This thesis research aims to identify and test the efficacy of a self-administered intervention that victims of workplace bullying can use to help themselves if they have fallen into a state of psychological inflexibility. Some such individuals will resort to using an active or passive approach to confront a bully. While these approaches can be useful to temporarily alleviate the negative experiences arising from workplace bullying, they do not help to address the negative thoughts and emotions, such as self-blame and shame, that can manifest themselves because of bullying. Individuals dwelling in their negative experiences are essentially allowing themselves to get stuck in their thinking, which can eventually lead to depression and stress. There is currently no self-administered intervention that deals with this. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was chosen to be examined as a possible solution for this problem in this thesis research. ACT has been found to be useful in helping individuals who suffer from depression, stress and anxiety disorders, all of which are symptoms suffered by victims of workplace bullying. In the ACT model, there are six inter-related processes (acceptance, defusion, being present, self-as-context, committed action and values) and the
culmination of all these processes helps individuals to become psychologically flexible. Three studies were conducted in this thesis research and the participants were from Asia, specifically from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Study 1 involved a total of 50 participants using a questionnaire, sent using Qualtrics, an online software. It was conducted to identify whether those who have been exposed to workplace bullying are indeed low in psychological flexibility. This was found to be the case in this research. In Study 2, ten participants from those who had participated in the questionnaire were identified to have been bullied and to have scored low in their psychological flexibility score. The ten participants were randomly allocated into either an intervention group or a control group. Those who were in the intervention group received three sessions of skills training, and, apart from two participants, the remaining participants were found to have shown some change in their psychological flexibility. Using a qualitative approach in Study 3, thematic analysis was conducted and revealed that the participants did show a change in their mindset and were able to apply what they had learned to attain psychological flexibility. This thesis research reveals preliminary evidence of the efficacy of ACT for individuals who have been exposed to workplace bullying. This thesis should pave the way for further research in the area of workplace bullying, to explore and focus on intervention that bullied targets can use to help themselves to navigate through the residual psychological thoughts and emotions they carry as a result of their bullying experiences.

This thesis explored the influence of leadership incivility upon employees, with the aim of understanding individual experiences and developing organisational interventions. The research was undertaken within an acute NHS Trust setting, where through the author’s professional work, the issue of lack of confidence in dealing with uncivil leadership became apparent. Recent research has explored incivility within different workplaces, but studies within the clinical setting are limited, and incivility within the Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), including Physiotherapy, is a current literature gap.

A qualitative exploration of uncivil leadership was undertaken within the NHS Trust, and template analysis used to analyse data from semi structured interviews (N=20) conducted within the Physiotherapy department. The findings were presented and discussed in relation to 6 key themes, of “What it feels like to work with these leaders”, “Hierarchy”, “Why they behave that way”, “Patient care”, “Workplace culture and culture of leadership” and “Challenging the behaviours” (study 1). These themes informed the basis and design of an organisational intervention to give AHPs increased confidence in managing situations with uncivil behaviour. The intervention examined different strategies and coping techniques, ranging from directly challenging the uncivil individual, to learning to live with the behaviour through various techniques. A quasi-experimental study (study 2) consisted of pre- and post-measurements among AHPs in the NHS Trust. Participants completed a survey prior to the intervention (T1) and then after the intervention workshop (T2), split into an experimental group (n=50) and a control group (n=23). Measures of confidence (self-efficacy), Resilience (CD-RISC) were analysed using two-way mixed ANOVA’S. Measures of confidence in having a challenging conversation across different groups in the workplace, and in two different situations were analysed with paired t-tests.

The intervention was successful and levels of confidence and resilience in having a challenging conversation significantly increased after the intervention. The results also demonstrated a significant increase in the confidence of the participants in having challenging conversations, across the groups and within different situations, so when the uncivil behaviour was directed at themselves or their team. Overall, the research programme contributes an evidence base for interventions to develop confidence and resilience in challenging uncivil behaviour of those in senior leadership positions.

The dominant discourse in the media is that we live in a post-feminist era, in which feminism is no longer needed as women have achieved equality (McRobbie, 2004), and are assertive, confident, dominant, and equal. However, in sexting research (Ringrose et al., 2013; 2012), girls and boys still inhabit contradictory positions on what it means to do femininity or masculinity.

This study focuses on sexting amongst young people in Northern Ireland about which there is very little qualitative research. Interviews were conducted with four stakeholder organisations who assist schools in the delivery of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE), and with pastoral care co-ordinators in three post-primary schools to ascertain how their school is currently responding to sexting issues. Focus group interviews were then conducted with seventeen (ten girls and seven boys) 14–17-year-olds.

