WORKFORCE campusreview. com. au
It’ s tougher out there
Differences in culture and levels of support may explain why staff are bullied and harassed at higher rates in regional universities.
Glenda Strachan interviewed by James Wells
A study has found bullying of academic staff occurs at higher rates in regional universities than at metropolitan ones.
Self-reported Harassment and Bullying in Australian Universities: explaining differences between regional, metropolitan and elite institutions surveyed 22,000 academic staff at 19 different universities, asking them if they had experienced workplace bullying during the past five years.
Institutions surveyed included the Go8 universities, other metropolitan universities and four regional universities. The names of the institutions surveyed have not been disclosed. Thirty six per cent of the regional academic staff reported being bullied, compared with the overall rate of 28 per cent. The survey examined only academic staff and did not take into account general, support and casual academic staff.
Forty two per cent of staff at one of the regional universities reported being bullied. Professor Glenda Strachan, from Griffith University Business School, co-author of the study, said:
“ What we found was in the four regional universities, they reported less support for professional development, [ which ] could lead to lower resourcing, et cetera, in those universities,” she said.“ There’ s a correlation between professional development support, perceived input into changes, and control. It’ s about the wider organisational culture, and the incidence of bullying and harassment overall.”
Strachan says the survey supports the case for deeper investigation into bullying in universities as a whole, as it occurs even at workplaces with sophisticated human resources systems.
The competitive nature of academia and stretched resources are contributing to bullying. Here, Strachan explains why institutions should examine their culture to find out what exactly causes this behaviour.
CR: Glenda, can you begin by outlining the key points of this study?
GS: It’ s based on data collected for an ARC Linkage grant, where we surveyed staff in universities. The survey was called Work and Careers in Australian Universities. It was undertaken in 2011, and we had more than 22,000 responses.
This study looked at academic staff and professional general staff who are on fixed-term employment and continuing employment. The survey asked staff if they had experienced harassment and bullying in their workplace in the previous five years. If they said yes, we asked had they considered taking a case. That was a proxy for [ whether ] the issue was serious enough to want to pursue.
There were originally 19 universities in the survey, but for this we reduced the number. We had representatives of the Go8, some other metropolitan universities, and four regional universities; we’ ve never identified which universities were in the survey. The question was, do
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