By

Ian David, Amanda Mendoza, Samantha Belmudes, and Andrew Pham

The Nature of Backstabbing in Professional Settings

Although a typical day in the workforce can be long and strenuous, for many people, developing good relationships is crucial to maintaining their mental health. However, not everyone is willing to keep the peace and unfortunately, backstabbers can run rampant throughout any field and affect the wellbeing of their targets.

Question 1A:

In the research, it said that grad students were targeted as participants because they have more work experience. Do you believe that your results would have changed if you didn’t have any students as participants?

Dr. Malone’s starting point was working with graduate students, but she later decided to send these surveys to companies for subsequent procedures. However, using graduate students as participants was key in this case. Undergraduates in comparison don’t necessarily have as much work experience in comparison to positions higher up the professional hierarchy since most merely handled menial roles (e.g., retail and resturants) instead of occupying established careers.

(Malone & Hayes, 2021)

Question 1B:

Before you analyzed the results, what forms of backstabbing did you believe were going to be the most prominent based on your sample?

She wasn’t quite sure at the time of conducting the study if there were any particular forms of backstabbing were going to be more prevalent in workplaces. Regardless, the survey with open-ended questions heavily inspired her second study. 

The first study was a survey that incorporated open-ended questions. The second one consisted of a likert scale with questions based on answers she she received from the previous study. 

Dr. Malone was able to come up of numerous categories of backstabbing based on the information and data that was collected from the second study. These categories played a significant role in her study, as they broadened the definition and concepts of backstabbing. Although she did not focus on a specific form of backstabbing, all of the categories listed served a purpose for the entire study.

Question 2: 

Through your research, do you think gender plays a role in backstabbing and workplace aggression through the perceived motive of power struggles?

Dr. Malone does not believe that gender plays a role in backstabbing following to the results of her study. It was confirmed that the outcomes were not indiciating any considerable gender differences. Although, there is a common belief that women are more inclined to commit backstabbing than men are, but Dr. Malone’s findings prove otherwise.

The methodology of how they were backstabbing on the grounds of gender roles did not seem to hold true either. There were many various categories that emerged from it. An example of such would be the forms of how they were backstabbed, consisting of actions like lying, stealing ideas, spreading rumors, etc. 

Dr. Malone additionally examined how employees responded to the backstabbing they experienced. An example would be if they complained to the supervisor after the incident. Another response would be backstabbing the backstabber in hopes to get even with one another. These responses served great data to Dr. Malone’s research. These categories of backstabbing evolved from the methodologies of how they were backstabbed on the grounds of gender roles.

Question 3: 

Does the experience level and position of the employee, such as entry-level positions, leave the employee more vulnerable to backstabbing in the workplace In comparison to middle or intermediate positions?

Because our intended matter of primary research concentrates on instances of backstabbing between entry-level positions in particular, we needed to further explore her outcomes regarding durations of professional experience as a sample demographic. Dr. Malone divided such into: 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, and over 36 years of experience—additionally factoring in their specific occupations since the distances between administrative levels can vary across industries. 

Moreover, her response to this question explicitly stated that employees’ length of experience was not necessarily a variable which affected the frequency, occurrence, or manner of backstabbing. Her results contrarily indicated that the nature of backstabbing was similar across 0 to 36+ years of experience. Both active and passive forms of aggression were displayed. And, perceived motives were rooted in manners of self-projection, conflicting personalities, and pursuits of authority despite how much experience they had.

However, Malone is not absolutely certain that there is an absence of association between backstabbing and accumulated experience since her study participants skewed toward the higher tiers of the administrative totem pole. She revealed that a greater majority of her sample—by chance—occupied long-term careers near or within executive departments like chief executive officers, vice presidents, and managerial positions of that sort. 

Question 4:

 Due to this study being conducted in 2012, do you believe that remote work has reduced the amount of backstabbing found in the workplace?

When asked, Dr. Malone cited that she did not have enough information to address the question properly. Due to the study being conducted over 10 years ago, there are significant changes that have occurred regarding the workplace and how it’s viewed. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become the standard in the workplace. However, there is limited research conducted on remote work environments and the interactions among coworkers. 

Due to the limited study on remote work and its relationship regarding workplace behavior, there leaves much room for a new study to be conducted analyzing these interactions. A hypothetical study utilizing similar research methods as Dr. Malone’s backstabbing in the workplace methodologies and typologies would provide insight on how backstabbing incidents present themselves through remote work. 

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By: Maddie Barsch, Dana Del Rio, Janine Hernandez, Mikayla Orozco-Pedroza

First of all, we would like to thank Dr. Henry Puente for taking the time to speak with us regarding his qualitative research study on the Hispanic Hollywood. He was extremely helpful and provided us with insight that allowed us to have a better understanding of research methods and approaches.

