You Manage It! 1: Ethics/Social Responsibility Standing Up to Workplace Bullies
As discussed in this chapter, violence in the workplace can take a variety of forms. One form that can be relatively subtle but that can wreak havoc in the workplace is bullying. Just what is bullying? In general, workplace bullying might be described as abrasive or intimidating employee behavior. The Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute defines bullying as repeated, health-harming mistreatment that could include verbal abuse; threatening, humiliating, or offensive behavior; or work interference.
If this type of treatment was directed at a member of a protected class, the bullying could be found to be illegal discrimination. However, if the victim is not a member of a protected class, antidiscrimination law will not offer any protection, at least in the United States. Canada, Australia, and Europe have passed antibullying laws. Workplace antibullying legislation has been introduced in at least 16 states, but none have been passed into law. A federal antibullying law would protect everyone, not just certain subgroups of employees. Critics fear that antibullying legislation could result in liability for employers and a huge number of lawsuits. They also argued that bullying cannot be defined precisely enough, which makes it difficult to outlaw.
Although it may be difficult to define, a recent survey found that 37 percent of employees feel that they have been bullied at work. Research has also found that workers who have been bullied tend to be less satisfied with their jobs, have greater anxiety, and are more likely to quit their jobs. Some accountants have also reported in a recent limited survey that they are more likely to alter numbers in reports when they are pressured by bullies.
Although bullying may not be in violation of federal or state law, organizations that want to be an employer of choice and have effective work teams and a high level of productivity shouldn’t tolerate it. Goodwill of Southern California provides an example of what an organization can do to prevent or stop workplace bullying. Goodwill established an interpersonal misconduct policy as a means to operationalize its strategic values of respect, integrity, service, and excellence. Goodwill’s policy states that interpersonal misconduct is an individual’s behavior that bullies, demeans, intimidates, ridicules, insults, frightens, persecutes, exploits, and/or threatens a targeted individual and would be perceived as such by a reasonable person. Goodwill is targeting patterns of this type of behavior, rather than focusing on isolated incidents. The organization has terminated employees who have violated the policy.
Critical Thinking Questions
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16-14. Is workplace bullying different from discrimination? Explain.
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16-15. Is workplace bullying different from sexual harassment? Explain.
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16-16. Do you think legislation would be an effective tool for managing workplace bullying? Why or why not?
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16-17. How could you develop a workplace culture that doesn’t tolerate bullying?
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16-18. How could you estimate the cost of workplace bullying?
Team Exercise
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16-19. An old business adage states that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Applying this simple but powerful logic to workplace bullying suggests that workplace bullying needs to be measured in order to be effectively managed. Just what, however, can or should be measured? That question can best be addressed by considering examples of workplace bullying. The following list provides behavioral examples of workplace bullying. You can find more examples at www.bullyonline.org.
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▪ Being constantly criticized over trivial matters
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▪ Being humiliated, shouted at, or threatened, often in front of others
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▪ Finding that your work and credit for it have been stolen
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▪ Finding things that you say and do are twisted and misrepresented
As a team, address the issue of measuring bullying in the workplace. How should it be measured? What kind of measurement instrument should be used? How will the criteria be generated? Address these key issues and identify a process that your team would recommend to develop measures of workplace bullying. If possible, generate an example of what a measure might look like. Would it be a rating scale, a checklist, or something else? Also, who would complete the measures? Finally, identify your plan for the resulting data. That is, what would you do with your results? Would you assess individuals with the data? Would you try to identify bullies? What utility would the measurements have?
Share your measurement approach and example with the rest of the class. Also describe your management plan with regard to the use of the data. Under the direction of the instructor, the class should select the best measurement approach and the best management plan.
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Experiential Exercise: Team
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16-20. Workplace bullying can take a variety of forms (see the partial list in the team exercise). With your teammates, identify an episode representing workplace bullying and prepare to role-play this example. Each team presents its role-play example to the class. If needed, the team should explain how the action portrays bullying.
As a class, consider the role-play examples. For each role-play, address what should be done to prevent or eliminate such bullying. (The instructor can lead this class discussion following each role-play.) Also as a class, consider the possible utility of such role-plays. How could the role-play approach be used as part of a program to manage bullying in organizations?
Experiential Exercise: Individual
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16-21. Bullying needs to be able to be defined in behavioral terms so that a workplace bullying policy can move from a concept to an operational reality. If bullying could be behaviorally defined, the behaviors could be useful for measuring the occurrence of bullying in a workplace as well as training employees with regard to the kinds of workplace behavior that is not acceptable.
Generate behaviors that illustrate, in your judgment, examples of workplace bullying. In other words, what behavioral incidents would represent examples of workplace bullying? How could these behavioral examples be used in an organization? Share your examples and suggested uses with the rest of the class.