The purpose of the research presented in the article, “Workplace Aggression in Teenage Part-Time Employees” is to determine if among teenage employees, interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision predicts aggressing toward supervisors at work, like it does among adult employees. Also, the study aims to determine is teenagers take part in workplace aggression. Workplace aggression is one of the most important issues that affect young workers. Moreover, there are different forms of aggression, physical (e.g., punching) or psychological (e.g., verbal insults). Workplace aggression are harmful for the individuals as well as for the organizations. The study presented has two hypotheses. In the first hypothesis, the researchers predict that there is a relationship between the teenager’s financial reasons and interpersonal justice and abusive supervision. If one of them is high, all of them are high, while if one of them is low, all of them are low. However, if the teenagers’ reasons for working are low, aggression would be low, no matter what. In the second hypothesis, the researchers hypothesize that when teenager’s personal reasons for working are high, aggression will be low, regardless of the degree of perceived interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision. Also, they predict that when teenagers’ personal reasons for working are low and interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision are high, aggression will also be high, while when interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision are low, aggression will be low.
To conduct the study a group of senior high school students were distributing surveys to 131 (71 girls, 60 boys) employed Canadian high school students and giving information about to study. The survey consisted in questions related to age, education, hours worked per week, hourly rate of pay, time worked with supervisor, and anger. The questions were rated from 1 to 5; 1 being strongly disagree, while 5 strongly agree. In order to participate, the participants had to be full-time students and part-time employees, which was 2 to 37.5 hours per week. The students who worked more than 37.5hr per week could not participate, therefore the final sample consisted in 119 participants (69 girls, 50 boys). Participating students returned their surveys anonymously in a sealed envelope to the students who conducted the study and as a reward they received a $1 gift certificate to a coffee and donut store. The participants’ average age was 17 years, and their average education level was Grade 11. Also, they worked on average of 18.0 hr per week. 22% of them worked in fast foods restaurants, 17% local stores, 14% large department and grocery stores, 14% in restaurants, 9% in fitness centers, 9% in community and government services, 8% in small organizations, 4% at gas stations, and 4% in bars, and 4% delivered newspapers. The study focused on the purposes of interpersonal injustice, abusive supervision, and reasons for working in order to predict teenagers’ workplace aggression.
Since not a lot of students participated in physical workplace aggression (14% in total, 8% participated in one act of physical aggression) researchers could not examine psychological and physical aggression together. The 12 variables presented in the study were age, education, hours per week, hourly rate, time with supervisor, anger out subscale, gender of teenager, gender of supervisor, interpersonal injustice, abusive supervision, financial reasons, personal fulfillment, aggression. They were summed up to provide an overall score, and the measure pf psychological aggression was used in all subsequent analyses. The results of the study showed that the most common forms of psychological aggression directed at supervisors were making rude comments/gestures, transmitting damaging information. Approximately 25% of participants participated in these kind of behaviors, while only 16% of participants reported being sure, yelling at, and insulting the supervisors. Also, approximately 6% of participants reported damaging property, swearing at, and crying in order to make supervisors feel bad. This study showed that the lack of physical aggression was different from other studies that researched workplace aggression.
The results of the first hypothesis tested was that financial reasons for working moderated the effect on both interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision ΔR2 = .09, p < .01; ΔR2 = .14, p < .001. It shows that there is a relationship between financial reasons, interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision. For both low and high financial reasons for working, when interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision were low, workplace aggression was low. When interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision were high and when financial reasons for working were low, workplace aggression remained low. However, when interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision were high and financial reasons for working were also high, workplace aggression was higher. If in the workplace environment aggression did not exist, the reasons for working there were higher, because people felt safe. Moreover, the results for the second hypothesis show that personal fulfillment reasons for working moderated the effect on interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision on the workplace aggression, ΔR2 = .13, p < .001; ΔR2 = .06, p < .01. Which shows that When personal fulfillment was high, workplace aggression remained at a similar level for both low and high interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision. However, when personal fulfillment was low, under low interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision, workplace aggression was low, and under high interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision, workplace aggression was higher.
The study’s data supports that aggression at work by teenage part-time employees exists. Teenagers show aggression at work more than adults do. Teenagers are more vulnerable, and the aggression engaged by them is mostly psychological. Reasons of working influence how workplace experiences affect workplace aggression. Financial reasons for working moderated the relationships between interpersonal injustice and abusive supervision and workplace aggression. Teenagers are more vulnerable and likely to experience aggression in the workplace. If they are in need of money, and have to work, they might feel trap. Nobody wants to work somewhere where they do not like, or feel welcomed. Also, if one keeps inside of him angry emotions for a long period of time, and does not talk to anybody, they are more likely to start fighting when they get the chance. Job availability could also affect findings related to teenage workplace aggression, and future research should consider economic factors that relate to teenage employment.
The implications of the study are that the experience of having initiated aggression acts in the workplace could have implications for teenage employees’ well being as they grow up. Also, the understanding of aggression at work might have been an implication.
in general. Future research is necessary to examine the long-term consequences of involvement in exposure to workplace aggression. The study contains three limitations that should be addressed in the future studies. The first limitation is the cross-sectional nature of the data warrant consideration. The second limitation is the sample size. There were only two predictor and two moderator variables that could be examined in the same time. The third limitation is that the data was self- reported, the magnitude of the relationships between predictor and dependent variables could have been exaggerated. Overall, the study proved both, of the hypothesis. Financial and personal reasons for working moderate the relationships between interpersonal injustice and workplace aggression and between abusive supervision and workplace aggression. Organizations should take responsibility and help teenagers control their emotions to their supervisors.