Blowing the whistle on workplace sexual harassment. Examining the role of harasser status and types of sexual harassment

• Published date: 12 August 2014
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-11-2013-0092
• Pages: 510-522
• Date: 12 August 2014
• Author: Lu-Ming Tseng
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity, equality, inclusion

Blowing the whistle on workplace

sexual harassment

Examining the role of harasser status and

types of sexual harassment

Lu-Ming Tseng

Department of Risk Management and Insurance, Feng Chia University,

Taichung, Taiwan

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate service workers’ intention to report the

“customer harasses colleague” and “colleague harasses customer” problems, and how the intention is

influenced by the service workers’ perception of conflict, company integ rity and criminal evidence.

Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaires were used as the research instrument, and

full-time life insurance salespeople were taken as a research sample. The research design helps us to

see to what extent the respondents rely on the harasser’s status and the types of sexual harassment

to form their whistle-blowing intention.

Findings – The main findings showed that: sexual harassment problems are likely to be evaluated

from a “who is the harasser” perspective. The respondents appeared more tolerant of the “colleague

harasses customer” probl ems as opposed to the “custome r harasses colleague” prob lems.

The respondents exhibited higher intention to report the hostile environment sexual harassment as

opposed to quid pro quo sexual harassment.

Originality/value – Sexual harassment has been described as an extremely harmful behavior in

organizations. However, relevant discussions about the “customer harasses colleague” problems

and “colleague harasses customer” problems are rare. The research provided an examination of

these issues.

Keywords Sexual harassment, Intention, Hostile environment, Quid pro quo, Service worker

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Researchers have pointed out that the legal definition of sexual harassment contains

quid pro quo and hostile work environment types of harassment. Quid pro quo sexual

harassment occurs when a harasser makes unwelcome sexual advances toward the

victim in exchange for workplace benefits (Fineran, 2002; Buchanan and Fitzgerald,

2008). Hostile environment sexual harassment, on the other hand, consists of

unwelcome sexual advances that create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working

environment for the victim (Cortina and Wasti, 2005). Both quid pro quo and hostile

environment sexual harassment create serious workplace problems (Schiff and

Kramer, 2000; Kimmel and Aronson, 2004; Cortina and Berdahl, 2008; Gill and

Febbraro, 2013; Spector et al., 2014). However, the literature on quid pro quo and hostile

environment sexual harassment in the service industry has focussed mainly on

organizational insiders (e.g. managers and colleagues) as the source of the misconduct,

while sexual harassment problems involving customers have received less attention

(Gettman and Gelfand, 2007; Yagil, 2008). In addition, prior work has found that

working people may be unwilling to expose the sexual harassment committed by peers

(Gill and Febbraro, 2013), but little of this has discussed working people’s intention to

perform whistle blowing of the “colleague harasses customer” problems. The current

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

Received 6 November 2013

Revised 3 March 2014

Accepted 26 June 2014

Equality, Diversityand Inc lusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 33 No. 6, 2014

pp. 510-522

rEmeraldGroup PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI -11-2013-0092

510

EDI

33,6