ABSTRACT
Human resources personnel, inclusive of vice presidents, directors, diversity officers, and their staff, often find themselves as the intake personnel for workplace bullying complaints. Though workplace bullying in the United States is still legal, when a target of workplace bullying can link the aggression and harassment to a protected class status, the organization can become the center of a Title VII complaint.
To clarify the role human resources personnel could play in the midst of workplace bullying problems on campus, I have collected 96 human resources open-ended comments and conducted a qualitative content analysis. By using Krippendorf’s content analysis procedures (1989) and applying Bolman and Deal’s (2017) structural frame about organizations, I examined the human resources personnel’s remarks to address the central research question for this study was: RQ 1 What are the common insights that human resources personnel offer regarding workplace bullying on their perspective campuses?
The qualitative content analysis lead to four themes: Theme #1—Leadership is Key; Theme #2—Lacking Training; Theme #3—Reflection on Law/Policy; and Theme #4—Faculty Abuse of Tenure. Considering these four themes, the cumulative commentary is that a cogent higher education structure has leadership that will empower human resources to engage and conduct training for themselves and supervisors. Resultantly, the organization could be proactive in avoiding lawsuits that materialize from bullying and instead cultivate a work environment where even tenured faculty are coached to avoid aggressive and disrespectful work behaviors.
