Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States [2 Volumes] 1440850240, 9781440850240

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States

Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States Volume 1

Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada, Editors Foreword by Gary Namie

Copyright © 2018 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Duffy, Maureen P., editor. | Yamada, David C., editor. Title: Workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States / Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada, editors ; foreword by Gary Namie. Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017013247 (print) | LCCN 2017031060 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440850240 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440850233 (set : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781440850257 (volume 1) | ISBN 9781440850264 (volume 2) Subjects: LCSH: Bullying in the workplace—United States. | Harassment—United States. Classification: LCC HF5549.5.E43 (ebook) | LCC HF5549.5.E43 W67168 2018 (print) | DDC 331.25/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013247 ISBN:

978-1-4408-5023-3 (set) 978-1-4408-5025-7 (vol. 1) 978-1-4408-5026-4 (vol. 2) 978-1-4408-5024-0 (ebook)

22 21 20 19 18   1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available as an eBook. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

VOLUME 1 Forewordix Gary Namie Prefacexiii Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada PART I: UNDERSTANDING WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 1 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: Definitions, Terms, and When They Matter David C. Yamada, Maureen Duffy, and Peggy Ann Berry

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2 Prevalence of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing among U.S. Working Adults: What Do the Numbers Mean? Loraleigh Keashly

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3 Risk Factors for Becoming a Target of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie and Ruth Namie

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4 Organizational Risk Factors: An Integrative Model for Understanding, Treating, and Preventing Mobbing and Bullying in the Workplace Len Sperry

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PART II: EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 5 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing and the Health of Targets Melody M. Kawamoto 6 The Psychosocial Impact of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing on Targets Maureen Duffy

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7 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: A Neuropsychotherapeutic Perspective 151 Pieter J. Rossouw 8 Vicarious and Secondary Victimization in Adult Bullying and Mobbing: Coworkers, Target-Partners, Children, and Friends Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik 9 When Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Occur: The Impact on Organizations Renee L. Cowan

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PART III: PREVENTION OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 10 How Awareness and Education Can Help with Recognition of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie, Ruth Namie, and Carol Fehner

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11 The Role of Human Resources in Bullying and Mobbing Prevention Efforts Teresa A. Daniel

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12 Innovative Practices in Workplace Conflict Resolution John-Robert Curtin

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VOLUME 2 PART IV: UTILIZING EFFECTIVE INTERVENTIONS IN RESPONDING TO WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 13 Best Practices in Psychotherapy for Targets of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Maureen Duffy and Jessi Eden Brown

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14 Best Practices in Coaching for Targets of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Jessi Eden Brown and Maureen Duffy

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15 Best Practices in Coaching for Aggressors and Offenders in Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Benjamin M. Walsh

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16 The Role of the Consultant in Assessing and Preventing Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie and Ruth Namie

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17 The Role of the Ombuds in Addressing Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Tony Belak

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PART V: THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE IN THE UNITED STATES FOR WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 18 The American Legal Landscape: Potential Redress and Liability for Workplace Bullying and Mobbing David C. Yamada 19 Comparing and Contrasting Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Laws in Other Countries with the American Legal Landscape Ellen Pinkos Cobb

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PART VI: WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING WITHIN SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT SECTORS 20 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Health Care Sector Susan Johnson 21 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in K–12 Settings: School Principal Mistreatment and Abuse of Teachers Jo Blase and Joseph Blase 22 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in U.S. Higher Education Loraleigh Keashly and Joel H. Neuman 23 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Public Service Sector and the Role of Unions Gregory Sorozan

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24 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Corporate Sector Kelly H. Kolb and Mary Beth Ricke

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25 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Nonprofit Sector Vega Subramaniam

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Epilogue: An Agenda for Moving Forward David C. Yamada and Maureen Duffy

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About the Editors and Contributors

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Index 627

Foreword

These volumes build upon a strong foundation. American researchers, educators, practitioners, and advocates in the arena of workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse are in debt to the foundational theories and practices developed by our European friends and colleagues. Our research and commentary in these volumes flows from their significant work in the field of workplace bullying and mobbing. I marvel at the breadth and depth of the chapters that follow in this twovolume set. The impressive anthology is a testament to the abilities of this mostly American contingent of writers to address every aspect of the workplace bullying and mobbing phenomenon—from definition to impact to solutions to charting a future course. On a personal note, I am proud to have collaborated with many of the invited authors. The societal context of this project is critical. Academics, practitioners, and advocates alike stand against abusive conduct at work that creates almost insurmountable problems for individuals, coworker relationships, families, and organizations. Nevertheless, combating work abuse in America is not uncritically accepted. Though our society has made other forms of abuse taboo—child abuse, domestic violence, student-age bullying—bullying and mobbing at work remain widespread, acceptable, and even promoted. For example, many Americans revere corporate leaders and politicians who have well-known bullying reputations. Though abusive workplace conduct is universal across cultures, American solutions must necessarily take into account the unique characteristics of our lived experiences. We are not a democratic socialist nation as are many European countries, and our people are not collectivist by nature. Our heritage is more that of rugged individualism and personal resourcefulness. However, this enterprising nature of ours can sometimes devolve into ruthless competition. Television reality shows that feature cutthroat competitive

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backstabbing among participants, culminating in elimination, enjoy strong ratings. When the public gets a say in declaring winners, it typically rewards the most cunning, Machiavellian person who has exploited kind or trusting others to win. In myriad ways, we are a winner-take-all society. We condemn second place finishers as losers. Our dominant culture socializes us to believe that we are different from others in the world. This accounts for our sometimes myopic nationalistic views that connote superiority. Putting aside my disdain for cultural narcissism, I readily admit we are different from the other nations that have identified workplace mobbing and bullying as problematic and taken national or state-level actions to ameliorate the problems. The reasons for the difference are varied and complex. First, to date, American lawmakers have not shown the political will to fund research that could remotely implicate employer responsibility for psychologically unsafe, and therefore unhealthy, workplaces. We live in a time of unprecedented hostility to science and fact-driven decision making. Heinz Leymann’s clinic for those abused in the workplace would not likely be funded by any government grant in the United States today. A second difference is that our European predecessors have made it clear in all statutory laws and occupational health regulations that employers are primarily responsible for harm suffered by employees. Abusive employees or managers are seen as agents of their employers. In America, blaming corporations for anything—criminal acts, large-scale environmental damage, or havoc wreaked on the global financial system—is often equated with a lack of patriotism. We are among the most, if not the most, corporate-driven capitalistic cultures on earth. Asking that human factors be included in the capitalistic equation is tantamount to sacrilege. Rather than holding employers accountable, American workers turn on each other in internecine feuds. We blame victims (bullied targets in the context of these volumes), people who, in fact, are just like ourselves. We commit the fundamental attribution error of minimizing the role of environments over behavior and overestimate personalities as causal factors. The individualism for which we Americans are known lets organizations off the hook. When we pin responsibility on victims, it ostensibly lends order to a chaotic world. We adopt the delusion that “bad things only happen to bad people,” accounting for a third difference. It seems reasonable that trade unions are a solution to worker powerlessness in bullying scenarios. They could and should be. However, in America, sympathy for unions is undermined by a 40-year corporate campaign against joining or forming unions. Sadly, America’s unionization rate ranks among the lowest in the world, thus adding a fourth contrast between the world and America to the list.

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A subtle, but fundamental, difference between us and much of the rest of the world is that personal dignity in America is considered something that one must “earn.” Europeans, in their codification of antimobbing and antibullying regulations, proclaim that workers have an inherent dignity. The dignitarian doctrine protects employees’ privacy, personal integrity, or identity and self-esteem. Here, self-esteem is mocked. Employers’ duty of care, an extension of dignitarianism, mandates employer vigilance over workers’ safety—both physical and psychological. Bullying and mobbing and abuse at work should rightly be considered assaults on the dignity of workers. Dignitarian principles are not reflected in our employment laws. There is no mainstream dignity movement in America, notwithstanding pioneering efforts to create one. Outside of the workplace bullying movement, we have a long journey ahead to gain widespread acceptance of the importance of personal dignity. Workplace bullying, mobbing, and abuse are phenomena that make for a chaotic, unpredictable, cruel, and fearful world for those targeted and their families. Orderly explanations are unavailable. The bullying work environment is a world turned upside down. All too often, good souls are targeted for abuse, while those who exploit others garner rewards. Coworkers shrink with anticipatory fear rather than help their abused colleagues. And executives and administrators all too often ignore clear reports of bullying and mobbing, sometimes preferring to rationalize aggressive acts as natural and indispensable parts of a successful workplace climate. We need evidence-based solutions that effectively address the core issues underlying bullying, mobbing, and abuse at work. These volumes provide hope and confirmation that progress is being made toward those goals. Despite our shortcomings, Americans are innovators and social entrepreneurs. From our ranks will surely emerge the unique American answers we seek. I was personally inspired by many of the authors between the covers of this book. It is my hope that the publication of this collection of research studies and commentaries on the 20th anniversary of the launch of the U.S. workplace bullying movement inspires future generations of academics, practitioners, and advocates. We all must strive to make America a kinder, more compassionate place to work, and these volumes provide an important blueprint. Gary Namie Workplace Bullying Institute

Preface Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada

Joined by our tremendous group of chapter contributors and colleagues, we are pleased to offer this two-volume book set that explores workplace bullying and mobbing from multidisciplinary perspectives, with a dual focus on research and practice. We hope that it will serve as a useful educational and reference work not only for researchers, practitioners, and students in many fields that call for an understanding of bullying and mobbing at work, but also for members of the general public who seek to comprehend these behaviors and potential responses to them. Workplace bullying and mobbing inflict destructive effects on immediate targets, coworkers, witnesses, family members, and host organizations. The costs of these forms of interpersonal mistreatment can be measured in terms of harm to physical and emotional health, anxious and distressed family relationships, diminished trust in coworkers and organizations, reduced workplace productivity and morale, and actual dollar costs for everything from treatment to retraining to litigation. In a little over three decades, research about workplace bullying and mobbing has been conducted in many countries around the world. The implications of this growing body of research, knowledge, and practice concerning workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States form the bases for these volumes. In this preface, we would like to share with readers the roots of this project, its overall purpose and scope, and a preview of what to expect in the pages to come. We close with our acknowledgments.

SEEDS PLANTED The biennial Work, Stress and Health conference is a welcomed contrast to the dreary sense of obligation and hierarchy that pervades all too many

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academic and professional events. Sponsored by the American Psychological Association, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology, Work, Stress and Health attracts a diverse array of academicians, practitioners, and students who are interested in applying research and best practices to the fostering of healthier workplaces. The May 2015 conference in Atlanta not only exemplified the compelling draw of this gathering, but in many ways, it also planted the seeds for this project. During the conference, a multidisciplinary cohort of scholars and practitioners interested in workplace bullying and mobbing naturally coalesced. We attended each other’s workshops, talked between formal sessions, and exchanged ideas over meals at local eateries. We got to know each other better, learned more about the work that each of us was doing, and enjoyed a shared sense of professional community and camaraderie. At some point, a couple of those present commented that there was an awful lot of talent in the area of workplace bullying and mobbing represented at the conference and that we ought to put together a book showcasing this work from a distinctly American perspective. Eighteen months later, we were able to send this book to publication. It has been our honor and privilege to shepherd it along.

PURPOSE Our primary purpose in developing this book set was to bring together important research and thinking about workplace bullying and mobbing from leading and emerging American researchers, theorists, and practitioners and to present that work in a comprehensive and systematic way. (For a chapter on applications from neuroscience, we did go half-way around the world to Australia to find the relevant expertise.) We assure our readers, especially those from outside the United States, that we were not being provincial or ethnocentric in choosing this focus. Rather, we understood that the employment context in the United States is very different from that in European nations, Australia, and Canada—countries that have produced so much foundational, high-quality research, scholarship, and commentary about workplace bullying and mobbing. For better and for worse, these American differences cover the major employment sectors (private, public, and nonprofit); systems of employee relations; and mechanisms for resolving legal and labor disputes. In the context of this American focus, we perceived a need for an encyclopedic treatment of workplace bullying and mobbing that embraces multidisciplinary and multifaceted examination and analysis. We intended these volumes to be theoretically inclusive and to present a range of policy, practice, and research perspectives. We also wanted to showcase the accumulated wisdom of practitioners in the area of workplace bullying and mobbing so

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that readers would be able to juxtapose practitioner understandings and perspectives with those of researchers and scholars. In so doing, we tried to stay true to the most robust and comprehensive interpretation of evidence-based practice, namely, reliance on a combination of research and practice evidence with stakeholder values, priorities, and preferences. The mutual informing of research and practice is evident throughout each of the contributions to the book set. Furthermore, where appropriate, research gaps needing attention are identified, along with the tagging of ongoing challenges in the areas of practice and policy. Finally, careful readers will identify respectful differences of opinion and viewpoint among the chapter authors. We did not recruit authors for the purpose of fomenting disagreement, but we did want to include a variety of analyses, interpretations, and framings to provide looks at workplace bullying and mobbing from different vantage points. In this sense, we hope that this project contributes to our overall understanding of the subject matter in ways that respect the complexities of the various topics.

PREVIEWING THESE VOLUMES The book set is divided into six parts. Part I focuses on understanding and describing workplace bullying and mobbing. In this section, topics such as terminology and prevalence rates are discussed as well as risk factors for becoming a target and organizational risk factors for the development of bullying and mobbing. In part II, we examine the effects of workplace bullying and mobbing. Health impairments experienced by targets and broader psychosocial impacts are described. The effects of bullying and mobbing on the brains of targets and the resulting implications are discussed in the contribution on neuroscience and bullying. The effects of vicarious victimization on family members and coworkers are examined. We also examine the impacts of bullying and mobbing on the host organizations. In part III, we focus on the prevention of workplace bullying and mobbing. This includes the role of human resources (HR) and applications of various conflict resolution tools. In part IV, we center on effective interventions to respond to workplace bullying and mobbing. This section includes discussions of best practices in psychotherapy and in coaching for targets of workplace bullying and mobbing as well as possibilities for coaching aggressors and offenders. The potential roles of workplace consultants and the ombudsperson are also examined. In part V, we consider the legal landscape for workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States. This includes an examination of relevant legal developments in the United States, followed by a comparative look at how legal systems in other countries address bullying and mobbing behaviors, the latter being especially relevant to multinational employers.

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Finally, in part VI, we focus on workplace bullying and mobbing within specific employment sectors. Health care, K–12 educational settings, higher education, public service and the role of unions, the corporate sector, and the nonprofit sector all receive individual treatments. We close with an epilogue in which the coeditors share final thoughts and impressions about the overall subject matter and provide commentary about how awareness of bullying and mobbing will continue to affect the nature of workplace interactions and relationships. We hope that these volumes will be useful in different ways, depending on the individual reader’s needs. For some, this material will yield specific research summaries or potential good practices. For others, single chapters or groups of chapters will be worth cover-to-cover reads to obtain topical overviews. For those who want a comprehensive overview of workplace bullying and mobbing, a full reading of both volumes will provide a useful, comprehensive starting point. In any event, we trust that engaging with these volumes will be time well spent.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are deeply grateful for the knowledge, expertise, and experiences that have been generously shared by our contributors, and we cannot thank them enough for their hard work and patience with our recurring demands as editors. We specially thank Drs. Ruth and Gary Namie for their pioneering leadership in bringing the problem of workplace bullying to national attention in the United States. It is hard to imagine where we would be in the United States had they not come along and helped to put this social problem before us. On a broader scale, we express our appreciation and gratitude to scholars, practitioners, workers, and advocates around the world who are devoting time and energies toward helping us understand and respond to bullying and mobbing at work. The fellowship of those who understand the destructiveness of these behaviors and want to prevent and stop them is a special one. We are especially appreciative of the signature contributions of researchers and theorists outside of the United States who have helped to build foundations for our work today. Many of their writings are cited in our various chapters. We also wish to thank Jessica Gribble, our editor at Praeger/ABC-CLIO, and the production and marketing teams there. Jessica has been a staunch supporter of this project from the outset and has guided it with a deft hand. It has only been a pleasure to work with her and to benefit from her ideas and creativity. Daniel Glass, our APA guru, peerless editorial assistant, and Suffolk University doctoral candidate, helped to make the technical side of editing this book set seem easy.

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In addition to our joint acknowledgments, I (M.D.) have a few individual expressions of thanks that I wish to share. People from all over the country and, indeed, from many other countries have communicated with me over the years about their own experiences of workplace bullying and mobbing. To them, and to my clients, I offer my sincerest appreciation for their trust. I hope that in the pages of this book set, they will continue to find resources for their own recovery and positive reengagement in the world of work. My coeditor, colleague, and friend, David Yamada, has been an amazing partner in this project. He is a wonderful collaborator and has made doing this book set rewarding in ways too many to list. Finally, to my husband, with gratitude as always for your unconditional support, and for your many surprise cups of tea, coffee, and glasses of wine. I (D.Y.) want to express my gratitude to several institutions and individuals. Suffolk University Law School and Valparaiso University provided welcomed support and space to work on this project. Maureen Duffy, who graciously invited me to join her as coeditor—a leap of faith to be sure—has gifted me with her wisdom and expertise, attention to detail, good humor, and friendship. To put it in a lawyer’s vernacular, it has been an honor to “second chair” the planning and editing of this book set with her. Furthermore, I dedicate my work on the project to dear friends Mary Louise Allen, Denise McCrane, and Brian McCrane, as well as to my late mom, Betty Yamada, who was the antithesis of a bully.

PART I

Understanding Workplace Bullying and Mobbing

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: Definitions, Terms, and When They Matter David C. Yamada, Maureen Duffy, and Peggy Ann Berry

Since the late 1980s, when the terms workplace mobbing and workplace bullying began to appear in the research and professional literature, scholars and practitioners in fields as diverse as psychology, organizational behavior, and law have attempted to define these terms or have suggested other labels for naming the underlying behaviors. Three decades later, the concepts of workplace bullying and mobbing are fully entering the mainstream vocabularies of employee relations and interpersonal mistreatment. The process of labeling and defining human interactions can be a tricky and sometimes touchy business, as many researchers and theorists have come to realize. In what is now a multidisciplinary field of study, with multiple disciplinary lexicons simultaneously in use, labeling and defining workplace bullying and mobbing remains a sometimes fraught activity. Nonetheless, what is common to these efforts to label and define these behaviors is the shared interest in understanding the underlying social and neurobiological processes involved; the damaging effects on targets and an increasingly wide range of other stakeholders; and the development of effective means to both prevent workplace bullying and mobbing and offer treatments, interventions, and legal relief to those affected. Naming something is a powerful epistemological act with real-world significance. Drawing a distinction by naming and defining something brings that something from the background into the foreground, thereby enabling it to be studied and investigated. Keeney (1983) stated that “drawing any distinction necessarily leaves us with an altered, expanded universe for further investigation” (p. 23). It would be a safe bet to say that there are very few professionals, especially practitioners, working in the area of workplace bullying

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and mobbing who have not heard clients express huge relief upon learning that the abuse they have been experiencing at work has a name and is studied in the professional literature. The naming of their experiences of bullying and mobbing provides validation, opportunities for understanding, and avenues for healing. John Dewey (1910/2007), the American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, also paid attention to the importance of naming. He said, Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account. (p. 173) Thus, we begin these volumes with what may appear to be an obligatory chapter on terms and definitions. However, we do so with aspirations that go beyond checking a box. In addition to providing and explaining basic terms and definitions, we will highlight when, why, and how they matter, while acknowledging that people will have their own opinions as to which ones best capture the underlying behaviors. As we see it, these behaviors are so damaging and destructive to individuals and organizations that we should not get too caught up in debates over who is “right” on the question of preferred terminology. Rather, we embrace and call for a “big tent” approach that focuses on understanding, preventing, and responding to these behaviors on individual, organizational, and public policy levels. Accordingly, this chapter will identify and discuss varying terms and definitions related to our focus on workplace bullying and mobbing. We begin by focusing on a representative sampling of definitions used for our primary terms of workplace bullying and workplace mobbing, followed by a look at other terms that have been invoked to cover the same or similar behaviors. We then discuss the key elements of the definitions, followed by a brief consideration of the most common bullying and mobbing behaviors. Finally, we offer an examination of the implications of these terms and definitions for important stakeholder interests. Before proceeding, we wish to acknowledge that no core definition can possibly cover all the relevant dynamics of bullying and mobbing at work. In parsing and distinguishing them, we are not finding fault with what is or is not contained in a given definition. In many cases, a factor that one author includes in a basic definition may be covered by another author elsewhere in a commentary.

