Much blame – little gain? The effects of single vs multi-blaming on labelling and third-party intervention in workplace bullying

Abstract

Purpose

Organizational practitioners must often interpret accounts of workplace bullying. However, they are frequently reluctant to confirm the target's account and often fail to set effective intervention measures. Building on novel approaches in attribution theory, this study explores how causal explanations and blame pattern shape the labelling of a complaint and the subsequent recommended intervention measures.

Design/methodology/approach

187 Austrian human resource professionals, employee representatives and other practitioners were confronted with a fictional workplace bullying complaint including conflicting actors' accounts and diverse possible internal, relational and external causes. Since the prior low performance of a target might affect blame attributions, the previous performance ratings of the target were manipulated. Data were analysed via qualitative content analysis.

Findings

When respondents reject the complaint, they predominately identify single internal causes and blame the target, and/or trivialize the complaint as “normal conflict”. Both low and high performance of the target trigger (single) internal blame. When the complaint is supported, deontic statements and blame attributions against the perpetrator prevail; however, blame placed on the perpetrator is often discounted via multi-blame attributions towards supervisors, colleagues and the target. Structural causes were rarely mentioned. Relational attributions are infrequent and often used to trivialize the complaint. Irrespective of the attributional blame patterns, most third parties recommend “reconciliatory measures” (e.g. mediation) between the actors.

Practical implications

Trainings to temper single internal blaming and raise awareness of organizational intervention measures are essential.

Originality/value

This is the first study to investigate workplace bullying blaming patterns and organizational responses in detail.

Citation

Zedlacher, E. and Snowden, A. (2023), "Much blame – little gain? The effects of single vs multi-blaming on labelling and third-party intervention in workplace bullying", Employee Relations, Vol. 45 No. 1, pp. 90-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-05-2021-0228