Human Resource Professionals' Gender and Career Tenure-Based Differences in the Frequency of Observed Female-Female Workplace Bullyin

This quantitative, causal-comparative study investigated whether differences in the frequency of observed female-female workplace bullying were created by gender and career tenure. Gender socialization theory served as the study's theoretical foundation. The Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revise (NAQ-R) and additional demographic questions were used to collect data from a usable sample of 122 U.S. Human Resource (HR) professionals. The summed mean in the current study sample (M = 37.9) compared favorably to the overall mean reported by the instrument author (M = 31). The reliability estimate for the summed NAQ-R 22 items for the present sample was .97 when Cronbach's alpha was determined, supporting aggregating items into an overall scale for the present sample. Due to non-normal distribution, nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test analysis was used to compare observed frequency of female-to-female bullying behaviors in workplaces (dependent variable) by male versus female HR professionals (independent variable). Results indicated that there are not significant differences between male versus female HR professionals' frequency of observation of female-female workplace bullying (U = .199, p = .431). Kruskal-Wallis test analysis was used to analyze differences in observed frequency of female-to-female bullying behaviors (dependent variable) between HR professionals of different career tenure, and results showed that there were no significant differences in perceived bullying between the different HR professional job tenure categories, chi 2(4) = 3.83, p = .431. Gender and career tenure do not create significant differences in the frequency of observed female-female workplace bullying by HR professionals.