Write an autoethnographic
Write an autoethnographic vignette reflecting on your experiences being the target of, perpetrator of, or witness tomicroaggressions in the workplace. Analyse the effects of this microaggression on the individual, organisational and societal levels (min. 200 words).
read Harrington, S., Warren, S. and Rayner, C. (2013), Human Resource Management practitioners responses to workplace bullying: Cycles of symbolic violence, Organization, 22(3), pp. 368389.
Vickers, M.H. (2007), Autoethnography as sensemaking: A story of bullying, Culture and Organization, 13(3), pp. 223237.
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L E C T U R E S L I D E S A R E N O T N O T E S
Lecture slides are designed to be visual aids for the live presentation.
Reading them cannot substitute for attending the lecture or listening to
recordings. Sometimes concepts and ideas presented are then critiqued
and challenged during lectures.
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P R O J E C T :
F U T U R E
Dr Helena Liu
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Week 5 Organisational Violence
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HOW ARE YOU?
Four weeks into the session, now is a good time to reflect on how you
are feeling in the subject. If you are concerned about your progress,
please come and speak to me or your tutor after class.
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SEEK HELP
UTS COUNSELLING SERVICE
Building 1 (the Tower) Level 6
15 Broadway, Ultimo, NSW 2007
[emailprotected]
Tel: +61 2 9514 1177
http://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/health-and-
wellbeing/counselling-service-and-self-help/contact-us
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Last week in this subject, we explored the
interrelatedness between society, culture
and identity. This provided the first step
towards a sociological understanding of
human resource management on which
the subject is built.
REVIEW
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REVIEW
A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
This subject will ask you to see the general in the particular and the
strange in the familiar (Berger, 1963).
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURES
Complex, inaccessible, fuzzy, holistic sets of processes that change over
time.
INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS OF POWER
Most societies in the West are underpinned by four systems of power:
imperialism; white supremacy; capitalism and patriarchy (hooks, 2003,
2009).
IDENTITY
Our senses of self are constructed through ongoing processes of
identity work, shaped by sociocultural contexts.
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MULTIPLE CHOICE
QUIZ REVIEW
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ORGANISATIONAL
VIOLENCE
Art includes End of Days by Cleon Peterson (2014) and Judith Beheading Holofernes by Artemisia
Gentileschi (c. 1620)
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AGENDA
Organisational violence
What do we mean by violence?
How does violence manifest in organisations?
What are the aspects and forms of workplace
bullying?
How is human resource management implicated
in violence?
What are microaggressions?
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TRIGGER WARNING This lecture deals with issues of interpersonal and systemic violence, including bullying, assault and harm towards
marginalised groups.
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V I O L E N C E
S E C T I O N
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Violence is not just limited to acts of
physical harm, but harm against both body
and psyche, including assaults on others
dignity, identity and representation (Hearn,
2003; Linstead, 1997; Westwood, 2003).
VIOLENCE
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VIOLENCE
A Lasting Impression
Violence occurs between and through flesh, and often
manifests through bodily emotions such as shame, guilt,
anxiety and anger and bodily signals such as blushing and
trembling (Bourdieu, 2004). Violence also tends to leave a
persistent mark (Westwood, 2003) and can sometimes see the
victim perpetuate those violent behaviours (Linstead, 1997).
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EVERYDAY AND ORDINARY
Violence in organisations can be subtle and insidious as well as dramatic.
The severity of violence is not the point. The point is that violence is often
mundane and taken-for-granted in organisations.
(Liu and Pechenkina, 2019; Westwood, 2003)
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Violence can even be sentimentalised
through schemes of domination, when
victims of violence accept the harm done to
them and even unwittingly or unwillingly
become complicit (Bourdieu, 2004).
SENTIMENTAL
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SYSTEMIC
When violence is supported by formal organisational
structures, the responsibility for the abuse is placed on the
victim, where the violence is constructed as a necessary and
inevitable part of organisational life (see Harrington, Warren
and Rayner, 2013).
In effect, victims are denied the right to define and therefore
resist the violence (Linstead, 1997).
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W O R K P L A C E
B U L LY I N G
S E C T I O N
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BULLYING
Incivility refers to low intensity behaviours such as sending demeaning
emails, making unfounded accusations, and ignoring a colleagues
request, typically with ambiguous intent.
