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Workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment unfolds as a process, usually recursive and escalating, that involves multiple actors and stakeholders. Through Section 1 of this volume, the antecedents and effects of workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment are detailed. Apart from discussing individual and organizational causative factors and adverse outcomes for targets and organizations, this section presents issues pertaining to target coping and survival and power versus powerlessness as dialectic rather than sovereign. Emergent research examining the physiological impact on targets, the controversial interplay of personality and the striving towards well-being is showcased. Section 2 brings together chapters on the various key players in the workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment scenario. The focus here is on targets, bullies, bystanders, leaders and significant others as well as the range of interventionists (such as HR managers, therapists, organizational practitioners, unionists and so on) who address situations of misbehaviour. The motives, experiences and outcomes of the former group and the roles, dilemmas and challenges of the latter group are elaborated.

The agenda of respectful workplaces is no more urgent than in the context of workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment. This becomes even more significant in the face of mistreatment linked to social identity and national culture. The chapters constituting Section 1 speak to the spectrum of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention undertaken within and beyond workplaces to tackle workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment. As well as organizational-related mechanisms, therapy, collective action and legislation are described. Normative angles, the challenges of actual practice and the contours of effectiveness are pinpointed. The increasing recognition of the conflation between category-based harassment and workplace bullying and the burgeoning cross-cultural lens of the substantive area are captured through the chapters of Section 2. Identities revolving around gender, sexuality, disability, caste and ethnicity serve as markers for mistreatment, underpinning the needto explore the dynamics of these situations in terms of causes, manifestations and consequences. Variations in the unfolding of negative acts due to cultural influences have been found, emphasizing that though misbehaviour is universal, it has country-specific characteristics.

This volume captures themes and debates around elucidating and studying workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment. The chapters presented here underscore the complexities and nuances of the phenomenon and showcase the various techniques relevant to and concerns associated with researching it. Debates abound as to what workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment is and what it is not, leading to a construct bind. Viewpoints are exchanged over how best to uncover the topic so as to ensure that recommendations for action are anchored in rigour. Section 1 portrays the gamut of variants that constitute workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment, such as interpersonal bullying, depersonalized bullying and cyberbullying, alongside theoretical underpinnings, contentious stances and contemporary contextual influences. Section 2 speaks to the challenges of studying a sensitive, multi-person, multi-level problematic, highlighting the possibilities offered by quantitative, qualitative and mixed paradigms. Advanced designs and innovative strategies that facilitate explanatory power, reliability and validity are put forward.

This volume embodies the twin purpose of highlighting topics beyond the purview of themes commonly associated with workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment and of presenting insights into those occupations, professions and sectors which either have received extensive research attention or hold a pronounced propensity to trigger workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment. Section 1, which comprises special topics, depicts the intersection between workplace bullying, emotional abuse and harassment and specific circumstances such as whistleblowing and customer abuse or particular attributes such as violence and ostracism. In so doing, it extends the boundaries of the substantive area, stimulating new themes for further inquiry and indicating new areas for action. Section 2 draws attention to how misbehaviour inheres in particular kinds of tasks and livelihoods due to job design, work organization and other elements such as power, external environment, employment patterns and so on. An array of occupations, professions and sectors such as academe, nursing, law, hospitality, precarious work and so on is covered, reflecting emergent developments in the labour market so as to include those with long-standing and considerable research findings and those where empirical inquiries are more recent.

This book showcases empirical studies on workplace bullying from a range of Asian countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, UAE and Vietnam, and is the first-of-its-kind single academic project documenting workplace emotional abuse in the world's largest continent. It encompasses the ‘varieties of workplace bullying'conceptualization in addition to category-based harassment and abusive supervision, and presents target, bystander and interventionist perspectives, along with contextualized insights into the phenomenon. The book speaks to the significance of sociocultural factors and draws on several theoretical and substantive bases including dignity, social cynicism, coping, gender, sexual orientation, job insecurity, turnover intention, affective events theory, attribution theory, regulation and policy initiatives. Covering all major regions in Asia where workplace bullying has been foundto occur, namely West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, the book portrays studies which engage both positivist and postpositivist paradigms, utilize an array of methods and include a range of industrial sectors and employment contracts and all levels of the organization. While focused on Asia, the book's insights have international relevance and are of interest to the worldwide community of researchers, practitioners and students of organizational studies, human resource management, industrial sociology, work psychology, industrial relations, labour law, corporate law, health sciences, social work and Asian studies.

