Faculty of Information Management

Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)

Malaysia

ORGANIZATION DILEMMA: BULLYING IN THE WORKPLACE

By:
Mohamed Narazid Bin Mohd Dan

Master of Science in Information Management

March 2007
 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Table of Contents

Abstracts 3

Introduction 4

Definition of Bullying 5

Characteristics of Bullies 6

The Emergence of Workplace Bullying in Organization 7

The nature of Bullying in the Workplace 8

Causes of Bullying in the Workplace in Organization 10

Implications of Workplace Bullying 13

Implications to the worker 13
Implications to the organization 14

Recommendations to Overcome Bullying in the Workplace 16

Conclusions 18

Bibliography 19

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Abstracts:

The overall aim of this paper is to review and summarize the selected literatures on the
issues of bullying in the workplace as one of the organization dilemma. One of the
intentions is to understand of the trepidation and concerns in the bullying environment
and implication to the organization, workplace and the worker as a victim. An approach
on overview the bullying and its concepts have been done in this paper including the
characteristics of bullies, factors of emergence and nature of bully in workplace. This
paper also explores the causes and implications of bullying to the workplace and worker
itself. Finally, the paper concludes the recommendation to overcome the problem.

Keywords: Bullying, workplace, Organization dilemma, Worker

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Introduction

Bullying in the workplace must be elaborate starting from the root of bully itself. The
concept of Bullying is differs from harassment and assault where latter can result from a
single incident or small number of incidents, which everybody recognizes as harassment
or assault whereas bullying tends to be an accumulation of many small incidents over a
long period of time. Each incident tends to be trivial, and on its own and out of context
does not constitute an offense or grounds for disciplinary or grievance action.

Bullying occurs when someone at work is systematically subjected to aggressive

behavior from one or more colleagues or superiors over a long period, in a situation
where the target finds it difficult to defend him or herself or to escape the situation. Such
treatment tends to stigmatize the target and may even cause severe psychological trauma.
(Einarsen, 1999)

Infrequently, bullying does not always involved physical violence. Commonly, it may
involve verbal intimidation that likely occurs in the presence of colleagues and
undermining of the victim professional work and the bully taking credit for other people
work (McMohan, 2000). Bullying at work is claimed to be a more crippling and
devastating problem for employees than all other work-related stress put together and
may be seen as a rather severe form of social stress at work (Zapf, 1999).

Repeating bullying can have extremely detrimental effect on the individual who falls prey
to this menacing behavior. Many victims seem to suffer from symptoms under the
domain of traumatic stress syndrome such as facing insomnia, various nervous
symptoms, melancholy, apathy, lack of concentration and socio phobia. In the other
effects, the victim may lose their self confidence and self esteem where able contributes
to the worst case such as nervous breakdown, heart attack and suicide (McMohan, 2000).

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Definitions of Bullying

Bullying can be defines in the other meaning as mobbing, harassment or abuse.

Nevertheless, bullying often describes as a form of harassment, perpetrated by an abuser
having more physical and social power or dominance that the victim possesses. The
victim of bullying is referring to as a target. The harassment can be in verbal, physical,
emotional or psychology.

Zapf (1999) in his literature are describes bullying as a psychological aggression that
often involves a group of mobbers rather than a single person. He also have categorized
the bullying at work carry the meaning of harassing, mobbing, offending, socially
excluding someone or assigning offending work tasks to someone in the course of which
the person confronted ends up in an inferior position.

The concept of bullying may use in many situations describing a variety of behaviors.
However, the concept refers to a rather specific phenomenon where hostile and
aggressive behaviors, be it physical or non-physical, are directed systematically at one or
more colleagues or subordinates leading to a stigmatization and victimization of the
recipient.

Heames and Harvey (2006) in their study are defined bullying as a status blind
interpersonal hostility that is deliberate, repeated, and sufficiently severe to harm the
targeted persons health or economic status and is driven by the perpetrators need to
control another individual, often undermining legitimate business interests in the
process.

The assertion by Heames and Harvey are supported by Einarsen (1999) where he
identified bullying as repeated actions and practices that are directed to one or more
workers, which are unwanted by the victim, which may be done deliberately or
unconsciously, but clearly cause humiliation, offense and distress, and that may interfere

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with job performance and cause an unpleasant working environment. This definition
emphasizes the two main features of most definitions of bullying at work:

i. Repeated and enduring aggressive behaviors that are intended to be hostile and
ii. Perceived as hostile by the recipient.

The behaviors involved seem mostly to be a verbal nature and seldom where sometimes
include physical violence.

