assaults on supervisors or managers by employee, sabotage.
Violence in eviction, repossession, debt collection, blocking access, unlawful detention.
Attacks on staff, contractors or suppliers. Destruction of corporate property.
Arson.
Assaults on
witnesses, community members, regulators, or other clients.
Hold-ups, violent protest, vandalism, kidnapping, terrorism.
Threat of
violence Threats of force in disputes with staff, contractors, or suppliers.
Co-worker's threat of
physical attack. Threats of violence to managers,
supervisors, contractors or suppliers.
Unreasonable warnings of forceful retaliation, eviction, or service termination.
Threats of violent retaliation for poor service or product performance.
Threats of physical harm to activists, or others in operating environments.
Threats by robbers, extortionists, kidnappers, or terrorists.
Verbal abuse
Yelling, swearing, name-calling and sledging, arising in conflicts over, expectations, entitlements, job conditions, rights, pay, work performance, management styles, work practices, interpersonal difficulties, and customer service or product quality.
Attack on social status or position
Denial of participation in training or career opportunities; exclusion;
sending to Coventry; blaming; scapegoating; demonising; denigration in terms of appearance, lifestyle, family, values, or ethnicity; vexatious allegations; exposure to malicious notes, rumours, or pornography.
Denial of service because of characteristics, circumstances, or ethnicity.
Attacks on the reputation of employee to gain trading advantage or service access.
Appropriation of social
or cultural, capital. Public humiliation by activists, competitors, or political rivals identity theft.
Systemic violence
Unreasonable work practices, impossible deadlines, under- resourcing.
Withholding information, Interference with co- worker's files or equipment.
Unreasonable work- to-rule, Unfair refusal to operate new technology.
Queuing or 'flicking' of complainants.
Impossible trading conditions. Spam.
Malicious disruption of corporate systems.
Fraud.
Systems inflicting social and environmental damage. Defamation actions to stifle protest.
Computer hacking, e-warfare, e-terrorism.
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Epistemic Conceptualisations of others that degrade their dignity and integrity and justify their maltreatment, for example, defamation, discrimination, race hate, or orientalism. Appropriation or unfair taxing of property. Intellectual suppression, e.g. misrepresenting, silencing, or excluding ideas or arguments.
Fraudulent misrepresentation.
Untrue product claims. Malicious rumours.
Representations that degrade the dignity and integrity of employee.
Propaganda for harmful lifestyles, products, debt.
Green- washing.
Negative stereotyping.
Culture jamming.
Ideological conflict.
Self-harm Provocative behaviours that incite recipients to react aggressively.
Risky lifestyles (e.g. extreme overworking, alcohol and illicit drug abuse, financial over commitment, or greed).
Self-terrorisation, mental health problems; access to weapons; or suicide ideation.
Complicity in unsafe work practices that give rise to risk of public backlash, loss of trading rights, bankruptcy, and civil or criminal charges.
Source: Adapted from Kidwell (2005:337)
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In addition to conventional understandings of harassment and violence, categories of systemic violence, epistemic violence and self-harm are separated out. These categories may be conduits for harassment and violence that deserve specific attention in safeguarding an organisation. It may also be that prevention of occupational violence and harassment through one conduit leads to their expression through another.
2.4.1 Systematic harassment/violence
This categorisation includes brutal work systems for which there are complex layers of responsibility. Early recognition that work systems or practices can be a risk factor for violence, and hence an occupational safety and health (OSH) issue, has been evident for over a decade in the discourse of occupational violence. Precursors for the categorisation of unreasonable work systems and practices such as mobbing (and harassment) can also be found in the Victimisation at Work Code issued by the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health (1993). Since then, work systems or practices that place employees, clients and members of the public at risk of psychological injury have been termed organising-violence (McCarthy, Sheehan &
Kearns, 1995), systems harassment (Kennedy, 2001) or systemic violence (Bowie, 2002).
Where otherwise normal individuals occupy roles that relay harassment and violence in the way things are done, the safeguarding challenge is formidable. Trials of the perpetrators of the Holocaust and of the genocide in Yugoslavia in the 1990s testify to violence inculcated in system roles. These trials showed that remedies for gross violence perpetrated in the name of organisational roles and missions are possible where there is an international system of justice that has wide subscription from nation states.
2.4.2 Epistemic (or conceptual) violence
This category recognises the potential for manipulation of meanings to be implicated in the perpetration of harassment/violence. Conceptual violence can be perpetrated through fraudulent misrepresentation, defamation, discrimination, race hate and orientalism. For example, restructuring, downsizing and the relocation of communities can be legitimated by the negative stereotyping of the unproductive in the interests of progress. Such denigration also has its counterpart in the urban
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renewal that gentrifies and gate communities in the name of rectifying obsolescence and enhancing security (McCarthy, 1998). The use of epistemic violence in a ritual sacrificial manner is highlighted as rationale for the cleansing of work and urban environments for the greater good.
Defamation is a core tactic used by perpetrators of epistemic violence, and remedies can be sought through criminal and civil laws. However, the prohibitive cost of legal action to remedy defamation makes this pathway inaccessible for most victims.
Remedies for damages occasioned by such misrepresentations can be sought through organisational complaints, conflict resolution or grievance procedures as well as tribunals and ombudsmen. However, complaints are often difficult to support with evidence or to distinguish from the so-called reasonable management practice.
The allegation that a person is a perpetrator of aggression also raises risks of defamation, necessitating protection for complainants.
Evident in some recent case material is a tendency for managers who face allegations of harassment/violence to react by initiating performance appraisals and disciplinary proceedings against complainants (McCarthy & Mayhew, 2003). Here, misrepresentation can arise in counter-allegations that the complainant's performance was in some way unsatisfactory or constituted misconduct and that reasonable management action has been exercised. Such counter-allegations can be tactical to weaken the grounds of complaint and can also serve as an ingratiating signal to power-holders threatened by allegations of impropriety.
2.4.3 Self-harm
The category of self-harm has been included in Table 2-1 to accommodate the potential for individuals in their organisational roles to variously internalise, relay, or be complicit in the transmission of harassment/violence in ways that may be harmful to them. As such, the concept opens a space for discussion of complicity and self- responsibility. Recipients of harassment/violence can internalise pain in unhealthy victimhood – apathy, hopelessness, depression, obsessive pursuit of justice, revenge, or suicidal ideation. As such, the notion of self-harm prompts thought about what might be entailed in moving from unhealthy victim identities, or relay positions, to becoming agents for change (McCarthy 2003:56).
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