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20 - Understanding the Role of Affect in Workplace Aggression

from Part III - Workplace Affect and Interpersonal and Team-Level Processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2020

By
Zhanna Lyubykh ,
M. Sandy Hershcovis  and
Nick Turner
Edited by
Liu-Qin Yang ,
Russell Cropanzano ,
Catherine S. Daus  and
Vicente Martínez-Tur
Liu-Qin Yang
Affiliation:
Portland State University
Russell Cropanzano
Affiliation:
University of Colorado
Catherine S. Daus
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Vicente Martínez-Tur
Affiliation:
Universitat de València, Spain
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Summary

Workplace aggression is a significant and prevalent issue facing organizations. Almost all employees report experiencing workplace incivility: low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). More severe forms of workplace aggression happen at lower but still sizable rates. For example, data from the 2014 Canadian General Social Survey indicates that 27 percent of all physically violent incidents occur in the workplace (Perreault, 2015), with women more than twice as likely to be targets of workplace violence than men after adjusting for work hours (Lanthier, Bielecky, & Smith, 2018). These numbers are even more startling when one considers that employees often fail to report workplace aggression. For example, in the hospital environment – a context with elevated risks of aggression – 88 percent of employees who experienced a violent incident did not formally document the incident (Arnetz et al., 2015).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Workplace Affect , pp. 270 - 283
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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