3 Questions for Elizabeth Gingerich, business law professor and editor, Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Elizabeth Gingerich, Valparaiso University

Elizabeth Gingerich joined Valparaiso University’s College of Business Administration as a business law professor after a substantial legal career advising and representing corporate clients. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she serves as the editor-in-chief of the College’s Journal of Values-Based Leadership, which promotes “ethical and moral leadership and behavior by serving as a forum for ideas and the sharing of ‘best practices.’”

I was introduced to Elizabeth in 2008, when the JVBL published my article, “Workplace Bullying and Ethical Leadership.” Since then, I’ve periodically visited the journal’s website to review current and past issues, available online without charge (latest issue here; back issues here). Elizabeth kindly agreed to be interviewed about her work and that of the JVBL:

1. Before entering academe, you had an extensive career as a business lawyer providing legal advice to corporations. How does that experience inform your teaching and work in shaping the journal’s content?

When I began teaching in 2001, I had already practiced law for nearly 20 years and thought I was done.  After a month, however, I became somewhat unsettled with my isolated status and knew I had to step back in – at least part-time.  The academic world helps in the courtroom and the continued practice of law keeps one sharp in the classroom. The tricky part is striking a healthy balance.

I personally would not want to be taught by someone who did not have real world experience.  Thus, as laws change and cases are decided that especially affect my business clients, I take that new knowledge, analyze it, and usually add it to my lectures.

The combination of learning, applying, analyzing, and finally teaching has given me a wider perspective of global business and its ethical and legal implications.  The combination of continuous learning and teaching what I am practicing also places me in a favorable position to conduct interviews of notable business leaders for the JVBL.

2. Valparaiso University embraces its Lutheran heritage. How do questions of faith inform or engage the mission of the journal?

The overall mission of the journal is to disseminate articles and case studies which demonstrate either the practice of and/or the need to adopt business strategies that go beyond the sole pursuit of the bottom line.  Principled decision-making ostensibly requires consideration of stakeholders’ needs, the implementation of socially responsible practices, and the adoption of sound environmental stewardship policies.

Many of the JVBL’s interviewees have included the influence of faith and religious training in formulating and implementing their respective business practices.  I have termed this “benevolent capitalism.”

3. Readers of this blog tend to be very interested in workplace issues. What does the term “values-based leadership” mean for employment relations?

Lack of an alienating hierarchy. Appreciation of all employees’ efforts.  Seeking advice as to the direction of the company from all workers.  Rewarding those who participate accordingly.

With respect to the interviews I have conducted for the JVBL, unionization and other forms of collective bargaining are simply not needed where this meaningful and continuous feedback and interaction firmly exist. Some of the more prominent examples include Interface Global (Atlanta), Whole Foods (Austin), Lands’ End (before it was sold to Sears), and Playpumps International (Johannesburg, S.A.).

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Starting in 2012, “3 Questions” is a regular feature presenting short interviews with notable individuals whose work and activities overlap with major themes of this blog. Go here to access all interviews in the series.

Free podcast series, No. 1: About the New Workplace Institute

I’ve launched a new podcast series that will serve as a multimedia complement to this blog. You can access the podcasts without charge from iTunes!

In podcast No. 1, “Creating Healthy Workplaces: The New Workplace Institute,” I answer these questions from Ian Menchini, Director of Electronic Marketing at Suffolk University Law School:

1. Professor, what is the New Workplace Institute and why did you create it?

2. Can you give us an example of the kind of activity you want the Institute to host or sponsor?

3. Tell us a bit about your blog, Minding the Workplace, as well as your plans for this Podcast series.

4. Will Suffolk law students have opportunities to become involved with the Institute?

We’ll be posting new podcasts roughly 3-4 times a month. Next week’s podcast will be devoted to explaining the Healthy Workplace Bill, the anti-bullying legislation I’ve written that is the basis of our law reform movement.

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Many thanks to Ian Menchini at Suffolk University Law School for his instrumental assistance in creating this series.

Cincinnati conference to examine violence and bullying in healthcare workplaces, May 11-13

See you on May 11-13?

The University of Cincinnati is hosting the National Conference for Workplace Violence Prevention & Management in Healthcare Settings, scheduled for May 11-13, 2012, in Cincinnati.

Here’s how the organizers describe the conference:

This conference will cover the full spectrum of the workplace violence typology as it directly relates to incivility, bullying, verbal and physical aggression, threatening words or actions, sexual harassment, and physical assaults that occur in healthcare settings (e.g., hospitals, long term care, emergency departments, home health, pharmacies, clinics, and private practice offices).

This conference will provide an opportunity for national and world leadership to prevent work-related injuries by disseminating the current scientific research on healthcare workplace violence, analyzing what changes have been made to alleviate healthcare workplace violence and providing recommendations for minimizing workplace violence for healthcare providers and their patients.

