Workplace Aggression Profiles and Diverse Emotional Responses: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

Because of the lack of direct measurements, our understanding of different forms of aggression in organizations is still very limited. As such, there has been increasing calls for going beyond the existing theoretical presumptions and indirect measurements which have been dominating the research. Based on the literature on workplace aggression as well as affective events theory and stressor-emotion model, we intend to identify the unique aggression profiles and to reveal what types of emotional responses they produce for the target employees. We collected data on 249 aggression incidents in Pakistan’s higher education sector through survey. The results of the cluster analysis suggest five distinct types of workplace aggression, which are separated by the particular aggression behaviors involved (e.g. direct-indirect, verbal-physical aggression), perceived strength, blame attribution, third party presence, and identity of the offender. Further statistical analysis indicates that target employees give different emotional responses (anger, sadness, embarrassment, disappointment, feeling insulted) to these diverse mistreatments. As a key contribution, this study makes it clearer that the sources, organizational processes and underlying social dynamics might vary a lot across different aggression experiences depending on what the topic is, who are involved, and how the targets perceive the situation. Second, it presents an initial test regarding how instead of a standard emotional reaction, diverse negative emotional responses accompany different aggression profiles.