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DEFINING WORKPLACE BULLYING Three representative definitions of workplace bullying are provided here. They include definitions from Andrea Adams, the British journalist who first popularized the term workplace bullying in the 1980s and early 1990s; Gary and Ruth Namie, the cofounders of the American-based Workplace Bullying Institute, who were most responsible for bringing the term workplace bullying to the United States; and leading European researchers Stale Einarsen, Helge Hoel, Dieter Zapf, and Cary Cooper.

Andrea Adams The late Andrea Adams used a series of BBC radio documentaries to bring the topic to a more public audience. In 1992, she authored what may have been the first book to use “bullying” at work as its operative term (Adams, 1992). She observed that even though workplace bullying is “like a malignant cancer” and that “the majority of the adult population spends more waking hours at work than anywhere else,” the manifestations of this form of abuse “are widely dismissed” (Adams, 1992, p. 9). In a 1994 speech to the trade union Manufacturing, Science and Finance, she defined bullying this way: Workplace bullying constitutes offensive behaviour through vindictive, cruel, malicious or humiliating attempts to undermine an individual or groups of employees. And these persistently negative attacks on their personal and professional performance are typically unpredictable, irrational and often unfair. This abuse of power or position can cause such chronic stress and anxiety that the employees gradually lose belief in themselves, suffering physical ill-health and mental distress as a result. (Ellis, 2011, p. 2) Adams was a journalist, not a researcher or theorist. However, her early explanation of workplace bullying captured many of the elements found in more academic definitions. Furthermore, by emphasizing a public audience rather than an academic one for her work, she helped to lay the groundwork for mainstreaming workplace bullying as an employee relations concern.

Gary Namie and Ruth Namie In 1997, Gary and Ruth Namie, both holders of PhDs in psychology, founded the Campaign Against Workplace Bullying, the first major initiative designed to import the term workplace bullying into the vocabulary of American employee relations and mental health treatment. This effort would

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evolve into the creation of the Workplace Bullying Institute and the publication of several books (Namie & Namie, 1999, 2009, 2011). The Namies define workplace bullying as the “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of a person by one or more workers that takes the form of verbal abuse; conduct or behaviors that are threatening, intimidating, or humiliating; sabotage that prevents work from getting done; or some combination of the three” (Namie & Namie, 2009, p. 1). They go on to characterize workplace bullying as a form of “psychological violence” that mixes “verbal and strategic assaults to prevent the Target from performing work well,” thus undermining “an employer’s legitimate business interests” (Namie & Namie, 2009, p. 1). They add that bullying includes an aggressor’s “personal agenda of controlling another human being,” typically via “a combination of deliberate humiliation and the withholding of resources” required to perform a job (Namie & Namie, 2009, p. 1). Working in conjunction with Zogby Analytics pollsters, the Workplace Bullying Institute has conducted periodic national scientific surveys on workplace bullying using various measures that build off this basic definition. Further discussion of those surveys may be found in chapter 2, which examines the prevalence of workplace bullying and mobbing behaviors.

Stale Einarsen, Helge Hoel, Dieter Zapf, and Cary Cooper Leading European researchers and theorists Stale Einarsen, Helge Hoel, Dieter Zapf, and Cary Cooper have been examining bullying, mobbing, and related behaviors at work going back to the 1990s. While acknowledging the complexities and “many shapes and shades” of this topic (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, p. 4), they define workplace bullying this way: “At a basic level it is about the systematic mistreatment of a subordinate, a colleague, or a superior, which, if continued and long-lasting, may cause severe social, psychological, and psychosomatic problems in the target” (Einarsen et al., 2011, p. 4). They further expound on this definition: “Bullying at work is about repeated actions and practises that are directed against one or more workers; that are unwanted by the victim; that may be carried out deliberately or unconsciously, but clearly cause humiliation, offence, and distress; and that may interfere with work performance and/or cause an unpleasant working environment” (Einarsen et al., 2011, p. 9).

DEFINING WORKPLACE MOBBING Now we offer three representative definitions of workplace mobbing. They include definitions from Heinz Leymann, the first to adopt and develop the term mobbing in a workplace context; Noa Davenport, Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Elliott, whose 1999 book helped to introduce workplace mobbing

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to American audiences; and Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry, coauthors of two leading books on workplace mobbing behaviors.

Heinz Leymann During the 1980s, the late Swedish psychologist Heinz Leymann adopted the term mobbing to describe the kinds of abusive, hostile behaviors that were being directed at employees by their coworkers. This pioneering expert on mobbing behaviors built on the work of ethologist Konrad Lorenz, who studied the behaviors of birds and other animals when they ganged up to drive a target animal out of their territory. Here is his “operational definition” of workplace mobbing (Leymann, 1990): Psychical terror or mobbing in working life means hostile and unethical communication which is directed in a systematic way by one or a number of persons mainly toward one individual. . . . These actions take place often (almost every day) and over a long period (at least for six months) and, because of this frequency and duration, result in considerable psychic, psychosomatic and social misery. (p. 120) Leymann (1990, 1996) fleshed out the above definition through his development of a multiphase model of workplace mobbing: namely, Phase 1: the precipitating conflict; Phase 2: the escalation of abusive behaviors against a target; Phase 3: the involvement of management or administration into the conflict; Phase 4: the acceleration of negative acts and labeling of the target; and Phase 5: the elimination of the target from the workplace or unit within it. Kenneth Westhues, the Canadian sociologist, built on the work of Heinz Leymann and investigated multiple cases of workplace mobbing, in particular among academics in higher education. In a highly regarded series of books on workplace mobbing, Westhues (1998, 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c) extended and applied Leymann’s definition and understanding of workplace mobbing to his analysis of multiple actual cases.

Noa Davenport, Ruth Schwartz, and Gail Elliott Noa Zanolli Davenport, Ruth Distler Schwartz, and Gail Pursell Elliott (1999) introduced workplace mobbing into the U.S. employee relations vocabulary via their 1999 book, Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace. They defined mobbing this way: The mobbing syndrome is a malicious attempt to force a person out of the workplace through unjustified accusations, humiliation, general harassment, emotional abuse, and/or terror.

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It is a “ganging up” by the leader(s)—organization, superior, coworker, or subordinate—who rallies others into systematic and frequent “mob-like” behavior. . . . The result is always injury—physical or mental distress or illness and social misery and, most often, expulsion from the workplace. (Davenport et al., 1999, p. 40) In America, bullying gained a stronger foothold than mobbing as a preferred term for employee relations stakeholders and the general public during the first decade of the century. However, the work of these authors would help to keep mobbing in the U.S. work abuse vocabulary as well.

Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry (2012) define workplace mobbing this way: Workplace mobbing is nonsexual harassment of a coworker by a group of members of an organization for the purpose of removing the targeted individual(s) from the organization or at least a particular unit of the organization. Mobbing involves individual, group, and organizational dynamics. It predictably results in the humiliation, devaluation, discrediting, and degradation; loss of professional reputation; and, often, removal of the victim from the organization through termination, extended medical leave, or quitting. The results of this typically protracted traumatizing experience are significant financial, career, health, and psychosocial losses or other negative consequences. (p. 52) Duffy and Sperry’s (2012, 2014) definition of workplace mobbing is based on a systemic, integrative approach to understanding workplace abuse and includes the interaction of the individual with the group and with the larger organization—all elements that they see as crucial in the development of workplace mobbing and, hence, as necessary for inclusion in a comprehensive definition. Like other definitions, Duffy and Sperry’s includes the fact that workplace mobbing is physically and psychologically health harming. Unlike other definitions, they include the reputational damage and other psychosocial losses that follow workplace mobbing. In expanding on the inclusion in their definition of the fact that workplace mobbing is a typically traumatizing experience, Duffy and Sperry (2014) state that “it leaves the victim reeling, not knowing what has happened, why it happened, and, most important, what will happen in the future. Being mobbed can take away a victim’s sense of safety and security in the world” (p. 1).

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BULLYING VS. MOBBING Researchers and commentators about bullying and mobbing behaviors at work have expressed different views about the relationship between the two terms. At times, these discussions have yielded (usually respectful) differences of opinion. Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, and Cooper (2011) recommend avoiding “the trap, often observed in social sciences, where new issues are coming into focus and a plethora of competing terms and concepts are introduced” (pp. 4–5), while gently chiding the United States for falling into it. They further suggest that “in practice, only minor differences exist between the concepts of bullying, harassment, and mobbing” (Einarsen et al., 2011, p. 5). Accordingly, they endorse a more or less interchangeable use of the terms in referring to “the systematic exhibition of aggressive behavior at work directed towards a subordinate, a coworker, or even a superior, as well as the perception of being systematically exposed to such mistreatment while at work” (Einarsen et al., 2011, p. 5). Duffy and Sperry (2012, 2014) make the case for not conflating mobbing with bullying. They see the primary conditions differentiating mobbing from bullying in the workplace as (1) ganging up or group aggression that is always characteristic of mobbing and (2) organizational participation in mobbing through acts of commission or omission or both against the target. In Leymann’s (1990, 1996) multiphase model, organizational involvement in mobbing is specified in Phase 3, and Duffy and Sperry see organizational culture, climate, and leadership as a central feature of this destructive social process. On the other hand, bullying can involve one-on-one aggression and not include the process of ganging up by multiple actors. Additionally, definitions of bullying are silent on the issue of organizational involvement—a basic element of both Leymanns’s (1990, 1996) and Duffy and Sperry’s (2012, 2014) definitions. Martin and Peña Saint Martin (2012) prefer the use of the term mobbing over bullying to avoid conceptual confusion between mobbing and bullying. They suggest that the concept of bullying is most clearly associated for many, especially for those in Latin America and other Spanish-speaking countries, with aggression among schoolchildren. Because of differences in languages and in cultural understandings, it has so far not been possible to arrive at a global consensus of what the best term to describe workplace aggression is. Like Duffy and Sperry (2012, 2014) they also point out that the term mobbing always refers to group or collective aggression and is, therefore, more theoretically precise. For Duffy and Sperry (2014), not conflating bullying and mobbing is particularly important when thinking about interventions to reduce and prevent workplace mobbing. They state, “Understanding the difference between

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workplace bullying and workplace mobbing is important because you can’t solve workplace mobbing by only addressing the bullying behaviors of individuals. Since organizations are the incubators of workplace mobbing, solving the problem of mobbing requires awareness and change at the organizational level as well as at the individual level” (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 17). For Duffy and Sperry, the value of theoretical precision and sensitivity makes the case for distinguishing between mobbing and bullying and not conflating the differences between them.

OTHER TERMS RELATED TO BULLYING AND MOBBING AT WORK Many other terms have been used to describe behaviors typically associated with, or related to, bullying and mobbing. Perhaps the earliest American treatment of this general subject is Carroll M. Brodsky’s The Harassed Worker (1976), describing workers who had been subjected to mental cruelty on the job that escaped safety protections designed to prevent physical workplace hazards. Other labels have included abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000); lateral violence, horizontal violence, and oppressed group behavior (Roberts, 1984; Vessey, Demarco, Gaffney, & Budin, 2009); emotional abuse (Keashly, 1997); indirect, relational, and social aggression (Archer & Coyne, 2005); disruptive behaviors (The Joint Commission, 2008); chronic work trauma (Stennett-Brewer, 1997); relational aggression (Dellasega, 2009); and incivility (Pearson & Porath, 2009). Below is a closer look at several terms that have been offered during the past two decades.

Work Abuse On the eve of workplace bullying and mobbing entering the lexicon of American employee relations, therapists Judith Wyatt and Chauncey Hare invoked the term work abuse to largely describe the same cluster of behaviors (Wyatt & Hare, 1997). In their 1997 book, they define work abuse as the “demeaning or brutalizing of a person through patterned ways of interacting at work that are mostly denied” (Wyatt & Hare, 1997, p. 373). These behaviors generally fall into four categories: “Ongoing (Neglectful) Abuse,” “Chronic Scapegoating,” “Acute Scapegoating,” and “Denial of Due Process” (Wyatt & Hare, 1997, p. 8). Wyatt and Hare (1997) are especially critical of any tendency to conflate work stress and work abuse. Work stress is often a euphemism for work abuse and is invoked when people who are “routinely misused within a work system” blame the effects on themselves (Wyatt & Hare, 1997, p. 373). The

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term work stress, they believe, “carries society’s false implication of self-blame for one’s abusive situation” (Wyatt & Hare, 1997, p. 373).

Emotional Abuse In an early comprehensive literature review and commentary, Loraleigh Keashly (1997) uses the term emotional abuse to capture varieties of verbal and nonverbal workplace aggression. She derived from the research seven common dimensions to form an overall definition of emotional abuse at work: • “‘Behavior’ can include verbal and nonverbal/physical modes of expression”; • “Constitutes a pattern (vs. a single event)”; • “Includes behavior that is unwelcomed, unwanted, or unsolicited by the target”; • “Involves a violation of a standard of conduct towards or treatment of others or of a person’s rights”; • “Results in harm to the target”; • “There is intent or controllability of the action”; and • “Involves power differences” (Keashly, 1997, pp. 94–96).

Abusive Work Environment The Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB), authored by David Yamada, serves as the template workplace antibullying legislation for law reform efforts in the United States (Yamada, 2013). The HWB does not use the terms bullying or mobbing in its key operational and definitional language. Rather, use of the term abusive work environment as a proxy for workplace bullying reflects the author’s decision to make the proposed bill language more legally congruent with protections against harassment based on protected class status, such as sexual harassment. The Healthy Workplace Bill defines its primary cause of action as follows: “It shall be an unlawful employment practice under this Chapter to subject an employee to an abusive work environment as defined by this Chapter” (Yamada, 2013, p. 352). Within the bill language, the critical definition is “abusive work environment,” which “exists when an employer or one or more of its employees, acting with intent to cause pain or distress to an employee, subjects that employee to abusive conduct that causes physical harm, psychological harm, or both” (Yamada, 2013, p. 351). As explained in chapter 18, “abusive conduct” is further defined in ways that capture bullying and mobbing behaviors (Yamada, 2013, p. 351).

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Abusive Supervision Abusive supervision is a term used to describe a type of workplace abuse that occurs between a supervisor and subordinate, in which the abuse is top-down and carried out within the context of a relationship in which there are clear power differentials. The characteristic behaviors are excessive criticism, faultfinding, nitpicking, micromanagement, and excessive supervision or scrutiny. Ben Tepper (2000) defines abusive supervision as “subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact” (p. 178). Tepper’s (2000) definition is based on the subjective assessment of the subordinate under supervision. However, the concept of abusive supervision has evolved to the point that certain supervisory behaviors (i.e., excessive criticism, faultfinding, etc.) are now generally regarded as intrinsically hostile or abusive, irrespective of whether the subordinate views them that way or not.

Workplace Violence and Psychological Violence American conceptualizations of workplace violence commonly emphasize physical aggression, physical harm, and criminal behavior. For example, here is one of the early contemporary framings of the topic, courtesy of workplace violence expert Raymond Flannery: Offices, courts, schools, and healthcare settings are no longer safe havens from crime. The four major societal crimes of homicide, assault, rape, and robbery have now become frequent visitors to the workplace. . . . While we shall look more closely at the specific nature of these crimes, . . . the general national statistics suggest that violence in society and in the workplace has become a major public health problem for our country. (Flannery, 1995, p. 5) Some definitions leave room for purely verbal and nonverbal, nonphysical behavior, while continuing to focus on physically violent behavior that overlaps with criminal activity. For example, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2002) uses this definition: “Workplace violence is violence or the threat of violence against workers. It can occur at or outside the workplace and can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, one of the leading causes of job-related deaths” (p. 1). Also, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2006), the workplace-safety research arm of the federal government, has a classification system that labels “worker-on-worker” violence as Type III Violence, which may include “verbal violence (e.g., threats, verbal abuse, hostility, harassment) and other forms, such as stalking” (p. 4).

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The Namies, among others in the United States, have attempted to bridge the gap by using the term psychological violence to describe bullying (Namie & Namie, 2009, p. 1). They appear to be on strong international ground, with both the International Labour Organization (Chappell & DiMartino, 2006) and the World Health Organization (Cassitto, Fattorini, Gilioli, & Rengo, 2003) also referring to bullying and mobbing behaviors as psychological violence and including them under the workplace violence rubric. While this may be an accurate characterization of forms of severe nonphysical aggression, the term is not widely used in the American employment context.

Workplace Incivility Workplace incivility has been defined as “the exchange of seemingly inconsequential inconsiderate words and deeds that violate conventional norms of workplace conduct” (Pearson & Porath, 2009, p. 12). Incivility researchers Christine Pearson and Christine Porath give as examples “interrupting a conversation,” “talking loudly in common areas,” “arriving late,” “not introducing a newcomer,” “failing to return a phone call,” and “showing little interest in another individual’s opinion” (Pearson & Porath, 2009, p. 12). At times, incivility has been conflated with bullying and mobbing, and sometimes it has been used interchangeably, especially in the popular media. Furthermore, incivility research is sometimes used to buttress analyses of more severe forms of workplace mistreatment. In logical terms, it could be argued that while not every act of incivility rises to the level of bullying or mobbing, many bullying or mobbing behaviors would surely qualify as acts of incivility. Increasingly, however, researchers are distinguishing between incivility on one hand and bullying and mobbing on the other.

Harassment and Hostile Work Environment Hostile work environment is a legal term used to describe a common form of harassment grounded in protected class status, such as sex or race. Most of the leading case law has developed in the context of sexual harassment (Yamada, 2000). Chapter 18 sets out the U.S. Supreme Court’s standard for defining what constitutes a hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. At times, those who are not versed in employment discrimination law will invoke this term to describe workplace bullying, aggression, and incivility. This is understandable, for combinations of these behaviors can surely make for hostile work environments. However, this may also create the misleading impression that all bullying-type behaviors are prohibited under employment discrimination laws, which is not the case. Unless it can be shown that

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harassing behaviors are motivated by the target’s protected class status, they do not fall within the prohibitions of the Civil Rights Act and similar protective statutes (Yamada, 2000).