See you there?

I’ve accepted an invitation to give a keynote address at the conference on Friday, May 11, during which I’ll be discussing legal issues relating to workplace bullying and violence.

In addition, the organizers are accepting abstracts for papers, poster sessions, and symposia. The due date is February 17. Go here for the link!

Chief organizers include Gordon Lee Gillespie, Ph.D., R.N. (principal investigator) and Donna M. Gates, Ed.D., R.N.  (co-investigator). Go here to learn about the rest of the conference committee.

Very important focus

I’m delighted that a full-blown, multidisciplinary conference is focusing on this topic. The healthcare workplace is important to everyone, and working conditions can be stressful and challenging. Physical violence, bullying, and other forms of aggression are common occurrences.

Over the years I’ve written a lot about bullying in healthcare. I’ve collected previous posts here:

4-part series on bullying in healthcare

Workplace bullying in healthcare I: The Joint Commission standards

Workplace bullying in healthcare II: Vanderbilt U program for doctors

Workplace bullying in healthcare III: A sampling of legal cases

Workplace bullying in healthcare IV: Nurses bullied and responding

Other related posts

Cheryl Dellasega’s When Nurses Hurt Nurses

Nurse writes about bullying by doctors, other doctors respond

Healthcare bloggers on workplace bullying

Nursing as a Calling: Aspirations and Realities

Alaska nurse blogs about workplace bullying experience

A Flu Tale of Intellectual Bullying?

Minding the Workplace: Changes for 2012

Thank you, everyone, for your ongoing interest in Minding the Workplace, which has attracted over 200,000 hits and a bevy of insightful comments since its launch in December 2008. During the coming year, I’ll be making some modest changes to the blog. They will include:

1. Interviews and podcasts — I’ll be doing short interviews with a wide range of people connected with the world of employment relations, and I’ll be using the podcast format to introduce more multimedia content.

2. Slightly less frequent publication – During the past three years, I’ve covered a lot of ground here, with over 700 articles entering the blogosphere. Consequently, I’ll be blogging an average of 3 times a week rather than the 4-5 times a week pace I’ve maintained since the blog’s inception.

3. More “aggregator” posts – With hundreds of blog posts here, and an abundance of relevant content by other writers available online, I’ll be doing more “aggregator” posts that assemble articles and other sources on relevant themes and topics.

What won’t change is a focus on topics such as workplace bullying, employment law and policy, psychological health at work, and related issues of economics, politics, and social justice. This blog entered the scene during the 2008 economic meltdown, and we continue to face tough times in our workplaces. I hope that Minding the Workplace will help to keep you informed and enlightened as we weather the storm.

Best wishes for a fulfilling, secure, and healthy New Year, especially to readers who have been struggling with some of very challenges discussed in these pages.

-David Yamada

Fancy internship vs. “summer job”?

Say you’re a young college student, weighing your options for the summer. Assuming you have some choice in the matter, what’s better preparation for a successful career, a summer internship with a prominent business or non-profit group, or a summer job filling shelves and running a cash register for a local supermarket?

A professor’s answer

As a university professor, my strong advice to most students would be to take the internship. Whether they are aiming for a plum job out of college, or perhaps vying for a spot in graduate or professional school, the internship will carry more weight than 10 weeks stocking shelves at the grocery store.

Indeed, it’s probably not even a close call.

But indulge me for a minute…

When I was in college some 30 years ago, most undergraduates did not expect to do a summer internship unless, perhaps, they were enrolled in a professional program such as nursing, engineering, or social work. For political science majors like me, summers typically meant doing some type of low-wage job working in a store, a factory, or the great outdoors.

I spent a couple of my summers working for a local drug store chain as a stock clerk. During an interim year between graduating from college and starting law school, I returned to the company in the midst of a terrible recession. The work involved unloading trucks, tagging merchandise and stocking shelves, and customer assistance. While I wouldn’t call the job backbreaking, at the end of a busy shift, I knew I had earned my meager wages.

I didn’t ignore the bells & whistles that might give a boost to my law school applications. I was a department editor of the college newspaper, a senator in the student government, and a volunteer for numerous political campaigns. But I understood the difference between a paying job and extracurricular activities.

What I learned

When I got to law school, I was wholly intimidated by the array of internships, fellowships, and similar opportunities that many of my classmates already sported on their resumes. I hasten to add that they didn’t flaunt these credentials; it simply was part of what they had done.

Looking back, I wish I would’ve been more appreciative of what I learned in my less glamorous minimum wage jobs. I gained a work ethic. I learned how to follow instructions and take directives. I learned how to treat a customer with respect. And I learned what it means to start at the bottom and to earn a pat on the back for the work I did.