This book, recognizing that workplace bullying is a significant employment relations and occupational health and safety problem in India which warrants urgent and holistic intervention, presents empirical studies examining contextual factors, antecedents, mediators, moderators, processes, outcomes and solutions, thereby deepening our understanding of the phenomenon. The chapters showcased in the volume emphasize the paradoxical Indian sociocultural ethos whose simultaneous embrace of humanism versus identity-based, personalized and hierarchical relationships, materialism versus spiritualism and individualism versus collectivism both fuel yet quell misbehaviour. The inquiries which constitute this book engage both positivist and postpostivist paradigms, draw on several theoretical and substantive frameworks, utilize an array of methods, investigate numerous foci and cover various geographical regions in India, a range of industrial sectors and all levels of the organization. In so doing, they make pathbreaking contributions beyond country-specific insights to advance the frontiers of the thematic area worldwide. The chapters include important findings pertaining to digital workplaces, child labour, forgiveness, customer bullying, psychological contract violation, perceived organizational support, psychological capital and comprehensive prevention strategies encompassing psychosocial risks. As well as building on a decade of knowledge about workplace bullying in India, the book puts forward a research agenda on the topic for the subcontinent in particular and the field in general. The volume is of interest to researchers, practitioners and students of organizational studies, human resource management, industrial relations, labour law, corporate law, health sciences and social work.

This book showcases issues of work and employment in contemporary India through a critical lens, serving as a systematic, scholarly and rigorous resource which provides an alternate view to the glowing metanarrative of the subcontinent's ongoing economic growth in today's globalized world. Critical approaches ensure that divergent and marginalized voices are highlighted, promoting a more measured perspective of entrenched standpoints. In casting social reality differently, a quest for solutions that reshape current dynamics is triggered. The volume spans five thematic areas, subsuming a range of economic sectors. India is a pre-eminent destination for offshoring, underscoring the relevance of global production networks (Theme 1). Yet, the creation of jobs has not transformed employment patterns in the country but rather accentuated informalization and casualization (Theme 2). Indeed, even India's ICT-related sectors, perceived as mascots of modernity and vehicles for upward mobility, raise questions about the extent of social upgrading (Theme 3). Nonetheless, these various developments have not been accompanied by collective action – instead, there is growing evidence of diminished pluralistic employment relations strategies (Theme 4). Emergent concerns about work and employment such as gestational surrogacy and expatriate experiences attest to the evolving complexities associated with offshoring (Theme 5).

Based on a series of qualitative inquiries exploring employee experiences of work in international facing call centres in Mumbai and Bangalore, India, this book presents the lived experience of call centre agents, coupled with managers'perspectives and trade unionists'viewpoints. The book underscores how employee identity is defined by the notion of professionalism. Inculcated in agents by employer organizations, professional identity is invoked as a means of gaining employee commitment to the realization of organizational goals in a bid to ensure competitive advantage. While professional identity is associated with a host of privileges, it not only results in agents justifying and complying with organizational requirements and absorbing job-related strain but also precludes agents'engagement with collectivist endeavours aimed at representing and protecting their interests, causing the nascent trade union movement in this sector to reinvent itself. While employer organizations thus rely on the notion of professionalism to achieve organizational ends, they admit to discrepancies in the enactment of professionalism, indicating the presence of rhetoric. Providing new and holistic insights gained via rigorous academic research, this book is of value to HR and OB professionals and scholars, industrial relations experts, sociologists, psychologists and trade unionists, as well as readers interested in India's ITES-BPO sector.