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WORKFORCE
staff in regional universities experience the same degree of harassment and bullying as those in metropolitan universities?
Other research has shown labour markets in regional cities of less than 200,000 people – because of tighter labour markets, fewer jobs available et cetera – [ could experience different levels of bullying and harassment than those in larger cities, where there is more movement ]. That’ s why we asked the question.
We didn’ t find any difference in incidence for professional and general staff; the incidence between city and regional universities was about the same.
We then concentrated on academic staff only. Overall, we did find that the Go8 universities had the lowest rates of reported incidents, and the regional universities had the highest. Although, I have to say, when you look at the exact data in the paper, some metropolitan universities, the non-Go8, were about the same as the regional.
In terms of the groupings, however, the four regional universities experienced the highest rates of harassment, and the highest rates of what we’ d call serious harassment and bullying.
Can you give us more of an insight into why these academic staff at regional universities experienced the higher rates? Based on some of the literature about harassment and bullying, which talks about control over work being important, we looked at some of the other questions, such as,‘ How much control do you have at work?’ and‘ What is the attitude towards people of your gender or age?’
The overall conclusion is that the effect of perceived input into decision-making – which is about job control, autonomy and role conflict – is important. The measures of perceived input into changes, perceived reduction in that input, general prejudice and professional development opportunities and support were correlated with the findings of harassment.
Are there any types of bullying that are more prevalent than others? We can’ t tell this from our survey. In some ways this is a survey that says we need to go and do more research to understand what is going on. [ As it was ] a large survey about career development and those issues in universities, we asked only a limited number of questions about harassment and bullying.
What comes out of this survey, I think, is that incidents of harassment and bullying are higher where there is less support for professional development, and [ an organisational culture that doesn’ t support input from staff ]. To understand this better, a more detailed survey that focuses on harassment and bullying would have to be undertaken.
I suppose the other thing I’ d highlight is, the overall incidences of harassment and bullying. From 24 per cent to 43 per cent of academics say they have experienced some form of harassment or bullying in the previous five years.
It’ s not an insignificant group of staff that is saying this, and those who said they considered taking a case – our proxy for serious harassment – range from about 10 per cent to 17 per cent of staff. That’ s a reasonable group of people who are experiencing these things, so it needs further research into what organisations can do.
Would you say there’ s a culture change required in the universities that experience high rates of bullying? I think further investigation is necessary. The literature talks about harassment and bullying being higher in organisations that have competitive cultures. The literature on managerialism within universities, and the cultures within universities, points to high degrees of competition among academic staff. We all know that resources are getting more scarce within universities.
I definitely think [ research needs to take a look ] at these issues. The organisational culture is related to the instances of harassment and bullying, so universities need to be very aware of that, and to look into that in greater detail I think.
This survey also found that Aboriginal staff are more likely to be bullied. Why? The prevalence of [ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ] staff in universities is below 5 per cent, but higher in regional areas, so it’ s a small group of staff.
I think the wider literature would point to this being a social issue. As universities have policies that are trying to encourage students and staff of Indigenous origin, [ protecting them from bullying and harassment ] needs to be carefully looked at and improved upon. ■
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