In the other literature source, Archer (1999) was elaborate bullying as a fostered through
a lack of role clarity and stress caused by uncertainty where most of the organizations
have a bully where it never ceases to amaze on how one person's divisive, disordered and
dysfunctional behavior able to influence the entire organization like a cancer.

For the overall conclusion in the bullying definition base on the above literatures, agreed
to conclude that bullying are involves disturbing of others through verbal, several of
physical assault, or others method intimidation such as manipulation. Bullying seems to
contain at least four phases: aggressive behavior, bullying, stigmatization and severe
trauma.

Characteristics of bullies

Bullying is identified as the behavior of a single perpetrator against one or more entities
(Heames and Harvey, 2006). Both of them are categorize few descriptors of bullying
activities that include irritable behavior constantly finding fault with others/persistent
criticism, name calling in public, spreading malicious rumors, increasing work pressure,
sexual harassing, physical abusing or harming and malicious or defamatory
communicating via the internet or e-mail.

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Meanwhile, Hannabuss (1998) in his study defined the bully is when a person unable and
unwilling to recognize the effect of their behavior on others, where does not want to
know of any other way of behaving, and is unwilling to recognize that there could be
better ways of behaving. It is often said that bullies have low self-confidence and self-
esteem, and because of this inadequacy, they fear that their inability to fulfill their duties
will come out into the open. So they take steps to stop this happening.

Bullying may also be tradition in settings where an age group or higher rank feels
superior than lowerclassmen. The people who labeled themselves as bullied also reported
lack of constructive leadership, lack of possibilities to monitor and control their own
work, and conflicting goals and priorities (Einarsen, 1999).

In the other category of view, Zapf (1999) concluded that social climate is an
interweaving factor contributes to this. Some factors that categorize by Zapf such as
quickness to anger and use of force, addiction to aggressive behaviors, mistaking others
actions as hostile, concern with preserving self image, and engaging with obsessive and
rigid actions are the additional aspect to elucidate the bullying characteristic.

The Emergence of Workplace Bullying in Organization

Workplace bullying is the repeated mistreatment of one employee targeted by one or

more employees with a malicious mix of humiliation, intimidation and sabotage of
performance. Workplace bullying often takes place within the established rules and
policies of the organization and society. Such actions are not necessarily illegal and may
not even be against the firms regulations, however the damage to the targeted employee
or worker and to workplace is obvious.

Heames and Harvey (2006), have point out in their study that the workplace is a natural
environment for interpersonal differences and specifically for workplace bullying to
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emergence and occur. The blend of individuals from a variety of cultures with different
beliefs, values, and attitudes, who are required to work together in hyper-competitive
high stress work environments, provides a fertile climate for conflict and bullying to
arise. They describe the workplace as group-oriented environments that are symbolize by
differences of opinions, a competition for power and territoriality, jealousy, prejudice,
envy, and problematic group dynamics.

In addition, Hannabuss (1998) affirm that emergence of bullying is started from the
aggressive behavior where arising from the deliberate attempt to cause physical or
psychological distress to others. In order to identify the trend and emergence of bullying,
it is consequential to understand the context in which the bullying can occur.

To support the aggressive behavior that have been mention by Hannabuss above, the
study from Heames and Harvey are explored the previous literatures that concluded the
genetic and childhood experiences is the factor to lead the workplace bullying. Other
literature that identify by them are mentioning that the adult bully learned this behavior in
childhood, is unable to break the psychological cycle as he or she grows into adulthood,
and thus mimics the destructive behavior either at home or in the workplace.

In the other analysis which supports Heames and Harvey fact, Einarsen (1999) has
defined the context of the workplace and relational stress issues as being instrumental in
provoking deviant behavior such as bullying. He suggests that organizational structure,
group norms, status inconsistency, and the resulting strained relationships can contribute
to or escalate negative behavior that can lead to bullying.

The nature of Bullying in the Workplace

Einarsen (1999) has recognized that the behaviors involved in bullying may in fact be
fairly common in everyday life and they may cause much harm and humiliation when
occurring on a regular basis. Hence, it may not be the nature of the conduct in itself that
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makes the victim suffer. The frequency of the acts, situation factors related to power
differences or inescapable interactions, or the victim's attributions about the offender's
intentions may cause as much anxiety, misery and suffering as does the actual conduct
involved.

In order to narrow down the nature of bullying, Zapf (1999) are categorizes five types of
bullying behavior that includes:

i. Work-related bullying which might include changing the work tasks or making
them difficult to perform.
ii. Social isolation.
iii. Personal attacks or attacks on private life by ridicule, insulting remarks and gossip
iv. Verbal threats where they (victim) are criticized, yelled at or humiliated in public;
and
v. Physical violence or threats such violence.