Stakeholder organisations and schools view sexting behaviour in various ways: as child sexual abuse, bullying, selfish gratification, and a child protection issue. By contrast, young people see sexting as normal behaviour. The young people report that it is more likely to be boys pressurising girls for a picture, a common finding in sexting research. Unlike the literature, however, this study found that girls also instigate sexting and put pressure on boys to send pictures. Despite this, there is still an unequal relationship between girls and boys because of the objectification of girls (and, rarely, boys). The study concludes that young people should advise on the content of RSE lessons and resources, and that RSE should move away from telling young people not to sext but to help them explore appropriate relationship behaviours, including sexting. Teachers should have access to appropriate training to help them feel confident about teaching such material.

Introduction: Cyberbullying is a complex and multifaceted public health issue among young people. Research indicates deleterious effect on the mental health and wellbeing of victims which warrants action to address this issue. Adults do not have first-hand experience of cyberbullying in their youth and so the development of prevention and intervention strategies can benefit from the engagement of young people’s perspectives. However, young people’s voices are largely absent from the current discourse. This thesis aims to explore the nature, causes, and consequences of cyberbullying from the perspective of young people with a view to informing the development of evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies.

Methods: The research was framed by the Medical Research Council guidelines for intervention development. Qualitative and participatory research methods were employed. In the first instance a systematic review and meta-ethnographic synthesis of qualitative studies related to young people’s conceptualisations of cyberbullying was conducted. Secondly, a rights-based model was developed to facilitate the active involvement of young people in the research process. A Young Person’s Advisory Group was purposefully formed to collaborate in the design, conduct, and interpretation of a qualitative study of young people’s perspectives on cyberbullying as well as in priority setting for intervention development. Young People’s involvement in the Advisory Group was evaluated to determine the effectiveness off the model in facilitating young people’s participation in the research process and the acceptability of the approach. The co-designed qualitative study comprised focus groups with secondary school students which were conducted in the school setting.

Findings: The meta-ethnography highlighted that the fundamental role of cyber technology in young people’s lives and the complexity and ambiguity of the cyber world in which they connect are inherent to young people’s conceptualisations of cyberbullying. The participatory evaluation of young people’s involvement in the research process indicated that the elements necessary for the effective realisation of young people’s participation rights were present in this study. Based on their interpretation of preliminary findings from the qualitative study, Advisory Group Members identified the non-consensual distribution of nude images and the mental health impact of cybervictimisation as serious concerns for young people and priorities for intervention development. Findings indicate that non-consensual distribution involves a complex process that is produced by, and reinforces, gender power dynamics. Young males, under pressure to conform to societal constructs of masculinity, coerce females to send explicit images which are screenshot and intentionally distributed, without consent, to male peers in exchange for social kudos. Regarding the mental health impact, cyberbullying was described as more psychological in nature and impact than traditional bullying with increased deleterious effect on the mental health and wellbeing of victims. Analysis identified several barriers which prevent victims from seeking social support and participants’ perception that suicide is a viable escape route for young victims defeated and entrapped by cybervictimisation.

Conclusion: This research makes a valuable contribution to the existing knowledge base in that it privileges youth voice on the nature, causes, and consequences of the phenomenon and highlights young people’s priorities with regard to intervention development. In response to research findings and suggestions from the Young Person’s Advisory Group a number of recommendations are made in relation to research, policy, and practice which are grounded in young people’s experiences, values, and norms.

This research was conducted to investigate labour turnover and retention in the hospitality industry in Ireland with a particular emphasis on a fun culture. The data collected was from front line employees of generation Z, generation Y and Generation Baby Boomers. These employees are employed as front line employees in hotels and bars of the hospitality sector in the North and East of Ireland. The method of collecting this data was the use of semi-structured interviews, for the purpose of generating rich qualitative data and to gain the realities of these employees working in the industry. Additionally, a thematic analysis was conducted to permit new and existing themes to emerge from the qualitative data.

A significant amount of findings was discovered. The findings show the impact of a fun culture, socialisation, implications of management, organisational citizen behaviour and compensation for low-wages has on the intention of employee turnover in the hospitality industry in Ireland.

The research findings may be of significant value to front line management and human resource management.

