Nonviolence at Workplace—Scale Development and Validation

Religion and Philosophy

In Jainism, himsa or violence against sentient can be committed by yoga (modes such as mind, speech, and body) and karana (through action such as doing it yourself, getting it done through others, or by giving consent to others). Ahimsa emphasizes the sanctity and dignity of every living being irrespective of species, caste, color, creed, or nationality and it is preached that the practice of ahimsa is both an individual and collective virtue (Sangave, 1991). Themes such as mercy, universal brotherhood, compassion, ahimsa, love, and sacredness of life have resonated in various religious teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Judaism although history has revealed that religions have also contributed to violence (Gopin, 1997). This study's focus is on nonviolence which is a literal English translation of Áhimsa. Nonviolence is prescribed in the eight-fold path (Ashtanga Yoga) to achieve control over body, senses, and mind (Sharma, 2003). According to chapter 10, verse 5 in Bhagwad. Gita, nonviolence is the spiritual realization of the true body that enables the evolutionary progressive life of living entity (Prabhupada, 2000). According to Swami Prabhupada, text 8–12 of Bhagwad Gita means that violence is caused when one is trapped in ignorance of material concept of life (Bhagwad-Gita, 1978). Detachment from material entanglement enables nonviolence. According to Mahabharata scriptures, nonviolence is the supreme moral duty (Easwaran, 2007). It means not harming others by thoughts, words and deeds and a universal love for all living creatures (George, 2008). According to Indian philosophy, concentration of mind is achieved by showing friendliness to the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked. Hatred is said to disable mentality (Ram Murthy, 2012).

Sociology, Political Science, and Psychology

The dictionary meaning of nonviolence ¹

The focus of nonviolence is to influence change without injuring the opponent (Bondurant, 1965). Nonviolence is a technique in which, one or both parties to a conflict, can resolve the paradox by reinterpreting the situation (Bondurant, 1965). The distinctive feature of nonviolence is the rejection of the stereotypical interpretation of the “enemy” (Lynd, 1966). It recognizes hardships in self and the opponent (Tolstoy, 1967). The world view that human nature is violent is a distortion of reality and impacts our behavior and interpretation of situation. Such built-in bias toward violence restricts search of nonviolent solutions (Sharp, 1973, Vol. 1). Nonviolence limits man's capacity for unreality and stereotypical interpretation. It attempts to gain an accurate understanding of the opponent's views, motivations, and intention (Sharp, 1973). In a violent struggle, the oppressor is attributed with faults and weaknesses while in nonviolence, “self-suffering” is accepted should the opponent fail to understand or even seek to harm (Cooper, 1973).

Creative nonviolent action requires reorganizing or reinterpreting old information to channelize cognitively controlled anger. It discriminates between a man and his role and recognizes that unjust acts through roles and structures are not necessarily motivated by evil. A nonviolent activist can become a significant force by transforming himself (Pelton, 1974).

It recognizes that the oppressor and the victim are creatures of circumstances. Thus, blame, if attributed should be to both or to none (Sharp, 1979). In nonviolence, truth is a relative and is subject to evolution and reinterpretation. It signifies fight against evil acts and not human beings (Iyer, 1983).

Nonviolent personality is highly empathetic, envisions others perspective, is altruistic, and does not aggress on provocation (Kool & Sen, 1984). It operates in the realm of rationality and accords high level of responsibility toward the violent other. Opponent is not perceived as enemy but simply a creature, which has erred under given circumstances. Thus, individuals are not labeled as wicked (Bose, 1987). Nonviolence is renunciation of physical and psychological violence (Holmes, 1990). A nonviolent person balances humanitarian concerns and justice (Kool & Keyes, 1990).

