Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Volume 11, Issue 2, February 2020, pp. 114–121, Article ID: IJM_11_02_012
Available online at http://www.iaeme.com/ijm/issues.asp?JType=IJM&VType=11&IType=2
Journal Impact Factor (2020): 10.1471 (Calculated by GISI) www.jifactor.com
ISSN Print: 0976-6502 and ISSN Online: 0976-6510
ABSTRACT
The study had explored the root cause of bullying and attempt to find out the
relation of diversity with bullying. It also attempts to find out the association of
bullying and different forms of conflict. Two staged random sampling is used. Data
collected from 270 respondents suggest that there is bullying with respect to gender
and religion which further gives rise to conflict and reduces the performance of the
organization. Diversity brings changes that may or may not be welcomed and as a
result of which people try to bully others majorly on the basis of gender and religion
as a primary and secondary dimension of diversity. This study will help the
organization to understand the reason for bullying with respect to diversity and
suggest different measures for managing diversity so as to marginalize bullying from
organization and society.
Keywords: Diversity, Bullying and Conflict.
Cite this Article: Dr. Priyanka Indoria, Diversity: Source of Bullying, International
Journal of Management (IJM), 11 (2), 2020, pp. 114–121.
http://www.iaeme.com/IJM/issues.asp?JType=IJM&VType=11&IType=2
1. INTRODUCTION
Currently, one of the major challenges faced by organizations is diversity management. With
globalization, the workplaces had become more diverse and its management is a big task for
HR managers. Diversity has a different impact on the performance of the organization
depending upon the situation. Diversity shows two faces as far as its impact is considered.
The positive effects give a competitive edge to the organization however its negative effects
are more severe and cannot be ignored. Since diversity brings changes, these changes bring
bullying silently. Bullying is one of the major issues faced by organizations implicitly.
Various organizations are dealing with it without knowing its root cause. Therefore, this paper
attempt to find out the root cause of bullying.
According to Helge Hoel (2003), bullying arise majorly because of three reasons. Firstly,
people want to safeguard their self-esteem and in order to maintain it; they tend to undermine
the talent of others. Deficiency of social competence makes people bully others to maintain
their position in society. Lastly, the biggest reason for bullying is the imbalance in power
(Indoria, 2017). Because of this people tend to withhold the information, do extensive
monitoring, ignorance of a good idea or viewpoint and even shouting publically on the
employees are the components of bullying. People from different background possess
different/unique information which they may or may not share with others. In order to get a
competitive edge in this competitive world, every information is important and needed to be
shared at the right time and right place in the organization. Withholding information so that
others don‟t get the benefit out of it is like refraining someone from his/her future growth. The
victim feels emotionally injured and this further leads to different forms of conflict that are
more severe for the organization. Hence, this study attempt to find out the root cause of
bullying, its association with diversity and its outcomes.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
The present workplace is facing the biggest challenge which has emerged because of
globalization. Diversity is defined as a variation or a change from the set standards.
According to Cox (1993) “Diversity is the representation in one social system of people with
distinctly different group affiliation of cultural significance”. Diversity exhibits a dual impact
on the performance of the organization. Although it has many positive impacts, the adverse
impact of diversity needs more attention of the policy makers, organization and even
government. Some of the positive impacts of diversity are better problem solving, improved
innovation, better decision making, and increased knowledge pool. Some of the negative
impacts of diversity are conflict majorly, information conflict, emotional conflict and task
conflict; cultural resistance and low group cohesion. One of the most severe repercussions of
diversity is „Bullying‟ (Indoria, 2017). This is actually a connecting medium between
diversity and different forms of conflict.
According to Leymann (1996) workplace bullying is hostile and unethical communication
directed in a systematic way towards an individual on a frequent basis and over a longer
period. Lutgen-Sandvik (2007) defined “workplace bullying as the continual aggression
(verbal and non- verbal), that includes social isolation, personal comments, and various other
agonizing messages and unreceptive collaborations”. It is an interpersonal behavior that is
unwelcome and unsolicited (Indoria, 2017; Jagatic, 2011). This study has considered three
aspects of bullying: work-related bullying which includes withholding information, unrealistic
deadlines, unmanageable workload, etc. Second is person-related bullying which includes
unnecessary humiliation related to work, repetitive reminders of errors, etc. and the third
aspect is physical intimidating bullying which includes being shouted at, physical abuse, etc.