Children with autism face many social challenges and these have been associated with vulnerability to social exclusion and higher levels of bullying compared to the general population. This can lead to long-term negative outcomes including damaged self-esteem and mental health difficulties. Since the majority of autistic children in the UK attend mainstream schools, the studies conducted for this thesis aimed to explore under-researched areas such as the impact of inclusion, and in particular the attitudes of neurotypical children towards their autistic peers. In Study 1, interviews with autistic girls and their parents (n=22) revealed that girls experienced high levels of bullying, school absenteeism and a tendency to mask their autism and that this was more apparent in mainstream compared to special schools. In Study 2, interviews with teachers (n=12) highlighted many challenges supporting autistic children, but also identified some creative solutions and factors that control the extent to which these were implemented. The next three studies explored attitudes of neurotypical children and whether these could be changed through exposure and contact. Studies 3 and 4 (n=775) investigated attitudes of children in schools with high versus low exposure to autism. Findings revealed that educational exposure led to an increase in prosocial emotional responses to bullying and increased personal exposure facilitated an increase in positive attitudes towards people with autism. Study 5 evaluated the influence of contact with autistic peers through group music-making (n=49) on the attitudes of their neurotypical peers. The intervention led to increased prosocial emotional responses to a vignette depicting social exclusion of a child with autism. In summary, autistic children face many challenges, which are not always addressed by teachers in mainstream schools. Furthermore, the physical and social environment of the school affects attitudes towards autistic children. Combining educational exposure within inclusive school climates, and personal exposure through structured intergroup opportunities, can improve responses to bullying and attitudes towards autism, and may ultimately increase quality of life for autistic children in mainstream schools.

Lot of people nowadays are feeling stressed in their jobs. IT sector is not an exception and it was important to investigate the situation further in order to suggest recommendations. Purpose of this study was to examine levels of stress felt by IT workers in Ireland and main causes of that.

Quantitative study was conducted, in total 94 respondents participated. The results provided evidence that the employees frequently felt stressed and nervous, as they had a large amount of work to do, which required increased concentration and high levels of knowledge. Also, most of the respondents admitted that they did not have enough physical activity and also commonly experienced some negative physical symptoms – dizziness and tiredness and psychological symptoms – irritability, lack of concentration and angriness. Correlation analysis between the perceived stress and the feelings about the work revealed that higher levels of stress were highly associated with a decreased physical and mental well-being, decreased satisfaction with the workplace and personal life and trust and communication issues with co-workers and superiors. This study confirmed the previous results and suggested that, indeed, excessive stress in the workplace negatively affects all aspects of work and family lives. Also, relationship between stress and various demographical influences were tested. No significant differences between genders were found, even though literature suggests that women tend to be more stressed in the workplace.

Companies within the IT industry should take proper actions, in order to ensure that the employees are motivated and perform well, but without exceeding certain stress limits, which negatively affect their lives.

Just over one in 10 primary school age children in Ireland are first-generation immigrants (Department of Education and Skills [DES] 2018a). An even larger number of Irish primary school pupils have at least one immigrant parent (DES 2018; Central Statistics Office 2017). However, surprisingly little is known about the experiences of these “new Irish” parents (Roder et al. 2014, p.15) as they navigate the Irish primary school system. In extending the work of Cotter and Kolawole (2015) and Martin et al. (2018), this small-scale study employed semi-structured interviews to explore the lived realities of a small ethnically diverse group of immigrant parents. Some key people, including migrant rights advocates and ethnic minority community representatives, also shared their perspectives. This study used Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to understand how immigrant parents learn how to “do school” in Ireland (Hickes 2002, p.217). An examination of the personal narratives provided some insight into how immigrant parents view and enact their role in their children’s education. The qualitative findings also reveal the value which immigrant parents place on education and the high aspirations they hold for their children. Several obstacles to immigrant parent involvement were also identified. The results may help provide a better understanding of how immigrant parent-school partnerships can be supported in the Irish primary school context. Key words: immigrant parents; parent-school relationships; parental involvement; ethnic capital.

Cyberbullying of teachers by their pupils has not been researched as widely as adolescent bullying or cyberbullying. The cyberbullying of teachers by pupils has been defined as “the creation of digital texts, images and recordings that portray the teacher in ways that are demeaning and/or ridicule the teacher, which are then transmitted electronically to others” (Kyriacou & Zuin, 2015, p.267). This research attempts to provide a diverse understanding of the online lives of teachers in post-primary schools in Ireland. Some of the variables for examination include how teachers self-regulate their profiles on social media, the security and privacy prevention tools used and their attitudes towards communicating with students online. This research investigates the types of cyberbullying that teachers experience and how this influences them in their roles as teachers within their school environment. Negative physical and mental health effects including severe stress, fear for personal safety, teacher and pupil performance has been identified as a result of pupils bullying and cyberbullying teachers, this is an additional area of examination. This research utilises a quantitative approach to provide further insight into teacher cyber victimisation to develop support structures for teachers and schools.