I’m not claiming that someone can’t learn these things in an internship. And I concede that it sounds like I’m wallowing in nostalgia for a job that — in actuality — I regarded simply as a way to save money for college. But there’s something about a genuine, humble, entry-level job that teaches us some valuable lessons for the years to come.

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Related posts

Has tackling discrimination led to a more elitist society?

The Let-Me-Impress-You Club

Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation explores the internship phenomenon

The experience of being bullied at work: Insights and silos

It’s a truism, but an accurate one: Experience is a powerful teacher when it comes to understanding workplace bullying. The line between those who “get it” and those who don’t often is drawn between individuals who have personally experienced this form of abuse or watched someone close to them endure it, versus those who claim to have never encountered bullying at work as a target or bystander.

For the former group, those experiences and observations form the primary lenses — intellectual and emotional — through which we understand this topic and screen additional messages related to it.

However, we also must recognize how our own experiences and observations can serve as silos, blocking us from viewing and incorporating into our understanding new information and insights about behaviors that are endlessly complex.

Some long-time readers and frequent commenters to this blog may be wondering, is he talking about me? The answer is no, it’s not about you (really!) — at least not individually. If anything, it’s more of a personal “memo to self”!

But seriously, this point applies to all of us who have drawn valuable insights about workplace bullying from direct or close secondary exposure. The lessons of our own lives must combine with the stories of others, academic research, and informed commentary to form our deepest possible understanding of workplace bullying, what it does to people and organizations, and what we can do about it.

Check ‘em out: Top 50 workplace blogs

Pull up your mouse and get ready to click away! Organizational-Psychology.org maintains a list of its Top 50 Workplace Blogs, and exploring it will keep you busy.

The top 5 blogs are: Chief Happiness Officer, Bud to Boss, Corporette, Four Hour Work Week, and Workisnotajob.

We’re on the list!

I’m honored that Minding the Workplace also made the Top 50 list. Here’s the short description:

Blogger David looks to understand the idea of the workplace as it has morphed in the new millennium. Workplace bullying and post traumatic stress disorder are new topics.

You can check out the full list here, and I’d recommend setting aside a chunk of time to do so. There’s a lot of good stuff in these blogs.

Hitting the books

In addition, for those exploring degree programs in organizational psychology, Organizational-Psychology.org provides a freely searchable “Find a School” database of some 380+ schools offering undergraduate and graduate study options.

A visit to the Workplace Bullying Institute and WBI University

I had the considerable pleasure of spending an extended weekend participating in Workplace Bullying Institute University, the intensive, small group, 3-day training and education seminar about workplace bullying led by Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie. Although I’ve been working with the Namies since 1998, this was my first visit to WBI U and to the Workplace Bullying Institute’s offices in Bellingham, Washington.

WBI U: Bootcamp for Bullybusters

Based on reviews from others and my close familiarity with Gary and Ruth’s work, I’ve been happy to tout WBI U to those who want to incorporate a deep understanding of workplace bullying prevention and response into their varied professional practices.

Now, having been a “student” at WBI U (and I have a shiny new certificate to show for it, thank you), I can vouch for it personally: This was a unique and remarkable intellectual and personal experience.  Here’s why:

First, the Namies have assembled a jam-packed, soup-to-nuts curriculum about the many aspects of workplace bullying, starting with the phenomenon itself, moving into individual and stakeholder responses, and looking at future developments such as law reform. It is a very, very substantive program, built around not only the Namies’ own work, but also the extensive research and commentary that have emerged over the past couple of decades.

Second, despite the heavy-duty content, there was plenty of time for discussion.  Collectively, our small group (eight in all, including the Namies) brought work experiences in human resources, science and technology, mental health, law enforcement, non-profit advocacy, hospitality management, higher education, and law. This diversity of background made for rich and spirited exchanges between participants over the course of the three-day seminar.

Finally — and this was the most personally gratifying aspect of the weekend — WBI U provided us with a chance to share our interests, stories, and experiences. The discussions went well past the designated meeting times, extending over dinners, coffee, and drinks. When people come together to immerse themselves in a topic like this one, bonds form quickly and ideas begin to hatch.

A visit to WBI

I also visited the WBI offices in Bellingham. Some have the misleading impression that WBI is a huge monolith, perhaps because WBI has become so visible and its website (link here) is packed with information. Nothing could be further from the truth! Including the Namies, WBI currently has six people on staff, and they share a cozy office setup whereby every bit of space is utilized.

In sum, North America’s leading organization devoted to stopping workplace bullying is comprised of a small collection of talented, dedicated individuals located in one compact floor of office space. It’s a testament to the power of individual commitment and intellect that this modest entity has had such a significant and positive influence.

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Gary, Ruth, Sean, Jessi, Dan, and Dave, a big thank you for being such wonderful hosts for WBI University.