COMMON WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING BEHAVIORS As a whole, workplace bullying and mobbing situations cover a gamut of overt and covert behaviors directed at targets. However, none of the core definitions examined here lists the more common bullying and mobbing behaviors. Although these behaviors may be self-evident to many who are consulting these volumes, it may be useful for those who are newer to the general subject matter to see a catalogue of some of the more common forms of workplace abuse. This also helps to put the definitions in context and build a foundation for the remaining chapters.

Workplace Bullying Institute U.S. Survey The Workplace Bullying Institute’s 2007 U.S. scientific survey of workplace bullying provides a useful snapshot of common abusive behaviors at work (WBI, 2007). Under WBI’s guidance, the polling firm Zogby International conducted some 7,700 online interviews of a survey group representative of the U.S. population. Among those who indicated they had been subjected to forms of workplace bullying: • 53 percent reported verbal abuse including “shouting, swearing, name calling, malicious sarcasm, threats to safety, etc.”; • 53 percent reported behaviors and actions, private or public, including “threatening, intimidating, humiliating, hostile, offensive, inappropriately cruel conduct, etc.”; • 47 percent reported abuse of authority, including “undeserved evaluations, denial of advancement, stealing credit, tarnished reputation, arbitrary instructions, unsafe assignments, etc.”; • 45 percent reported “interference with work performance,” including “sabotage, undermining, ensuring failure, etc.”; and, • 30 percent reported “destruction of workplace relationships” . . . “among co-workers, bosses, or customers.” (WBI, 2007, p. 12) Other frequent bullying behaviors reported by survey participants included sexual harassment, defamation and misrepresentation, physical assault, pay and benefit reductions, and terminations without cause (WBI, 2007).

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Leymann’s Critical Incident Model Heinz Leymann identified frequent workplace mobbing behaviors as part of a multi-phase critical-incident model leading from mobbing to expulsion (Leymann, 1990). Phase 1 is the critical incident itself, usually an unresolved work conflict that leads supervisors and/or coworkers to resent or dislike the victim. Phase 2 is the actual mobbing or stigmatizing of the victim, which includes a range of negative acts against the victim, including removal from the workplace. Specific behaviors may include: • Injuring the victim’s personal reputation, including “rumor mongering, slandering, holding up to ridicule”; • Directing or limiting communications, such as undermining the victim’s ability to communicate, giving the silent treatment, or “continual loud-voiced criticism and meaningful [hostile] glances”; • Physical and social isolation of the victim; • Undermining the victim’s ability to work, including withholding work assignments or giving the victim “humiliating or meaningless work tasks”; and, • Directing “violence and threats of violence” at the victim. (Leymann, 1990, p. 121) Phase 3 involves more formal management activity that “turns the person into a marked individual” through negative formal evaluations of job performance and negative assessments of suitability for continued employment. Phase 4 is the acceleration of abuse and the negative labeling of the target. Finally, phase 5 culminates in the expulsion of the victim from the organization.

Individual Situations May Vary Individual aggressors may have their favored tactics and strategies, and patterns of abusive behaviors may emerge in certain types of work settings. Many of the negative acts and patterns of negative acts in bullying and mobbing are sadly predictable. However, it would be risky to presume that there are uniform sets of bullying and mobbing behaviors for given situations. Indeed, while some occurrences of work abuse are ordinary and foreseeable in terms of the behaviors described above, we are continually amazed and appalled at the inventive combinations of mistreatment that can be directed at targets. Accordingly, specific instances of mobbing and bullying typically involve varying combinations of these hostile behaviors and negative acts. Based on our familiarity with hundreds of bullying and mobbing situations, a multitude of contextual factors shapes the choices of abusive behaviors enacted by

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aggressors. These include, among other things, power relationships grounded in organizational hierarchies and interpersonal dynamics, legal relationships, the number and nature of key actors, institutional resources available to aggressors, and motivations driving the mistreatment. Furthermore, in given situations the types of bullying and mobbing behaviors may change over time, depending upon the status of those targeted and the roles of those enlisted to participate in the abuse.

KEY ELEMENTS OF DEFINITIONS Obviously, the foregoing definitions of bullying, mobbing, and related terms vary in some ways. Taken as a whole, however, they lead us to a largely shared cluster of key elements.

Negative Acts All of the core definitions of bullying and mobbing include negative acts. For example, Adams refers to “vindictive, cruel, malicious or humiliating attempts to undermine” targets (Ellis, 2011, p. 2). Namie and Namie (2009) cite “verbal abuse; conduct or behaviors that are threatening, intimidating, or humiliating; sabotage that prevents works from getting done; or some combination of the three” (p. 1). And Duffy and Sperry (2012) describe “devaluation, discrediting, and degradation; loss of professional reputation; and, often, removal of the victim from the organization” (p. 52). Lists of specific negative behaviors, however, are usually reserved for subsequent commentary following the definitions. Many commentators would readily acknowledge that bullying and mobbing are dignity-denying forms of mistreatment. However, only Keashly’s (1997) definition expressly describes the harm in terms of societal norms and rights, noting that workplace emotional abuse “involves a violation of a standard of conduct towards or treatment of others or of a person’s rights” (p. 95).

Intention Most definitions and explanations of workplace bullying and mobbing, as well as definitions of related terms, include an element of intent by an aggressor, either explicitly or implicitly. For example, in defining workplace bullying, Namie and Namie (2009) refer to an aggressor’s “personal agenda of controlling another human being” (p. 1). Duffy and Sperry (2014), in describing workplace mobbing, refer to how “individuals, groups, or organizations target a person for ridicule, humiliation, and removal from the workplace” (p. 1). Yamada’s (2013) legal conceptualization of an abusive work

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environment includes “intent to cause pain or distress to an employee” (p. 351). By contrast, Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, and Cooper state that bullying “may be carried out deliberately or unconsciously” (2011, p. 9). A 2009 survey of human resources practitioners by Teresa Daniel and Gary Metcalf (2016) exploring distinctions between perceived workplace bullies and tough bosses suggested that intent matters. Interviews of survey respondents indicated that the presence of malice created a dividing line between bullying and tough management: “Participants were able to articulate clear distinctions between a bully and a tough boss. The ‘so what’ of this study was our finding that it is the presence or absence of malice that determines whether a conflict at work is actually workplace bullying, with malice defined as “the desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another” (Daniel & Metcalf, 2016, p. 31).

Frequency and Duration Under Leymann’s definition (1990, p. 120), “these actions take place often (almost every day) and over a long period (at least for six months).” Other core definitions are less specific, with the Namies (2009, p. 1) referring to “repeated” behaviors and Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, and Cooper (2011, p. 9) referring to “repeated actions and practises.” Furthermore, as noted by Keashly (1997), the behaviors present a pattern as opposed to being a single event. In general, we may presume that the greater the frequency and duration of the mistreatment, the more likely it is to be considered a form of bullying or mobbing. Specifications of frequency and duration are also likely to appear in survey instruments measuring prevalence rates.

Negative Impacts Virtually every definition of bullying, mobbing, or similar terms includes negative health impacts on targets. Namie and Namie (2009) refer to “healthharming” effects (p. 1), while Einarsen and colleagues (2011) describe “severe social, psychological, and psychosomatic problems” (p. 4). Duffy and Sperry (2014) include “deteriorating physical and mental health” (p. 1), and add to that the disorientation experienced by targets who are left “reeling, not knowing what has happened, why it happened, and . . . what will happen in the future” (p. 1). In the legal context, Yamada’s conceptualization of an “abusive work environment” requires “physical harm, psychological harm, or both” to state a valid cause of action (2013, p. 351). The core definitions tend not to delve into forms of collateral damage facing targets, including psychosocial impacts such as vocational and professional identities, future employability and career prospects, and impairment of

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family and personal relationships. They also tend to omit the significant costs of these behaviors to employers and organizations. However, the cited commentators and researchers discuss these factors at length in their major works.

Number and Roles of Actors Most of the core definitions anticipate a single target. However, Adams refers to attempts to undermine an “individual or groups of employees” (Ellis, 2011, p. 2), and Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, and Cooper (2011) refer to behaviors “that are directed against one or more workers” (p. 9). This raises the question of whether negative acts directed at a larger number of workers somehow lose “eligibility” to be deemed bullying or mobbing, perhaps at some stage falling into the category of very bad management rather than targeted aggression. In terms of aggressors, both the bullying and mobbing definitions generally anticipate the possibility of more than one actor participating in the abusive behaviors. Davenport, Schwartz, and Elliott (1999) invoke the more emotionally laden “ganging up” (p. 40) in their definition of mobbing.

FRAMING CONCEPTS FOR TERMS AND DEFINITIONS Organizational Culture and Responsibility The basic definitions provided here focus on central actors, intentions, behaviors, and impacts. Most of the core definitions do not branch into the roles of organizational cultures in discouraging or enabling the underlying behaviors, nor do they address questions of institutional responsibility when such behaviors occur. Duffy and Sperry (2012) are unique in this respect in that they include “mobbing involves individual, group, and organizational dynamics” (p. 52) in their definition. Nonetheless, learned researchers and commentators readily acknowledge the organizational implications of bullying and mobbing, including the central role of top leadership in establishing workplace cultures. These behaviors are especially prevalent in organizations with more pronounced hierarchical structures (Grubb, Roberts, Swanson, Burnfield, & Childress, 2005).

Power Imbalances and Differentials Of the core definitions shared here, Keashly (1997) expressly mentions power differentials between aggressors and targets; Adams refers to the “abuse of power or position” (Ellis, 2011, p. 2); and Leymann includes the inevitable role of management or administration (1990, 1996). Surveys covering workplace bullying in America consistently show supervisors and bosses as the

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most likely aggressors by a significant margin over peers and coworkers, with subordinates coming a distant last (Namie & Namie, 2009). More fundamentally, bullying and mobbing behaviors are, by their very nature, exercises of power over another because of organizational rank and culture, individual personalities, demographics, and perceived target vulnerabilities.

IMPLICATIONS OF TERMS AND DEFINITIONS The public at large, academic researchers, labor and employee relations practitioners, legal and dispute resolution institutions, and mental health providers are among the stakeholders whose interests are implicated by how we label and define workplace bullying, mobbing, and related behaviors.

Public Education, Dialogue, and Understanding The benefits of naming, labeling, and defining behaviors can be considerable. Both authors can attest to having people targeted by workplace bullying and mobbing reporting that they had no idea what they were enduring until they discovered articles, Web sites, and blogs using these terms and explaining the underlying behaviors and their impacts. The terms and definitions resonated with these individuals and often captured their experiences. Whether dealing with individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the naming of recurring behaviors in our lives may help us to develop a contextual understanding of our experiences. Consider, for example, how the term sexual harassment has changed our understanding of employment relations, discrimination, and gender. Until the underlying behaviors were named, women so targeted had no easy way to refer to them. Today, however, the term sexual harassment is well understood and has significant personal, societal, and legal meanings. Of course, there are risks that come with using such familiar words as bullying and mobbing. Both terms carry differing cultural connotations that may add emotional components to the definitions offered above and elsewhere. For example, over the years, the authors have fielded claims that bullying is too soft a label to adequately capture the damage wrought by the underlying behaviors, while encountering others who believe the term is too heavy-handed. To further illustrate, mobbing may conjure up images of angry assemblies of people carrying pitchforks, whereas workplace mobbing may actually be much more strategic and multidirectional in nature. Furthermore, adapting these terms to label workplace aggressors involves potential stigmatization. Most would not want to be branded a bully or a mobber, and some may face retaliation, retribution, or ostracism after being publicly tagged as such.

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Research In designing and conducting research studies about workplace bullying and mobbing, definitions may play a significant role. For example, definitions will help to inform lists of behaviors or scales used by researchers in prevalence surveys. Furthermore, definitions may shape questions posed to survey respondents or interviewees in qualitative studies. Further evidence of this will be found in chapter 2 (prevalence of bullying and mobbing). The use of labels or terms in survey research may be more problematic. As discussed above, bullying and mobbing may carry strong connotations. Invoking terms (e.g., “Have you ever been bullied at work?”) rather than behaviors may project meanings to respondents or invite them to make up their own, thus subjectively influencing their answers to survey questions.

Mental Health Care If a client or patient approaches a mental health care provider with a personal account about, say, domestic abuse or sexual harassment, then using the label will likely provide a common base of understanding for both parties that can inform further discussion and eventual therapeutic and treatment options. It can potentially be so with workplace bullying and mobbing. However, for two reasons, we are not quite there yet. First, unlike sexual harassment, the terms are not sufficiently well-known that workers will necessarily invoke them when confronted by the behaviors. Second, the mental health community is not adequately informed on this overall topic, resulting in too many situations being dismissed or misunderstood as ordinary conflicts and stressors of a job (see chapters 13 and 14 for a fuller discussion). However, levels of understanding are widening and deepening, and it is eminently foreseeable that targets of bullying and mobbing will get more hospitable and understanding receptions from mental health providers in the years to come.

Labor and Employee Relations Terms and definitions matter greatly for ground-level applications in labor and employee relations. As explained in chapter 18, collective bargaining agreements and, in many jurisdictions, employee handbooks have contractual force. If provisions covering bullying and mobbing behaviors are included in such documents, then nearly every key word or phrase carries potential legal significance for employees and employers. If an employment policy refers to generic bullying or mobbing but does not define the term in terms of conduct or behavior, then in the event of litigation, it may be left to a legal tribunal to adopt a definition.

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Law and Public Policy Specific words and phrases matter greatly in law and public policy, including those covering bullying and mobbing behaviors. Courts and administrative tribunals will look first to specific terms and definitions in legislation and regulations to clarify the scope of coverage of legal protections and obligations. In the case of laws that explicitly cover bullying and mobbing behaviors, definitions contained within will be controlling.

Conflict Resolution Labels, definitions, and accompanying legal norms may significantly influence the roles of conflict resolution mechanisms, including alternative dispute resolution modalities. If bullying and mobbing are acknowledged as forms of interpersonal mistreatment or abuse, then conflict resolution systems are more likely to recognize the possibilities of wrongful behavior and exploitation of power differentials. If these behaviors are classified as forms of interpersonal conflict, then parties are more likely to be treated as equals who cannot resolve their differences privately.

MAKING ROOM FOR A BIG TENT In this chapter, we set out a basic landscape of terms and definitions that will inform and help to frame subsequent chapters in these two volumes. We hope that we have done so in a way that creates room for different preferences and opinions on terminology related to these destructive workplace behaviors.

REFERENCES Adams, A. (1992). Bullying at work: How to confront and overcome it. London: Virago. Archer, J., & Coyne, S. M. (2005). An integrated review of indirect, relational, and social aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 212–230. Brodsky, C. M. (1976). The harassed worker. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Cassitto, M. G., Fattorini, E., Gilioli, R., & Rengo, C. (2003). Raising awareness of psychological harassment at work. R. Gilioli & M. A. Fingerhut (Eds.). Retrieved from http://www.who.int/occupational_health/publications/en/oehharassmentc.pdf Chappell, D., & DiMartino, V. (2006). Violence at work (3rd ed.). Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Office. Daniel, T. A., & Metcalf, G. S. (2016). Stop bullying at work: Strategies and tools for HR, legal, & risk management professionals (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management. Davenport, N., Schwartz, R. D., & Elliott, G. P. (1999). Mobbing: Emotional abuse in the American workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing.

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Dellasega, C. A. (2009). Bullying among nurses: Relational aggression is one form of workplace bullying: What can nurses do about it? American Journal of Nursing, 109(1), 52–58. Dewey, J. (2007). How we think. New York: Cosimo Classics. (Original work published 1910.) Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2012). Mobbing: Causes, consequences, and solutions. New York: Oxford University Press. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2014). Overcoming mobbing: A recovery guide for workplace aggression and bullying. New York: Oxford University Press. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D., & Cooper, C. L. (Eds.). (2011). Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). London: CRC Press. Ellis, A. (2011). Andrea Adams, British pioneer: Bio and text of 1994 speech. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/adams.pdf Flannery, R. B., Jr. (1995). Violence in the workplace. New York: Crossroad. Grubb, P. L., Roberts, R. K., Swanson, N. G., Burnfield, J. L., & Childress, J. H. (2005). Organizational factors and psychological aggression: Results from a nationally representative sample of US companies. In V. Bowie, B. S. Fisher, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Workplace violence issues, trends, strategies (pp. 37–59). Portland, OR: Willan Publishing. The Joint Commission. (2008). Behaviors that undermine a culture of safety. Sentinel Event Alert, 40. Retrieved from https://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18​ /SEA_40.PDF Keashly, L. (1997). Emotional abuse in the workplace: Conceptual and empirical issues. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 1v1), 85–117. Keeney, B. P. (1983). Aesthetics of change. New York: Guilford Press. Leymann, H. (1990). Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces. Violence and Victims, 5(2), 119–126. Leymann, H. (1996). The content and development of mobbing at work. In D. Zapf & H. Leymann (Eds.), Mobbing and victimization at work (pp. 165–184). Hove, England: Psychology Press. Martin, B., & Peña Saint Martin, F. (2012). Mobbing and suppression: Footprints of their relationships. Social Medicine, 6(4), 218–226. Namie, G., & Namie, R. (1999). Bullyproof yourself at work!: Personal strategies to recognize and stop the hurt from harassment. Benicia, CA: DoubleDoc Press. Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2009). The bully at work. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2011). The bully-free workplace: Stop jerks, weasels and snakes from killing your organization. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (2006). Workplace violence prevention strategies and research needs: Report from the conference partnering in workplace violence prevention, translating research into practice (DHHS NIOSH Publication No. 2006-144). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2006-144/pdfs​ /2006​ -144.pdf Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2002). OSHA fact sheet: Workplace violence Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts​ /factsheet-workplace-violence.pdf

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Pearson, C., & Porath, P. (2009). The cost of bad behavior: How incivility is damaging your business and what to do about it. New York: Portfolio. Roberts, S. J. (1983). Oppressed group behavior: Implications for nursing. Advanced Nursing Science, 5(3), 21–30. Stennett-Brewer, L. (1997). Trauma in the workplace: The book about chronic work trauma. Decatur, IL: Nepenthe Publications. Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 178–190. Vessey, J., Demarco, R., Gaffney, D., & Budin, W. (2009). Bullying of staff registered nurses in the workplace: A preliminary study for developing personal and organizational strategies for the transformation of hostile to healthy workplace environments. Journal of Professional Nursing, 25(5), 299–306. doi:10.1016/j.profnurs​ .2009.01.022 Westhues, K. (1998). Eliminating professors: A guide to the dismissal process. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Westhues, K. (2004). Workplace mobbing in academe: Reports from twenty universities. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Westhues, K. (2005a). The envy of excellence: Administrative mobbing of high-achieving professors. Lewiston, NY: The Tribunal for Academic Justice/Edwin Mellen Press. Westhues, K. (2005b). The pope versus the professor: Benedict XVI and the legitimation of mobbing. Lewiston, NY: The Tribunal for Academic Justice/Edwin Mellen Press. Westhues, K. (Ed.) (2005c). Winning, losing, moving on: How professionals deal with workplace harassment and mobbing. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press. Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI). (2007). 2007 U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBIsurvey2007.pdf Wyatt, J., & Hare, C. (1997) Work abuse: How to recognize and survive it. Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books. Yamada, D. C. (2000). The phenomenon of “workplace bullying” and the need for status-blind hostile work environment protection. Georgetown Law Journal, 88(3), 475–536. Yamada, D. C. (2013). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–354.

