Understanding Sexual Harassment and Assault Climate: A Latent Profile Investigation

As highlighted by the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment and assault appear to be widespread across a variety of organizations (Wang, 2016). Although efforts to reduce the prevalence of these negative workplace behaviors have identified climate as a critical antecedent to preventing sexual harassment and assault, little research has addressed the specific components that describe this form of climate (O’Leary-Kelly, Bowes-Sperry, Bates, & Lean, 2009). We addressed this gap using a profile analysis approach to split a general “implementation” climate factor (Williams, Fitzgerald, & Drasgow, 1999) into four types of climate (i.e., prevention, enforcement, response, and retaliation) to broadly represent the different ways that climate dimensions can be configured for preventing sexual harassment and assault. Results showed that three distinct profiles emerged from these climate dimensions, and they were linked to auxiliary criteria including experienced sexual harassment/assault at work and several job attitude variables. We discuss how our person-centered approach to representing climate holistically can improve the design of climate interventions for preventing and responding to sexual harassment and assault.