Revanchist Behaviors in an Academic Style: A Qualitative Study to Analyze Academics’ Revenge

Abstract

This study focuses on examining the counterproductive behaviors of academics, who have a lesser likelihood to show revanchist acts on account of the characteristics of their professional group, defining the purposes, means, and reasons of revenge, and determining the results of revanchist behaviors. To this end, we conducted a qualitative study on the academics who were working at Turkish state universities. In the end, the reasons, purposes, and means of revenge have been defined, and the results of revanchist behaviors have been determined through processing and analyzing interpretively collected data.  Accordingly, there are numerous rationales for revenge among academics as they define it personally and closely related to their personal character on one hand, and on the other hand, they tend to use various tools during revenge process, mostly a combination of semi-legal and legal ones since there are some obstacles (i.e. administrative sanction mechanisms) to use illegal tools. In addition, they aim to re-balance the situation and look for justice after any harmful action or activity stemmed from other parties. As a different result, revenge is defined as a tool for protecting self and self-interest(s).