Category: Research Work

‘Kosovo precedent’ complicated invasion of Ukraine, visiting scholar says

Published on by Behrend BlogLeave a comment

 By Robb Frederick, Associate Director of News and Information,

Penn State Behrend

When Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin invoked the “Kosovo precedent,” a 78-day NATO air campaign over the former Yugoslavia. The attacks, launched on March 24, 1999, and led by the United States, forced Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw from Kosovo, where more than 10,000 Kosovar Albanians had been killed.

NATO had acted without approval from the U.N. Security Council, where Russia, a longtime Serbian ally, could have vetoed any resolution. The member nations argued that the international community was obligated to intervene and end a humanitarian crisis.

Russia had a different perspective.

“Russia’s view was that NATO had attacked a sovereign country and taken its territory,” said Jiří Nykodým, a postgraduate researcher at Masaryk University in Brno, in the Czech Republic. “Then, when it suited them, they argued the opposite – that Kosovo set a precedent for interventions that do not involve the U.N. Security Council. Russia used that as a justification when they annexed Crimea, and again when they invaded Ukraine.”

Nykodým studied the Kosovo precedent during a five-month visit to Penn State Behrend, where he served as a visiting scholar. He came to the college to work with Lena Surzhko Harned, an associate teaching professor of political science and an expert on Ukraine and the politics of the post-Soviet space.

“Her insight was very unique,” he said. “She recommended several books, including texts that were written in Cyrillic.”

Jiri Nykodym

Jiří Nykodým

A paper written by the pair was published by the European Consortium of Political Research.

As they examined the Kosovo precedent, Nykodým and Surzhko Harned looked closely at how it intersects with a diplomatic principle known as “responsibility to protect.” That policy, adopted at the 2005 United Nations World Summit, gives the international community the right to intervene when a state fails to keep its residents safe. The measure was a direct response to the war in Kosovo and massacres in Rwanda and Srebrenica.

“When you combine the Kosovo precedent and the responsibility to protect, you see there are limits to international law,” Surzhko Harned said. “Russia has used the Kosovo precedent to obstruct and undermine the law. Basically, they say to the west, ‘You broke the rules first.’”

Russia has blocked efforts to enforce the responsibility to protect, vetoing U.N. resolutions meant to address state failures in Syria, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Venezuela and Yemen. At the same time, Putin used the measure to justify military incursions into Georgia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, where he perceived a threat to Russian-speaking minority communities, alleging a genocide for which there was no evidence.

“Putin has been careful not to explicitly invoke the responsibility to protect,” Nykodým said. “He uses the same language, however. It allows him to operate in a grey zone, selectively applying aspects of international law that support his goals.”

The war in Ukraine raises the stakes for the international community, which will have to reassess its commitment to the responsibility to protect other nations, Nykodým said.

“The war makes this more relevant,” he said. “We are seeing the effects of the Kosovo precedent in real time, and at the cost of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

Psst: Office gossip can be costly, Behrend researchers find

Published on by Behrend BlogLeave a comment

By Robb Frederick, Associate Director of News and Information,

Penn State Behrend

canstockphoto110465852 (002)

Workplace gossip often targets the boss. She’s in over her head. He’s overextended. There’s trouble at home, supposedly.

When the boss is the one spreading gossip, sharing private insight about a team member’s performance or personal life, that can lead to a far more damaging dynamic – a behavior researchers refer to as moral disengagement.

“Leaders set the tone for an organization,” said Joongseo Kim, an assistant professor of management at Penn State Behrend’s Black School of Business. “When a leader participates in gossiping behavior, other employees pick up on that right away. They are less likely to feel shame or guilt when they gossip. They think, ‘Even the leaders are doing this. It’s acceptable in this organization.’”

Kim runs the Raimy Behavioral Lab at Penn State Behrend. He studies business ethics and workplace deviance. This spring, working with Madison Dambach, a senior in the Black School of Business, and Yun Kim at Oklahoma State University, he began a study of gossip contagion in the workplace.

“Gossip can be fun,” he said. “It’s sharing a thing that began as a secret, and that makes it a social-bonding mechanism.”

Positive gossip – sharing the news of a colleague’s promotion, for example – can increase a team’s sense of organizational identity, according to a 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health. That type of water-cooler talk can boost efficiency and employee retention.

“It’s all about intent,” Kim said. “If you gossip to motivate a person, or to elevate the reputation of a person, that’s a positive thing. If what you are saying is purposefully hurtful, however, and if you’re saying it to sideline or neutralize a colleague, that can do real damage.”

An employee with a calculative mindset – someone who approaches social relationships as a means of achieving another goal, such as financial gain – is more likely to gossip when a supervisor participates in the behavior, said Dambach, who presented the study at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conference in Boston.

“People with a higher calculative mindset see gossip as an opportunity,” Dambach said. “It’s a way to undercut a competitor or cast doubt on their abilities or their commitment to the organization. Some people will use that to their advantage, especially if the supervisor is listening.”

When a boss gossips, that’s viewed as a green light for others in the organization to behave the same way, Dambach said. Over time, that can affect employee productivity.

“Managers should pay more attention to that,” she said. “if they feed into gossip, their employees will do the same, without any sense of guilt or shame. That weakens the cohesiveness of the group. It leads to resentment. Ultimately, it can lead to the failure of the business.”

Madison Dambach and Joongseo Kim in Boston

Senior student Madison Dambach, left, and Joongseo Kim, assistant professor of management at Behrend’s Black School of Business.