ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the root causes of academic bullying in higher education. Abusive supervision has been a significant topic of research in the field of organizational behavior since 2000. Defined as “the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact,” typical behaviors directed toward subordinates by supervisors include ridicule, blame, rudeness, lying, put downs, public shaming, withholding credit, invasion of privacy, and giving the silent treatment. Given the preponderance of white males in academic science and the increasing percentage of women in graduate science programs and foreigners in postdoc positions, there is ample reason to suspect that both surface-level and deep dissimilarity are important factors driving abusive supervision in academic science. Finally, power distance—the extent to which lower ranking individuals in a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally—provides a strong normative backdrop for abusive supervision in countries, or among individuals, with high power distance.
