Learning, Teaching and Leadership

I am pleased to have collaborated with Dr. Leda Stawnychko and Ms. Rafi Mehnaz on this new article, “Exploring the impact of workplace incivility on psychological safety and leadership succession in higher education” in the International Journal for Leadership in Education.

I first met Leda Stawnychko when she was an EdD student at the University of Calgary. I had the pleasure of serving on her supervisory committee to support her doctor of education research project on Leadership Development Experiences of Department Chairs at a Canadian University.

When Leda invited me to join her later for a project on psychological safety and leadership succession in higher education, I accepted right away. This topic is important one and it rarely gets discussed in the literature on academic integrity, but as we know, professional and collegial ethics are part of a comprehensive approach to academic integrity.

As we point out in the abstract and in the main body of the article, there is a disproportionate impact of incivility on equity-seeking and early-career faculty. In other words, those who are already marginalized and experience barriers and discrimination are more likely to be on the receiving end of workplace incivility and hostility.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There can be no integrity without equity. We need to think more about the way that higher education as a system allows for the perpetuation of discrimination and harm, not only for students, but also for faculty and staff. If the workplace is not a psychologically safe environment, then employees cannot thrive.

I invite you to check out the article, which is open access and free to read and download.

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Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is a Professor and Research Chair in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer.