Mobbing art 1. (1)

Mobbing art 1. (1), LO, kurs pedagogiczny, patologie w pracy

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Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research
© 2009 American Psychological Association
2009, Vol. 61, No. 3, 169–189
1065-9293/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0016783
THE ROLE OF THE CONSULTING
PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE PREVENTION,
DETECTION, AND CORRECTION OF
BULLYING AND MOBBING IN THE
WORKPLACE
Patricia A. Ferris
Calgary Psychology Group Inc./Janus Associates
It is clear that psychological aggression is both common in workplaces and
harmful to individuals and organizations. An emerging line of research exam-
ines organizational responses to allegations of bullying and mobbing. As a
result, some researchers now identify processes for detecting, correcting, and
preventing bullying and mobbing. Strategies to improve the quality of working
life such as surveillance, policy development, training, coaching, and the de-
velopment of selection, performance management, and reward systems that set
standards for collaborative and supportive behavior at work are all necessary to
move organizations toward eliminating tolerance of bullying and mobbing.
Consulting psychologists have the expertise to provide such interventions be-
cause of their in-depth understanding of personality, testing, and assessment,
and the application of these concepts to selection, coaching, and performance
management. The consulting psychologist brings an attention to human factors
that humanize the workplace. The author reviews research on bullying and
mobbing, adds practitioner insights based on 13 years of practice in this area,
and discusses interventions applied in practice settings.
Keywords:
bullying, mobbing, consulting psychologist, human resources, inter-
ventions
Pat Ferris is a partner in a firm that provides Employee Assistance Programs and organizational
consulting to a wide range of organizations across western Canada. The firm also provides individual
counseling to the general public. She has provided consulting services to industry on bullying/mobbing
and has provided individual counseling to both perpetrators and targets for 13 years. She has a doctoral
degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology from the University of Calgary.
I thank Charlotte Rayner and her student Sue Harrington for sharing their work with me and
for our interesting discussions.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Patricia A. Ferris, Calgary
Psychology Group Inc., 601-1177-11th Ave. S. W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2R 1K9. E-mail:
pferris@janusassociates.ca
169
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FERRIS
Researchers first described
mobbing behavior
in animals, then applied the term to
schoolchildren who attacked each other verbally and physically. Eventually, researchers
applied the term to adults in the workplace. Lorenz first used the term
mobbing
in the
1960s to describe animal behavior intended to scare away a stronger preying animal. He
described a process in which a number of animals grouped together to display attacking
behavior, such as geese scaring away a fox (as cited in Davenport, Distler Schwartz, &
Pursell Elliott, 1999). Heinemann applied the term
mobbing
in the 1970s to describe
attacking behavior in children at school (as cited in Davenport et al., 1999). A robust
school literature (e.g., Coloroso, 2002) currently refers to both physical and emotional
attacks by children toward children as
bullying
. Leymann (1990), a Swedish family
therapist who saw workers damaged by the behaviors of peers and superiors, applied the
term
mobbing
to adults in the workplace in the 1980s. Leymann defined mobbing as
“psychological terror” that involved what he called hostile and unethical communication
directed toward one individual by one or more other individuals in a systematic way, thus
pushing an individual into a defenseless position (Leymann, 1996).
Leymann’s work brought this type of workplace behavior into greater scrutiny in both
research and practice settings. Zapf (e.g., Zapf, 1999; Zapf, Knorz, & Kulla, 1996; Zapf
& Leymann, 1996) followed in the tradition of using the term
mobbing
. Other researchers
have applied different terms to the original concept of psychological terror, including
harassment
(e.g., Brodsky, 1976),
bullying
(e.g., Adams, 1992; Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, &
Cooper, 2003; Field, 1996; Rayner, 1997; Rayner, Hoel, & Cooper, 2002),
workplace
aggression
(e.g., Keashly, 1998),
incivility
(e.g., Pearson, Andersson, & Porath, 2000),
petty tyranny
(e.g., Ashforth, 1994, 1997), and
counterproductive workplace behaviors
(e.g., Robinson & Bennett, 1995).
In addition to the original goose theme, Marais and Herman (1997), Babiak and Hare
(2006), and Hornstein (1997) more recently also used the animal analogy to describe
psychological attacks in the workplace. Marais and Herman refer to perpetrators as
“corporate hyenas,” whereas Babiak and Hare suggest that many perpetrators are psychopaths
or “snakes in suits.” Hornstein refers to bosses who engage in psychological terror as “brutal”
and their targets as “prey,” indicating that the animal analogy of this type of behavior
resonates. Nevertheless, it is also fair to state that bullies represent a heterogeneous group, not
all of whom may be psychopathic and deeply flawed people. In a later section in this article,
I review the literature on the antecedents of bullying and provide insight to character and
situational circumstances that can lead to bullying behavior.
My goal in this article is to provide consulting psychologists with a foundation of
knowledge regarding the concepts of bullying and mobbing that then provides the basis for
conducting interventions primarily at the organizational level. In the present article, I inform
consulting psychologists from a practitioner perspective. I am a partner in a large independent
practice that provides employee assistance programs (EAPs) to more than 50 organizations.