Dr. Henry Puente is a Professor of Communications at CSUF. He has experience in the entertainment industry and specializes in researching the areas of U.S. Latinx Entertainment. We began this interview with Dr. Puente by asking him what inspired him to conduct this research. He explained how he worked for a Latino film distributor while also completing his Ph.D. He realized there was little research regarding Latino audiences and felt inspired. He decided that he could be the first to conduct this kind of research.

“What question do I want to ask?“

Once Dr. Henry Puente decided on conducting this study, his first step in approaching this project was creating questions to ask his interviewees and deciding what questions he wanted answers to. He explained how this was a difficult process because having questions is basically the entire basis and outline of the research. We can relate to this difficulty because likewise, we had to create questions for Dr. Puente to get our answers.

While on the topic of interviews, we asked Dr. Puente about the process of interviewing people for his research. He said that one aspect that surprised him was the fact that some people just did not want to talk about this subject. He said he was especially surprised because the questions he asked were not too personal or invasive. We think that this was very insightful information because organizing interviews plays a huge role in research. Without interviews it is hard to receive vital information that one needs for academic research. He also explained how this made his process much longer than he wanted it to be. He also introduced to us the idea of the IRB. It is a type of certification one has to have before interviewing people. He understood why the University makes this necessary after this experience. We found this interesting because we did not know about this concept beforehand.

Dr. Puente mentioned that research methods depended on the study in which was being performed. So, when asking him what method he used for this specific research, he had said he used a mix of both qualitative and quantitative studies. Quantitative studies were the easiest part since all he was looking at were numbers. The qualitative part was the hardest because of having to transcribe the information given by people. When interviewing people, it became hard at times to get the information needed from them. He had to be able to read people and navigate what was fact and what was fiction, which is only learned from experience.

With all the time and hard work he put into his research, he didn’t think it would be innovative but he more so did it because it was a topic that was never really brought into question. Being in the industry, he noticed there wasn’t much attention on latino culture, let alone films. He wanted his research to make an impact on the industry and to focus on better promotion and advertisement with latino films and to push to make more

In response to a question about the most effective research methods, Dr. Puente explained that the approach that works best depends on the study in question. He explains that much of his skill is derived from experience. 

 “People are complicated.” 

According to Puente, one of the skills he has acquired over the course of his research career is the ability to read people. When interviewing folks, you have to be able to discern whether they are saying what you want them to; “sometimes they don’t tell you enough” so you have to judge how relevant the information is. Puente goes on to explain that you can determine if a person is telling the truth by reading their body language and crosschecking it with other sources of information.

“Navigating fact and fiction is just a skill you have to learn, I think you can learn it but I don’t know if you can teach it” 

During the course of writing and publishing his research, Dr. Puente reveals he had no great ambitions. “Best case scenario, It might be helpful for people who are going to be promoting Latino culture or even reaching Latino audiences…you don’t necessarily write things because you think everyone is going to read it, you just want some people to read it.” In retrospect, he expressed hopes that it would have crossed over to the industry a little more. In spite of the fact that the work he conducted was kept under wraps, it continues to inspire young Cal State Fullerton researchers.

Navigating through the research was a process for Dr. Puente. When it came to choosing which films will be included in the research, he came up with a criterion that each film needed to be classified as a U.S. Latino film. To help with that process he used periodization. When talking about what is included and what is not included, he asked the question: “What is Hispanic Hollywood?” He determined the best way was to say when Hispanic Hollywood started and when it ended. With those determinations he also made a justification for his reasoning.

“Most of the cast had to be latino, director had to be latino, the writer latino, had to be produced in the U.S.,” said Dr. Puente.

In that short period that Hollywood was making Hispanic films, Hollywood will use English/Spanish print and advertising, as well as Hispanic language and subtitles. Knowing that fact defined Hispanic Hollywood according to Dr. Puente.

Although Dr. Puente was the first one to research Hispanic Hollywood, he did not feel overwhelmed. He felt that there was no pressure because the research simply did not exist yet.

“This research did not exist, so whether I don’t do it or do it do matter that much, so I just kind of saw it as something of tiny little contributions of knowledge and not as something more than that,” said Dr. Puente.

After a year and a half worth of work Dr. Puente’s discipline helped him finish his research on “Marketing and Distribution lessons from Hispanic Hollywood.” and is available to read online.

By: Isla Huerta, David Peach, Devin Guevara, Antoine Dinh

Professor Erickson is an associate professor at Cal State Fullerton where she teaches Comm Law and Media and Society. Professor Erickson has several published articles that are in the realm of law review, but the article that we chose to base our research around is the article, The Watchdog Joins the Fray: The Press, Records, Audits, and State Access Reform. The article is about how journalists have crossed into the realm of politics so that information can become more accessible. In our interview with Professor Erickson we ask her a series of questions that give us an insight of how she conducted her research and why she chose to do research on this topic.

