PhD students Alec Cram and Matthew Philp also recognized

Wei Wang, Dean David Saunders, Jana Raver, Alec Cram and Matthew Philp

Nov. 20, 2012 – Kingston This year’s recipients of the Queen’s School of Business Research Excellence Awards were lauded at a reception at Goodes Hall. The QSB Award for Research Achievement was presented by Dean David Saunders to Jana Raver, Associate Professor and E. Marie Shantz Faculty Fellow in Organizational Behaviour, while New Researcher Achievement Award honours went to Wei Wang, Assistant Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Finance. The inaugural recipients of awards recognizing research excellence at the doctoral level were PhD students Matthew Philp and Alec Cram.

Jana’s research interests include interpersonal relations and group processes in the workplace. She focuses on the ways in which employees support each other and build high-performance environments instead of engaging in counterproductive actions such as harassment and bullying. She impressed the award committee with her record of publications in top-tier journals and her role as editorial board member for leading publications. She has published articles in journals such as Science, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management Review. She is an associate editor at Applied Psychology, and a principal reviewer at Journal of Applied Psychology.

Wei Wang’s accomplishments early in his scholarly career are impressive as well, making him a worthy recipient of the New Researcher Award. The award recognizes a faculty member whose research during the pre-tenure period is considered outstanding. Wei’s research focuses on bankruptcy restructuring, distressed investing, activist investors, corporate governance, capital structure, and behavioral finance. In 2012, he made a name for himself with several papers relating to creditor rights in large bankruptcies. His research has been published in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis,
Financial Management, and Journal of Fixed Income.

The Research Excellence Award program is administered by an ad hoc committee of QSB professors. In addition to the recognition, recipients receive grants to support their research and facilitate its dissemination in high quality publications.

Read about Jana’s research at QSB Magazine and watch for Wei’s research in the Winter 2013 issue, out in January.

New research from Queen’s School of Business reveals that nearly 6 out of ten working Canadians are exposed to workplace harassment – and the culprits are often women

KINGSTON, ON, March 21, 2012 – The celebrated series Mad Men, which portrays the 1960s world of advertising, is about to enter into its much anticipated fifth season. And while protagonist Don Draper’s offside behaviour towards women in the office is widely regarded as an approach of days gone by, a recent Leger Marketing poll commissioned by Queen’s School of Business reveals that workplace harassment is still very much a part of the modern day office environment with 57 per cent of working Canadians having experienced or witnessed workplace harassment.

But what does harassment look like in today’s workplace? Queen’s School of Business professor and expert in organizational behavior, Jana Raver says inappropriate ‘love taps’ and coerced office affairs, like those portrayed on the popular show, aren’t the only acts constituting today’s harassment behaviours; harassment can take a variety of insidious forms that are sometimes difficult to identify.

“While we no longer smoke and drink in the office like the characters from Mad Men, Don Draper’s style of workplace harassment is still alive and well in 2012,” says Dr. Jana Raver, Associate Professor at Queen’s School of Business. “Many offenders rationalize their actions as harmless, but this isn’t a TV show that ends in 60 minutes — it’s real life, and a single incident of harassment can cause long-lasting suffering for the victim.”

She says gender dynamics play a role, but not strictly in the male versus female way that many of us may think.

While men are disproportionately identified as the culprits with half of the harassment inflicted solely by them, according to Jana, today’s office bully might very well be “Dawn Draper.” When women experience harassment (personally or witness to it), they are twice as likely as men to report that it came from another woman (30 per cent vs. 15 per cent of men).

The study also found that women are more likely to reveal they have personally experienced harassment (33 per cent vs. 26 per cent of men).

“Today’s workplace bully can be male or female, but while men tend to bully both women and men equally, female bullies tend to disproportionately choose other female colleagues as targets,” says Raver. “And contrary to stereotypes of bullies preying on the weak for power, most targets of bullying in the office — regardless of gender — tend to be the average and above-average performers.”