work and society

GENERAL INFORMATION ON BULLYING

Relationships Between Machiavellianism, Organizational Culture, and Workplace Bullying: Emotional Abuse from the Target’s and the Perpetrator’s Perspective

Pilch, Irena ; Turska, Elżbieta

Journal of Business Ethics, 2015, Vol.128(1), pp.83-93 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Workplace bullying has been linked to a feeling of incompetence, to a sense of alienation , to anxiety that there will be no promotion or recognition, to job insecurity, to feelings of inadequacy, to knock-on tensions in personal relationships and to depression.

Definition of bullying

Bullying refers to any unfavourable or offensive conduct on the part of a person or persons, which has the effect of creating a hostile workplace environment workplace environment (Other terms that are used for workplace bullying are corporate bullying, workplace violence, moral harassment, emotional abuse and work rage, mobbing.)

Bullying involves

persistent, abusive, and frightening behavior designed to make the target feel upset, humiliated, and threatened. The following profile fits most bullies:

•Blames others for errors.

•Makes unreasonable demands

•Criticizes the work ability of others in front of others=> accuses Nick of alcoholism in the meeting

•Inconsistent enforcement of arbitrary rules.

•Threats of job loss, insults and put downs.=> the boss threatens the employee with bad reference

•Downplays or denies accomplishments.

•Social exclusion.

•Yells and screams at target, often in front of others.

•Takes credit for another person's work.

A Bully Often

• Seeks to dominate and/or manipulate others.

• Enjoys feeling powerful and in control (whether real or not).

• Is both a poor winner (boastful and arrogant) and a poor loser.

• Seems to derive satisfaction from other’s fears, discomfort or pain.

• Is good at hiding behaviors or doing them where those in authority can't notice

• Is excited by conflicts between others.

• Blames others for his/her problems.

• Displays uncontrolled anger (rage).

• May have a history of discipline problems.

• Displays a pattern of impulsive and aggressive behaviors.

• Displays intolerance

• May use drugs, alcohol or be recovering from the consumption/withdrawal

• Lacks empathy towards others=> Kevin Spacey laughing at Nick’s grandmother’s nickname

The Mobbing Specifics- What does it really look like?

• 1. Assaults on the dignity, integrity, credibility, and professional competence of employees.

• 2. Negative, humiliating, intimidating, abusive, malevolent and controlling communication.

• 3. Committed directly, or indirectly, in subtle or obvious ways.

• 4. Perpetrated by one or more members-

• “Vulturing”

• 5. Occurring in a continual, multiple, and systematic fashion, over some time.

• There is a definite “Pattern” to the behavior. Repeated behaviors over numerous dates. Document, document, document.

• 6. Portraying the target as being at fault.

• 7. Committed with the intent to force the person out.

• 8. Mobbing is engineered to discredit, confuse, intimidate, isolate, and force the person into submission. A total “control” issue!

• 9. Representing the removal from the workplace as the target’s “choice.” Settlement agreements, “early retirements,” etc.

• 10. Not recognized, misinterpreted, ignored, tolerated, encouraged, or even instigated by the management of the organization.

• Total lack of acceptance or responsibility or even total denial that the organization does such behavior.

POSSIBLE QUESTIONS FOR PRESENTATION

link to the clip => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgACfyfjFBI

1) What are the typical traits of a bully at workplace and how are they reflected in Dave’s (Kevin Spacey) behavior towards his subordinate?

2) What are the typical reaction of subordinates when their superior takes away their dignity?

Employer’s Profile Analysis- the Bully

Kevin Spacey as Dave Harken attacks Nick Hendricks’ (Jason Bateman) dignity and competence, exerting a huge emotional abuse over him.

Nick is in the film persistently humiliated by his boss. What is immediately obvious is the ironic usage of boss’ language to undermine his employee’ intelligence.

The exaggeration in the boss’ behaviour is another indicator of his bullying behaviour: a small reason such as a 2-minutes delay to work consists a cause for meeting.

Furthermore, by threatening to lay-off the security coordinator the boss urges Nick to admit that he lied telling he was a minute late, although it was just a “saying”, a typical use of the language . By threatening to unreasonably sack other employees he brings Nick to a huge emotional distress.

It is a typical trait of a bully to constantly accuse and humiliate his subordinates. The boss continues the humiliation by doubting Nick’s trustworthiness. He uses mocking language and compares him with his distrustful wife.