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Prevalence of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing among U.S. Working Adults: What Do the Numbers Mean? Loraleigh Keashly

Aggression and hostility are unfortunately part of the workplace landscape for many people (Kelloway, Barling, & Hurrell, 2006). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through their workplace arm, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), have identified workplace aggression as a significant risk to workers (Wiegand et al., 2012). National surveys such as the General Social Survey (GSS) and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) include items regarding exposure to workplace violence, aggression, harassment, and bullying, which permits tracking of the rates of these experiences over time in the general population. These data inform public policy and responding. A 2002 representative national survey of over 2,500 U.S. wage and salary workers found that 6 percent experienced workplace violence and 41.4 percent experienced psychological aggression at work during the previous 12 months (Schat, Frone, & Kelloway, 2006). Such exposure is harmful for the individual, other workers, the organization, and beyond (Einarsen, Hoel, & Zapf, 2011). Workplace bullying and mobbing are unique phenomena in the domain of workplace aggression in that they are not discrete events or behaviors; rather, they are grounded in ongoing relationships with particular others, and thus are enduring and persistent forms of aggression (Keashly & Jagatic, 2011). Numerically, these relationships are not as frequent as general exposure to aggressive behavior; however, their effects are stronger, more wide-ranging, and longer lasting (McGinley, Richman, & Rospenda, 2011). Over the past two decades in the United States, there has been an increasing interest in understanding and addressing workplace bullying and mobbing from a variety of quarters, for example, researchers, governmental agencies, employee advocate groups, professional organizations, and service providers. This is

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an exciting development and bodes well for the political and public will to address this pressing public health problem. In this chapter, we will explore the prevalence, or size, of the workplace bullying and mobbing problem in the United States. To fully understand the numbers, we need to consider how bullying and mobbing are operationalized and measured, the time referent utilized (e.g., past month, 6 months, a year, working career), and the source, as well as the nature of the samples upon which prevalence estimates are based. To give you a sense of why understanding the basis for the numbers is important, the studies reviewed here provide rates for bullying and mobbing ranging from 7 percent to 96 percent among U.S. workers (see table 2.1). Thus, what is “real,” and why is it important to know that? Understanding what these numbers reflect has implications for how workplace bullying and mobbing are perceived and ultimately addressed.

DEFINING ELEMENTS OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING: WHAT DISTINGUISHES THEM FROM THE REST? To ensure that our measurement captures workplace bullying and mobbing, the distinctive features of these phenomena need to be incorporated in our assessment. In addition to negative behavior, our measurement needs to permit or include the assessment of repetition, duration, pattern or variety, and the power differential between actor and target (Hershcovis, 2011; Keashly & Jagatic, 2003; Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2007; Nielsen, Matthiesen, & Einarsen, 2010; Yamada, Duffy, & Berry, this volume). Repetition is often assessed through frequency of occurrence, duration through the chosen time referent, and pattern through a number of different behaviors and occasionally the severity or intensity of behaviors. The power differential is relevant because of how it influences the target’s ability to effectively cope or respond. Some measurement assesses the organizational or social power differences between the actor and target, with the implication that the coping abilities of the target are impeded. Other measures specifically include the impact of not being able to defend oneself. While critical to distinguishing workplace bullying and mobbing conceptually, these elements (individually and together) have also been tied to the nature of the impact on and experience of the target and others in the environment (Fox & Stallworth, 2010; Hershcovis, 2011; Keashly & Neuman, 2002). Yamada, Duffy, and Berry (this volume) argue that intent is an element of workplace bullying and mobbing. Conceptually, intent is relevant in the distinction between occasional aggressive exposure and bullying and mobbing, and it is also notoriously difficult to verify and thus measure (Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2010). Perceived intentionality is thus not often included in measurement. For this chapter,

Table 2.1  Studies of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States

Study and Data Collection Date

Sample

Schat et al., 2006

U.S. workers (representative random sample) N = 2,508 (57% response rate) U.S. workers; N = 403;

Collected in 2002–2003

Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007

Method/Operationalization Telephone interview Behavioral checklist (5 items psychological aggression; 4 items physical aggression)

Time Frame Duration

Rates

Prior 12 months Psych aggression: 41.4% ≥ 1 event 13% ≥ 1 event/weekly Physical aggression: 6% ≥ 1 event 1.3% ≥ 1 event/weekly Prior 6 months 46.8% ≥ 1 event/weekly 28% ≥ 2 events/weekly

Online survey NAQ-R (behavioral checklist; 22 items) + single item def’n Collected in 2006 Def’n: “. . . bullying as a situation where Prior 6–12 one or several individuals perceive months themselves to be on the receiving end of negative actions from one or more persons persistently over a period of time, in a situation where the targets have difficulty defending themselves against these actions. We do not refer to a one-time incident as bullying.” Rospenda et al., U.S. workers Phone survey Prior 12 months 2008 (representative GWH (behavioral checklist) scale + single random item Collected in sample) “In the past 12 months at work, have you 2003–2004 N = 2151 (52% been discriminated or harassed for any response rate) other reason (excluding race and sex)?”

Actors All aggression: Customers ≥ Coworkers ≥ Superior

Not asked

Self-identify: 9.7% prior 6–12 months 29.8% working career Witness: 10.9% prior 6–12 months

63% ≥ 1 event during 12 months Self-identify: 12% prior 12 months Females ≥ males

Not asked

(Continued)

Table 2.1  Continued

Study and Data Collection Date

Sample

Method/Operationalization

Time Frame Duration

28

Workplace U.S. workers Online survey Prior 12 Bullying (representative Single item def’n months; Institute, 2007 random “At work, have you experienced or witnessed working (Lutgen-Sandvik sample) any or all of the following types of career & Namie, 2009) N = 7,740 repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work being done, verbal Collected in 2007 abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation, humiliation?” Workplace U.S. workers Online survey Prior 12 Bullying (representative Single item def’n months; Institute, 2010 random “At work, have you experienced or witnessed working sample) any or all of the following types of career Collected in 2010 N = 2,092 repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevented work being done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation, humiliation?” Workplace U.S. workers Online survey Prior 12 Bullying (representative Single item def’n months; Institute, 2014 random “At work, what has been your personal working sample) experience with the following types of career Collected in 2014 N = 1,000 repeated mistreatment: abusive conduct that is threatening, intimidating, humiliating, work sabotage or verbal abuse?”

Rates Self-identify: 12.6% prior 12 months 24.2% working career excl. prior 12 months Witness: 12.3% in working career

Actors Superior 72.5% Peer 17.4% Subordinate 8.5%

Actor: 0.4% Self-identify: 8.8% prior 12 months 25.7% working career excl. prior 12 months Witness: 15.5% in working career

Males ≥ Females Same-sex bullying 64% in 12 months

Actor: 0.3% Self-identify: 7% prior 12 months 20% working career excl. prior 12 months People of color ≥ Whites Witness: 21% • 11% saw it • 10% know it happened Actor: 0.5%

Superior 56% Peer 33% Subordinate 11% Multiple actors 23% Males ≥ Females Same-sex bullying 77% in 12 months

Lipscomb et al., 2015 Collected in 2009–2010

VitalSmarts, 2014 Collected in 2014 29

CareerBuilder, 2014

State unionized public sector employees (4 agencies; NE state) N = 11,874 (response rate 71.8%)

Online survey Prior 6 months NAQ-R (behavioral checklist; six items) + single item def’n “Bullying can be described as having taken place when abusive behavior is repeated over a period of time and when the victim experiences difficulties in defending himself or herself in this situation. It is not bullying if the incident does not occur repeatedly.”

U.S. workers N = 2,283

Online survey Behavioral checklist (8 items)

U.S. private Online survey sector workers Single item def’n (representative “Bullying has been defined as unwanted, Collected in 2014 probability aggressive behavior that involves a real or sample) perceived power imbalance. The behavior N = 3,372 is often repeated over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.”

Currently and in working career Currently and in working career

44.2% ≥ 1 event in 6 months • 35.4% less than weekly • 8.8% ≥ 1 event/weekly Self-identify: 10% in 6 months • 7.6% less than weekly (occasional bullying) • 2.4% at least weekly (regular bullying) *Rate of self-identification varies by agency. 63% ≥ 1 event currently 96% ≥ 1 event ever Self-identify: 7% currently 28% in working career Females 34% self-identify Males 22% self-identify

Superior ≥ Peer ≥ Subordinate

Superior 52% Peer 36% Subordinate 11% Superior 33% Peer 19% Customer 19% Multiple actors 29% Note: Multiple responses were permitted.

(Continued)

Table 2.1  Continued

Study and Data Collection Date

Sample

Method/Operationalization

Time Frame Duration

Keashly & Jagatic, U.S. adults in Telephone interview Prior 12 months 2000 Michigan Behavioral checklist (17 items) + single item and working (stratified “Have you felt mistreated by someone at career Collected in 1999 random work?” representative sample) N = 1,189 N = 898 worked in prior 12 months

Rates 65.4% at least one event • 47% monthly or less • 18.4% at least weekly Self-identify: 27% prior 12 months • 16.7% bothered them a lot • 42% working career • 26.8% bothered them a lot

30 Burnazi, Keashly, U.S. working Telephone survey & Neuman, adults in Behavioral checklist (top 10 WAR-Q items) 2005 Michigan + single item Collected in 2004 (stratified “Have you felt repeatedly or persistently random mistreated by someone at work?” representative sample) N = 438 National Health U.S. workers Interview N = 17, 524 Survey; DHHS, 2010;Alterman et al., 2013 Collected in 2010

Prior 12 months 71% ≥ 1 event and working • 57% monthly or less career • 14% at least weekly

Self-identify: 10% prior 12 months • 6.8% bothered them a lot • 3.5% mistreated at least weekly In-person interview; Prior 12 months Self-identify: Single item 7.8% in overall sample “Were you threatened, bullied, or harassed by • industry differences anyone while you were on the job?”

Actors Supervisors 43.9% Coworkers 41.4% Subordinate 4.0% Other 9.7% Males = Females Same race Supervisor 65.2% Coworker 24.8% Subordinate 2.6% Other 9.4% Male = Female Same race Supervisor 70.7% Coworker 9.8% Subordinate 2.4% Customer 2.4% Male = Female

Not asked

General Social Survey Quality of Worklife Module (2014)

31

U.S. adults ≥ 18 years (representative sample); those who worked in Collected in 2002, past 12 months 2006, 2010, 2002 N = 1,796 2014 2006 N = 1,734 2010 N = 1,187 2014 N = 1,250 Grubb et al., 2004 U.S. (NIOSH) organizations N = 516 (62% Collected in response rate); 2002–2003 key informant responded

In-person interview Prior 12 months Single item “Were you threatened or harassed in any other way by anyone while you were on the job?” (Excluding harassment due to sex, race, and age)

Telephone survey Single item def’n “How often in the past year has bullying occurred at your establishment, including repeated intimidation, slandering, social isolation, or humiliation by one or more persons against another?”

Self-identify: 2002 11.2% 2006 8.7% 2010 9.4% 2014 8.1%

Prior 12 months 24.5% some degree of bullying 7.1% frequent incidents Targets: Employees 55.2% Supervisor 7.7% Customer 10.5%

Society for Human HR professionals Single item def’n In experience Resource with SHRM “Persistent, offensive, abusive, intimidating or with current Management, membership insulting behavior or unfair actions directed organization 2012 N = 401 (15% at another individual, causing the recipient In own career response rate) to feel threatened, abused, humiliated or Collected in 2011 vulnerable. Workplace bullies and targets may be employees, clients or vendors of the affected organization.”

Not asked

Supervisor 14.7% Coworker 39.2% Customer 24.5%

Nonprofit ≥ Profit Unionized ≥ Nonunion Large org’n ≥ Small 51% bullying incidents in org’n Large org’n ≥ Small 27% of respondents indicated being bullied in career

(Continued)

Table 2.1  Continued

Study and Data Collection Date USPS; Califano et al., 2000

Sample

1. USPS workers N = 11,932 (65.1% Collected in 1999 response rate) 2. U.S. workers (random representative sample) N = 3,009 (63.3% response rate)

Method/Operationalization

Time Frame Duration

Paper survey Prior 12 Experienced: Behavioral checklist (six items) months; on verbal abuse working Witnessed: Single item def’n career “About how often did you see someone at work do . . . verbal abuse such as shouting, swearing trying to provoke an argument calling someone a name putting them down in front of others, making intimidating or threatening gestures?”

Rates

Actors

Experienced: USPS Sample 61.2% ≥ 1 event ever 37% in past year • 75.3% notably upset

Supervisor 40.4% Coworker 42.6% Subordinate 3.6% Customer 11.2% Male ≥ Female

National Sample 47.6% ≥ 1 event ever 35.7% in past year • 67.1% notably upset

Supervisor 36.8% Coworker 37% Subordinate 4.2% Customer 13.8% Male ≥ Female

Witnessed: USPS Sample 36.9% at least monthly • 26.7% at least weekly • 10.2% monthly National Sample 32.9% at least monthly • 21.5% at least weekly • 11.4% monthly

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then, we will utilize the elements of repetition, duration, pattern or variety, and the power differential to evaluate the types of measurement that have been used in surveys of U.S. working adults so we can understand what is being measured and thus interpret the statistics accurately.

MEASUREMENT: HOW WE ASK THE QUESTION SHAPES THE ANSWER WE GET For the purpose of prevalence estimates, there are two primary ways of identifying who has been bullied or mobbed in a survey: self-labeling and behavioral classification. This is a matter of from whose perspective the identification is made.

Self-labeling: I Am a Victim Known as the subjective approach, self-labeling involves asking respondents whether they have been a target of bullying or mobbing at work. As can been seen in table 2.1, some surveys provided a specific definition of bullying or mobbing incorporating, to varying degrees, key definitional elements, and others did not, relying on respondent’s own definition of these phenomena. For example, Lipscomb et al. (2015) and Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007) utilize the definition developed by well-known bullying researcher Staale Einarsen and his colleagues (Einarsen, Raknes, & Matthiesen, 1994). This definition references negative behaviors, repetition, duration, and an inability to defend oneself. The CareerBuilder (2014) definition includes these elements and also specifically references the power imbalance. These definitions are consistent with those used in scholarly research (Nielsen et al., 2010). The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) surveys (e.g., 2007, 2010, 2014) and the 2004 Michigan survey (Burnazi, Keashly, & Neuman, 2005) reference repetitive negative actions, but they do not reference duration or the power or ability to defend oneself. The remaining studies using self-identification invoke the construct label (bullied, harassed, mistreated, threatened), leaving the meaning of the construct up to the respondent. In all these studies, respondents are self-identifying, but the difference in specificity of the construct raises the question of what precisely is being assessed. For example, laypersons and researchers agree that negative behavior and negative impact or harm are critical components of the experience of “feeling bullied” (Keashly, 2001; Saunders, Huynh, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2007). However, laypeople focus less on repetition, persistence, and power imbalance as key in discerning their experiences. Thus, with very specific definitions, there may be conflicts with the respondents’ definitions, and people may not identify themselves as being victims (Saunders et al., 2007).

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States

Alternatively, by not providing a definition, respondents may self-identify as being bullied or mobbed based on their experiences, which may be more accurately captured under conflict, occasional aggression, or incivility, thus potentially inflating the prevalence rates (Nielsen et al., 2010). Contrary to findings in other countries (Nielsen et al., 2010), the specificity of the definition does not appear to have substantially influenced the prevalence rate for these U.S.-based studies. Studies utilizing detailed definitions (CareerBuilder, 2014, Lipscomb et al., 2015; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007) suggest rates of current bullying (6–12 months prior) ranging from 7–10 percent, while those asking respondents whether they had been bullied or harassed in the prior 12 months, that is, personal definitions, report rates ranging from 8.1 percent (General Social Survey, 2014) to 12 percent (Rospenda, Richman, & Shannon, 2008). The GSS is particularly interesting because data have been collected on selflabeling (without definition) since 2002. Examination of the rates in table 2.1 appear to show a decline from a high of 11.2 percent in 2002 to 8.1 percent in 2014. Looking only at data from 2014 (e.g., CareerBuilder, 2014; GSS, 2014; WBI, 2014), the rate of prevalence by self-identification appears to be around 7–8 percent in the prior 12 months. To provide a sense of how these rates map to other countries, Scandinavian countries have rates of 5–6 percent for self-labeling (with or without a definition), and other European countries have rates of 14 percent (with definition) and 25 percent without definition (see Nielsen et al., 2010 for detailed breakdown). With regard to the United Kingdom, Hoel and Cooper (2000) report a self-labeling (with definition) rate of 10.6 percent. The types of scales used range from yes/no/don’t know (e.g., WBI surveys) to scales where the yes option requires some indication of frequency (yes; rarely, yes; now and then, yes; several times per month, yes; several times per week, yes; daily (NAQ-R); Einarsen, Hoel, & Notelaers, 2009; Lipscomb et al., 2015; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007). The latter response format recognizes that bullying and mobbing are not either/or phenomena but progressive, developing and intensifying over time (Einarsen et al., 2011). This response format allows the determination of the degree of bullying or mobbing (Fox & Stallworth, 2010; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007; Nielsen et al., 2010). Although the studies reported here did not provide rates of occasional versus regular bullying (Hoel, Cooper, & Faragher, 2001), these are important indicators, as the evidence on the process of bullying suggests that occasional bullying, if left unaddressed, could move toward frequent or regular bullying (Rospenda, Richman, Wislar, & Flaherty, 2000; Zapf & Gross, 2001). There are two interesting twists on the self-labeling approach: as a witness and as an actor. What we could call other-labeling, witnessing, or vicarious

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aggression (Barling, 1996) concerns workers reporting whether they have seen or are aware of others in their workplace being bullied or mobbed. Research finds that witnesses show similar negative effects to targets (Hoel & Einarsen, 1999; Vartia, 2001). Discussions of prevalence are enriched by considering the rates of witnessing because they provide information regarding (1) the extent of the impact or “victim” net (e.g., work team, unit, organization)— VitalSmarts (2014) reports that 97 percent of their respondents indicated that the bully’s behavior impacted several people beyond themselves; (2) the quality of work climate, specifically a hostile work environment; (3) the possibility for mobbing, as some of the witnesses may join in the process (Namie & Lutgen-Sandvik, 2010); and (4) possible resources for leveraging early and effective responding, that is, bystander action (Keashly & Neuman, 2007). Thus, a combination of perceived victimization rates and witnessing rates provides an idea of the overall degree of involvement and impact in the workplace. Studies that queried respondents’ experiences as witnesses find rates (in the prior 12 months) ranging from 11 percent (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007) to 21 percent (WBI, 2014), with higher witness rates in the Califano et al. (2000) comparative study of verbal abuse (a subset of bullying behaviors) of the United States Postal Office (USPS; 36.9% at least monthly; 26.7% weekly) and a national working sample (32.9% at least monthly; 21.5% weekly). The most recent WBI survey (2014) identified categories of respondents who, in their working careers, had been bullied (not witnessed) and had witnessed (not bullied), resulting in an overall rate of 48 percent perceived victimization prevalence. Utilizing U.S. Labor Department statistics, WBI (2014) projected that 65.6 million U.S. workers have some experience with workplace bullying and mobbing in their working careers. In terms of identifying as an actor, few surveys include this perspective. A key reason is that social desirability suggests that people would be less willing to frame what they do as bullying and mobbing, particularly given the increasingly public evaluation of these phenomena as bad and unjustified (see Ferris, Zinko, Brouer, Buckley, & Harvey, 2007, for another perspective). Of the studies reviewed here, only the WBI (2007, 2010, 2014) surveys asked respondents whether they had engaged in bullying. Endorsement rates were approximately 0.4 percent (roughly 75,000 workers). The huge disparity between those who identify as bullies and those who identify as having been bullied or seen someone bullied supports the idea that asking people to self-identify as actors likely results in an underestimate. We know relatively little about those who engage in these behaviors beyond what targets and witnesses perceive. Understanding the actors has implications for intervention and action. That may suggest coming at it from another method, such as the behavioral classification method, to which we will now turn our attention.

