Bullying in the Australian ICT workplace: the views of Australian ICT professionals

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine bullying in the workplace from the perspective of Australian Information Communication Technology (ICT) professionals. The data collection for this project included conducting a quantitative survey with 2,315 participants and 43 qualitative interviews with members of Australian Computer Society (ACS). We found that 630 ICT professionals, or 27.23% of all survey respondents, identified workplace bullying as an ethical problem. The majority of survey respondents who selected bullying as an ethical issue were permanent full time employees (N= 413, 65.6%). A significant relationship was found between respondents identifying bullying as an ethical issue in the survey and their job classification (Deviance = 25.55, Df = 11, p=0.0076), suggesting that job classification, among other things, does predict respondents’ selection of bullying. Furthermore, our survey and interview findings indicate that the more mature respondents, as well as those in the managerial roles, have a greater concern about bullying.