The Mason Institute Lunchtime Seminar Series 2021/22 continues with Prof Rosalind Searle, Professor in Human Resource Management and Organisational Psychology from the University of Glasgow.

Looking again at workplace sexual violence: Understanding the multi-level enablers and inhibitors that create, facilitate and reduce work place violence.

Drawing on state of the art psychological science this talk invites us to think again about sexual violence in the workplace. Drawing on socio-cognitive theory and perspectives of moral licencing, I outline how we need to look again at this behaviour and to understand afresh the individual, and wider factors, that play critical roles in its creation, maintenance and reduction. I will outline why legal sanctions matter, but are just one of a three element means to deter and inhibit. I will outline how perpetrators can use their high status and good deeds to remove scrutiny and sanction, and facilitate their moral disengagement from these actions. I will contend the need to change our mindset to look beyond the individual to consider the part employers, co-workers and the law have in greenlighting workplace violence.



About the speaker - Prof Rosalind Searle

Professor Rosalind H. Searle (PhD, MBA) holds the chair in Human Resource Management and Organisational Psychology at the Adam Smith Business School in Glasgow. She is also Director of the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology’s Impact Incubator. She is a chartered Occupational Psychologist, and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS), The Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

Rosalind’s research focuses primarily on organisational trust, and through this lens she is interested in the role of HRM processes for trust, the impact of change on organisational trust, the role of Decent work, and exploring distrust and its consequences particularly for counterproductive work behaviours. She is interested in the psychological processes that underpin changes to employee emotions, cognitions and behaviours. Her work with the UK’s health and social care regulator Professional Standards Authority has included comparative examination of fitness to practice producing one of the most influential reports for regulation identifying the individual, social and organisational antecedents, processes and contexts that lead to sexual misconduct and dishonesty in organisations. Her ESRC CREST funded study examined the impact of change on trust and CWB, and the subsequent toolkit has been widely used in organisations.

She has held a number of leadership roles, for example in her new role Directing the European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology Impact Incubator (2021-), Secretary General for Alliance of Organisational Psychology (2014-2018), and in various role for the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology. She is a member of Project GLOW (Global Living Organisational Wage) a 26 country initiative focused on researching living wages, and decent work. She has also co-led a number of EAWOP Small Group Meetings. She has also been a co-convenor for a standing group at European Group of Organisation Studies on Organisational Trust. She is an associate editor for Group and Organisation Management and the Journal of Trust Research. She also sits on the boards of Human Relations, Journal of Management and International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation.

Her research has appeared in leading international journals (e.g. HRM, Journal of Organisational Behavior, International Journal of HRM, Long Range Planning and Organization Studies). She was co-editor for the Routledge Companion to Trust and for Edward Elgar’s Frontiers of Trust book series.