April 2004

Organisational Bullying

The classic view of bullying is when one or more people are offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting. Bullies abuse their position of power to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the person they bully. However, there is another form of bullying that is growing and happens on a wholly subconscious level: a form called Organisational Bullying. Here, organisations themselves bully one or more people through their standard policies and actions.

Introduction

Most people experience or witness bullying during their lives, even if this is as early as their school days. The movement from the playground to the workplace has gained increasing recognition in recent years, as has the impact of bullying on staff performance, e.g. reduced commitment and retention rates. The costs associated with bullying are high, both financially and psychologically, for example: stress-related illness, absenteeism, reduced performance in the workplace, and adverse publicity for the employer.

Organisational Bullying

Organisational Bullying is a combination of pressure bullying, that tends to be short term and reactionary, and corporate bullying. Organisational Bullying seems to surface when an organisation is struggling to adapt to changing markets, reduced income, cuts in budget, changes in management style and mismatched expectations within the workforce. Organisational Bullying is a complex issue and a number of significant factors have been identified, for example:

pressure caused by global competition and the rapid pace of change;
economic hardship;
downsizing / restructuring;
poor internal communication systems and conflict resolution;
limited employee participation in the decision making process for decisions that directly affect them.

Many organisations believe they are on a treadmill, trying to stay one step ahead of steadily declining markets and increasing customer expectations. Within this environment, organisations are creating systems and management practices that are in effect becoming the “workplace bully”. Managers who are simply following the policies can be the unwitting tools for Organisational Bullying.

Investigations into the values and norms of the workplace environment have shown that the organisational culture can act as a filter through which behaviours are interpreted and through which a range of behaviours are accepted or tolerated. For example, in an organisation that aggression and harassment were significant problems, each week many people reported being subjected to ridicule, insulting behaviour, verbal abuse, rumours, hostility, social exclusion or derogation of work.

These acts occurred frequently and indicated a focus on 'male masculinity and continuous testing of one's ability to tolerate teasing and ridicule'. Nevertheless they appeared to have adverse affects on well-being and health as well as overall job satisfaction, even on bystanders as well as victims. Bystanders experienced a high degree of role conflict when they observed aggressive behaviour and reported a poor quality of environment in these circumstances. The fact that this was normal practice and not seen as unusual by the organisation gives bullying a level of validity that is unjustified.

Research at a large UK Telecommunications company identified multiple causes of bullying and that Organisational Bullying facilitates interpersonal bullying. The research also identified the fact that employees used the term bullying to voice their discontent regarding employee-employer relationships in the organisation. Effectively, the employees used the bullying concept to express that organisations are failing to address their concerns and needs.

There are an unwritten set of expectations operating at all times between every employee within an organisation and those who represent (i.e. managers and supervisors) the organisation to the employee. Such expectations include economic components (for example, pay, working hours and job security) and more implicit concerns such as being treated with dignity, the provision of some degree of work autonomy and, having opportunities to learn and develop. All these components are incorporated into the way an organisation works. If an organisation makes major changes to this, thus resulting in an expectation gap between them and the employees, then Organisational Bullying can occur and stress-related conflict will grow. As a final point, people must realise that Organisational Bullying affects all employees, from the boardroom to the shop floor.

If you believe that your organisation would benefit from a confidential review of the causes and effects of Organisational Bullying, contact Steve Stones on 024 76 279 000.