Summary Post

Firstly, this summary post will review the application of the British Computer Society (BCS) Code of Conduct with the abusive workplace behaviour case study illustrated in the initial post, whilst appraising the resulting professional, legal, social, and ethical issues that affect computing professionals.

The team’s technical leader’s assumption of all the contributions made by Diane and her colleagues signifies abusive workplace supervision and leadership (ACM, N.D.). This is a violation of principle 3.3 of the BCS Code of Conduct which upholds the right of a team member such as Diane to claim responsibility for her work which was done under the supervision of a team leader (British Computer Society, 2022). Agarwal & Anantatmula (2022) denote that unmannerly supervision instigates employees such as Diane to suffer psychologically. This is an infringement of principle 1.1 of the BCS Code of Conduct which instructs computing professionals to have a mutual respect for each other’s safety (British Computer Society, 2022).

Consequently, abusive leaders discourage expertise sharing behaviour and reduce employee psychological safety (Argawal & Anantatmula, 2021). From a team member’s standpoint, participation in teams is an opportunity to gain higher job fulfilment and expertise (Argawal & Anantatmula, 2022).

However, Diane’s team manager demeaned her experience of abusive workplace behaviour which signifies that the organisational structure involving the team leader and team manager is abusive (ACM, N.D.). The findings of a study with data collected from 239 Indian project organisation managers propose that business leaders must devote time and resources to curtail abusive supervision in the workplace by adopting proficient communication systems, functional involvement of team members, formal leadership education programs for managers and an equitable workplace dispute resolution system (Argawal & Anantatmula, 2021). As a result, this fosters a psychologically safe, professional, and ethical corporate environment for computing professionals at all levels of an organisation (Argawal & Anantatmula, 2021).

In conclusion, it is an arduous task to withdraw all abusive managers from the workplace. Nonetheless, the aforementioned recommendations when adopted reduce the negative effects of offensive workplace supervision (Argawal & Anantatmula, 2021).

References

ACM Ethics. (N.D.) Case: Abusive Workplace Behaviour. Code of Ethics. Available from: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/using-the-code/case-abusive-workplace-behavior// [Accessed 26 Nov 2022].

Agarwal, U.A. and Anantatmula, V. (2022) Knowledge Sharing in Project Teams: Psychological Barriers. IEEE Engineering Management Review.

Agarwal, U.A. and Anantatmula, V. (2021) Psychological Safety Effects on Knowledge Sharing in Project Teams. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

British Computer Society (2022) Code of Conduct for BCS Members. Available from: https://www.bcs.org/media/2211/bcs-code-of-conduct.pdf [Accessed 26 November 2022].