During the early phases of the bullying, victims are typically subjected to aggressive
behavior that is difficult to identify by being indirect and discreet where later on will
more aggressive acts appear. Einarsen (1999) mention that the victims in this condition
are clearly isolated avoided and humiliated in public. At the end, both physical and
psychological means of violence may be used. The victim with a long history of
victimization has a high possibility to be attacked more frequently than those with a
shorter history as victims.

In the overview of bullying nature phase, Einarsen (1999) also have converse that early
phase are the situation where the slight aggressive channel start to be directed against one
or more persons in the work group. For the second phase, it is becomes an evident that
the victim has problems in defending him/herself either as a consequence of existing the
psychological or social factors, or as a consequence of the bullying itself, which after a
while seems to place a social stigma on the victim. Bullying often preys directly on the
inadequacies of the victim's personality.
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In the third phase the victim is openly harassed and discriminated against by being
separated and excluded, or subjected to offensive remarks and joke which in the fourth
phase the physical attacks occur, and then may lead to the final stage called
extermination. Although victims of bullying are not literally killed, some do commit,
where others are expelled from working life or at least driven out of their organization.

There is similar opinion to agree on Einarsen assertion where Hannabuss (1998) was
elaborate the nature of bullying as an old issue, which has been too long swept under the
carpet. People who are the victims of bullying often do not say anything. Organizations
where bullying is alleged to take place often ignore it or blandly attribute it to the natural
healthy behavior of competitive human beings. Bullies may often stare their actions as
merely bossy to getting things done and also getting work done through people, where
as a part of effective management approach.

The intolerance against the victim produced by the bullying seems to cause the
organization to treat the victim as the problem. When stepping into the case, top
management, union representatives, or personnel administration tend to accept the
intolerance produced by the offenders, thus blaming the victim for its misfortune. The
third parties or managers may see the situation as no more than fair treatment of a
difficult and neurotic person.

Causes of Bullying in the Workplace in Organization

There are several organizational factors, as well as factors in the person of the bully and
of the victim that may cause bullying (Zapf, 1999). One of the primary factors present in
most bullying environments would be deficiencies in leadership behavior. Bullying may
lead to various forms of ill health. The causes of bullying in the organization may lead to
observable bullying behavior. Bullying may lead to health complaints in the victim.

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Anxious, depressive or obsessive behavior of the victim may produce a negative reaction,
which leads to bullying after some time.

Bullying may lead to a decrease in the social climate and social support, which in turn
may weaken the information flow. Again, this may increase job stresses such as
uncertainty (about goal achievement) and organizational problems. The figure 1 below is
explained the causes and consequence of bullying in the workplace.

Causes Bullying Consequence

Organization

Leadership Rumors
Organizational Culture Physocomatic
Job Stresses Social Isolation
Work Organization Depression
Verbal Aggression
Anxiety
Organizational Measures
Posttraumatic
Person Attacking the private Stress Disorder
sphere
Obsession
Personality
Stigmata Physical Aggression
Social Skills
Qualification

Figure 1: Causes and Consequence of Bullying

Source: Zapf, D (1999). Organizational, Work group related and Personal Causes of
Mobbing/Bullying at work. International Journal of Manpower. 20 (1 & 2), 70-85

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

The point from Zapf (1999) are identify that poor work organization and leadership
problems is related to bullying where the organizational climate, high stress and
organizational problems are among the most frequent causes for bullying from the
victims' perspective.

Some interest findings from Sheehan (1999) that relay to the factor of manager behavior
as one of impact to the causes of bullying in the workplace. Managers may use bullying
behaviors because they know such behaviors will go unchallenged to them. There is the
condition where the organizational change, including redundancies and the introduction
of new technology, have increases organizational demands on managers and
consequently increases the managerial stress. The concern due to struggle for efficiency
and profit in unstable market conditions, have force the organizations do exert pressure
on their managers.

These pressures tend to lower the threshold at which managers, particularly those
operating at the limits of their skill competencies and might adopt bullying behaviors
even if reluctantly. The behaviors encompassed such as sarcasm, threats, verbal abuse,
intimidation, bad mouthing, manipulation, duplicity, assignment to unpleasant jobs,
exclusion, isolation, forcing of resignation and physical violence.

Archer (1999) in his study mentioning the same idea as Sheehan where manager that uses
bullying techniques does, by definition, make bullying an influential process of getting
things done. More worrying is the observation that people who are not bullies will adopt
bullying behaviors if they see these behaviors as influential and valued in the workplace.

