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Beyond Victims and Perpetrators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

Meghan A. Thornton-Lugo  and
Deeksha Munjal
Meghan A. Thornton-Lugo*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio
Deeksha Munjal
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Meghan Thornton-Lugo, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78228. E-mail: meghan.thornton@utsa.edu
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Extract

We acknowledge and agree with Cortina, Rabelo, and Holland (2018) that the tendency to focus on victims as precipitators of their own negative workplace experiences (e.g. abusive supervision) presents a problematic theoretical paradigm. Using organizational justice as an illustration, we note that even in fields with an orientation toward victims, similar trends with regard to victim precipitation have still emerged. However, we also argue that although the perpetrator predation approach may help to avoid this tendency and encourage a better understanding of the responsibility for and origins of certain organizational experiences, it may fall short when examining complex phenomena that involve more than the dyad of perpetrator and victim. We suggest that industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology scholars might be better served by abandoning the language of victim and perpetrator altogether. Though we invoke these two terms when discussing organizational justice, we ultimately come to argue that researchers should utilize different language that better captures the experience and role of employees in these phenomena.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 116 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2018 

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