The practice also takes referrals from physicians and the public. I have seen employees
presenting with workplace bullying and mobbing issues for 13 years. I have conducted training
programs for industry focused on creating respectful workplaces and specifically for managing
bullying in the workplace for the past 10 years. Organizations contact me for consultation
about the management of employee conflict, harassment, and bullying.
The first section of this article provides a review of the literature to establish an
adequate understanding of the scope of psychologically damaging behavior in the work-
place. This section provides an overview of various definitions of psychologically dam-
aging behavior. I also discuss differences in the use of the terms
bullying
and
mobbing
,
and give an anecdotal review of cases from my independent practice to provide insights
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171
to practitioners and researchers. I then review the literature on antecedents and organi-
zational impact of bullying and mobbing. The next section provides information on
diagnosing the organizational orientation to bullying and mobbing. This section examines
research on the organizational representative (i.e., the person within an organization to
whom a target reports experiences to) response to allegations of bullying or mobbing and
reviews a process model and a typology of bullying. The last section presents a range of
interventions that consulting psychologists can implement at the individual and organi-
zational level to prevent, reduce, and manage bullying and mobbing in the workplace.
Practitioner Knowledge Base
Defining the Scope of Psychologically Damaging Behavior
As noted above, both researchers and practitioners have applied a wide range of terms to
describe psychological violence in the workplace. Although definitions vary, commonality
exists. These common threads suggest that mobbing and bullying involve a pattern of
repeated hostile verbal and nonverbal interactions that are generally nonphysical and
directed at a target, resulting in a negative impact on the target’s sense of self as a
competent worker or person. Bullying behaviors range from subtle (e.g., cutting off
communication) to observable (e.g., teasing and angry outbursts); however, they may also
include the absence of certain behaviors, such as not providing support and information.
Bullying and mobbing are distinct from conflict where the parties involved have equal
power (Keashly & Jagatic, 2003). Thus, many of the definitions imply a power imbalance,
whether formal as in a job position or informal as in having some form of economic,
psychological, social, or status power over an individual (Einarsen et al., 2003).
Intent is also implied in most definitions. Although it is difficult to prove intent, where
there are legal standards, an individual may be required to provide evidence that the
behavior was intentional. Nevertheless, in dealing with allegations of bullying and
mobbing at the organizational level, the concept of “reasonable person” is helpful: Would
a reasonable person have known that the behavior in question could be hurtful?
Other areas of debate concerning the definition of the concepts include the length of
time over which the behaviors occurred and how frequently the behaviors occurred.
Although most researchers acknowledge that a one-time behavior can be very damaging,
most would not consider this to be bullying. The organization may or should address such
behaviors in the context of respectful workplace policies, however. There is also debate
about the persistency of behaviors, that is, should the behavior be persistent over days,
weeks, or months? Leymann (1996) provided a strict (although considered somewhat
arbitrary) definition that for behaviors to be experienced as bullying, they should have
occurred once per week for a period of 6 months and resulted in harm to the individual.
For legal actions, this may be an appropriate definition; however, in the context of work,
such behaviors should be addressed and defined as unacceptable long before 6 months.
The province of Quebec in Canada is the only province to have legislation about bullying,
which is referred to as
psychological harassment
. The requirements for legal consideration
include vexatious (repeated) behavior, behaviors seen as hostile and unwanted that affect
a person’s dignity, and represent a harmful work environment (Commission des Normes
du Travail, 2004). Einarsen et al. (2003) provide the following definition of bullying:
Bullying at work means harassing, offending, socially excluding someone or negatively
affecting someone’s work tasks. In order for the label bullying (or mobbing) to be applied to
a particular activity, interaction or process it has to occur repeatedly and regularly (e.g.,
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FERRIS
weekly) and over a period of time (e.g., about six months). Bullying is an escalating process
in the course of which the person confronted ends up in an inferior position and becomes the
target of systematic negative social acts. A conflict cannot be called bullying if the incident
is an isolated event or if two parties of approximately equal “strength” are in conflict. (p. 15)
Last, the above discussion has focused on understanding bullying as an interpersonal
phenomenon. Liefooghe and Mackenzie Davey (2001) argue that bullying occurs at the
organizational level when many employees frequently experience organizational practices
and procedures as oppressive, demeaning, humiliating, and victimizing. Thus, the concept
of a bullying culture emerges.
In summary, bullying is not about someone having a bad day or a few bad days, and
it is not about conflict between peers. It is about the persistent and repeated targeting of
an individual with the goal of harming them or their work.