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States

Behavioral Classification: I Have Experienced These Behaviors Behavioral classification is an objective approach that involves providing respondents with a list of negative behaviors and asking them how frequently they have experienced each of these behaviors from someone at work over a specified period of time. The items are written in behavioral terms, and there is typically no reference to bullying, mobbing, or harassment (LutgenSandvik et al., 2007). An exception is the VitalSmarts (2014) survey, which specifically refers to the behaviors included as “forms of workplace bullying.” Some studies reviewed here utilized established behavioral measures, such as the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R; Einarsen et al., 2009; Lipscomb et al., 2015; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007); Generalized Workplace Harassment (Rospenda & Richman, 2004; Rospenda et al., 2008); and the Workplace Aggression Research Questionnaire (WAR-Q; Neuman & Keashly, 2004; Keashly & Jagatic, 2000; Burnazi et al., 2005), while others developed their inventories by drawing from various scales and focus group and interview data. The domain of possible behaviors is (sadly) enormous and beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss in detail (for more detail, see Keashly & Jagatic, 2003; Rodriguez-Caballeira, Solanelles, Vinacua, García, & Martín-Peña, 2010). To provide a flavor of the behavioral domain, a useful categorization is based on the focus of the behaviors, specifically person-related, work-related, and physical intimidation (Einarsen et al., 2009). Examples of person-related behaviors include being humiliated or ridiculed, being ignored or excluded, and being the subject of gossip, rumors, and insulting remarks. Work-related behavior examples include withholding information needed to do the job, being ordered to do work below the worker’s level of competence, and excessive monitoring of work. Examples of physical intimidation behaviors include being shouted at or the target of rage, intimidating gestures, and threats of physical violence. A recently recognized set of behaviors acknowledges the use of electronic media as the means for bullying or mobbing others, that is, cyberbullying. While cyberbullying has been the subject of much research attention among teens, it has only recently become the subject of research in workplaces (Privitera & Campbell, 2009). These specific behaviors have not yet made their way into the established behavioral inventories and need to be included. Evidence suggests that cyberbullying may have even more profound implications for workers than “traditional” bullying because of its boundaryless, permanent, and invisible nature (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2013). Regardless of the specific set of behaviors used, the identification of a respondent as “being bullied or mobbed” is based on the researcher applying a set of criteria. The types of criteria that have been utilized include:

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1. number of discrete behaviors endorsed; a. at least one behavior regardless of frequency; b. at least one or two behaviors of prespecified frequency, most often at least weekly, mapping on Leymann’s (1996) definition of workplace mobbing. Utilizing the criterion of at least two behaviors reflects the patterning/variety feature of workplace bullying and mobbing (Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2010); c. total number of behaviors of a prespecified frequency. This indicator provides evidence of patterning as well as the opportunity to discern the degree of bullying exposure, similar to the self-labeling method of occasional vs. regular bullying (Hoel et al., 2001; Lipscomb et al., 2015; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007); 2. the overall sum of frequency of behaviors with predetermined cutoffs (see Notelaers & Einarsen, 2013 regarding NAQ-R cutoffs); and 3. mean frequency of behaviors in the inventory. The behavioral inventory as a measure allows classification via all of the above criteria, that is, several indicators are possible from this one set of data. For the purpose of prevalence, classification into discrete categories of not bullied or bullied is the number of behaviors endorsed (1a and/or 1b), in essence treating bullying and mobbing as either/or kinds of phenomena. Given that bullying and mobbing are characterized as progressive processes, relying on these indicators alone does not give us a full picture of the nature of these phenomena. Not surprisingly, the rates of prevalence vary depending on the specific behavioral criteria utilized. Defining exposure as at a least one negative act regardless of frequency produces rates (e.g., 41.4%, Schat et al., 2006, to 96%, VitalSmarts, 2014) notably higher than when the categorization is based on one behavior occurring at least weekly (e.g., 8.8%, Lipscomb et al., 2015, to 46.8%, Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007). Looking at European data using at least one behavior per week, Nielsen et al. (2010) report prevalence estimates of 10 percent in Scandinavian countries and 16–17 percent in other European countries. When the criterion of two or more behaviors is utilized, the rates drop notably. The single behavior exposure indicator is problematic for at least two reasons. First, bullying and mobbing are rarely manifested in a single incident, let alone a single behavior. Thus, to be true to the patterning nature of bullying and mobbing, at minimum two behaviors should be the criterion. An even more precise indicator of patterning and, indeed, degree, would be the number of behaviors endorsed. In our early work (Keashly, Harvey, & Hunter, 1997), we found that the number of behaviors uniquely influences people’s experiences beyond what was accounted for by frequency of exposure. The

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second limitation is that reliance on a single behavior as the cutoff for classification is heavily influenced by the number and variety of behaviors included in the inventory. For example, both Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007) and Lipscomb et al. (2015) used items from the Negative Acts QuestionnaireRevised, which includes person-related, work-related, and physical intimidation behaviors (Einarsen et al., 2009). This questionnaire has 22 items. Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007) used all 22 items, while Lipscomb et al. (2015) chose a subset of six based on overall perceived seriousness, encompassing only person-related and physical intimidation behaviors. The authors argued that the other (work-related) behaviors reflected conduct other than bullying. Indeed, the most frequent behaviors reported by Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007) were work-related behaviors, with person-related and physical intimidation behaviors reported at much lower levels. Thus, by restricting the types of behaviors to exclude work-related items (which tend to be more frequently occurring) and also by having fewer behaviors overall, Lipscomb et al. (2015) have created a more conservative estimate of exposure prevalence. An advantage of the behavioral classification method relative to the selflabeling method is the opportunity to identify types of bullying and mobbing behaviors and thus to examine their connection to impact and experience as well as to different actors or relationships between actor(s) and target(s) (Neuman & Keashly, 2004; Hershcovis & Reich, 2013). Einarsen (1999) has argued that, as noted above, bullying and mobbing are not so much about the behaviors themselves but rather the frequency, duration, patterning, and the inability to respond effectively. However, other research has found that exposure to different types of behavior have differential effects (Cooper, Hoel, & Faragher, 2004). This suggests that behavioral inventories should include a variety of behaviors (direct-indirect, active-passive, verbal-physical; Buss, 1961; Neuman & Baron, 1998; Notelaers & Einarsen, 2013) to more fully capture the prevalence and nature of exposure. Referring back to the actor perspective, the behavioral inventory measure may be more revealing in terms of prevalence of enacted bullying or mobbing, as it does not require the actor to identify himself or herself as a bully. When this approach is taken, rates of enacting aggressive behaviors by workers toward others at work is quite high, with rates of 50–75 percent, indicating that they have engaged in at least one aggressive behavior (Brotheridge, Lee, & Power, 2012; Glomb, 2002; Greenberg & Barling, 1999).

Comparison of Methods Rates of victimization prevalence based on self-labeling tend to be lower than prevalence based on behavioral endorsement (Nielsen et al.,

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2010: for exceptions, see Keashly & Neuman, this volume). One interpretation of this difference is that these two methods are addressing different aspects of workplace bullying and mobbing. Self-labeling is about the experience of victimization, and the behavioral classification method is about assessing exposure to specific negative behaviors that may (or may not) constitute bullying and mobbing (Keashly & Jagatic, 2011; Nielsen et al., 2010). The two are expected to be related, but the correlation is not a perfect one (Einarsen et al., 2009). The decision to self-identify as being a bullying or mobbing victim reflects influences beyond actual exposure, including a desire not to appear weak or unable to cope or a personal definition of bullying not coinciding with the research definition (Nielsen et al., 2010; Saunders et al., 2007). Having said this, research shows that those who self-identify as bullied have higher rates of exposure to a variety of behaviors than those who do not self-identify (Jennifer, Cowie, & Ananiadou, 2003; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007). Another influence on self-labeling is the nature of behaviors included in the inventory. Behavioral inventories are composed of behaviors of varying severity, and perceived severity is an important influence on a person’s evaluation and labeling of his or her experience (Lipscomb et al., 2015; LutgenSandvik et al., 2007; Price Spratlen, 1994). For example, Keashly and Jagatic (2000) and Burnazi et al. (2005) asked respondents the extent to which they were upset by their experience (a proxy indicator of severity). They found people varied in their degree of upset and that this was linked to the resultant impact and perceived harm. Examination of the severity of behaviors included in inventories reveals that not all behaviors are of equal merit in the experience of feeling bullied (Cooper et al., 2004). Behaviors directed at the person, such as rumors, threats, and humiliation, are perceived as more severe than work-focused behaviors, such as exclusion from meetings, stealing work, and manipulating information (Escartín, Rodríguez-Carballeira, Zapf, Porrúa, & Martín-Peña, 2009; Meglich, Faley, & DuBois, 2012). In addition, perceptions of severity are influenced by cultural definitions of appropriate and inappropriate behavior (Escartín et al., 2009; Power et al., 2013) as well as the source of the behavior, a point we will return to later. To the extent that the behaviors endorsed are not experienced as severe or upsetting, the respondent is less likely to label his or her experience as being bullied or mobbed. This pattern of findings is similar to what has been found in the sexual harassment literature (Schneider, Pryor, & Fitzgerald, 2011). This literature also notes that experiencing harm did not require labeling oneself as a victim. That is, exposure to negative behaviors is sufficient to have a notable negative impact (Hoel & Cooper, 2000).

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The distinctiveness of these two measurement approaches suggests the value of utilizing both in surveys, permitting more nuanced and finer distinctions among people’s experiences. For example, connecting respondents’ answers to these two methods reveals a number of discrete categories, including the “bullied/nonvictim,” which is someone who does not self-identify as bullied but based on his or her exposure to behaviors would be characterized this way (Jennifer et al., 2003). Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007) and Lipscomb et al. (2015) determined the degree of bullying and tied it to differential nature and degree of impact. Further, by including different perspectives (target, witness, and even actor), we can get an indication of the nature and extent of the impact of bullying and mobbing in workplaces and beyond.

TIME REFERENT: THE LONGER THE TIME FRAME, THE HIGHER THE RATE An influence on prevalence rates is the time frame within which we are asking respondents about their experiences. As can be seen in table 2.1, the studies vary from experiences in the prior 6 months, prior 12 months, or in the entire working career. It may well be that people have not had any experiences of being bullied or mobbed in the past 6–12 months but have had experiences prior to this. The studies that included the time referent of “entire working career” show higher rates of prevalence, indicating that these phenomena are sadly a notable part of many people’s work lives. There are methodological concerns with having extended time frames because of concerns about recall: the longer time over which one is recalling, the less accurate the estimate (Bowling, Camus, & Blackmore, 2015). However, it can be argued that being bullied or mobbed is a highly salient experience and thus more easily recalled. Of note here is that many of these studies are snapshots of a particular period of time rather than a tracking over time. Tracking over time would permit us to get a sense of duration, which is a core element of bullying and mobbing. The one exception is the work of Judy Richman and her colleagues and their multiwave study of generalized workplace harassment in a university, which occurred over a 10-year period (McGinley et al., 2011). Some studies reviewed did ask respondents who selfidentified as being bullied or mobbed about the duration of their experiences. The results are stunning. In earlier work, Namie’s (2000) survey of bullying victims reported an average duration of 16.5 months. VitalSmarts (2014) reports a duration of more than 5 years for 53 percent of respondents, and McGinley et al. (2011), in their longitudinal study of university employees, identified employees of chronic abuse over 10 years! Thus, the time frame for specific responding merely provides us with the ability to distinguish between bullying and mobbing and exposure to aggressive behavior. To capture the

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truly enduring quality of bullying and mobbing and its effects requires gathering information about the length of the experience.

SAMPLE: WHOM WE ASK AND HOW WE RECRUIT THEM SHAPES PREVALENCE AND PROFILE Given that this chapter is focused on the prevalence of workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States, I chose to look at studies that purported to reflect the U.S. working population rather than those in specific industries. If the goal is to develop a picture of the experience of the U.S. working adult population, then representative random sampling is key to permitting such generalizability. A representative sample reflects the key characteristics of the population we are seeking to understand. A random sample increases the chances that we will achieve representativeness. Thus, to generalize to the U.S. working adult population, we want samples that reflect the profiles of working adults, such as sex, race/ethnicity, industry, occupation, and other key aspects. Several studies included here utilized the random representative approach, namely, the national working force samples: Califano et al. (2000); GSS (2014); National Health Interview Survey (Alterman, Luckhaupt, Dahlhamer, Ward, & Calvert, 2013; Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS, n.d.); Schat et al. (2006); and WBI (2007, 2010, 2014); the Michigan workforce: Burnazi et al. (2005) and Keashly and Jagatic (2000); the private sector workforce of CareerBuilder (2014); and the state unionized public sector of Lipscomb et al. (2015). Developing such samples is a massive undertaking requiring substantial resources to be able to do it effectively and appropriately. Other studies included in this review used nonrandom samples either as convenience samples or through other mechanisms. Nonrandom samples cannot be assumed to accurately reflect the U.S. working population, and, thus, the results may not generalize working adults’ experiences writ large. Rates in random samples tend to be lower than rates in nonrandom samples (Nielsen et al., 2010). Another influence regarding the sample is how the recruitment was accomplished. For example, Burnazi et al. (2005), Califano et al. (2000), GSS (2014), NHIS (2010), Keashly and Jagatic (2000), Lutgen-Sandvik et al. (2007), Schat et al. (2006), and Rospenda et al. (2008) embedded their items on bullying and mobbing in a broader survey of quality of working life or general employment issues. This is an important consideration, as surveys that explicitly focus on workplace bullying and mobbing may face self-selection by the respondents. That is, once told the survey is about bullying, some respondents may choose not to respond for a variety of reasons, and thus their voices are lost. On the other side, those who have had experiences

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may be more inclined to participate. Thus, prevalence rates from these studies are affected by the respondents’ connection to the topic. Rates in samples of workplace experience surveys tend to be lower than samples whose surveys focus exclusively on workplace bullying (CareerBuilder, 2014; VitalSmarts, 2014; WBI, 2007, 2010, 2014).

Specific Industry and Occupational Samples Within some surveys of the working population, data were collected on the industry or occupation of the respondents (DHHS, n.d.; Schat et al., 2006), or the survey was directed at a specific industry or occupation, for example, Califano et al. (2000), USPS; Lipscomb et al. (2015), state unionized public sector; and CareerBuilder (2014), private sector. Rates of prevalence based on exposure to bullying and mobbing behaviors and the experience of being victimized are higher in some industries and occupations than others. For example, the National Health Interview Survey (DHHS, n.d.) reports a rate in the overall U.S. working population of 7.8 percent in the prior 12-month period, and rates of 9.1 percent in health care (over 10% for nurses alone); 10.1 percent in retail trade; and 9.4 percent in transportation, in contrast to 5 percent in construction and 3.6 percent in mining and oil. Who the actors are may be particularly important to discern, as several of these industries are service intensive and thus clients, customers, or patients may be key actors. An interesting example of an industry-specific study is the Califano et al. (2000) study of the USPS. In their report, the authors compared the postal service sample to a national sample of U.S. workers, often denoting that the postal service was no worse and often better in terms of experiences on the job. An exception was verbal abuse, with postal workers reporting higher levels than the national working sample. Thus, considering the representation of industries and occupations in a sample is important in discerning the accuracy of a prevalence statistic for the U.S. working population as a whole. Industry- or occupation-specific prevalence rates are valuable, and they reveal the influence of context and expectations and norms on the enactment of and exposure to bullying and mobbing. This information has implications for the design and implementation of actions to address bullying and mobbing.

Whom Do We Ask? Individuals and Organizations The majority of the studies included in this chapter focused on individual workers and their experiences, mostly as targets, occasionally as witnesses, and rarely as actors. These data give us a sense of the spread of bullying and mobbing in workplaces. Another set of respondents is organizations. For example, the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM; 2012)

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and NIOSH (Grubb, Roberts, Grosch, & Brightwell, 2004) gathered their information from organizations and their experiences with bullying. Fully one-quarter of the organizations surveyed by NIOSH indicated that bullying was present, with 7 percent indicating that it was frequent (Grubb et al., 2004). More recently, the SHRM (2012) found that over half of the HR managers surveyed indicated that bullying had been and was an issue in their organizations. As stunning as these rates are, they are likely underestimates, as individuals (targets and witnesses) are often reluctant to formally report these experiences for fear of retaliation or that nothing will be done (Keashly, 2001). What is exciting is that organizational awareness of bullying and mobbing has implications for addressing these pernicious problems.

