Re-positioning workplace aggression interventions: a violence framework

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the socio-psychological systems in organizations that structurally support workplace aggression. Design/methodology/approach Using both a structural and contextual model of intimate partner violence (IPV), the factors supporting workplace aggression were analyzed. The narratives were provided from the participants’ lived experiences of workplace aggression, producing clear indications of where formal and informal power reside. Findings The methods of power and control used by workplace perpetrators parallel those illustrated in IPV. The inaction of management and the lack of social support enabled informal power asymmetries and the organizational norm of silence. The findings have implications for how workplaces view and intervene in relationship-based violence. Originality/value Workplace aggression has been studied from a conflict management perspective, without exploring the components that enable and support organizational abuse. As a result, organizational responses to workplace aggression have failed to address the complex relationship-based components and consequences. The primary contribution of this study is the disruption of the conflict-based perspective of workplace aggression into a more appropriate framework of violence, power and control.

Does National Culture Matter? Restaurant Employees’ Workplace Humor and Job Embeddedness

The ability to retain employees is a tenacious phenomenon in the restaurant workplace. Focusing on job embeddedness (JE) as possible explanatory factor in the application of the broaden-and-build theory and the social exchange theory, this study assesses the relationships among restaurant employees’ workplace humor, perceived workplace fun, perceived workplace aggression, and organizational JE (OJE). It examines to what extent these relationships vary across contexts, depending on national culture. A structural modeling analysis of data from 540 employees in restaurants in the United States and China provides broad support for our hypothesis: Workplace fun is positively associated with restaurant employees’ OJE while only coworker aggression is negatively related to employees’ OJE. Restaurant employees’ use of affiliative humor and aggressive humor is positively related to perceived workplace fun and negatively associated with perceived workplace aggression. Furthermore, national culture moderates the relationships between affiliative humor and perceived workplace aggression, aggressive humor and perceived workplace fun, as well as between workplace fun and OJE. Our findings contribute to clarifying the dynamics between perceptions of certain organizational factors for understanding when employees may develop OJE. The implication is that restaurant companies with international operations can foster OJE by placing various levels of emphasis on types of humor, workplace fun, and workplace aggression, in societies where individuals perceive these variables differently.