Breathers releases outlets and pauses: employee resistance in the context of depersonalized bullying

Abstract

Introduction The study of workplace bullying, which originated in Scandinavia in the 1980s with the work of Heinz Leymann who used the term "mobbing" to describe the phenomenon (Einarsen, Hoel, [...] Drawing on a study rooted in van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenology, conducted with agents working in international-facing call centers in Mumbai and Bangalore, India, this paper describes employee resistance to depersonalized bullying. Data were gathered through conversational interviews and subjected to selective and sententious thematic analyses. The theme of 'breathers, releases, outlets and pauses' captures both the various behaviours that participants engaged in to gain respite from and to acquire control over their oppressive work environment and the factors that determine their behaviours, namely, their professional identity and their job-related material gains. The findings not only further our understanding of the nascent concept of depersonalized bullying but also retheorize power dynamics in the context of workplace bullying. Keywords: Workplace bullying, power, routine resistance, subjectivity, call centers, India