Bullying Versus Mobbing
The term
bullying
seems to be the term most frequently used to describe the harmful
psychological behaviors reviewed in the previous section, although the term
mobbing
is
used as well. The terms are frequently used interchangeably by both practitioners and
researchers; however, it is not clear whether these actually are the same conceptually. In
general, Germanic and Nordic researchers tend to use the term
mobbing
, whereas English-
speaking countries tend to use
bullying
to describe psychologically harmful behaviors at
work. Some researchers, such as Hoel and Beale (2006), distinguish bullying from
mobbing. They argue that
bullying
is “primarily concerned with aggressive and unwanted
behavior delivered by someone in a managerial position toward a target” (p. 242), and that
mobbing
is “more likely to be the work of colleagues” (p. 242). This perspective suggests
that perpetration of psychologically harmful behavior by a person(s) in a position of power
is different from perpetration by a peer(s). Nevertheless, a study of professional faculty
and students that included the education, medical, nursing, and social work fields showed
that, in comparison to experiences of negative interpersonal interactions from superiors,
similar behaviors from peers led to the perception of greater distress (Ferris & Kline, in
press).
In contrast, others (e.g., Davenport et al., 1999; Westhues, 2007) distinguish between
the two terms on the basis of whether one or more persons are involved in perpetrating
harmful psychological behavior. From this perspective,
bullying
refers to a solitary
perpetrator and a peer or peers, whereas
mobbing
refers to more than one perpetrator
acting negatively toward a target.
There is a need for research that examines whether there are two (or more) distinct
concepts of psychologically harmful behaviors based on status and number of perpetra-
tors. There is also a need for conceptual clarity and a common understanding of how the
terms
bullying
and
mobbing
are applied that cannot be addressed here. For the purpose of
this article, when citing other authors’ work, I use the term applied by the authors. When
referring to the concepts in general or describing my work, I use the term
bullying
to refer
to acts by a single perpetrator and
mobbing
to refer to acts by more than one perpetrator.
To provide some insight to bullying and mobbing issues, I reviewed the files of 35
individuals seen by myself for bullying or mobbing between January 2006 and August
2008. In approximately one third of identified cases, occupational health professionals
within the organization provided additional information to me (with informed consent
from the client) about the workgroup climate and the alleged perpetrator. In addition, for
those accessing through an EAP, other employees from the same workgroups accessing
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173
for other reasons often described witnessing bullying behavior toward the targeted
individuals or a general climate of fear. This supplementary information provided insight
and support to the individuals’ reported experiences. The majority of remaining individ-
uals supplied correspondence that provided some support to their perspective. Neverthe-
less, the data described below are from the perspective of the target, and there was either
limited or no confirming information about the perspective of the alleged perpetrator or
what role, if any, the alleged target played in the development of the situation. Never-
theless, it is interesting to note that as treatment progressed, most individuals could
identify that some type of challenge to the alleged perpetrator or their objection to their
treatment by the alleged perpetrator likely played a role in their being targeted.
It is further important to note that my role with the individuals reviewed was as a
therapist with the goal of providing support and treatment for their individual experiences.
As such, there are other perspectives that are not considered. Employees on disability
benefits suing their companies may have had a stake in the outcome of litigation, which
may have biased their reporting and recovery. I would note that for the individuals for
whom I had outcome data, all eventually returned to work, albeit in workplaces other than
where the bullying or mobbing had occurred.
At the time of presentation, individuals were employed; however, several were off on
disability because of depression or anxiety. The majority of individuals presented through
accessing their EAP (66%). The majority of individuals accessed from the oil and gas
industry (54%); the service industry (19%); legal profession (9%); union or government
(9%); and health care, education, and other (3%, respectively). In assessing whether
bullying or mobbing had occurred, I used a clinical interview and the Workplace
Aggression Research Questionnaire (L. Keashly & J. Neuman, personal communication,
August 2001). I also used the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 1993) or the
Symptom Checklist–90–R (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994) to assess psychological symp-
toms at time of presentation. Consistent with the literature, the majority of individuals
were targeted by superiors: 19 reported bullying (negative behaviors from superiors), 12
individuals reported mobbing (negative behaviors from peers), and 4 individuals reported
both mobbing and bullying. Of these individuals, I assessed that 6 experienced a reduction
of productivity only, 17 incurred significant time off work, 12 left their organizations or
were given a severance package, 6 were terminated for cause, and 4 initiated lawsuits
(numbers exceed the sample size as some cases experienced both time off work and
severance or termination). The outcomes for 2 individuals are unknown. The alleged
perpetrators were primarily male (63%); however, it should be noted that the majority of
cases came from male-dominated industries.
Although the sample described is quite small, several issues stand out from this
review. First, it was striking how frequently superiors attacked employees’ careers with
seeming impunity. Second, when human resources (HR) personnel became involved,
targets often reported feeling unsupported, and the situation typically deteriorated. De-
termining appropriate interventions in allegations of bullying is a key skill required by HR
personnel and one that many admit to me that they find difficult and feel unprepared to
manage. I review research on HR response in more detail in the section discussing
organizational responses toward bullying and mobbing. Third, three of the four lawsuits
occurred in identified cases where both mobbing and bullying had occurred, and all
individuals reported disability leave. Although the number of individuals reporting law-
suits is quite small, this may suggest that when both bullying and mobbing occur, it may
be the most costly situation for organizations. Finally, individuals from several organi-
zations in which I had conducted comprehensive respectful workplace training (which
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