Debby Dougherty - Predatory Behavior in the Workplace

Last Thursday night I went to a talk by Debby Dougherty on Predatory Behavior in the Workplace at 6 pm in JFF LL 125. Professor Dougherty attained her Ph.D. in communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an emphasis in organizational communication. She now teaches as a professor of Communication at the University of Missouri and she is the Editor in Cheif for the Journal of Applied Communication research.  The goals of Professor Dougherty's talk were to try and explain 2 questions - 1) How is predatory sexual behavior possible in the contemporary workplace? 2) How can organizational leaders prevent this destructive behavior?  

One thing professor Dougherty talked about that stood out to me was her "web of power" metaphor. She explained that it is never just the offender and the victim because power is never singular. Power is multiple and complex, with strands woven together into a web through which escape becomes impossible. This metaphor explains that this destructive behavior is actually encouraged through the subconscious culture of the organization/business or even society as a whole.
 

Another point that professor Dougherty made that stood out to me was that the most destructive thing a person can do is be a bystander to predatory behavior. Because when bystanders look the other way and don't do anything to prevent, the predators don't think they are doing anything out of the ordinary, and then the predatory behavior becomes normalized. Professor Dougherty explains that this notion of normalized behavior is the reason why the Catholic Church, USC, Penn State, JD.com, and several other businesses/schools/organizations have been able to commit atrocious acts for years. 

Another interesting point that professor Dougherty made was that money doesn't fix the permanent effects of this destructive behavior. This stood out to me because a lot of times I feel like our society immediately thinks that everything is back to normal after repercussions are paid to the victim. Professor Dougherty explained that it doesn't matter if the victim gets paid 100 million dollars for what happened to her, it's not going to make everything the way it was before. She explained that many victims suffer from PTSD (what veterans suffer from because of the horrible things they saw/experienced) and that the psychological damages cause victims to have overall lower life satisfaction for the rest of their lives.

Finally, professor Dougherty explained how we can start to prevent this destructive behavior from being so common in the workplace. She explained that we need to take a step back and realize that sexual harassment is what it is today because it is so deeply woven into our society that it becomes normalized. So instead of us focusing on how we can prevent an "individual" from doing such a terrible thing, she wants us to focus on how we can start to change the way our society and culture sees this problem because this is what allows the individual to commit the destructive behavior. So basically we need to tackle this problem from the outside-in, rather than from the inside-out.