History of Childhood Oppression, Inter-Temporal Resentment and Compliance with Codes of Harassment at the Workplace: An Offender’s Perspective

Abstract

This study tends to identify intents and inclinations that explain low/ high compliance with the codes of provocation/harassment, at the workplace. Despite the reason and the fact that most literature on the subject takes into account the perspective of victims of harassment at workplace, this study prefers to take cross-sectional basis of the offender’s perspective. Studies on matters of harassment are generally prone to potential syndromes such as ‘accuse the victim’ and deliberation by state institutions in under-reporting of crime. Victims of sexual harassment, in most of the cases, don’t tend to share such sensitive information, instantaneously. Generally, past happenings of provocation and harassment are not been disclosed for decades, may be due to ‘social desirability bias’ or due to apprehension of losing job/career, as in most of such cases some senior fellow at the workplace is found involved in such provocation. An in-depth and detailed questionnaire with several sections has been furnished and floated primarily among male counterparts at the workplace, in Pakistan. In order to acquire responses with minimal biases, a counter biasing statement was included as part of the interview, while respondents were deemed assured that their identity and responses won’t be revealed to any other person or institution. In order to be cautious and prudent about the credibility of the proposed study and in ensuring concurrent validity of the analysis, three competing models: Ordered Logit; Ordered Probit; and Robust regression have been estimated. Estimated models, consistently suggested: positive and significant impact of strong neighbourhood effect upon intent of provocation; positive and strong impact of personality trait jealousy; high and significant intent of provocation by persons with high exposure to abuse in form of witnessing or experiencing; while the most interesting finding is that persons with a strong history of abuse in their childhood, especially by their close relatives, develop resentment overtime against provocations, and have high compliance with codes of sexual harassment. Keywords: Sexual harassment, Childhood provocation, Chronic fatigue syndrome, Inter-temporal, Ordered-logit, Ordered-probit, Robust regression.