What can nudging offer to reduce workplace sexual harassment? A conceptual review

Abstract

This paper examines workplace sexual harassment and looks into why workplace sexual harassment remains a pervasive, underappreciated problem in the United States and outlines the limitations of existing controls of sexual harassment at work, namely sexual harassment policies, awareness training, and grievance procedures. Based on these limitations, it reflects on the current definitions of sexual harassment and introduces the concept of nudging to support the preventive and corrective measures already adopted to reduce workplace sexual harassment. It provides a conceptual framework of nudges that might be effective in reducing incidents of sexual harassment. The eight types of nudges that form the framework are grouped into five overall categories depending on who a nudge is for: top, middle, and line management, harassers, observers, victims, and society. This paper is first to conceptualize nudging as a supportive mechanism to traditional management control systems in the context of workplace sexual harassment.