SOURCE: WHO DOES IT SHAPES THE EXPERIENCE AND THE IMPACT Another element that is critical is who the actor is vis-à-vis the target. As noted earlier, the NHIS study (DHHS, n.d.) found that industry rates are likely influenced by the sources of the bullying, particularly in the servicerelated industries where customers and clients are notable sources. Source is an important consideration in terms of differentiating bullying and mobbing from other related phenomena, such as hostile or aggressive work environments, as well as understanding the experience of feeling bullied and mobbed and the nature and extent of the impact (Hershcovis & Reich, 2013; Keashly & Jagatic, 2011). Ultimately, the true prevalence rate of bullying and mobbing in the U.S. working population is influenced by the source. In terms of distinctiveness, by virtue of its persistence and enduring nature, bullying and mobbing occur in the relationship between a specific target and a specific actor. If a survey utilizes the self-labeling method, respondents are often queried about the actor. Most research utilizing behavioral inventories do not ask who the source of the behaviors is (for an exception, see Neuman & Keashly, 2004). Thus, it is impossible to distinguish between exposure based on different behaviors coming from different actors and different behaviors coming from the same actor (Keashly, 2013). The former reflects a hostile work environment with aggressive behaviors, while the latter is more specifically workplace bullying or mobbing. Another important reason for identifying sources is that bullying and mobbing at the hands of superiors, peers, and subordinates is enacted and experienced differently (Hershcovis & Barling, 2010). Several studies reviewed here did gather data on who the actors were vis-à-vis the target. As can be seen in table 2.1, the prevalence rate varies depending on who is the actor. In the earlier discussion about samples, how people were recruited (quality of work life

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survey vs. a bullying survey) was identified as influential in prevalence rates. This is also true in terms of who gets identified as the source of workplace bullying and mobbing. Studies whose survey was focused on bullying (CareerBuilder, 2014; Lipscomb et al., 2015; VitalSmarts, 2014; WBI, 2007, 2010, 2014) were more likely to identify the actor as a superior, then as a peer, and least often as a subordinate. In contrast, those studies whose workplace bullying and mobbing questions were embedded in a broader “quality of work life survey” (Burnazi et al., 2005; Califano et al., 2000; DHHS, 2010; GSS, 2014; Keashly & Jagatic, 2000; Rospenda et al., 2008; Schat et al., 2006) report similar rates for superiors and peers and much less for subordinates. It may be that when respondents are cued to “workplace bullying and mobbing” for their initial participation, the public image of these being boss-enacted phenomena may prime these experiences, making them more salient when responding. We do know that bullying behaviors at the hands of superiors are experienced more negatively than such behaviors from other sources, and thus the boss as actor may more readily come to mind (Keashly & Neuman 2002). Some studies also collected data on the sex of the actor, revealing that men are more often identified as actors. By examining the sex of the target and actor together, we know that bullying and mobbing tend to be predominantly same-sex phenomena (WBI, 2007, 2010, 2014). Gathering data on the number of actors involved allows us to assess the presence and prevalence of mobbing. The CareerBuilder (2014) survey did include a question regarding the identity of the actors that allowed respondents to choose more than one. Of those who indicated they were currently being bullied, almost a third reported being bullied (or mobbed) by several actors (L. Nikravan, personal communication, November 11, 2016). With this exception, the prevalence rates of other studies mask mobbing from view. Although knowing the overall prevalence of workplace bullying and mobbing is important, being able to drill down to look at who is doing what to whom gives us further insight into the faces and nuances of workplace bullying and mobbing. Understanding what happens in these relationships opens the door to crafting relevant and effective actions and interventions.

PURPOSE FOR STUDY: WHY WE WANT TO KNOW SHAPES HOW WE ASK THE QUESTION The studies reviewed here reflect a variety of interests that include academic research; public health (GSS, NHIS); employee advocacy (WBI, CareerBuilder, VitalSmarts); professional organizations (SHRM); and industry (USPS). Understanding the purpose of the study provides insight into the measurement utilized, which in turn shapes the prevalence rate. For academic research (e.g., Burnazi et al., 2005; Keashly & Jagatic, 2000; Lipscomb

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et al., 2015; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007; Rospenda et al., 2008, Schat et al., 2006), survey data provides the opportunity to articulate the distinct nature of bullying and mobbing vis-à-vis other negative workplace phenomena (e.g., incivility, general aggression, hostile work environment) and to test explanatory theories and models. Measurement needs to more precisely capture the distinctive features of workplace bullying and mobbing, hence the utilization of self-labeling and psychometrically reliable and valid behavioral inventories. For public health (GSS, 2014; DHHS, 2010), the purpose is to have an estimate of the size of the problem relative to other workplace problems (like harassment and discrimination) that impacts quality of life for U.S. citizens to garner support for spending scarce public health dollars. Thus, measurement needs to clearly focus on the respondents’ experiences of victimization, that is, self-labeling as bullied or mistreated. For employee advocacy groups (CareerBuilder, 2014; VitalSmarts, 2014; WBI, 2007, 2010, 2014), the focus is on demonstrating that employees are being victimized systematically and that organizations have a responsibility to take action. For this purpose of mobilizing for action, the self-labeling method that utilizes the distinct feature of repeated and persistent aggression is useful, and the resultant statistics are attention-grabbing. A dramatic example of this is VitalSmarts’ (2014) claim that 96 percent of workers have experienced bullying in their working career, with 63 percent currently experiencing bullying. Such statistics grab our attention and make us want to learn more, an important goal for employee advocate organizations. Given that Human Resources is often the unit that is expected to engage with workplace problems such as bullying and mobbing, SHRM’s (2012) survey of their members’ experiences gives a sense of the scope of the problem for these professionals, and thus the need for member support and training. Measurement here then needs to clearly distinguish bullying and mobbing from other negative behaviors and situations, which demonstrates the value of self-labeling using a precise definition. Finally, the USPS (2000) survey is distinctive among the studies reviewed here in that it was motivated by a need to address a public perception of the USPS as a violent place (“going postal”). The comparative study was conducted by the well-respected National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and reflects the academic value of precise construct measurement of relevant phenomena by definition and specific behavioral examples.

IN SUM: WHAT IS THE “REAL” PREVALENCE? In this chapter, we have examined the ways in which the prevalence rate of workplace bullying and mobbing is shaped by the measurement approach, time frame, sample, and source. We have also recognized how the purpose of

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the study influences the metric chosen and the resultant profile of workplace bullying and mobbing. Somehow, though, the answer of “it depends” does not seem satisfying, does it? We want specific numbers. So here goes: utilizing the self-labeling with precise definition measurement, 7–8 percent of U.S. working adults will feel they are currently (prior 6–12 months) being bullied or mobbed by someone at work, and over a quarter of all working adults will identify as having been bullied or mobbed in their working career. Depending on occupation and industry, the risks for being bullied and mobbed may be higher than the overall prevalence. Broadening the impact net further, onequarter to one-third of all working adults have witnessed others being bullied or mobbed. Translating these percentages to numbers of workers using the Bureau of Labor Statistics (n.d.) nonfarm labor force for 2014 (most recent data collection reported here) of 137.5 million workers, 9.8 million workers are currently being bullied or mobbed, 35–40 million have experienced bullying and mobbing in their working careers, and 35–45 million have witnessed the bullying and mobbing of others. No matter how you cut it, that is a lot of workers who are being affected by persistent and repeated aggression in relationships of consequence (with superiors, coworkers, and clients/customers), not to mention their family and friends who are primary supports for them. Beyond persistent aggression, these studies reveal that one-third to one-half of American workers in any 12-month period are exposed to aggressive behavior from someone with whom they work. Measuring and tracking these occasional acts of aggression are important; if left unaddressed, they could develop into bullying or mobbing situations. To end on a more hopeful note, the good news from this review is that there is increasing interest from a variety of stakeholders in identifying and understanding workplace bullying and mobbing, with evidence that the public writ large, and public health agencies and other organizations more specifically, perceive these as major workplace issues that must be addressed. Recognizing there is a problem and realizing the size of it is a critical step in taking workplace bullying and mobbing seriously and builds the will for developing and implementing strategies for managing and eradicating these very destructive workplace experiences that touch us all.

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Keashly, L., & Jagatic, K. (2003). By any other name: American perspectives on workplace bullying. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and emotional abuse in the workplace: International research and practice perspectives (pp. 31–61). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Keashly, L., & Jagatic, K. (2011). North American perspectives on workplace hostility and bullying. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research and practice (2nd ed.; pp. 41–71). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Keashly, L. & Neuman, J. H. (2002, August 12). Exploring persistent patterns of workplace aggression. Paper presented at the Workplace Abuse, Aggression, Bullying, and Incivility: Conceptual and Empirical Insights symposium, Meeting of the Academy of Management, Denver, Colorado. Keashly, L. & Neuman, J. H. (2007, November). Stepping up: Developing peer strategies for addressing bullying. Paper presented as part of a training and development session, “Building Workplace Bullying Seminars: Grounding Training and Development in Strong Communication Scholarship,” National Communication Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. Kelloway, E. K., Barling, J., & Hurrell, J. J., Jr. (Eds.). (2006). Handbook of workplace violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Leymann, H. (1996). The content and development of mobbing at work. In D. Zapf & H. Leymann (Eds.). Mobbing and victimization at work (pp. 165–184). Hove, England: Psychology Press. Lipscomb, J., London, M., McPhaul, K. M., Ghaziri, M. E., Lydecker, A., GeigerBrown, J., & Johnson, J. V. (2015). The prevalence of coworker conflict including bullying in a unionized US public sector workforce. Violence and Victims, 30(5), 813–829. Lutgen-Sandvik, P., Tracy, S. J., & Alberts, J. K. (2007). Burned by bullying in the American workplace: Prevalence, perception, degree and impact. Journal of Management Studies, 44(6), 837–862. Matthiesen, S. B., & Einarsen, S. (2010). Bullying in the workplace: Definition, prevalence, antecedents and consequences. International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, 13(2), 202–248. McGinley, M., Richman, J. A., & Rospenda, K. M. (2011). Duration of sexual harassment and generalized harassment in the workplace over ten years: Effects on deleterious drinking outcomes. Journal of Addictive Diseases, 30(3), 229–242. Meglich, P. A., Faley, R. H., & DuBois, C. L. (2012). The influence of actions and actors on the perceived severity of workplace bullying. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 13(1), 11. Namie, G. (2000, October 27–28). U.S. hostile workplace survey 2000. Paper presented at the New England Conference on Workplace Bullying, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, Massachusetts. Namie, G., & Lutgen-Sandvik, P. E. (2010). Active and passive accomplices: The communal character of workplace bullying. International Journal of Communication, 4, 343–373.

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Neuman, J. H., & Baron, R. A. (1998). Workplace violence and workplace aggression: Evidence concerning specific forms, potential causes, and preferred targets. Journal of Management, 24(3), 391–419. Neuman, J. H., & Keashly, L. (2004, April 4). Development of the workplace aggression research questionnaire (WAR-Q): Preliminary data from the Workplace Stress and Aggression Project. Paper presented at the Theoretical Advancements in the Study of Anti-Social Behavior at Work symposium, meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, Illinois. Nielsen, M. B., Matthiesen, S. B., & Einarsen, S. (2010). The impact of methodological moderators on prevalence rates of workplace bullying: A meta‐analysis. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(4), 955–979. Notelaers, G., & Einarsen, S. (2013). The world turns at 33 and 45: Defining simple cutoff scores for the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised in a representative sample. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 22(6), 670–682. Power, J. L., Brotheridge, C. M., Blenkinsopp, J., Bowes-Sperry, L., Bozionelos, N., Buzády, Z., . . . Madero, S. M. (2013). Acceptability of workplace bullying: A comparative study on six continents. Journal of Business Research, 66(3), 374–380. Price Spratlen, L. (1994). Interpersonal conflict which includes mistreatment in a university workplace. Violence and Victims, 10(4), 285–297. Privitera, C., & Campbell, M. A. (2009). Cyberbullying: The new face of workplace bullying? CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(4), 395–400. Rospenda, K. M., & Richman, J. A. (2004). The factor structure of generalized workplace harassment. Violence and Victims, 19(2), 221–238. Rospenda, K. M., Richman, J. A., & Shannon, C. A. (2008). Prevalence and mental health correlates of harassment and discrimination in the workplace: Results from a national study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(5), 819–843. Rospenda, K. M., Richman, J. A., Wislar, J. S., & Flaherty, J. A. (2000). Chronicity of sexual harassment and generalized workplace abuse: Effects on drinking outcomes. Addiction, 95(12), 1805–1820. Saunders, P., Huynh, A., & Goodman-Delahunty, J. (2007). Defining workplace bullying behaviour professional lay definitions of workplace bullying. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 30(4), 340–354. Schat, A. C., Frone, M. R., & Kelloway, E. K. (2006). Prevalence of workplace aggression in the U.S. workforce: Findings from a national study. In E. K. Kelloway, J. Barling, & J. J. Hurrell (Eds.), Handbook of workplace violence (pp. 47–89). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Schneider, K. T., Pryor, J. B., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (2011). Sexual harassment research in the United States. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research and practice (2nd ed.; pp. 143–265). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Society of Human Resource Management. (2012). Workplace bullying. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys​ /pages/workplacebullying.aspx

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Risk Factors for Becoming a Target of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie and Ruth Namie

The chapter title implies that a host of personal characteristics can be identified that predict why one person is targeted for bullying and others are not. We sort the identification into three components: (1) the search for a dispositional or personality trait profile, (2) behaviors that tend to lead to aggression directed against targets, and (3) characteristics of perpetrators that operate either unilaterally or interactively with targeted workers’ actions. Next, we explore how certain emotional consequences of being bullied exacerbate the harm endured by targets. They are predictors of impact severity rather than being selected for bullying and mobbing. Finally, we close with our predictions for a brighter future for targets of bullying.

DO TARGET PERSONALITIES PREDICT BULLYING? We begin with dispositional approaches to explain why certain individuals might be targeted. Business school researchers like to include “victim precipitation” in their list of variables explored in bullying-related studies. For example, Tepper, Duffy, Henle, and Lambert (2006) defined victim precipitation as “the idea that some individuals may become at risk of being victimized by provoking the hostility of potential perpetrators” (p. 104). The authors explicitly borrowed victim precipitation from criminal justice. For this particular study, with a sample of military supervisors and National Guard members, the authors incorporated an omnibus dispositional tendency—negative affectivity (NA): people who experience high levels of distress, feeling upset, afraid, or jittery—as a predictor of being abused by supervisors. High NA individuals are less able to defend themselves against aggression or they are perceived by coworkers as annoying, not likeable, and thus provocative. Tepper and

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colleagues (2006) confirmed that those high in NA indeed perceived being treated more abusively. They concluded that abusive supervision is a trickledown phenomenon and called for organizations to first treat supervisors more fairly if subordinates are not to be subjected to abuse. (The lay term “sh** flows downhill,” known to nearly everyone, comes to mind.) If the form of abuse under examination had been domestic violence, the analogous recommendation would have been to first provide services for the batterers to satisfy their needs with the hope that it mitigates battering. Thankfully, domestic violence advocates appropriately focused first on alleviating harm done to victims and then attending to the needs of batterers. Social justice movements are driven by the unmet needs of victims, underdogs, and the disadvantaged—not the coddling of abusers, typically those who already enjoy the privileges of societal support. Our methodological criticism of the Tepper et al. (2006) study is that subordinates’ NA tendencies were queried contemporaneously with all other measures. In other words, subordinates who had already experienced abusive supervision by one or more of the other participants could have been made distressed, upset, afraid, and jittery specifically as the result of the abuse. The researchers instead treated the NA trait cluster as an immutable preexisting characteristic of subordinates’ personalities. In another study (Tepper, Moss, & Duffy, 2011), the researchers invoked moral exclusion theory, which states that some targets deserve fair treatment (each person has a “scope of justice”) and others are excluded from moral rules (assuming justice concerns for them are inapplicable). Scope of justice refers to the range or boundaries for psychological fairness that an individual holds with respect to how others should be treated (Opotow, 2012). Two ostensibly objective variables—supervisors’ perceptions of emotional conflict with subordinates and work performance of subordinates—were correlated with supervisors’ perceived dissimilarity from subordinates. The findings demonstrated that subordinates targeted for abuse are those from whom supervisors felt most dissimilar. Abuse was also more likely for those considered “poor performers.” In the concluding discussion section of the study, there was an alarming call to study rank-and-file employees’ acts of workplace deviance as a related predictor of abusive supervision. This seems to further reflect a cool indifference toward targeted workers as somehow less worthy. Choosing victim precipitation as a research variable in bullying-related studies in the 21st century is odd because it was deemed outdated as long ago as 1984 by researchers in its original field of origin: criminal justice (Timmer & Norman, 1984). The sociology of criminal victimization demonstrates how U.S. crime is structurally precipitated. The analogy for bullying is that sophisticated studies place the dyadic relationship between perpetrator and target in the broader context of organizational politics and leadership.

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Ignoring system factors is misguided. In brief, criminology has abandoned victim precipitation. The premier source of social science research on the topic is the Bergen Bullying Research Group at the University of Bergen, Norway, run by Stale Einarsen, a clinical and organizational psychologist. Lind, Glaso, Pallesen, and Einarsen (2009) challenged the predictive power of personality of the target as the antecedent to bullying: do targets possess flawed personalities? They administered the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), a five-factor model of personality assessment instrument, to workers who had been bullied and those who had not been bullied. Targets did not score higher on the neuroticism scale. They were no more anxious, worried, easily upset, or insecure than nontargets. However, targets did score higher on the conscientiousness scale, meaning they were selfdisciplined, organized, hardworking, moralistic, and rule-bound. The authors ruled out a general victim personality profile.

BLAMING VICTIMS Our American societal tendency to blame victims for their fate is worse than business school myopia on the topic. The underlying process is part of normal person perception principles and a form of automatic thinking that, if left unchecked, blames victims. Social psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error (Jones, 1979). There is a significant difference in how targets explain the reasons for the social misery that bullying has inflicted on them and how outsiders (HR, coworkers, managers distant from the incidents) explain it. Inculcated in American mythic culture is reverence for the power of the individual over situations. Strong personal will is expected to overcome all obstacles. Conversely, research into attribution biases shows that outsiders (observers, in research jargon) automatically, without deliberate thought or malice, tend to overestimate the role of personality, or dispositional factors, when explaining the actions of others (actors). Individuals themselves (the “actors”) see themselves as behaving responsively to the push and pull of external environmental factors. They are adaptive and flexible. From the target’s perspective, perpetrators and perpetrator support systems are part of the environment, not aspects of who they are. Investigators who arrive at the ubiquitous finding in bullying cases of simple “personality conflict” between the accused and complainant commit the fundamental attribution error. They overestimate the contributory role of target personalities (internal factors) to explain bullying. It is a way of perceiving targets as broken people. As Tepper et al. (2011) concluded, bullied targets may be precluded from moral treatment based on their personality.

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UNWANTED, UNINVITED ASSAULT No rational person thinks that anyone invites upon themselves repeated waves of psychological assaults involving verbal abuse, threats to one’s identity, and paralyzing intimidation that creates excessive distress over long periods of time. Bullying is an irrational process. A variant of victim blaming is the assumption that the mistreatment was wanted or invited. As with sexual harassment, bullying’s illegal cousin, no mistreatment is invited in the eyes of the law. Just because bullying in the United States is currently legal does not make it less abusive or disruptive to the targeted individuals and the organization.

WHY NOT FIGHT BACK? We now share observations about behaviors exhibited across targets that could also trigger targethood. Given these are generalities, not every target exhibits all the behaviors. Targets do not defend themselves in the immediacy of the initial assault during which bullies are probing for defenses or the lack thereof. They do not fight back because they cannot. If they could have employed a combative defensive reply for immediate use, they would not be targets. They would be one of the 73 percent of adult Americans who have never experienced bullying (Namie, 2014c). And if they could have, they would have. Ironically, targets do confront their bullies in 69 percent of cases (Namie, 2013c). However, because they wait more than a month, the confrontation is ineffective. To effectively rebuff a perpetrator, the response must be immediate and clearly contingent upon the assault directed at the target. Delay dilutes the power of countermeasures by breaking the connection between assault and response. Waiting creates a lost opportunity to stop the bullying. Target countermeasures are also rendered ineffective because the target operates in isolation, often without any institutional support. The perpetrators and management have an alliance, formal or informal, against the target. Human resources tends to promise support and then fails to engage senior management to stop it. In fact, once HR alerts senior managers, the target is disbelieved and discounted (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010). In another study, D’Cruz and Noronha (2011), recorded instances where coworkers who were friends with bullied targets helped their beleaguered colleagues. This voluntary help refuted the do-nothing bystander effect typical of so many coworker actions. Then, HR, on behalf of the employer, reversed the helping. The authors called this “helpless helpfulness” invoked by the institution. The finding helps the reader understand why targets are relatively powerless when bullying happens.

