Twenty five years of workplace bullying research: Where do we go from here?

Contemporary Issues in Employment Relations Annual Lecture 2019

Keynote speaker, Professor Premilla D’Cruz

Silver jubilees, as with all milestones, are times for reflection. As research into workplace bullying completes a quarter of a century, it's worth pausing to take stock and ponder over several issues.

Workplace bullying research, initiated in Scandinavia and the UK and now spanning the globe, has yielded rich insights into prevalence, causes, process, consequences and those involved including targets, bullies, bystanders, leaders, HR managers, unionists, interventionists, significant others and so on, across nations and cultures, occupations, professions and sectors. Despite concerted research and intervention, including national legislation in some countries and a spotlight on the International Labour Organization (ILO) in recent years, the problem persists worldwide. This leads to numerous questions:

• Is the phenomenon of workplace bullying being accurately grasped?
• Why does this type of mistreatment persist despite evidence-based practice?
• What is the best way of addressing this extreme workplace stress?

In this lecture, Professor Premilla D’Cruz from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad will examine the conceptualisation of workplace bullying, the range of incidence rates across the world and the features which mark the phenomenon’s essential character. She will speak to the importance of interdisciplinary and global perspectives as well as touch on ethical underpinnings as some of the critical pointers of the way ahead.

The lecture will be followed by networking and light refreshments.

About the speaker

Premilla D’Cruz (PhD) is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Together with Charlotte Rayner, she conducted the first survey on workplace bullying in India. She has been researching the area of workplace bullying for over a decade with colleague Ernesto Noronha and has covered various facets of the phenomenon through pioneering work which has extended the boundaries of our understanding.

Professor D’Cruz has been President of the International Association on Workplace Bullying and Harassment (IAWBH) and is the Chief Co-Editor of the forthcoming Handbooks of Workplace Bullying, Emotional Abuse and Harassment, Volumes 1-4 (Springer). She has been a visiting scholar at various European and Australian universities and has received multi-lateral and bi-lateral study grants, in addition to several awards for outstanding academic and research work throughout her student and professional career. Professor D’Cruz is currently the section co-editor of Labour Relations and Business Ethics at the Journal of Business Ethics. Professor D’Cruz's other research interests include emotions at work, self and identity at work, workplace control, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) and work.