An organizational analysis of conflict in cases of academic sexual harassment: training videos as example

Abstract

As sexual harassment has become recognized in the legal system as an issue that interferes with both organizational and academic performance, scholars have increased their investigations into how society can better understand and prevent its occurrence. Video programs are one form used by academic institutions to train and educate their members on how and why sexual harassment occurs and what can be done to stop its prevalence on campus. Using literature on hidden conflict, this work investigates the effectiveness of a sample of such training videos taken from a large Southwestern university. Five programs designed specifically for use in an academic institution, and two more generally organizational-minded programs, undergo an interpretive analysis to determine the extent to which they openly address the conflict of sexual harassment on campus by providing evidence of institutional ownership of the problem and attempting to empower the potential target. Additionally, the analysis examines the extent to which the programs explicitly, implicitly, and tacitly encourage the viewer to hide the conflict. Both the format and information contained in the tapes suggest that the video mechanism of training used by academic institutions to educate their members on how and why sexual harassment occurs on campus does not facilitate effective management of the conflict, but instead functions to keep it hidden by encouraging targets to individualize the conflict and administrators to trivialize it.