What made you choose to research about the watchdog element of journalism?

Being that Erickson is a professor in law, she is well versed in the ideas of information and how it should be presented legally and if it is legal to obtain in the first place. Her article, The Watchdog Joins the Fray: The Press, Records, Audits, and State Access Reform is a research piece that focuses on the free flow of information and the access to it by the general public. In our interview, Erickson states that there are three main groups or occupations that have to deal with freedom of information – those being: librarians, lawyers, and journalists. For her research she was set to create a “group” that would do audits in seven different states in order to find out if the information that was supposed to be public really was public and accessible. When these groups set out, Erickson learned that not only was the information inaccessible, but the journalists who went for the information were displeased with the lack of cooperation with the states. This led to the journalists trying to push for more accessibility to the information effectively making them activists on the side of freedom of information and putting more pressure on the states to allow free flow. Erickson stated that this surprised her and it was not something that was planned but certainly welcomed as the watchdog of journalism was in full effect though her research

How was the research conducted?

Professor Emily Erickson said that it was a painstaking process, but there were seven different case studies. Gathering information from seven different states as well wasn’t easy, but it took time and patience. One of the types of research that she included was multi prong research and she took interviews of 100 people who were involved with the freedom of information. This included lawyers, politicians, journalists, and editors. Another form of research that was included was statutory analysis and she created a typology from the information that was gained from the statutory. Historical analysis was key in this research. In order to do this, Erickson read countless press coverage about freedom of information and audits in the seven states. The last form of research that she used was political science theory to understand groups and coalitions. Looking over the work and information that was gained, Erickson said that she did too much research, but it was necessary to make sure all the information was correct and accurate. The amount of research that was done made it possible to gain all the information needed about state audits, freedom of information, public records, to help make the watchdog possible.

What challenges did you face throughout your research?

When we asked Professor Erickson about what her challenges were throughout her research, she answered by saying she felt like throwing her hands up and her mind was spiraling into despair when she was researching about finance and corporate speech related stuff. She explains that she is currently going through this with her partner Matt with the paper that they are currently doing. She says that the problem is that they can try pointing something out, but who really cares about their point because whoever they are researching about knows what they are doing so why even bother.

Professor Erickson mentions that with legal research, what you want is to be cited. You want your ideas to ultimately find their way into arguments that are made in court. One of the papers that Matt and her did was called “Transformative You”. She explains that the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards have submitted an amicus brief, which is an argument that supports one side of a case. Since their amicus brief has been submitted to the Supreme Court, someone at the Supreme Court will potentially see their names if their research is used. Erickson goes on to explain that if you read court cases, you would know that court opinions will actually cite research from researchers like her. She says that getting cited is the goal and her challenge is being able to write something that will get cited. Something that is persuasive enough and well-articulated enough to make it to the big stage.

With Erickson having such a huge goal, perfectionism is her biggest challenge. She always goes crazy about making every little thing perfect, but not because she thinks that she’s perfect, but because the self doubt in the back of her mind is telling her that this is not perfect. She has a big goal so she wants everything to be completely perfect and wants everything to be good in order to accomplish the goal.

Professor Erickson never went to law school and because of that it has caused her to have imposter syndrome since she self learned almost everything in regards to law. She mentions that she has taken a couple law classes in grad school for her PhD that was in her area of study, but she’s never had 2 years worth of hardcore law training. So what comes easily for other people didn’t come easy for her, especially since they were taught how to turn these things out and she wasn’t. She advises that students should fight the imposter syndrome as hard as they can and that most of us feel that challenge at some point in our lives when we really don’t know what we’re doing. Confidence is the key even if you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing, carry yourself with confidence because it can really take you a long way.

“If you’re never failing – it probably means you’re never taking any meaningful risks.”

Emily Erickson

Was there anything that surprised you when conducting your research?

As we began to do our own research we asked Professor Erickson if there was anything that surprised her to see if we should expect any surprises. Erickson goes on to say that when doing her research she was not expecting journalists to be activists since journalists are supposed to be seen as independent from those they write about. This is surprising because throughout the history of journalism there has always been a specific way of writing a story and journalists are really only supposed to objective. Professor Erickson feels very strongly that journalism needs to change and she says, “you shouldn’t just follow this basic idea that in itself is not truth”. Having a newsroom that is filled with diversity that is not just about race and gender, but also about diversity of backgrounds can bring a fresh perspective to different things. With her new findings Professor Erickson believes that the new generation of journalists can change journalism for the better and strive to give journalists their own voice when writing their stories.

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