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GENDER AND TARGETHOOD Workplace bullying is defined by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) in its most recent national survey of a representative sample of all adult Americans (Namie, 2014c) as “repeated mistreatment of an employee by one or more employees: abusive conduct that takes the form of verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, humiliation or sabotage of work performance” (p. 3). Respondents were queried about their personal experiences with abusive conduct. The term workplace bullying did not appear in the survey. The prevalence was 27 percent: 7 percent describing themselves as currently experiencing the mistreatment, and 20 percent reporting it as part of their work history. Witnesses, whose experience was vicarious rather than direct, comprised 21 percent of respondents. Rounding out the sample were a group purportedly aware of bullying without personally experiencing it (19%), and 28 percent who neither acknowledged bullying nor had any experience with it. From that 2014 survey, we also know that 60 percent of all targets are women. Women are also perpetrators, but only a minority of them (31%). Women bullies disproportionately pursue women as their targets (in 68% of cases). Twenty-one percent of all bullying is defined by the woman-onwoman dyad. The male bully and male target pair represents 30 percent of all bullying. The woman-on-woman aggression has also been called the queen bee phenomenon. The rationale of authors Derks, Van Laar, and Ellemers (2016) is that the internecine hostility is a reaction to being members of a marginalized group—women in male-dominated organizations. In this way, woman-onwoman psychological violence is the same construct as horizontal (or lateral) violence, a term used in the nursing profession (Purpora, Blegen, & Stotts, 2012). In both spheres, senior women distance themselves from, and even aggress against, younger women that observers could argue need and deserve help from their mentors. Feminist Phyllis Chesler (2009) explored women’s inhumanity to women in an important book. She concluded that much of the cruelty shown to women by women is partly a remnant of human evolution. At its core is internecine competition among females of most species. Female humans have dense cortexes that can override impulses or instincts. Societal civility can cover antisocial action. However, competition among women does occur. We asked targets to contrast currently being bullied with having been bullied before but not now. Same-gender pairings comprise 77 percent of the cases when only current bullying is considered (Namie, 2014c). These pairings fairly often preclude targets invoking their employers’ nondiscrimination policies, which are based on state and federal civil rights laws. From a previous national survey, we know that 80 percent of all cases of mistreatment

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would not meet Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaint eligibility criteria (Namie, 2007). In 2014, women targets were more likely to report being currently bullied when their perpetrator was a woman (27%) than when the perpetrator was a man (15%). Women reported much higher rates of historical bullying (47%) than did men (27%). Anecdotally, the majority of calls to WBI from targets seeking advice were historically from women. Respondents completing online surveys at the WBI Web site are typically women (80%–84%). We posit that women feel the pain from bullying and are motivated to reverse their circumstances. Bullying comes with stigma attached. Men may be more reluctant to admit the powerlessness that targethood connotes than women. Salin and Hoel (2013) challenged the notion that workplace bullying is gender neutral (as in it affects everyone similarly) by considering it a “gendered phenomenon.” That is, the experience is different for women than men. Women are more likely to label negative acts bullying and rate them more severely than men. This is partly explained by the lower status women have in most organizations. In turn, lower power compels silence by targets and a reliance on passive conflict resolution strategies at work, avoidance, or denial. Women are more likely to seek social support outside work rather than confront their bullies. Hence, the preponderance of women callers to WBI for help.

RACE AND TARGETHOOD Individuals who are members of historically disadvantaged groups enjoy civil rights protections codified in state and federal laws. That is, if they are members of a protected status group, such as women, minority races, older workers, or disabled individuals, they may be eligible to file a complaint with their employer when nondiscrimination policies are believed to have been violated. For the WBI national survey (Namie, 2014c), the polling organization provided data on four races of adult Americans surveyed: Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Whites. Each of the minority groups experienced a higher rate of abusive conduct than Whites (24%): 33 percent of Hispanics, 33 percent of African Americans, and 33 percent of Asian Americans. Despite workers’ familiarity with the illegality of racial discrimination in contemporary workplaces, that knowledge seems to have not mitigated the mistreatment for members of those minority groups. The data do not allow us to ascertain whether bullying supplements existing discrimination or supplants it. When we combine the prevalence rates for those who directly experienced bullying with those who only witnessed it, we estimate the total proportion of individuals “affected” by bullying. The national, whole sample, rate was

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48 percent (Namie, 2014c). Hispanics were the most affected (57%), African Americans second (54%), and Asian Americans third (53%), compared to Whites at 44 percent. There were differences across the racial groups in which particular factors best explained the bullying. The four factors across which survey respondents were asked to apportion a percentage of responsibility for abusive conduct were target characteristics, perpetrator characteristics, the employer, and society. African Americans assigned the high percentages to employers (32%) and society (30%). Of all the racial groups, Hispanics blamed targets the most, assigning 33 percent of responsibility. Perpetrators were blamed most by Whites (47%). Asian Americans placed the most responsibility on employers (46%) of all the groups. The two groups with the highest “external” explanatory factor percentages were African Americans (62%) and Asian Americans (50%). Whites and Hispanics preferred “internal” personality factors to explain bullying (68% and 65%, respectively).

WHEN THERE IS A HISTORY OF PRIOR ABUSE Targets of bullying completed an online WBI survey asking when they had first experienced abuse of any kind in their lives. Forty-four percent reported their first abuse happening in their family of origin (Namie, 2013b). In a more detailed study of targets, WBI found that 20 percent had been subjected to partner violence, 20 percent abuse from siblings, 17 percent physical child abuse, 11 percent sexual child abuse, and 10 percent adult sexual assault or rape (Namie, 2011c). To be clear, prior abuse does not put a “kick me” sign on an adult’s back. However, it does mean that the adult workplace target of abuse is more likely to recognize the mistreatment than a person without historical experience. The emotional consequences of the emotional abuse will not likely be delayed. Retraumatization repeats the horrific feelings from prior experiences. In fact, trauma victims can have their symptoms triggered by traumatizing events not related to their original experiences. Targets who have never been traumatized can be bullied for weeks or months and not recognize it. How? The American workplace can be toxic in so many ways that the mistreatment directed at them could be considered routine, the “way business is done” in that organization. Also, targets tend to be rule followers, not mavericks (or “social deviants,” as business school researchers characterize them). Targets would not reflexively report wrongdoing without first looking inward to explore how they might have caused a problem for their bully. This misdirection postpones correctly identifying it for what it is. It is often family or coworkers who convince the target that the perpetrator’s actions are not normal nor acceptable.

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Targets late to recognize their bullying are at high risk for great harm, according to Janoff-Bulman’s (1989) model. They are the ones with the most idealistic and optimistic views of the world, having never been significantly mistreated. Prior abuse may serve to accelerate recognition. The earlier recognition happens, the quicker resolution steps can be taken. In this way, victims of prior abuse may be quicker to mobilize into action.

TARGET BEHAVIORS AS PREDICTORS We now explore a set of behaviors that workers exhibit that increase the likelihood that they will be targeted for bullying and mobbing. We begin with actions that appear on the surface to be counterintuitive triggers. That is, they are all positive. The three we discuss are (1) targets’ superior technical skills at the job, (2) targets’ popularity within the organization, and (3) targets’ aversion to political gamesmanship. From our experiences with targets, the oft-repeated mantra is, “I just want to be left alone to do my job.” This plea to stop meddling comes from workers with a strong work ethic. They feel obligated to perform well in exchange for a paycheck. They are not the socially deviant workers; their workplace citizenship behaviors are above reproach. They are the exemplars—honest, independent, ethical, team players, and the go-to experts about work procedures for coworkers (Namie, 2003). From a hiring employer’s perspective, they are ideal conscientious employees.

STRENGTH AND OPTIMISM ARE LIABILITIES WBI asked self-described targets of bullying to state why they were targeted. First in 2003 and then again in 2012 (Namie, 2012b), targets said bullying was partly triggered by their strengths, not their weaknesses. The two strengths were technical and social skills of a higher level than their assailants. Making the social comparison with a stronger person creates tension for some perpetrators. Rather than be comfortable with another person’s talent, regardless of rank—subordinate, peer, or superior—some individuals choose to displace or torment the threatening person. This is especially true when the target is known to be more intelligent than her or his bully (Kim & Glomb, 2010). In an experimental study (Parks & Stone, 2010), group members resented the most altruistic member for making a greater contribution to the group. That effort was construed by others as a superior, though unexpressed, morality than theirs. The least selfish members were banished, second in unpopularity only to the most selfish group members. It seems that possessing a cluster of positive work-related traits can get an American worker in trouble, notwithstanding employer calls for engaged

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employees right under their noses. Behavioral patterns gleaned from court cases with which we have been involved, coupled with the thousands of telephone tales we have heard, confirm that strong performers are the individuals targeted. But why does performance strength not translate to the social skill of rebuffing targeted psychological assaults? We could as easily ask why nurses who tirelessly care for the health of others typically ignore the impact of bullying on their personal health. Teachers who are effective with the children of strangers often cannot teach their own children. Lawyers who advise clients regarding legal conduct can commit unethical acts without self-restraint. It is paradoxical. It is possible that the attention of targets is placed solely on work tasks with little time or desire to focus on potentially destructive people in their work environment. In other words, limits to one’s cognitive load may put the target at risk. Janoff-Bulman’s (1989) theory of traumatization is a better explanation. She sorts individuals who have been exposed to potentially traumatizing life events into two groups: those who experience symptoms of trauma and those who do not. A belief in the benevolence (equity, fairness) of the world is the key determinant of group membership. Holding such an optimistic belief, an assumption about the surrounding world is shattered when bullying invades that person’s life. It overwhelms the person’s ability to cope. It is dissonant with a lifetime of positive experiences and expectations—that people are fair, that hard work will be rewarded, and that respect is reciprocated. When those assumptions are shattered, trauma can result. So, it is the optimist who is at risk. Cynical, pragmatic, and nonidealistic individuals recognize workplace political game playing as normal. The latter group is less shocked, less surprised, less disappointed, and hence less likely to be traumatized. Targets we have known were all surprised, bushwhacked. They never saw the assaults coming at them. Targets can stubbornly remain optimistic, even in the face of years of brutal abuse. One-quarter of targets cling to the belief that their employer will save them once it learns the extent of the emotional abuse they suffer (Namie, 2013a). While they wait for the impossible, their health is further compromised from unremitting exposure to distress. Targets tell us via all channels of communication with the WBI that they are not political game players (Namie, 2012b). Some would see this as naiveté, a liability. Kramer (2006) asks us to place a higher value on political intelligence than emotional intelligence in organizations. People without political intelligence, being unaware of power relationships and consequences for exercising power over others, have a harder time recognizing manipulative Machiavellian behavior by others. It also makes it impossible for them to mount a successful counter to the sophisticated campaign of destruction

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engineered by one or more perpetrators intent on displacing the target. The requisite skills are not in their personal repertoire. Of course, we never advise targets to lower themselves and act like bullies themselves. If every person was driven purely by office politics, no work would ever get done.

BEHAVIORAL ANTECEDENTS TO TARGETHOOD From our two decades of work in bullying and mobbing, we have observed the following behaviors to be typical of targets. Some targets are “nice.” Unfortunately, this is not a compliment as we commonly use the term. Look up the definition. The word’s Latin root, nescius, means to be ignorant. It evolved into being foolish or stupid. So, it’s better to be kind than nice. To be nice can make one easily exploited. Many targets exhibit behaviors that make them high self-disclosers. They voluntarily offer their future enemies ammunition with which to assassinate their character in the early stages of their relationships, including those with potential perpetrators. They consider personal information to be building blocks of new relationships. That is, they share intimate facts about their lives expecting their bosses and coworkers to reciprocate with secrets of their own. Sadly, such disclosures enable the exploitation around which future bullying is centered. Bullies are not open, disclosing types. They solicit information from open targets only for the purpose of using it against them later. The risk from a strong attachment to a beloved job is an overinvestment of one’s identity in that job. When work and identity become inseparable, a vulnerability opens for others to see. One need not be a sadistic perpetrator to notice that the targeted individual may lack a balance between life at work and life outside work. But sadistic bullies, especially those in management, can leverage that overinvestment into maximizing the distress that accompanies the threat of job or career loss. It is difficult enough for targets to resume their lives after the bullying incidents have been resolved, favorably or not. Starting over in another department at the same firm or finding work at another employer is tough. But generating a new narrative for one’s life is a much larger task (LutgenSandvik, 2008). It essentially requires reinventing oneself after first grieving the loss of the original self. When both job and identity are lost to bullying, the task is doubly hard. Perfectionism is stressful and impossible to attain (Wirtz et al., 2007). High-achieving bullied targets can fall prey to this demanding self-imposed form of criticism. In some cases, targets tell us they won’t leave their job until they prove to their bully that the lies about their incompetence are

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false. They will work harder to produce a result that will never satisfy the abuser. Nor will it satisfy themselves. As they push harder, lose more sleep, grow more fatigued, and experience neurological changes from the prolonged stress, they become less capable of their former performance level. They are chasing an unattainable standard. Ironically, perfectionism is used by bullies to justify their arbitrary and capricious work assignments with floating, unachievable standards.

PERPETRATORS’ CHARACTERISTICS Bullying can be partially explained as being a compensatory process. Garcia, Restubog, Kiewitz, Scott, and Tang (2014) traced the practice of abusive supervision to perpetrators’ history of aggression learned in their family of origin, mediated by states of angry rumination as adults. And in that angry mental state, threat perception is more likely. Bullies may be adults physically with an immaturity with respect to moral development and emotional intelligence. Targets in a WBI online survey (Namie, 2012b) rated the abusive-toxic personality of perpetrators as the second most important factor in why bullying happened to them. It was ranked behind the target’s superior technical skill. Clearly, bullying is predicated upon perpetrators’ need to control the lives of others. Perpetrators unilaterally choose whom to target, the choice of tactics, timing—including onset, cessation and resumption—and location. Targets lack the power to alter those choices. The process is in no way a voluntary collaboration. The non-WBI literature supports our conclusion about targets being good performers. Fast and Chen (2009) believe a bully’s aggression is cover for supervisory incompetence. Treadway, Shaughnessy, Breland, Yang, and Reeves (2013) documented that politically skilled bullies hide their lack of performance skill from their superiors. This is done through ingratiation up the chain of command. Ingratiation cements the bond between perpetrator and management sponsor. This allows bullies to abuse with impunity (Namie, 2009). When and if the bully is ever exposed, the sponsor (as senior manager in the organization) often denies the facts and retains the favored, albeit brutal, bully. A longitudinal five-year study bolsters our impunity claim (Glambek, Skogstad, & Einarsen, 2016). Bullies are rarely punished. There are two sources—one anecdotal and one empirical—that suggest that bullying could be an interaction between dominating predators and their prey. The first is derived from our consulting work in organizations. The work requires assessing and counseling identified perpetrators. From that group comes a rationale for bullying that defies rationality. Many bullies have told us that they preferred not to act abusively but that some individuals

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who could not counter initial aggression deserved mistreatment. “Why?” we inquired. Because she or he could not be respected by virtue of “allowing” themselves to be intimidated and humiliated. In this way, bullying and mobbing were warranted by the unwilling perpetrator. This perverse reasoning mirrors explanations based on provocative victims. The empirical evidence for an interaction between abusers and abused victims comes from a study of Canadian prisoners only obliquely related to bullying and mobbing. Book, Costello, and Camilleri (2013) asked maximumsecurity prisoners—some psychopathic and some not—to choose from among videotaped men and women the ones they deemed easiest to mug (with intent to rob or steal from) and to describe their selection criteria. The videotaped people had described whether they had previously been victimized or assaulted in a way greater than bullying. One woman had been the victim of sexual assault. Psychopathic prisoners showed the highest accuracy in selecting the participants who had actually been victimized. Within the psychopathic group, prisoners who scored high in the interpersonal/affective characteristics of psychopaths—manipulativeness, superficial charm, and lack of empathy— were the ones with greatest identification accuracy. These are the people most likely to exploit others. The psychopathic traits of lack of behavioral control and impulsivity were not predictors of victim identification accuracy. Psychopaths high in the interpersonal traits of psychopathy based their selection of a victim primarily on gait. In other words, they attended to how the videotaped person walked, either with confidence or “like an easy target.” Gait was the principal cue connoting vulnerability. As it turns out, the videotaped people who displayed vulnerable body language were more likely to have had a history of victimization in the past. Psychopaths then chose those same people for future victimization. The authors suggest this may account for bullied targets’ inability to escape repeating their targethood across situations and employers over time. This study informs the literature on bullying and mobbing with its demonstration that some victims do exhibit external displays of vulnerability. Some predators can sense it, while other observers cannot. But shouldn’t we distinguish everyday perpetrators of bullying and mobbing in workplaces from imprisoned psychopaths? Robert Hare, the North American authority on psychopathy, found in one study of managers and executives that the prevalence of the traits in corporate America matched the proportion in the general population (Babiak, Neumann, & Hare, 2010). The psychopaths at work tended to be the highestranking executives. The most psychopathic managers in the study scored highest in the affective and interpersonal domains of psychopathy (and not in the lifestyle and antisocial domains). Researchers had performance evaluation data from subordinates and managers of those individuals. They were

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rated the most charismatic by others even when performance skill was low. The researchers’ conclusion was that the pairing of psychopathic abilities and intelligence enables managers to manipulate and con others. This finding matches the Book et al. (2013) finding above with psychopathic prisoners.

OSTRACISM, ISOLATION, AND SELF-HARM Bullying polarizes witnesses in the workforce. When bosses give explicit orders to exclude the targeted worker from work production activities, they are playing the “divide and conquer” game. Exclusion from social life with coworkers typically follows. Coworkers sort themselves into supporters of either the target or perpetrators. Approximately 15 percent of coworkers publicly side with the bully and act aggressively toward the target, their former friend (Namie, 2008). Once the target has been ostracized by peers, those peers go to extraordinary lengths to rationalize their antisocial actions. They even muster anger at the target for not having stood up and confronted the bully (Diekmann, Walker, Galinsky, & Tenbrunsel, 2012). Thus, the target is made to appear undeserving of help in coworkers’ eyes. The targets most at risk of self-harm or suicide are people who live alone. The bullying experience is extremely distressful. Social support is an important—perhaps the most important—antidote to that distress. Family and friends become the only sources of validation and continuity once colleagues from work sever ties with their bullied coworker (Namie, 2011b). Pets are an inadequate buffer against the sea of overwhelming misery that bullying can bring. Social isolation of the distressed target allows irrational, delusional, and self-destructive thoughts to emerge unchallenged. For years, the relationship between bullying and suicide among adults was simply correlational. That is, the fact that bullying caused targets to consider suicide could not be confirmed. In a longitudinal study spanning five years with a sample of bullied and nonbullied workers, it was found that bullied targets were twice as likely to consider suicide even after five years (Nielsen, Nielsen, Notelaers, & Einarsen, 2015). In one case with which this author is familiar, the target took great pains to draw the link between the years of managerial abuse and the suicide. The target wrote multiple letters explaining the reasons for the suicide. Police found the blood-stained letters near the body after the shooting. No misinterpretation could be made by those who found the target. This is rare. It is more likely that bullied workers lose their jobs, became estranged from family and children over time, lose homes to foreclosure, live in their cars, begin to binge on alcohol, and decide to take their lives when all perceived viable

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options run out. With this pattern of decline, it is difficult to connect suicides to former workplaces. Yet, it was the abusive workplace that unraveled the once complete and satisfying lives of targets.