Nonviolence is human effort to contain aggression and pursue well-being (Asthana, 1990). Nonviolence is de-biasing from a self-referential position by allowing legitimacy to others (Brown, 1990). A negative image of the opponent (a steep self-other attitudinal gradient) is an impediment to nonviolent conflict resolution (Burrowes, 1996). The principle of nonviolence is that what holds good in respect of oneself applies to the whole universe. It does not differentiate between the opponent and the self and recognizes each party's interpretation of reality and truth (Easwaran, 1997). A nonviolent person claims moral superiority over the opponent (McAdam & Tarrow, 2000). Nonviolence does not attribute intentions to the oppressor. It separates the “evil” from the “evildoer” and isolates “evil” while salvaging the “evildoer” (Sharp & Paulson, 2005). Nonviolence is the discipline of the body and a realization that one's self is one's own friend as well as an enemy (Easwaran, 2007).

Four theories of nonviolence are proposed. The first is nonviolence as a psychological variable explained through three dimensions: aggression, moral concerns, and power (Kool, 1990, 1993, 2008). The second is nonviolent strategy classified as principled on one dimension and either reformist or revolutionary on the other (Burrowes, 1996). The third is a circular model of peacefulness or nonviolence represented by the three slices symbolizing peace with oneself, peace with the society, and peace with the nature encompassing the inner circle of universal peace (Brenes, 1999, 2009). The fourth theory is a two-dimensional model of nonviolence classified along the continuum of violence and nonviolence and means and ends. A nonviolent means and nonviolent ends is most likely to break the cycle of violence (Ritter, 2005).

Thus, the salient themes emerging from nonviolence literature are (i) non-personalistic attribution, (ii) reinterpretation of the stereotypical image of opponent, and (iii) change. While causing no harm is a universal value, the real test of nonviolence is only when it is pitted against violence (Borman, 1986). This study endeavors to find “what,” “when,” and “how” of the above themes by extending this search in area of violence.

Violence is an assault on physical self as well as on person hood, dignity, sense of worth of the victim (Scheper-Hughes & Bourgeois, 2004), and often instigated by violence and injustice. A violence cycle escalates from seemingly ambiguous, unintentional, and thoughtless acts into intentional and highly coercive behavior. The stimulus is perceived as unprovoked, cognitively interpreted as interactional injustice, and rapidly escalates into a tit-for-tat spiral by employing counter-aggression for revenge (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Thus, on one hand, revenge or “getting even” connotes destructive and antisocial behavior (Greenberg, 1990), on the other hand, it can also be constructive and pro-social (Bies, Tripp, & Kramer, 1997). Review of literature suggests that such constructive responses can possibly help to break away or depart from the violence spiral at any stage by two ways (i) ignoring the provocation and (ii) cognitively reinterpreting the provocation (Bies et al., 1997; Masuch, 1985). This not only breaks or defuses the vicious violence spirals but also eliminates the secondary spirals. This study found three ways in which cognitive reinterpretation takes place.

The first cognitive reinterpretation is bringing about a constructive change in self rather than futile attempts or expectation to change the opponent first. The opponent is perceived as unable or unwilling to change. Examples of constructive change in self is a working harder to “prove” the critic wrong as a response to a humiliating public criticism of work performance (Bies & Tripp, 1995; Kidder, 1981), seeking private confrontation with the opponent to solve the problem (Bies & Tripp, 1995; Morrill, 1992), avoiding the harm-doer for a short period of time (Bergman & Volkema, 1989; Bies & Tripp, 1995), and transferring out of the job or department.

The second reinterpretation is that the opponent lacks ability to understand the situation. In Milgram's Experiment, 65 percent naïve subjects administered increasingly severe shocks as punishment (Milgram, 1974, p. 48), but those who did not administer the shock, cognitively reinterpreted that the experimenter was dull and did not see implications of his act (Nissani, 1990).

The third reinterpretation is that the opponent is perceived to be under stress and hence trapped in his/her own biases, policies, and systems (Greenberg, 1990; Sharp & Paulson, 2005; Sitkin & Bies, 1993). Thus, three methods of cognitive reinterpretation legitimize benefit of doubt to the opponent and enable departures from the spiral.

We propose the domain nonviolence in Figure 1 by the extending the current tit-for-tat model proposed by Andersson and Pearson (1999).

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Figure 1.

