Bullying: A Widespread Concern
Delving deeper into the topic, it appears that workplace bullying is on a lot of people’s minds! If you have access to the library at Capella or another institution, a simple search shows a large number of articles, many published in the last couple of months! It is also interesting to see stories from across the globe—and in diverse fields of work including apparel, firefighting, medicine (both human and veterinary), government, IT and banking, to name a few. Apparently no one is immune!
Are we seeing more of this kind of behavior because the workplace has become more stressful in hard economic times? Are workers more afraid of complaining, because they don’t want to rock the proverbial boat and end up losing their own jobs?
Here are a few more articles:
- In the banking industry: “Tone Down the Bullies” by Robert Bruce in Accountancy; Dec2008, Vol. 142 Issue 1384, p14-14.
- An ethics-based approach to understanding the issue: “Bullying in the U.S. Workplace: Normative and Process-Oriented Ethical Approaches,” by Helen LaVan and William Martin in Journal of Business Ethics, Dec2008, Vol. 83 Issue 2.
- Issues for hospital administrators: “Is Your Hospital Safe? Disruptive Behavior and Workplace Bullying” by William Martin in Hospital Topics, Summer2008, Vol. 86 Issue 3.
- Recommendations for training managers and supervisors: “Keeping Bullying Out of the Workplace” by Marilyn M.; Fish, Alison N. Davis, et. al. in InsideCounsel, May2008 Supplement, Vol. 18.
What do you think? Have you read anything on the topic? Post your comments and share additional resources of interest to Organizational Perspectives readers.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Current Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:44 am
I am just joining this site and I do have comments. I have been working on this topic from the perspective of a psychologist for the last few years. I am an administrator in higher education. I have a couple of great data sets involving workers perceptions and health status. I have found a relationship between bullying and turnover and rates of illness. I think that in the current climate, we will see more individuals being the victims of bullying as more and more people fear for their jobs. It seems that when the going gets tough people respond with defensive and aggressive behaviors.
There are a lot of studies from the psychological literature too. thanks for the references from the business world.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Luciane makes an excellent point about the relationships between bullying and the negative effects on organizations and targets. I started bully research (IO Psy doctoral student) two years ago when there was scant research on the topic. Since then, as the US caught on that this, indeed, is a pervasive, dangerous, workplace security issue not to mention the devestation it causes victims as they lose their social networks in the workplace, and often quit their jobs. There are reported cases of suicide once the trickle-down effects hit families who try to deal with the depression, PTSD, and loss of identity. Surely the problem will escalate as the result of economic pressure and fear in the workplace. Bullying has become specific to industries: nursing, teaching, sales, and lately, countries like CHINA are bravely reporting cases of bullying. Imagine that. Problem is, most are self reports, and if leaders embrace hardline, aggressive managers while looking away, chances of legislation in the near future are slim. I appreciate Lucianne bringing to my attention turnover and rates of illness- people will do anything to get away from bullies. One more comment … well, two actually. Training programs? What a joke. They train bullies how to bully AND secondly, one of these days I’ll write a book about what it was like to be a bully victim. Almost three years and I still suffer. It’s an incredible story, and as I write this, my hands shake even thinking about it. But I’m ok, would be better if I could shake up Capitol Hill.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
P.S. On a positive note, we could publish an article on the topic. Anyone up for the challenge?
April 15th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Here is another article:
Corrosive Leadership (or Bullying by Another Name): A Corollary of the Corporatised Academy?
by Margaret Thornton
Australian National University – ANU College of Law
Australian Journal of Labour Law, Vol. 17, pp. 161-184, 2004
It is available for free download, with registration from the Social Science Research Network: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1313528
December 1st, 2009 at 10:22 am
I am!!!! Working on the papers and book as we speak. I would love to see if we could work together