The boss also entraps Nick by offering him alcohol at work. He actually dishonestly tries to elicit a positive response to his offer and then openly criticizes Nick for being an alcoholic. He even forces him to drink it knowing the power he exerts on him due to his position in the hierarchy and unjustifiably accuses him of being alcoholic in front of his colleagues.

The highlight of his abysmal behaviour is the fact that he declares himself of being the new Vice President of Sales, although he has given him for many months the false impression that he had to work hard to get this promotion.

His answer to the devastated employee that he was trying to motivate him to work harder exasperates Nick.

Finally, he even laughs at Nick because of the way he used to call his grandmother before dying showing no respect for his grief.

When Nick finally has had enough of his boss’ continuous insults and humiliating behavior, he announces that he is considering resigning, Dave threatens him again by saying he will ensure that he won’t find employment anywhere again by saying that he will ensure to present him as a dishonest and insubordinate alcoholic.

The humiliating expressions “I own you”, “I can crush you anytime” and “you don’t have free will” reflect an intimidating environment where creativity and enjoyment are undermined.

Employee’s Profil Analysis- the victim

From the first scene where Nick negatively characterizes his boss “total fucking asshole” it is obvious that he faces issues at work that create an unfriendly environment that potentially undermines his performance and collaboration with his supervisor.

The scene where the employee envisions attacking his employer vividly demonstrates the dead end of the situation he is in and his escalated anger. It is clear that his physical and mental reserves have been depleted.

Generally, the effects of bullying and harassment are varied. Individuals working in an atmosphere of intimidation and fear cannot perform to their capabilities. This can lead to low morale, increased absenteeism or even resignation.

Indeed, in the short clip of “Horrible Bosses” the employee decides to resign but the bullying behaviour of his boss and his threats prevent him from resigning and force them to conform with Dave’s unacceptable behaviour.

Introduction

Dignity is fundamental to the health of both humans and organisations and, as a result, the idea that dignity at work should be viewed as a basic employment right is growing in acceptance and understanding. However, the unfair treatment of employees in various ways and contexts still remains, and includes discrimination, harassment and bullying. The video that we are going to show you today is an extract from a movie called “Horrible Bosses”, which is a clear representation of bullying in workplace. Bullying is characterised as offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour, an abuse or misuse of power to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.

Theories:

Martin (1992:4) distinguishes two dimensions of power - “power to” and “power over” - in this case we can see “power over” clearly represented as the two men appear to be in a zero-sum game (Abbott et al 2012:93) where Dave, the boss, gains money and status at the expense of others.

Although there is some backlash against the seemingly absolute power that Dave holds over Nick, alluding to Foucault’s argument that ‘Where there is power, there is resistance’ (Foucault 1978:95), Dave immediately crushes it.

Although it is obvious that Dave is bullying Nick, what is more significant is the effect that this has on Nick. Belgian Law, for example, highlights the importance of bullying’s consequences on the employee - i.e. ‘that the personality, the dignity or the physical or psychological integrity of an employee’ is harmed during work, that his position is jeopardised or that a threatening atmosphere is created (Chirila & Constantin 2013:1176). While it is plain that many if not all of these consequences are true in this case, let us focus on dignity.

Corniou and Gyorgy (2013) state that workplace mobbing causes the victim to progressively lose their influence, credibility, confidence, and power to make decisions (711), therefore their dignity. While it is often used to force the victim to resign, in this case we can see that it is actually employed to break the subordinate’s spirit, rendering Nick unlikely to contest any of his decisions or challenge his authority.

Conclusion：

1.Establishing feedback system，supervision system and regulations within the company，which would help restrain employers’ unsuitable behaviours and protect employees’ dignity. Employees have great freedom to complain and claim.

2 interference from third party is needed，like human resource department and labour union.

Abbott, B., Heery, E. & Williams, S. (2012), Civil Society Organisations and the exercise of power in the employment relationship, Employee Relations, Vol. 34 (1), pp. 91 - 107.

Corniou, Teodora Simona & Gyorgy, Manuela (2013), Mobbing in Organisations. Benefits of Identifying the Phenomenon, Procedia - Social and Behavioural Sciences, Vol. 78, pp. 708 - 712.

Foucault, Michel (1978), The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Penguin Books: London.

Martin, R. (1992), Bargaining Power, Clarendon Press: Oxford.