Payal Sharma, PhD, University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

Abstract: Research on workplace mistreatment continues to develop exponentially. Because targeted parties are known to suffer, increasingly scholars are seeking to understand antecedents, especially of a relational or social nature, of behaviors such as abusive supervision, social undermining, incivility and bullying. However, several unanswered questions remain which we hope to address with our efforts. First, how might a ‘system’ of mistreatment be precipitated? Although prior work has focused largely on mistreatment occurring between dyads (such as leader-follower or between-employee pairs) or in work groups, less is known about how mistreatment might be induced to occur by multiple offenders towards multiple targeted parties across individual, dyadic and group levels. Second, what relational or social factors are within targeted parties’ control? While there is growing interest topics such as coping, less clear is how targeted parties can protect themselves.

To address these questions, we draw on qualitative data, including semi-structured interviews conducted with primary informants of “video girls,” or women who perform in hip hop videos. We contextualize these perspectives with interviews with other industry experts including video directors, choreographers, photographers, and stylists. Our project begins to shed light on how both internal (within-group) and external relationships can (1) precipitate a system of mistreatment; and (2) be leveraged by targeted parties to protect themselves.

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