How Organizational Responses to Sexual Harassment Claims Shape Public Perception

Abstract

Sexual harassment remains pervasive in the workplace. Complementing past research examining the intra-organizational effects of sexual harassment, this paper investigates its extra-organizational consequences by considering reputational damage organizations can suffer from sexual harassment claims. Four experiments (N_Total = 1,534) show that even a single sexual harassment claim can damage public perception of gender equality of an organization, which reduces organizational attractiveness. However, an organizational response characterized by proactive consideration of the claimant (compared to no mention of sexual harassment, mention of sexual harassment with no response, or a minimizing response to a sexual harassment claim) fully restores, and sometimes even increases, public perceptions of the organization’s commitment to due process and gender equality. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In order to test potential moderating influence of participants’ gender, we oversampled in this study. Please see the Online Supplement for further details of a priori sample size determination and results for participant gender.

2 As a manipulation check, participants answered whether or not they read about a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the company. As an attention check, participants were asked to choose a particular answer for a question to make sure they pay attention to instructions (see Oppenheimer et al., 2009). Participants who failed to answer either check correctly were excluded from the analyses.

3 Participants responded to the same attention check as in Study 1 (i.e., choose a particular answer for a question to make sure they pay attention to instructions). Participants who failed to answer the check correctly were excluded from the analyses.

4 Participants responded to the same manipulation and attention checks as in Study 1. Those who failed to answer either check correctly were excluded from the analyses.

5 Participants responded to the same manipulation and attention checks as in Study 1. Those who failed to answer either check correctly were excluded from the analyses.