In the same topic of overview, Rayner and Cooper (1997) are contribute the similar
expectation with the other researcher by describe the causes of bully in the workplace is
because the manager have a staff whom they find difficult and do not know how else to
manage them. Others category that highlighted by them is some people bully as a means
of passing on their own stress and others bully because they work in environments where

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this is the norm and they can simply get away with it perhaps even feel it is a style of
management which is expected of them.

Implications of Workplace Bullying to the Worker and Organizations

In the performing the implications on the workplace bullying, this section of review has
divided it to the two sub-sections: Implications to the worker and Implication to the
organization.

Implications to the Worker

McMohan (2000) in his study are mentioning that the worker or victims may loose the
self-confidence and self esteem and may inevitably suffer extreme stress as a result of
bullying. If an environment of bullying is maintain and there is nothing done to alleviate
the problem, long term effects on the individual can be severe, with a case scenario
leading to nervous breakdown, heart attack and suicide.

Other implications to the worker may often them to suffer psychological injury stress,
anxiety, sleeplessness, feelings of guilt and shame, panic attacks, poor concentration,
irritability and low self-esteem. There are often expose to the physical symptoms like
headaches, sweating, psychosomatic illness, and skin irritations.

The individual will loss moral at work that will lead to the higher level of absenteeism as
the victim attempts to hide from the situation. The occurrences of bullying may
eventually lead to higher staff turnover, as victim can no longer endure work in the
organization where indirectly impact to the organization itself when the victims leave the
company.

In order to supported McMohan, Harvey and Heames (2006) study agreed that the
negative interaction will be occur between the bully and the bullied will spill over into
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the worker personal mental and physical health and thus, negatively impact other
interpersonal relationships with among others. These phenomena of workplace bullying
can escalating through a group of worker and destroy positive communications, and then
break up the relationship nature.

In addition, Einarsen (1999) enlighten that the person of bullying at work has also been
shown to have low self-esteem and to be anxious in social settings while their personality
are to be irrelevant due to this.

Zapf (1999) also have point out that the workplace bullying may lead to a decrease in the
social climate and social support, which in turn may weaken the information flow.

While Hannabuss (1998) has elaborate a finding through his study where mention that the
worker effectiveness at work and their image of themselves as human beings are reduced
in term of productivity, decreasing commitment, stress and threatened due to the causes
of bullying.

In addition, this causes factor directly affected to their self-image with low self-esteem
and unrealistic beliefs about themselves. The workers behavior is often put down to
personality clashes, eruptions and disagreements that occur in the natural and expected
way in a busy workplace and which unfortunately turn into emotional events.

Implications to the Organization

There are several impacts of bullying for the organization that have been recognized by
McMohan (2000):

i. Organizations with higher tolerance for bullying will have increase difficulties in
attracting and/or retaining human capital.
ii. The corporate reputation will be harmed by the occurrence of bullying activities in the
organization.
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iii. The financial cost of recruiting and retraining replacement can be high if the worker
leaves the company.
iv. The organization may suffer loss of productivity and efficiency due to this higher
level of absenteeism and poor morale.

The workplace bullying could negatively affect corporate or organization culture and
ultimately its legitimacy and reputation in the industry and community.

Meanwhile, Rayner and Cooper (1997) mentioning that those employers who gain a
reputation for tough management may find that not everyone is attracted to working for
them, and recruitment may become an issue soon in future.

Heames and Harvey (2006) in their study are contribute the same level of assertion where
highlighted on the negative impact which organization with higher tolerance for bullying
will have increase difficulties in attracting and/or retaining human capital and interrupt
the corporate reputation due to harmed by the occurrence of bullying activities in the
organization.

Zapf (1999) also have stressed to the point of negative implication that may increase job
stresses such as uncertainty about goal achievement and organizational problems.

In overall overview on the implication of workplace bullying, the figure 2 in the next
page is explain on the relations impact of three entities between bully and the victim,
bully and group and bully and organization through cross level perspective of workplace
bullying interaction model.

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 Organization Dilemma: Bullying in the Workplace

Figure 2: A cross level perspective of workplace bullying.

Source: Joyce Heames and Mike Harvey. Workplace bullying: A cross level assessment.
Emerald Management Division. 44 (9) 1214-1230.