Bullying, more specifically, is a form of interpersonal aggression intended
to harm another person (Vickers, 2007, p. 228).
When bullying and incivility become systemic, organisations develop a
toxic environment, which may be characterised by:
Frequent invasions of privacy
A high degree of secrecy
More demands and less support
Threats and abusive language
Lack of consideration of employees dignity
(Johnson and Indvik, 1996; Powell, 1998)
In Vickers (2007) case, the bullying of her manager contributed to a toxic
environment, which in turn allowed the violence to be tolerated,
trivialised and dismissed, even becoming accepted and acceptable over
time.
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WHY BULLY?
For bullies, dominating the target is an
accomplishment, a way of demonstrating power to
themselves and others (Vickers, 2007).
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SEXUAL HARASSMENT
When violence is inflected through patriarchy, sexual
harassment and assault can often manifest in the
workplace. Sexual harassment defined as any
unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour, which
makes a person feel offended, humiliated or
intimidated (see Sex Discrimination Act 1984), but
can be ambiguous in practice. Generally involves two
sets of behaviours:
1. Quid pro quo
2. Hostile environment
In the latter, perpetrators often taken advantage of a
culture of fear to silence targets and witnesses of their
abusive behaviour.
While vulnerable women are most frequently the
targets of sexual violence, other groups can also find
themselves as targets (Mclaughlin, Uggen and
Blackstone, 2012).
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TARGETS
For the targets, bullying is a traumatic event (Hutchinson et al.,
2005). For Vickers (2007), she experienced both physical and
psychological effects to her bullying.
It can also prompt a shift in identity, for example, from
someone who may consider themselves trusting, confident
and friendly to being secretive, fearful and cautious.
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WITNESSES
Being a witness to workplace bullying and violence
can also be distressing and traumatic. Salin and
Notelaers (2018) study suggests that bystanders are
prompted to re-evaluate their relationship with the
organisation itself. Specifically, their attitudes to work
change around job satisfaction, organisational
commitment, and turnover intentions. Bullying is
thus not merely an interpersonal phenomenon.
In the case of homophobic exchanges in particular,
Willis (2012) found that young LGBTQ+ bystanders
experienced pain and stress in the workplace. Willis
(2012) reminds us that victims and witnesses cannot
be homogenised as passive victims.
Bullying, however, can be very subtle. Subtle forms of
bullying can be more readily rationalised and
internalised, especially when the perpetrator is
powerful (Al-Karim, 2013).
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BULLYING AND HRM
RESPONSIBILITY
The majority of reports claim managers as the bully.
Organisational policies usually put bullying in the remit of
HRM who play a critical role in identifying, preventing and
resolving bullying in organisations, they their responses are
often seen as inconsistent with policy, including inaction,
denial, target-blaming or management complicity
(Harrington, Warren and Rayner, 2015, p. 370).
RESPONSES BY HR
Manager-to-employee bullying claims constructed within a
performance management discourse. Interpretive
mechanisms allowed HR staff to rationalise violent
managerial behaviours. Potential bullying is repackaged as
inappropriate management so that HR staff can construct
their own identities as valued experts and business partners
(Harrington, Warren and Rayner, 2015).
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M I C R O A G G R E S S I O N S
S E C T I O N
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Microaggressions are everyday verbal,
nonverbal and environmental slights, snubs,
or insults, whether intentional or
unintentional, which communicate hostile,
derogatory or negative messages to the
target based on their marginalised group
membership (Pierce, 1974).
MICRO-
AGGRESSIONS
For Week 5, the pre-tutorial activity requires you to write about
microaggressions. To help you better understand this theory and provide
some concrete examples of microaggressions, you can read these two
articles by Dr Derald Wing Sue:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/microaggressions-in-
everyday-life/201010/racial-microaggressions-in-everyday-life and
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/microaggressions-in-
everyday-life/201011/microaggressions-more-just-race.
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MICROAGGRESSIONS
THEORY ORIGINATED IN RACISM
Psychologist Chester Pierce (1974) defined
microaggressions specifically in the context of racism.
Verbal examples include racial slurs and epithets, as well as
more covert discourses such as linguistic mockery and
appropriation (Hill, 2009). Nonverbal signals include when
people exhibit nervousness around Black people (Feagin,
2013).
