Workplace Bullying - Essay Example

Critically evaluate the extent to which workplace bullying is facilitated by Organizational rather than individual factors. INTRODUCTION Whether we like it not, at one time in our lives, we were either victims of bullies and we were bullies to other persons who were younger and less physically built than our selves. Bullying can be very similar to other forms of aggression but some of distinctive features of bullying are: a) Bullying has a purpose and it is never accidental, b) The main purpose is to gain control of another weaker person through unwanted verbal and physical force. c) Bullies often attack their victims without a reason, sometimes just for the fun of seeing other people cry. One reason is because the victims do not fight back, and lastly, d) Bullies are very popular with their peers who are also as aggressive and troublesome as they are. In the article entitled Organizational, Work Group Related and Personal Causes of Mobbing/Bullying at Work, Zapf, D (1999) stated BULLYING is defined as the severe form of social work stress maker. Bullying last very long and often times escalates conflict with frequent harrassing actions that are aimed at one specific person. CAUSES OF BULLYING According to Zapf (1999) further clarifies that the causes of the Bullying is the work place itself, the social system, the bully perpetrator and the victim itself. The unwiling victim employee needs work to feed his or her family. The perpetrator supervisor is given the power to hire or fire the victim subordinate. As a consequence the supervisor is tempted to ask favors which are sometimes immoral or illegal. The supervisor could have been given the same cold bully and victim treatment when the supervisor was just a new subordinate in the company. The supervisor may just want to play the same game but this time he is the supervisor and his subordinate is the new victim. The social system is also cause because the victim employee is forced to endure and accept his or her predicament because it is very difficult to find a job. The victim prefers to swallow his or her pride in return for money to feed his or her hungry family. A survey of two samples of bully victims and bullies have supported this thesis. It is further discussed that bullying cannot be explained well without discussing the other parts of the bullying system (work place itself, the social system, the bully perpetrator and the victim itself) There are a few supervisors who unfairly use their position to exert power to abuse or bully some of his or her subordinates. The supervisor will abusively ask favors which are against the labor law and other discrimination laws in exchange for job retention. The refusal of the employee to obey such illegal overtures may cause the removal of his or her job. Bullying in the workplace can be done many ways. One-way is for the bully to threaten the victim that he may be lost his job or be demoted if the bully supervisor or co-worker's overtures are not followed. Another bullying move is threaten the person's personal work standing such as threatening the victim's work due to the victim's age or sex. Another bully move is to isolate the individual or victim form getting information, opportunities, outings, and others. Bully could also give impossible project deadlines, make the victim produce more work within the same time schedule and other undue pressure because the victim would not accept the love proposals of the workplace supervisor. The superior feels that the victim is helpless because of the difficulty of finding another job. Still another bully move by the supervisor is to undermine the individual or give a below standard work performance grade for a job excellently done or to give difficult project benchmarks so the victim will fail. The victim can either bow down to the overtures of the supervisor for special favors like having dinner in an expensive restaurant and the like. EFFECTS OF BULLYING IN THE WORKPLACE Bullying will have a long-term psychological effect on the victims. The victim thinks that he or she will not last long the company because the supervisor or superior is a bully in relation to the gender, sex, ethnicity or jealousy. The victim may need to see a psychologist or psychiatrist to remedy her mental state of being put in an unhappy situation where he or she could not do anything about. Bullying may cause the victim to have a low morale. The victim may suffer from unforced sickness absenteeism a declining work output and increase in the hiring and firing of work staff. But the victim can turn the tables around the bully. There are many ways to do this. One way is to resign and file a complaint to the management. This will give a bad mark on the supervisor's over all supervisory performance. The supervisor will be in danger of not only being fired but also facing United Kingdom's courts for discrimination and violation of the labor and employment laws. In big complex and busy organizations workplace bullying can be difficult to spot. For some it may be easier to ignore the problem than attempt to confront it. Yet others find the concept of bullying a non-starter. Bullying, it may be argued, is a way of weak-minded individuals expressing their inability to cope with the rough and tumble of life. However, the evidence to date shows that companies may be losing a great deal in terms of cash and productivity. This has resulted in a call for more sophisticated measures for detecting bullying and shows that many companies are beginning to take the issue very seriously indeed. In the workplace, bullies are frowned upon. They are despised and disliked because they prey on the economic condition of workplace subordinates because of their position. The victim either has to accept this sad fate, as part of life or to just resign and hope that the next company he or she will he hired will give him or her a more human working condition. Bullying in the workplace is a normal activity in most private and government work places. Even the employees unions have accepted this fact. The employees' unions are checking bullying by supervisors and other management line officers. But the bullying most occurs with the newly hired employees. The new employees are not yet regular employees. According to US Department of Justice and Bureau of Justice report "The statistics world-wide are frightening as I shall now indicate. The US Department of Justice and the Bureau of Justice have compiled data, which would appear to be in line with many of the statistics available in the United Kingdom. These findings include: Over one million individuals are the victims of violent crimes in the workplace each year. For comparison reasons, this is said to be around 15% of all violent crimes committed annually in the United States. Of specific interest to the topic of workplace bullying, of all the violent crimes committed in the workplace, individuals well known to the victim committed 19%. It was estimated that aggression in the workplace caused some 500,000 workers to miss 1,751,000 workdays annually or 3.5 days per incident. This loss of working days equated to $55 million in lost wages. In November 1994 the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) published the results of a survey revealing that 1 in 8 (around 3 million) UK employees have been bullied at work in the last five years. Over half of those who have experienced bullying say it is commonplace in their organisation and a quarter say it has got worse in the last year. These figures appear to be backed up by survey after survey."