Recommendations to Overcome Bullying in the Workplace

Bullying can start from small and get out of hand unless there is consistency with what is
expected. Everyone should have the same expectations and be on the same direction. If
someone is being bullied at their workplace the behavior should be reported to a trusted
superior in the organization (Einarsen, 1999). The information should be factual when
describing the type of bullying, where and when it is happening, who is involved, and
how the victim reacts to the bullying. It is important to determine if the victim is
provocative. How the information is conveyed is very important.

According to Rayner and Cooper (1997), bullies needed to be recognised for what they
were, and asking from employers more recognition of the problem, the development of
procedures for dealing with it providing training, investigating levels of morale and
absenteeism and accepting that bullying reduces efficiency. They suggested to examining

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on where bullying could occur or is occurring and go trough on morale and motivation
factor. The changes in section of work practices, different managerial structures and
volumes of work, changed deadlines and workflow able to manage these phenomena
within control.

Similar recommendation literature from McMohan (2000) that suggested the training is
often recommended as one of competition ways to deal with bullying, and it can go a
long way. It might take the direct form of training about aggression and violence in the
workplace, conflict resolution and assertiveness self centered, courses, instruction and
information about harassment policy in the company.

Organization as a whole needs to be aware of the problems of workplace bullying.

Organizations then need to confront the bully or bullies within a problem-solving, rather
than disciplinary framework to address the problem. The person identified as a bully
ought to be confronted about their behavior. Second, that person ought to be then offered
an opportunity to deal with their behavior within a framework of skill development.

Style of management contributes to bullying behaviors by managers, and then it seems

reasonable that the acquisition of more appropriate people skills may reduce bullying
within organizations (Zapf, 1999). The skills identified as most likely to help deal with
the problem of bullying behaviors include communication, conflict resolution,
interpersonal relations, leadership, negotiation, stress management, and team-building.

Positive experiences include open communication, team building; support, and

explanation of role changes. During organizational change, however open
communication can be the first casualty. Sheehan (1999), have suggest a
recommendations to overcome the problem through empowerment of employees during
change processes and development of soft people skills or soft skills such as empathy,
trust, and the management of symbols.

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The other literature study from Hannabuss (1999), where require the bullies is needed to
be recognized for what they were, and asking from employers with more recognition of
the problem, the development of procedures for dealing with it such as reporting and
dealing with incidents, providing training, investigating levels of morale and absenteeism
from sickness.

Conclusion

Base on the all assertion of selected literatures able to conclude that the organizations
need to be aware of bullying and abusive behaviors in the workplace, and organization
also need to competent in identify, assessing, evaluate, and resolve conflicts when occur
this phenomenon at the first place in order to avoid the dilemma in organization.

Nowadays the bullying are rising up from days to days at the workplace atmosphere,
where it is was preventing win-win outcomes at work, undermining empowerment, and
decrease the strength of healthy organizations. The top level of management in
organizations needs to challenge this dilemma by performing the restructuring in order to
restriction the bullying behaviors in organization environment.

By doing so, organization may eliminate the effects caused by bullying behaviors in the
workplace. In this way of method, the construction of sustainable organization will
emphasize the benefits of business and achieved through care and compassion of the
workers via associated to human resource management. Workers, organizations, and the
community as a whole able to gather this benefits to the creation of successful entity to
control the bullying.

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BIBILIOGRAPHY

Archer, David (1999). Exploring bullying culture in the para-military

organization. International Journal of Manpower. 20 (1 & 2), 94-105.

Einarsen, Stale (1999). The nature and causes of bullying at work. International
Journal of Manpower. 20 (1 & 2), 16-27.

Hannabuss, Stuart (1998). Bullying at work. Library Management. 19 (5), 304-

310.

McMahon, Lucy (2000). Bullying and harassment in the workplace. International

Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 12 (6), 384-387

Heames, Joyes & Harvey, Mike. (2006). Workplace bullying: a cross level
assessment. Emerald Management Division. Retrieved 10 February 2007, From World
Wide Web: www.emeraldinsight.com/0025-1747.htm.

Rayner, C. & Cooper, C. (1997). Workplace bullying: myth or reality-can we

afford to ignore it. Leadership & Organization Development Journal. 18 (4), 211-214

Sheehan, Michael (1999). Workplace bullying: responding with some emotional

intelligence. . International Journal of Manpower. 20 (1 & 2), 57-69.

Zapf, Dieter (1999). Organizational, work group related and personal causes of
mobbing/bullying at work. International Journal of Manpower. 20 (1 & 2), 70-85

Sheehan, M., Barker, M. and Rayner, C. (1999). Applying strategies for dealing
with workplace bullying. International Journal of Manpower. 20 (1 & 2), 50-56.

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