Sexual harassment in the workplace: Rituals as Prevention and Management Strategies in COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

This study aims to increase our understanding regarding the use of rituals as the prevention and management strategies for the external consequences resulting from sexual harassment in the workplace during the COVID-19 crisis. We conducted a qualitative study through semi-structured interviews (N = 30) with employees in five hospitals and analyzed the data with a grounded theory approach. The results indicated that rituals could positively influence reputation repair and legitimacy construction. Moreover, interaction patterns between organizations and stakeholders mediated the relationships between rituals and prevention and management results heterogeneously. Managerial perceptions, ritual factors and cultural factors influence rituals to achieve more effective results in terms of prevention and management. By presenting a process model illustrating rituals’ unique capacity to prevent and manage the threats of workplace sexual harassment, we contribute to the literature on workplace sexual harassment and rituals in three ways. First, we extend the workplace sexual harassment literature by exploring prevention and management strategies for external consequence/reputation threats. Second, we present a process model to illustrate how rituals impact the results of sexual harassment prevention and management strategies. Third, we illustrate the mediating and moderating factors and their contributions toward developing better rituals that function in such prevention and management strategies.