This research examines the lived experience of 40 men from working class areas of Cork city as they attempt to desist from offending. As part of this study, addiction featured as a significant issue for all of the participants and dominated their desistance journey. This study aimed to understand how issues of masculinity, working class culture, poverty and trauma were relevant for men from the Cork area and their participation in crime. In addition, this research sought to understand the relationship between addiction and offending, and relatedly the relationship between desistance and recovery. This work uses the voices of the participants via life narrative interviews and the findings emerged via a Grounded Theory analysis that links the themes and concepts to the data.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of anti-bullying intervention (ABI) strategies. Situated in a UK police force, the study focused on the voices of three key agent groups that hold important yet different relationships with the ABIs in the participant police force. The research extends current understanding of how different groups with different constructs of bullying engage with the mechanisms in place to manage and control it. These three groups are referred to throughout the thesis as Creators, Disseminators and Users. Creators are primarily responsible for the ownership of ABIs, while Disseminators provide advice and guidance on the ABIs to the workforce, and the Users represent those targeted or accused of workplace bullying. This multi-agent perspective is important given that extant literature has focused predominantly on single-agent type groups.

The study uses Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a framework to reconcile the structure versus agency challenge and provides opportunity to understand the factors that shape attitudes and responses to bullying and the ABIs that are in place to manage and control it. Given that workplace bullying is complex, the Bourdieusian lens extends the opportunity to explore how these complexities are understood through individual, multi-level and socio-historical organisational contexts.

Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology, semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the deep-level responses from this multi-agent perspective.

The findings hold important implications for research and practice and extend current discussions in the workplace (anti)bullying field. Firstly, they suggest that contemporary ABI strategies may no longer fit the requirements of a modern police force. New recruits holding deinstitutionalised and individualistic career trajectories reject informal approaches to dealing with bullying at work that are favoured by those with longstanding careers in policing, in favour of more formalised ABI strategies. Secondly, the findings indicate that, beyond formal ownership of the anti-bullying strategies, the hidden organisational network predicated upon social alliances is a powerful mediator in shaping how the ABI strategy is understood and enacted. This extends current understanding of how bullying is maintained and moves discussions to the networked level of organisation. Thirdly, the use of gendered language applied at the individual and organisational levels of organisation were found to be influential in diminishing the value and role of the ABI. The findings further suggest self-seeking system abuse of the ABIs, particularly by those seeking promotion or whose work performance is negatively brought into question. Finally, and importantly, the study also offers new theoretical insights into the reported gap between ABI policy/strategy construction and implementation. Drawing on the concept of habitus, the study utilises habitus as a new way of understanding how different workplace demographics and policy/ strategy developers create their own understanding of bullying at work and the mechanisms in place to manage it.

This study revisits the behavioural aspect of management accounting control (MAC) that has remained mostly unexplored over the last four decades. In particular, this study investigates; how managers and supervisors use accounting technologies and other management control mechanisms (MCMs) to intentionally or unintention- ally bully the shop floor workers of selected privately owned RMG factories located in a high-power distance emerging economy. Drawing on Max Weber’s ‘social stratification’ (i.e. class, status and party), this study has revealed that to maximise organisations’ profit and secure their personal gains, managers and supervisors frequently use accounting technologies and other MCMs to deliberately (most of the cases) bully the subordinate workers. In so doing, managers and supervisors justified their bullying behaviours through workers’ class situation, educational credential, geographic location and gender. Owners of the selected factories, on the other hand, legitimised MAC based- managerial bullying (MB) through their economic resources and social status. In fact, by involving in state politics and obtaining legislative power, they also influenced government policies (e.g. labour laws and national minimum wage) to reduce the collective bargaining of workers in a particular sector of the economy. Nevertheless, owners also patronise insiders (e.g. supervisors and managers) and outsiders (e.g. members of political parties, state police, government employees, and bureaucrats) to bully the workers institutionally through intimidation, harassment, and violence. This study, therefore, argues that there is a strong connection between MAC and MB that might succeed through the existence of social stratification and political patronage in a particular sector of a high-power distance emerging economy.