Incorporating bystander intervention into sexual harassment training

Past research has suggested that one critical antecedent to ethical decision making is moral intensity, or the degree to which individuals regard an issue as having a moral component. [...]increasing the level of moral intensity should be a key component in training people to make ethical decisions (i.e., not engaging in SH and helping SH victims). [...]a decrease in organizational tolerance, as signaled by the incorporation of BI training into regular SH training, can have a cascading effect on employees to accept a higher level of moral intensity by leading them to perceive that an organization takes SH as a more serious, moral issue. [...]acceptance of SH myths is found to predict negative attitudes toward victims (Sakalli-Uğurlu, Yalçin, & Glick, 2007) and decrease bystanders’ willingness to intervene in situations (Bannon, Brosi, & Foubert, 2013; Burns, 2009). Furthermore, as echoed by past SH researchers, the benefits of high-involvement responses that we suggested, as well as the typology of observers’ response to SH proposed by O’Leary-Kelly and Bowes-Sperry (2005), have not yet been empirically tested (Willness et al., 2007). [...]future research needs to test whether bystanders’ intervention of a certain a level of involvement and immediacy is more advantageous in protecting SH victims and preventing high-risk incidents.