(Www.workplacebullying.co.uk) The above research shows that bullying is occurring in almost all companies. Workplace bullying could be in the form of sexual harassment or racial harassment. Bullying in the workplace is an example of abuse of supervisory or management power. But, there are rare situations where the bully supervisor is senior or more powerful than the human resources department. The victim then either has to take the supervisor's advances or resign. RECOMMENDATIONS There are as many recommendations to fight bullying, as there are bullies. One strong recommendation is to fight the bully tooth for tooth. This should be the last resort. One effect of this bullying is that the much larger and stockier bully will pulverize the smaller sized victim. This would be very costly, both mentally and physically, to the victim. The victim may end up in the hospital or in the cemetery. One other recommendation is to forgive these bullies. One reason could be that they are hiding their sadness for being rejected and unloved by their parents, brothers and sisters, and new contacts. One effect of forgiving the bully because the victim understands that the bully just wants to turn his or her anger for being unloved and unwanted by his or her co-employees at work. Another recommendation is to report to the work supervisor the co-worker's bad attitude and if the supervisor is the bully, the aggrieved employee can report the supervisor's bad moves to a person higher than the supervisor. Still another recommendation is not to notice the bully. By not noticing the insults and teases and hardships made by the school and work bully, the bully will grow tired and then, in some instances, stop their bullying because he or she feels unhappy that the would be victim does not fear him or her. Another surprising move is for the victim to bully the bully. The bully will be awakening when the small guy, who is co employee, turns out to be a karate or martial arts expert. One effect of this counter bullying action is that the bully will not stop or the bully will be the bully victim reversing their roles. A final move to stop bullying is to teach the victims and would be victims that they should not fight back as a first move because this would escalate and worsen the already tense situation. The victims or would be victims should follow the five steps namely a) Ignore b) Move away c) Ask to stop d) Tell firmly to stop e) Report to an elder or superior officer in the workplace. In the study conducted by Zapf and Gross,(2001) entitled Conflict escalation and coping with workplace bullying: a replication and extension, Bullying is used to harass a person in the workplace for a long period of time. Bullying causes and increases the victim's work stress. A quantitative survey done with 149 victims of bullying showed that some bully victims were successtul in trying to cope with the bully situation. This bully victim's coping success resulted to having better working conditions. Qualitative data showed that the successful victims had coped with the bullies by starting some constructive conflict solving strategies. The bully victims stated that they had recommended others to follow their example by leaving the work place and seek social support. The successful copers chose to avoid conflict in the workplace caused by the bullies by resigning or asking to be transferred to another department or branch. These successful bully victims had fought back against their aggressors by using similar means often and less often used negative behaviour like absenteeism. The successful bully copers often recognized and avoided escalating behaviour. CONCLUSION Bullying is part of life. Just as there are robbers, kidnappers, rapists and the like, Bullying has to be accept as a unique situation that has to be reacted to in one or more ways to eliminate or minimize its hazardous effects on the victim. But the bullies must be stopped at all costs. One cost of fighting back against the bully boss could be the lost of a high paying job. The bully boss could file a case of insubordination or the like against the employee. Insubordination is only legal cause for the company to fire a disobedient employee. Some workplace bullies feel that their parents, siblings and workplace or school friends while growing up did not love them. These bullies feel that their subordinates are theirs to bully or abuse because they had been bullied or been abused when they were just growing up or when they were newly hired in the company. It is therefore conclusive that if one of the four factors that contribute to the bullying in the work environment situation, then the number of bully victims would have been statistically decreased. Who will the bully boss or supervisor victimize or harass or take advantage of if the victim will just resign and even file charges of work, or even worst, sexual, harassments charges If there were many companies offering jobs, then there would be lesser victims because the victims will just resign and apply to another company. Again, if the social systems was such that the victim had not been born of poor parents, then the present bully victims would have enough money to put up their own businesses and hire the bully supervisor or bully boss instead. A child who is born rich will not prefer to work for a bully boss or a bully supervisor who is a sexual harasser. In conclusion, workplace boss bullies have to be stopped. The first priority is to use peaceful means such as reprimands, ignoring, forgiving and understanding. The last resort would be to fight back until the last man is left standing. Bullying the bully may sometimes awaken the bully to his or her wrongdoings. Finally, based on the data gathered above, workplace bullying is facilitated by organizational rather than individual factors. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dr. Howard Spivak, Director, Tufts University Center for Children, 750 Washington St., Box 351, Boston, MA 02111. Or visit http://www.tucc.tufts.edu/. Dr. Limber, please write to: Dr. Susan Limber, Institute on Family & Neighborhood Life, Clemson University, 158 Poole Agricultural Center, Clemson, SC 29634. Or visit http://www.clemson.edu. Laura DeHaan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Child Development, FS 570, February 1997, North Dakota State University) Zapf, D & Gross, C, Conflict Escalation and coping with workplace bullying: a replication and extension, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10, 497-522., 2001 Zapf, D., Organizational, Work Group Related and Personal Causes of Mobbing/Bullying at Work,International Journal of Manpower, 20, 70-85 (1999) Workplace bullying, (http://www.workplacebullying.co.uk/aethesis.html) Dear writer The topic is research working place bullying. This is not about bullying at life or school or some where else. Please do not use any life case to prove the topic. ** This is a MASTER Level Essay ** Please Revision: 1. Case Study 2. Introduction 3. Conclusion 4. References (Need more and not just Web resource. Use Text Book Please) Style: Harvard Language Style: English (U.K.) Grade: n/a Pages: 9 Sources: 1 Read More