Bully in the Ivory Tower: A Baseline Study Validating Workplace Bullying in American Higher Education (2012)

Although the Scandinavians had been studying workplace bullying in all sectors for decades, previous researchers had not started an in-depth look at workplace bullying in American higher education as of 2012. A few salient research articles were in existence at the time. My first study was designed to begin filling this gap. Hence, this chapter will review the rationale and process for the Bully in the Ivory Tower study [Hollis, Bully in the ivory tower: How aggression & incivility erode American higher education. Patricia Berkly LLC (2012)]. This research was my baseline study for workplace bullying in American higher education. Additionally, “Bully University,” which I published with Sage in 2015, emerged from these findings and was the initial cost analysis of workplace bullying. Theoretically, Bully in the Ivory Tower uses Arlie Hochschild’s [American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 551–575 (1979)] emotional labor theory because it is exhausting to maintain composure while a bully thrashes one’s calm. The “Bully University” article uses employee disengagement theories to explain why employee disengagement is more costly than employee turnover [Byrne, Understanding employee engagement: Theory, research and practice. Routledge (2015)]. The results of that study with Sage confirmed that 62% of respondents had been affected by workplace bullying within 18 months of the study. Further, bullied colleagues spend an average of 3.9 hours weekly, or five weeks annually, coping with and strategizing around bullies. The study, which relied on descriptive statistics and qualitative data, resulted in four peer-reviewed articles.