(Agarwal, 2017).
According to Indoria (2017) there is a paradigm shift in the organizational culture to the
bullying culture. Since a large number of employees are working in an organization, as an
opportunity arises everyone wants to grab it, resulting in competition. This makes one winner
among all. Success is achieved at the cost of others lose. As a result of this, people start
harming others for the sake of their own success. This gives rise to bullying. It has become a
vicious circle where people who are bullied, tend to bully others. An intervention from
management and government is required so as to bring down bullying from the organization
and ultimately from the society.
The study tries to find out the factors of diversity that contribute towards bullying.
According to Rosener (1991), there are two dimensions of diversity primary and secondary.
Primary dimensions are those which are god gifted and secondary dimensions are those which
are inherited from society. Since this study is done in the Indian context, both gender (primary
dimension of diversity) and religion (secondary dimension of diversity) are the most debated
topics; hence these two dimensions of diversity are used. This study would help the
organization to find out if bullying exists on the basis of diversity with respect to gender and
religion in the organization.
3. OBJECTIVES
To study the association of diversity with bullying
To identify the causes of bullying
To explore the major forms of conflict emerge because of diversity.
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Due to the sensitive nature of the topic „bullying‟, the questionnaire is borrowed from the
study of Aggarwal (2017), where the author had clearly defined the items of bullying. A
survey was conducted in the healthcare industry where six multi-specialty hospitals were
chosen for the study. A two-staged random sampling is done where the first stage is that the
respondents should have an experience of above 6 months and the second stage is it should be
a multispecialty hospital. The sample size is 270. Of the respondents 54.2% were males and
44.7% were females; 26.4% of the respondents are Hindu, 23.4% of the respondents are
Muslims, 23.8% of the respondents are Christians and 25.3% of the respondents are Sikhs;
48% were having work experience of more than six months and less than one year, 38.8% had
an experience of more than one year and less than five years and 12.1% had an experience
of more than five years.
ANOVA test used to investigate the factors supposed to influence the dependent variable
(independent variable gender and religion). Cronbach's Alpha is 0.81.
Similarly, table 2 exhibits that the p-value for all the variables is less than 0.05. Hence it
can be noted that all these variables are contributing towards bullying with respect to religion.
Isolation, intimidation, overloaded with work with unrealistic time limits, sarcasm, and
gender these are the major contributing factor which is playing a mediating role in enhancing
bullying with respect to religion.
your ways
6. CONCLUSION
This study contributes towards workplace bullying by studying its root cause, association with
diversity and its impact on the performance of the organization. The major findings of the
study emphasize a number of important avenues for future research that will help to
understand the role of diversity in creating a bullying culture.
is one of the easiest ways to achieve their targets because they are aware of the fact that
bullying makes the victim stressed and ultimately the performance of the victim will be
reduced and therefore, he will be removed from the cat race for winning power.
individual and leads to task conflict. This reduces the productivity and performance of the
individual.
Diversity brings resistance to change acceptance and intolerance in ambiguous situations.
It has a direct negative impact on the productivity and performance of the individual and
organization. India is one of the most diversified countries in the world. It shows unity in
diversity. This study also revealed that there is a need of the hour to stand together for
accepting diversity so as to eliminate the negative effects of diversity and enhance and spread
the positivity associated with diversity. Individuals need to develop emotional intelligence to
work with different favorable or unfavorable emotions in order to marginalize the negative
effects of diversity: „Bullying’. Organizations need to carry out certain diversity acceptance
training programs to reduce bullying and making certain policies to stop bullying and create
an environment of equality.
7. LIMITATION
Since this study is confined to the Delhi-NCR region the future studies can do this research in
different parts of India. The sample size is only 270 so results may show more clear results
when the sample size is large. Moreover, the issue is so sensitive the respondents even gives a
cold heart to answer the questionnaire.
REFERENCES
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