Back to school: WBI University in July

Periodically people ask me how they can reorient their careers to get involved in anti-bullying work. Obviously general qualifications and experience play a big role in answering that question, but an important early step is doing the homework. For those interested, a growing body of educational programs and materials awaits them.

WBI U

At the advanced level is Workplace Bullying Institute University, a/k/a “WBI U,” an intensive, three-day, small-group training program led by Gary and Ruth Namie.

The Namies have been hosting WBI U sessions for several years, providing specialized training to individuals who want to learn more about how to prevent and respond to the destructive phenomenon of workplace bullying. They describe their program as a “unique, intensive experience that prepares professionals in mental health, law, management, human resources, coaching, unions, speaking & training with graduate-level instruction and materials.”

In July I’ll be heading out to Bellingham, Washington, where I’ll be joining Gary and Ruth Namie and several fellow learners for the next WBI U training session. I have a feeling I’ll be returning home with a brain stuffed full of ideas and information.

Building a personal knowledge base

As workplace bullying has entered the mainstream of American employment relations, I have become increasingly concerned over the factual assumptions and casual advice being shared in career guidance columns and news segments. Frankly, there’s a lot of bad — even dangerous — advice being tossed out by supposed experts.

Without question, there is room for legitimate differences of opinion concerning behaviors that are so varied and complex. But those opinions should be informed by the growing body of knowledge we have about workplace bullying and affected stakeholders.

That’s why I’m looking forward to participating in WBI U. I’ve been researching and writing about the legal implications of bullying at work for over a decade, and in the process I’ve learned a lot about these behaviors and employment relations in general. But I firmly believe that you can’t know too much.

Do-it-yourself U

WBI U involves a solid investment of time and money. Fortunately, there are other paths to obtaining advanced knowledge about workplace bullying, and many of the leading sources are within a modest price range. For a book list of suggested titles on workplace bullying and related topics, go here.

Among the possibilities, the Namies’ two books, The Bully at Work (rev. ed. 2009) (for targets of bullying) and The Bully-Free Workplace (2011) (for employers), are excellent (and affordable) starting places. If you absorb the lessons within, then you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

For those who want to dig deeper, I strongly recommend Stale Einarsen, Helge Hoel, Dieter Zapf & Cary L. Cooper, eds., Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace: Developments in Theory, Research, and Practice (2nd ed., 2011). Though pricey, it is an invaluable anthology of research and commentary by leading experts drawn from many nations.

Online, WBI’s own website provides a wealth of free material. The International Association on Workplace Bullying and Harassment is the main learned society for interested scholars and practitioners.

Understanding work, workers, and workplaces: The importance of being multidisciplinary

Readers who have been blissfully spared the buzzwords of academe may wonder what professors mean when we use terms such as “multidisciplinary,” “interdisciplinary,” “cross-disciplinary,” and “transdisciplinary.” Is it just a bunch of mumbo jumbo, or does it really matter at some level?

At least when it comes to understanding employment relations, it can matter a lot. Let’s take a quick look at why.

Definitions

In academic-speak, a “discipline” is a conceptual framework, a defined subject-matter area that lends itself to teaching and research, such as economics, anthropology, sociology, political science, psychology, and the like. The term also is used to refer to professional settings, such as business, medicine, law, and so forth.

Thus, terms such as multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary often are used rather interchangeably to mean incorporating perspectives from these disciplines in examining a given topic, situation, or problem.

The importance of mixing it up

So, for example, in examining the effects of the recession — on its face, an economic problem — we might also look at how the stress of a lousy economy affects people psychologically. In doing so, we’re thinking in a multi/inter/cross/trans disciplinary manner.

And when, say, doctors and lawyers get together to consider public health policy, they are exchanging insights from their professional disciplines of medicine and law in ways that hopefully add up to more than the sum of the parts.

Applied to workplace bullying

I have learned a ton about the critical importance of multidisciplinary thinking. In particular, in seeking to develop legal and policy responses to workplace bullying, I have benefited mightily from insights drawn from many academic and professional disciplines.

Among these, psychology has yielded the most valuable insights. Indeed, over the years I have spent many profitable hours in conferences, seminars, and conversations with folks trained in psychology. When paired with the “in the trenches” perspectives I’ve gained from talking to countless numbers of people who have experienced workplace bullying, I have a pretty good understanding of what this behavior is all about.

Clear thinking

Strip away the multi-syllabic terms and what are we left with? I think it’s called common sense.

Understanding work, workers, and workplaces calls upon us to draw upon the whole of our knowledge base about human behavior and the organizations we’ve created. Thankfully, it doesn’t require us to spend our waking hours reading academic treatises and journal articles, but it does mean that we should avoid becoming trapped in mental silos when examining a social problem and how to respond to it.