Tit. for. Tat Spiral (Andersson & Pearson, 1999) Realm of Nonviolence

Research has proved that people have stable propensity to exhibit certain behavior (Shoda & Mischel, 1993) and the way in which an individual interprets a situation varies as a function of individual differences (Skarlicki, Folger, & Tesluk, 1999). Thus, we contend that nonviolence is a stable personality variable, governed by tendency to de-bias from unitary interpretation of provocation. A nonviolent person visualizes multiple reasons of provocation by the perpetrator, reinterprets the situation, and thus ascribes benefit of doubt to the opponent through non-personalistic attribution.

A nonviolent response of ignoring or bringing about a constructive change in self defuses violent spirals and curbs secondary spirals. We argue that the active cognitive process of reinterpretation, ascribing benefit of doubt, and finally bringing about a constructive change in self is more than simple abstention from violence. Thus, a nonviolent personality is an active agent in defusing violence spirals.

Operational Definition

Nonviolence: It is the propensity of an individual to constructively respond to provocation such as violation of norms of respect and justice at workplace or any provocation in a way so as to not cause harm to the opponent in thoughts, words, and deeds in the following four ways:

NVT_Ignore: Ignore violation of norms of justice and respect or violent acts of the perpetrator as it is unworthy of any consideration and thus defuse the violence spiral.

Item and Scale Development Process

Deductive method, called “logical partitioning,” or “classification from above” (Schwab, 1980) was used to derive definition of nonviolence. The item generation (Giles & Mossholder, 1990; Yukl & Falbe, 1990) was done using operational definition of nonviolence as a response pattern across four nonviolent departures represented in Figure 1. We created an initial pool of 40 items. While reverse coded items are recommended (Nunnally, 1978), it has also shown to reduce validity of questionnaire response (Schriesheim & Hill, 1981). Thus, we did not use any reverse coded items. The items were shown to three psychologists to check for clarity, ease of understanding, and relevance. Their advice was used to alter the sentence formulation and delete certain items. This procedure reduced the pool of 40 items to 32 items.

Instrument

The final instrument comprised of 32 items. The participants responded on a 5-point likert scale where 1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Often, and 5 = Usually. The maximum–minimum score ranged between 160 and 32.

Participants

One hundred and fifty-eight professionals from IT and manufacturing sector who were also part-time students of Master of Management Studies (MMS) offered by Mumbai University completed the 25-minute questionnaire. The manufacturing sector comprised of all privately owned manufacturing organization in sugar, oil, electronic products, locks, electrical goods, etc. The IT sector comprised of all organization engaged in developing, managing, maintaining, and processing data using information technology. The details are presented in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Demographics Details of IT and Manufacturing Professionals

		Professionals (N = 158)
Manufacturing		33
IT		125
Gender	Male	112
	Female	45
	Missing	1
Age	20–29 years	123
	30–39 years	29
	40–49 years	4
	50–60 years	–
	Above 60	–
	Missing	2
Educational qualification	Diploma	1
	Degree	124
	Masters	32
	Doctor	–
	Other	–
	Missing	1
Work experience	Mean	5.2
	Standard deviation	3.55
	Missing	2

Source: Authors.

Procedure

The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's test is presented in Table 2. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was 0.669, suggesting that the data are suitable for exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The decision on the number of factors that can be retained was simultaneously based on the examination of the Scree Plot (Cattell, 1966) and the eigenvalues-greater-than-one rule (Kaiser, 1974). To achieve meaningful results, items were deleted (i) if they loaded equally heavy on more than one factor (cross loading above 0.30) and (ii) if their loadings were smaller than 0.30. After item deletion, the EFA was rerun. The process of scale purification in this stage reduced the number of items from 32 to 27. Result of EFA on the data (Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization, Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis with a minimum of 0.30) is presented in Table 3.

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Table 2.

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy		0.669
Bartlett's Test of Sphericity	Approx. Chi-square	820.398
	df	351
	Sig.	0.000

Source: Authors.

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Table 3.

