Applying Oppression Theory to Improve Organizational Health and Team Outcomes

 

Workplace incivility in nursing practice and learning has negative impacts on the victims and the patients as well. Protecting vulnerable individuals and empowering the victims can ensure that the organization delivers health efficiently and in an effective environment. The oppression theory explains uncivil workplace behaviors in a socio-ecosystem but identifies the source and the victims of these behaviors. For example, using the critical consciousness by Paul Freire to address oppression, key interventions aim at implementing actions against and awareness of these behaviors and their consequences. 

The organization can identify those at risk of experiencing uncivil behaviors and take action against the perpetrators. Using this theory enables the implementers of interventions to understand the socio-ecosystem with different levels where appropriate interventions can be applied. For example, awareness interventions are best applied at the victims’ and vulnerable populations’ level, while punitive actions can best be applied to the perpetrators.

Evidence-Based Strategies to Create High-Performance Interprofessional Teams

Key shortcomings from my workplace environment assessment were poor employee satisfaction, lack of transparent, direct, and respectful communication, and poor employee engagement. Clark (2019) presented an article on a technique combining various interventions and a conceptual model to address workplace incivility among vulnerable groups, especially learners and junior practitioners. Cognitive rehearsal, according to Clark (2019), is a strategy that will address these shortcomings in the workplace by empowering vulnerable employees, such as junior nurses and nurse students, to address incivility and handle it in nonviolent ways. 

This strategy will require that junior nurses be attached to mentors or seniors who are skilled facilitators (Clark, 2019). The role of these facilitators will be to provide guidance to their juniors through debriefing, preparatory learning, and evidence-based scripting. This will enhance communication between junior nurses and other professionals, improve their satisfaction with nursing practice, and engage them in solving extralimital problems.

Another strategy focuses on enhancing Workplace Relational Civility through a contemporary prevention approach that aims at enhancing relational decency, culture, and readiness in the workplace (Di Fabio & Duradoni, 2019). In this strategy, the nurse managers can take up the active leading role in identifying risk factors and enhancing building on the individual strengths of employees (Atashzadeh Shoorideh et al., 2021). 

Workplace relational civility that starts from the top managers can trickle down to the employees vulnerable to workplace incivility. Therefore, civility aspects such as respect, courtesy, and taking cognizance of others’ rights can be established in the socio-ecosystem described in the oppression theory. This can break the when of uncivil behaviors and enhance positive interactions and relations that will promote employee engagement, communication, and job satisfaction.   

To ensure that these strategies are effective in enhancing workplace civility, additional strategies can be employed by the organization. Firstly, the organization can embark on promoting awareness of workplace incivility. According to Jemal (2018), oppression is like a virus in an organization. Awareness is the best antidote for its outcomes, such as horizontal and vertical violence. Critical awareness, as described by Paul Freire, can mitigate oppression through transformative consciousness. Transformative conciseness uses awareness among the oppressed as one of its domain interventions. Therefore, awareness among vulnerable nurses can enhance the achievement of the aforementioned strategies.

Another strategy to bolster successful civility practices in addressing inequalities and social injustices in the workplace through anticipating behavioral responses. This can enhance behavioral response. Enhancing awareness of behavioral responses to uncivil behaviors among all employees at the workplace can enhance transformative awareness. This related strategy can improve critical awareness among potential perpetrators in the socio-ecosystem by enhancing self-blame and self-reflection.

Conclusion

My workplace environment assessment showed that my organization is barely healthy in terms of workplace civility. Key shortcomings were employee engagement, communication, and job satisfaction. To explain the relationship between uncivil behaviors in the workplace and organizational health, the oppression theory concepts were applied. In this theory, workplace incivility was a nonending outcome of an inferiority complex among vulnerable nurses. Therefore, this theory came in h

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