ABSTRACT
The two seemingly incompatible concepts of sex and work have created serious implications for employees and organizations. Sexual harassment is a pervasive organizational phenomenon that continues to plague individual employees, organizations, and society. The dynamic and pervasive qualities of sexual harassment have captured the attention of researchers from a variety of disciplines, who have approached the task of identifying, describing, explaining, and predicting from competing explanations or research perspectives. This essay reviews the findings and positions of researchers in communication, counseling, law, management, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies. Five types of works emerged in the literature selected for this review: reports of the results of surveys documenting the phenomenon of sexual harassment in the workplace; traditional social science examinations—quasi-experimental, laboratory, and field studies—of sexual harassment issues; research reports using discursive methods of narrative and textual analyses to explore sexual harassment; legal summaries and analyses of court decisions; and analyses of certain aspects of sexual harassment that offer positions for reflection or research. This chapter presents the findings and conclusions drawn from the literature in response to eight key questions about sexual harassment.