Rotated Component Matrixa for Nonviolence

		Component
		NVT_Stress	NVT_Ability	NVT_Constructive	NVT_Ignore
19	I inquire if the subordinate is upset due to some reason, if he/she threatens me	0.789
23	I query if coworker is under some pressure, if he/she criticizes me	0.646
17	I try to find out if a colleague is under nervous tension, when he/she insults me	0.640
12	I query if my coworker is under stress if he/she interrupts me continuously	0.536
3	I quietly probe if something is disturbing my subordinate, if he/she is impolite	0.496
6	I inquire if coworker is under any anxiety, when he/she takes full credit for my work	0.463
30	I feel a coworker may not be realizing when he/she takes full credit for my work	0.379
9	I feel colleagues lack etiquettes when they verbally insult me		0.747
25	I feel covert negative glances of colleagues are due to lack of social etiquettes		0.460
24	When resources are refused at work, I try to improve the quality of the proposal requesting resources			0.602
28	I review if I have been disciplined enough when I see my subordinate's indiscipline			0.599
32	I improve performance monitoring when a subordinate falls short of his/her responsibility			0.583
13	I re-evaluate if the goals were too aggressive when a subordinate fails to achieve targets			0.496
18	I overlook impoliteness of coworkers				0.723
22	I excuse when a coworker takes full credit for my work				0.564
31	I ignore it if I am refused resources at workplace				0.534
4	I ignore threats of coworkers				0.479
7	I ignore unjust criticism of my work				0.465
2	I excuse verbal insults made by coworkers				0.464
16	I take no notice of cold looks of coworkers				0.342
29	I pardon continuous interruptions of coworker while I speak				0.311
	Eigenvalues	4.30	2.20	1.92	1.67
	Cronbach's alpha	0.72	0.68 *	0.69 *	0.59 *
	Variance
	Total variance 37.35%	15.92	8.14	7.11	6.18

Source: Authors.

Notes: Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

^aRotation converged in six iterations.

^*Although less than Nunally's (1978) recommended 0.70 cut-off, internal consistency coefficients greater than or equal to 0.60 are considered to be acceptable for an exploratory study (Hair et al., 1998; Robinson et al., 1991).

A four-factor solution provided the most conceptually interpretable factor structure. The first factor is NVT_Stress was measured by seven items (α= 0.722). Factor two was NVT_Ability and included six items (α= 0.682). Factor three was labeled as NVT_Constructive and contained six items (α = 0.688), and factor four is NVT_Ignore and comprise eight items (α = 0.59). The fourth factor had Cronbach's alpha coefficient 0.59 which is approximately near to the internal consistency of 0.60 recommended (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1998; Robinson, Shaver, & Wrightsman, 1991) and hence accepted. This four-factor model explained 37.35 percent variance. The reliability test of the scale was performed and the Cronbach's alpha on standardized items is within acceptable level. Results are presented in Table 4.

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Table 4.

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's Alpha	Cronbach's Alpha based on Standardized Items	N of Items
0.783	0.785	27

Source: Authors.

Scale Validation

Nonviolence is a technique of creating goodwill (Bondurant, 1965). It is belief in the human potential to evolve and be humane (Lynd, 1966). It is a positive world view of human nature (Sharp, 1973, Vol. 1). It demonstrates trust on the opponent and converts the opponent's will (Sharp, 1973). Nonviolence is love for fellow human beings (Cooper, 1973). Creative nonviolent action creates love and goodwill by using reflective rather than reflexive action (Pelton, 1974). Nonviolence emanates out of a belief that no one is wicked by nature (Bose, 1987) and it is renunciation of physical and psychological violence (Holmes, 1990). Nonviolence is a conscious effort toward a transition from vegetative life to civilized existence (Asthana, 1990). Nonviolence helps the opponent confront his conscience (Burrowes, 1996). The principle of nonviolence is that all mankind is alike in essence (Easwaran, 1997). It seeks conversion of the opponent (Sharp & Paulson, 2005).

Objective

The objective is to test the construct validity of the scale nonviolence at workplace. If the construct captures the true essence of nonviolence as per theory, then we hypothesize as follows:

H1: Nonviolence will have a significant positive relationship with forgiveness.

Instrument

Operational Definition