Psychologists now accept that other marginalised groups
(e.g., people identifying as LGBTQ+) can also experience
microaggressions.
Microaggressions take a physical and psychological toll on
their targets (Deitch et al., 2003).
REPRESENTATIONS
Verbal descriptions as well as visual imagery of marginalised
people can be microaggressive (Liu and Pechenkina, 2016;
Prez Huber and Solrzano, 2015).
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WEEK 6
Diversities and their Backlash
Navigating our differences in organisations
and society
Read the required readings, attend the
lecture and tutorial.
NEXT WEEK
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REFERENCES
VIOLENCE
Bourdieu, P. (2004), Gender and symbolic violence, in N. Scheper-Hughes and P. I. Bourgois (eds), Violence In War
and Peace: An Anthology, Malden: Blackwell, pp. 339342.
Hearn, J. (1994), The organization(s) of violence: Men, gender relations, organizations and violences, Human
Relations, 47(6), pp. 731754.
Hearn, J. (2003), Organization violations in practice: A case study in a university setting, Culture and Organization,
9(4), pp. 253273.
Johnson, P.R. and Indvik, J. (1996), Stress and violence in the workplace, Employee Counselling Today, 8(1), pp. 19
24.
Linstead, S. (1997), Abjection and organization: Men, violence, and management, Human Relations, 50(9), pp. 1115
1145.
Liu, H. and Pechenkina, E. (2019), Innovation-by-numbers: An autoethnography of innovation as violence, Culture &
Organization, 25(3), pp. 178188.
Powell, G.N. (1998), The abusive organisation, Academy of Management Executive, 12(2), pp. 9596.
Westwood, R. (2003), Economies of violence: An autobiographical account, Culture and Organization, 9(4), pp.
275293.
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REFERENCES
WORKPLACE BULLYING AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Al-Karim, S. (2013), Is this bullying? Understanding target and witness reactions, Journal of Managerial
Psychology, 28(3), pp. 290305.
* Harrington, S., Warren, S. and Rayner, C. (2013), Human Resource Management practitioners responses to
workplace bullying: Cycles of symbolic violence, Organization, 22(3), pp. 368389.
Hunt, C.M., Davidson, M.J., Fielden, S.L. and Hoel, H. (2010), Reviewing sexual harassment in the workplace – an
intervention model, Personnel Review, 39(5), pp. 655673.
Hutchinson, M., Vickers, M.H., Jackson, D. and Wilkes, L. (2005), Im gonna do what I wanna do!: Organisational
change as a vehicle for bullies, Health Care Management Review, 30(4), pp. 331338.
Mclaughlin, H., Uggen, C. and Blackstone, A. (2012), Sexual harassment, workplace authority, and the paradox of
power, American Sociological Review, 77(4), pp. 625647.
Salin, D. and Notelaers. G. (2018), The effects of workplace bullying on witnesses: Violation of the psychological
contract as an explanatory mechanism?, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp. 121.
* Vickers, M.H. (2007), Autoethnography as sensemaking: A story of bullying, Culture and Organization, 13(3), pp.
223237.
* = the required
readings of the
topic
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REFERENCES
MICROAGGRESSION AND RACISM
Deitch, E.A., Barsky, A., Butz, R.M., Chan, S., Brief, A.P. and Bradley, J.C. (2003), Subtle yet significant: The existence
and impact of everyday racial discrimination in the workplace, Human Relations, 56(11), pp. 12991324.
Hill, J.H. (2009), The Everyday Language of White Racism, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Liu, H. and Pechenkina, E. (2016), Staying quiet or rocking the boat? An autoethnography of organisational visual
white supremacy, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 35(3), pp. 186204.
Prez Huber, L. and Solrzano, D.G. (2015), Visualizing everyday racism: Critical race theory, visual microaggressions,
and the historical image of Mexican banditry, Qualitative Inquiry, 21(3), pp. 223238.
Pierce, C. (1974), Psychiatric problems of the black minority, in S. Arieti (ed), American Handbook of Psychiatry,
New York: Basic Books, pp. 512523.
Willis, P. (2012), Witnesses on the periphery: Young lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer employees witnessing
homophobic exchanges in Australian workplaces, Human Relations, 65(12), pp. 15891610.
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