Enduring, Strategizing, and Rising Above: Workplace Dignity Threats and Responses Across Job Levels
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-15-2024
Department
Management
Abstract
Despite a growing body of literature focused on understanding experiences of workplace dignity, attention has centered almost exclusively on employees with lower-level jobs. As a result, little is known about how workplace dignity and indignity are experienced by employees with middle- and upper-level jobs and how their experiences differ from those with lower-level jobs. We address these absences by interviewing employees from a diversity of lower-, middle-, and upper-level jobs about their experiences of indignity at work. We outline common dignity threats, along with typical emotional responses and recourses employees use at each level. We find lower-level employees experience chronic dignity threats from being disrespected, devalued, demeaned, and dehumanized, to which their most typical response is endurance. Middle-level employees experience periodic dignity threats due to undermining of their work, confidence, and reputation. For them, the typical response is strategizing. Finally, on the rare occasions upper-level employees experience dignity threats, it usually is due to a disregard of their special expertise or denial of special rights, to which they respond by rising above.
Original Publication Information
Tilton, J., Lucas, K., Kish-Gephart, J.J. et al. Enduring, Strategizing, and Rising Above: Workplace Dignity Threats and Responses Across Job Levels. J Bus Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05672-5.
ThinkIR Citation
Tilton, Jacqueline; Lucas, Kristen; Kish-Gephart, Jennifer J.; and Kent, Justin K., "Enduring, Strategizing, and Rising Above: Workplace Dignity Threats and Responses Across Job Levels" (2024). Faculty Scholarship. 948.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/948
DOI
10.1007/s10551-024-05672-5
ORCID
0000-0003-1645-6603
Comments
© The Author(s)
The link to the article is provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative, which allows "links to view-only, full-text subscription research articles to be posted anywhere - including on social media platforms, author websites and in institutional repositories."
SharedIt | Springer Nature | For Researchers | Springer Nature