POWERFUL BULLYING-RELATED EMOTIONS—SHAME AND GUILT There are many synonyms for workplace bullying: abusive conduct, psychological violence, status-blind harassment, mobbing, abusive supervision, workplace aggression, and emotional abuse. Emotional abuse evokes the most common harm associated with bullying, psychological injury. Bullying is nonphysical workplace violence. The principal emotions related to bullying are shame and guilt. Targets universally experience shame. Abusers are keen to generate that sense of shame, feelings of utter worthlessness as a human being. When parents and teachers abuse children, the adults tell the children they will never amount to anything. They are a big “nothing.” When spouses emotionally abuse their partners, they say how unlovable the person is and how lucky he or she is to be with her or him. When workplace abusers disrespect another person at work, they treat them with contempt. They treat them with utter disregard reserved for subhumans, for those not on the same level as the perpetrator. The bully’s narcissism provides the sought-after contrast. The bully wants to convince the target that the bully is a “somebody” while the target is a “nobody.” When targets come to believe the lie—it only needs to be repeated enough without the bully held accountable—it starts to define the target’s reality. Shame is the result. Healing from shame takes longer than it takes to simply remove the bully or to transfer the target to safety. Guilt is a different emotion. Targets feel guilty for not having the courage, wits, or ability to counter the perpetrator’s initial onslaught. Once the domination begins, it is impossible for the target to get to safety alone. Conscientious targets wish they had done more. In fact, it requires either a large group of coworkers (a rare occurrence) or a benevolent and caring employer to provide the requisite psychological safety.

PERCEIVED INJUSTICE AND OBSESSIVENESS Two interrelated behaviors dominate the bullying experience throughout the prolonged ordeal—sensing grave injustice and an obsessiveness over case details. Bullying is unjust because it is primarily noncontingent punishment. There is no rational explanation for why the target was selected and then subjected to the barrage of negative acts over such a long period of time. If

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the bullying is primarily done behind closed doors, there are no witnesses. Perpetrators who torment their prey in private know that if the description of events emerges as a tie—“he said, he said”—managers win. The targets’ sense of injustice ensues. The injustices of bullying can be characterized as procedural (the rules not being applied fairly or consistently for all employees, the target is singled out for exclusion of rules); distributive (resources needed to succeed are denied to the target and not to other employees, guaranteeing failure); and retributive (fairness in punishment, it is meted out only to the target, not others, and for no rational reason). Injustice nags the target, often long after the employer’s incomplete resolution. Injustice is rooted in the violation of the target’s expectations about the work world that are shattered by the bully and the employer who backs the bully. Obsessiveness is the inability to let go of the feelings of injustice. The comparative, and objectively verifiable, data related to the differential treatment received by the target should not be ignored. Targets’ thinking goes as follows: if only people would listen and if they would read the voluminous accumulated documentation of years of incidents, justice could be won. Justice is unlikely when the employer acts as both judge and jury and does not fully understand the nuances of bullying and mobbing. Without independent investigations, the truth is difficult to discover. Employers rely on independent outsiders only in cases involving highranking managers and executives accused of harassment whom they wish to retain. In fact, most bullied targets never see an investigation in response to their complaints. Why? Because the vast majority of events, however destructive or disgusting, fail to meet EEO criteria. Without illegality and the exposure to liability, employers do not feel compelled to respond to mere bullying complaints. Another explanation for targets’ obsessiveness is that they are not believed by authorities with whom the sordid details are eventually shared. In only 9 percent of cases are targets believed, according to a WBI online survey (Namie, 2014a). For 53 percent of targets, the employer needed to discredit the person as a liar. About 20 percent were believed until the perpetrator gave an opposing tale (“he said, he said”), and 18 percent of targets were not believed because the misconduct described sounded too outrageous to be possible. From the perspective of the senior manager hearing a report that one of his favorite supervisors is a tyrant, it is more important to retain the bullying supervisor, his personal friend, and to save face rather than to believe a worker he doesn’t know. It’s not rational, but it’s understandable. This is exactly what happens in many cases. When the case details are rejected by HR or the EEO officer for ineligibility (as happens in most same-race or same-gender cases) and the target is not

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believed, the target feels delegitimized. She or he is told that no response by the employer is compelled by law. This triggers the downward emotional spiral characteristic of the bullying experience.

ANGER AND EMBITTERMENT Consider a bullying case months after the bullying started. After shock from the employer’s denial of responsibility subsides, targets tend to grow angrier. In many ways, their mental health is better. They are less vulnerable and emotionally fragile. However, they seem to have become more like the social deviant from business school research studies. They certainly did not start that way, but over time, they evolved from the kind, patient, hardworking, naïve worker into a one-person social movement hell-bent on finding justice for themselves. Linden (2003), a German psychiatrist, described a subtype of adjustment disorder and defined it as the mental reaction to exceptional negative life events. He called it embitterment, posttraumatic embitterment disorder (PTED). PTED has three core factors: a strong sense of injustice, deterioration of psychological well-being, and a desire for revenge. In a study gauging PTED levels for bullied and nonbullied workers, Karatuna and Gok (2014) found consistently higher scores by bullied workers on all dimensions. With prolonged exposure to distress, changes in economic status, and strained family relations, the nastiness of embitterment becomes understandable.

WHAT STOPS THE BULLYING? Bullying is demeaning, ostracizing, disempowering, cruel, threatening, humiliating, untruthful, and unrelated to the work itself. Yet, it persists. In an online WBI survey (Namie, 2014b), 1,000 respondents rank ordered the aspects of bullying that upset them the most. Ranked from first to sixth are the following: (1) Being accused of incompetence when I possessed more technical skills than my accuser; (2) Being humiliated in front of coworkers; (3) Feeling ashamed though I did nothing wrong; (4) Management ignoring my complaint; (5) Having coworkers ostracize, exclude, and reject me; and (6) Retaliation that followed my complaint. In a large sample WBI survey online, we asked targets whether their bullying had stopped, and, if it had, what had made it stop (Namie, 2012a). It had stopped for 25 percent of targets when they were terminated; another 25 percent had been made so miserable at work that they had been constructively discharged; 28 percent had voluntarily quit, typically for their health’s sake; and 11 percent had transferred to a different job with the same employer (also perceived as unjust because “Why should I be the one to move? I did

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nothing”). Remarkably, perpetrators suffered some negative consequences—​ 5 percent were fired, and 6 percent were punished (but actions taken remained confidential and unknown to the target). It is clear that targets pay the price to end the bullying. Once targeted for bullying, individuals have a 7 in 10 chance of losing their jobs. Given the high rate of displacement from bullying, what is the financial and safety aftermath for targets? WBI asked the questions in 2011. The financial impact is slightly more negative than positive—53 percent earned less money in a subsequent job; 39 percent did earn more. One-quarter of the displaced targets never got a next job. With respect to safety from bullying, 37 percent escaped and were safe; 31 percent were bullied in the next job. The best outcome—higher pay with safety—was the fate of only 12 percent of targets. The rest got higher pay but were bullied again (17%) or lower pay but were safe from bullying (25%) (Namie, 2011a). Much of our advice to targets centers on raising their awareness of the importance of avoiding irreversible stress-related health problems. Health and well-being need to be made prominent when making decisions about staying with an employer who refuses to ensure psychological safety for its workers. Too often, only fiscal matters factor into decisions. How can one not “afford to leave” if the risk of stress-related lifetime impairments is 100 percent?

AN IMAGINED FUTURE UNDERSTANDING OF BULLYING AND TARGETS Here is our modest proposal for how workplace bullying in America could and should be understood: • It is a natural, sometimes unavoidable, phenomenon that thrives only when ignored or treated with indifference. When noticed and made transparent, it will lose its harmful impact. • Measure the prevalence in organizations and work together to attenuate the rate. There need be no organizational shame. The only shame is knowing and failing to act. • Hold executive leadership responsible for eradicating it. It is not an “HR issue.” Only the culture shapers can have lasting impact and force change quickly. • Tie the absence of abusive conduct to requisite managerial performance evaluations and criteria for promotions and retention. • Calculate the preventable costs associated with bullying. Monitor reductions in risk management expenditures. • Destigmatize bullying for targets. Deny its power to shame. Encourage targets to meet and be agents of change for the organization.

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• Name perpetrators without demonizing them. Grant that they acted first out of ignorance. Launch training in key management skills. Allow them to change their behavior at work to avoid dismissal. If they don’t change, terminate. • Adopt correction techniques using proper methods, not the misapplication of conflict resolution tools. Focus on restorative justice for all affected employees. • Make changes in hiring procedures that once made abusers appear attractive. Change reference checking processes. • Do not block hiring talented people if they were once targeted for bullying. Make it easy to be honest about the necessity of leaving a toxic workplace. • Recognize the competitive advantages to the employer bold enough to recruit talent promising a psychologically safe workplace. Make the designation as coveted as being one of the “Best Places to Work.”

TARGETS ARE THE BEST OF US We compliment targets for representing the “better nature” of us all, as humans. The exploited ones are the most sensitive among us. Regardless of the occupation they rely on for a paycheck, they are our society’s artists, creative innovators, practitioners of peaceful relations, the orchestrators of social networks at work based on kindness and loyalty, and the opposition to the societal coarseness fostered by our capitalist culture. It’s a zero-sum competitive, winner-take-all regimen that demands hypervigilance and constant attention to self-preservation, with little time left for compassion for others. And in that dark side of the world of work, targets shine the rare light. For this, they are mocked and selected for abuse. Work is, by its very nature, about violence to the spirit as well as the body. . . . It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.—Studs Terkel (1974, p. xi) Most employees in most workplaces are not doing anything close to what they love. They are dispirited. We have found targets to have been very adaptive prior to their bullying. For one-third of adult targets, the abuse sustained at work is the first time they had faced such humiliation, intimidation, and threats (Namie, 2013b). Only one-fifth had been bullied during their school years. So, before bullying, they believed in a fair world. Fueled by a strong work ethic and optimism, they had managed to find joy in their work. They deserve our admiration.

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And they deserve thanks from every coworker for being the pioneers in a toxic workplace. Targets are the sacrificial “canaries in the mine” who pay with their jobs, careers, health (and sometimes their lives) as they live, and then report, the terror of a workplace lacking psychological safety for all workers. Each target story is a tragedy. It is worse when many workers are allowed to suffer while the repeating, chronic abuser is allowed to operate without accountability. Targets are sacrificed needlessly as the employer dodges responsibility by effectively blaming the displaced workers, falsely branded as poor performers. Not all bullied targets are whistle-blowers in the technical sense. The facts they reveal are not only about fraud or waste. However, they do reveal abuse— abusers and abusive practices—that a good employer should neither tolerate nor encourage. Whistle-blowers are incorrigible truth tellers. Targets are the same. Organizations could learn lessons from both targets and whistle-blowers. In America, it is common to shoot messengers who bring unsolicited news that all is not well in the trenches. Alas, that is the current fate of bullied targets.

UNIQUENESS OF THE WBI PERSPECTIVE We based information in this chapter on four sets of data. First, we used our direct anecdotal experience with individuals who had sought advice from us about extricating themselves from their bullying workplaces. We stopped counting the telephone sessions at 10,000. From those typical hour-long harangues, we came to recognize patterns common to bullying incidents and to patiently listen for the unique and innovatively cruel twists adopted by perpetrators. The calls flooded the Workplace Bullying Institute’s toll-free line in WBI’s early years. Eventually, Jessi Eden Brown, the counseling professional whose chapters (chapters 13 and 14) can be found elsewhere in this volume, handled those desperate callers for WBI. Our other deep engagement with targets derives from nearly two decades of training and consulting to organizations and unions. This work intimately connects us to people and their workplaces. Second, we have gathered empirical data about the nuances of targets’ experiences from nearly 50 online WBI surveys. The studies relied on selfselected (nonscientific) respondent samples with results that can be extrapolated only to targets. The results are informative and useful regarding the lives of targets. Third, we used our experiences with legal cases as expert witnesses. It is a smaller sample than the two above sources. In this role, the author derives indepth knowledge about real-world incidents within complex organizations. Fourth, and finally, the academic scientific literature on bullying has grown exponentially since the movement’s founding by Heinz Leymann in the late

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1980s (Leymann, 1990). Most articles published in peer-reviewed journals on the topic rely on targets as research participants simply because they are the most readily available. Most articles are not experiments based on randomization. Instead, they are descriptive by necessity. We cite works that best describe the target experience.

REFERENCES Babiak, P., Neumann, C. S., & Hare, R. D. (2010). Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 28(2), 174–193. Book, A., Costello, K., & Camilleri, J. A. (2013). Psychopathy and victim selection: The use of gait as a cue to vulnerability. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 28(11), 2368–2383. Chesler, P. (2009). Woman’s inhumanity to woman. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. D’Cruz, P., & Noronha, E. (2010). Protecting my interests: HRM and targets’ coping with workplace bullying. Qualitative Report, 15(3), 507–534. D’Cruz, P., & Noronha, E. (2011). The limits to workplace friendship: Manageralist HRM and bystander behavior in the context of workplace bullying. Employee Relations, 33(3), 269–288. Derks, B., Van Laar, C., & Ellemers, N. (2016). The queen bee phenomenon: Why women leaders distance themselves from junior women. Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 456–469. Diekmann, K. A., Walker, S. D. S., Galinsky, A. D., & Tenbrunsel, A. E. (2012). Double victimization in the workplace: Why observers condemn passive victims of sexual harassment. Organization Science, 24(2), 614–628. Fast, N. J., & Chen, S. (2009). When the boss feels inadequate: Power, incompetence, and aggression. Psychological Science, 20(11), 1406–1413. Garcia, P., Restubog, S. L. D., Kiewitz, C., Scott, K. L., & Tang, R. L. (2014). Roots run deep: Investigating psychological mechanisms between family aggression and abusive supervision. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(5), 883–897. Glambek, M., Skogstad, A., & Einarsen, S. (2016). Do the bullies survive? A fiveyear, three-wave prospective study of indicators of expulsion in working life among perpetrators of workplace bullying. Industrial Health, 54(1), 68–73. Janoff-Bulman, R. (1989). Assumptive worlds and the stress of traumatic events: Application of the schema construct. Social Cognition, 7(2), 111–136. Jones, E. E. (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions. American Psychologist, 34(2), 107–117. Karatuna, I., & Gok, S. (2014). A study analyzing the association between posttraumatic embitterment disorder and workplace bullying. Journal of Workplace Behavioural Health, 29(2), 127–142. Kim, E., & Glomb, T. M. (2010). Get smarty pants: Cognitive ability, personality and victimization. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(5), 889–901. Kramer, R. M. (2006, February). The great intimidators. Harvard Business Review, 84(2), 88–96.

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Leymann, H. (1990). Mobbing and psychological terrorization. Violence and Victims, 5(2), 119–126. Lind, K., Glaso, L., Pallesen, S., & Einarsen, S. (2009). Personality profiles among targets and nontargets of workplace bullying. European Psychologist, 14(3), 231–237. Linden, M. (2003). Posttraumatic embitterment disorder. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 72(4), 195–202. Lutgen-Sandvik, P. (2008). Intensive remedial identity work: Responses to workplace bullying trauma and stigmatization. Organization, 15(1), 97–119. Namie, G. M. (2003). 2003 Report on abusive workplaces. Retrieved from http://www​ .workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/N-N-2003C.pdf Namie, G. M. (2007). 2007 WBI U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBIsurvey2007.pdf Namie, G. M. (2008). How coworkers respond to workplace bullying. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/N-N-2008A.pdf Namie, G. M. (2009). Still bullying with impunity. Retrieved from http://www.workplace​ bullying.org/multi/pdf/N-N-2009D.pdf Namie, G. M. (2011a). Post-bullying financial woes for bullied targets. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/2011-IP-B.pdf Namie, G. M. (2011b). Who supports bullied targets? Retrieved from http://www.work​ placebullying.org/multi/pdf/2011-IP-L.pdf Namie, G. M. (2011c). Workplace bullying and prior experiences with abuse. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/2011-IP-All.pdf Namie, G. M. (2012a). Effectiveness of bullied target resolution strategies. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2012-StrategiesEff.pdf Namie, G. M. (2012b). How bullies select their targets. Retrieved from http://www​ .workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2012-IP-I.pdf Namie, G. M. (2013a). Barriers to bullied targets leaving their jobs. Retrieved from http:// www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2013-IP-C.pdf Namie, G. M. (2013b). First-time abusers in bullied targets’ lives. Retrieved from http:// www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2013-IP-H.pdf Namie, G. M. (2013c). The timing and results of targets confronting bullies at work. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2013-IP-D.pdf Namie, G. M. (2014a). Believe it or not: Impugning the integrity of targets of workplace bullying. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI​ -2014​ -IP-F.pdf Namie, G. M. (2014b). The many ways workplace bullying offends its targets. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-IP-C.pdf Namie, G. M. (2014c). 2014 WBI U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf Nielsen, M. B., Nielsen, G. H., Notelaers, G. & Einarsen, S. (2015). Workplace bullying and suicidal ideation: A 3-wave longitudinal Norwegian study. American Journal of Public Health, 105(11), e23–e28. Opotow, S. (2012). The scope of justice, intergroup conflict, and peace. In L. R. Tropp (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict (pp. 72–88). New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199747672.013.0005

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Parks, C. D., & Stone, A. B. (2010). The desire to expel unselfish members from the group. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(2), 303–310. Purpora, C., Blegen, M. A., & Stotts, N. A. (2012). Horizontal violence among hospital staff nurses related to oppressed self or oppressed group. Journal of Professional Nursing, 28(5), 306–314. Salin, D., & Hoel, H. (2013). Workplace bullying as a gendered phenomenon. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 28(3), 235–251. Tepper, B. J., Duffy, M. K., Henle, C. A., & Lambert, L. S. (2006). Procedural injustice, victim precipitation, and abusive supervision. Personnel Psychology, 59(1), 101–123. Tepper, B. J., Moss, S. E., & Duffy, M. K. (2011). Predictors of abusive supervision: Supervisor perceptions of deep-level dissimilarity, relationship conflict, and subordinate performance. Academy of Management Journal, 54(2), 279–294. Terkel, S. (1974) Working. New York: Pantheon. Timmer, D. A., & Norman, W. H. (1984). The ideology of victim precipitation. Criminal Justice Review, 9, 63–68. Treadway, D. C., Shaughnessy, B. A., Breland, J. W., Yang, J., & Reeves, M. (2013). Political skill and the job performance of bullies. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 28(3), 273–289. Wirtz, P. H., Elsenbruch, S., Emini, L., Rudisuli, K., Groessbauer, S., & Ehlert, U. (2007). Perfectionism and the cortisol response to psychosocial stress in men. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69(3), 249–255.

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Organizational Risk Factors: An Integrative Model for Understanding, Treating, and Preventing Mobbing and Bullying in the Workplace1 Len Sperry

This chapter reviews three intersecting sets of organizational dynamics and offers an integrative model of mobbing and bullying that integrates them and provides a useful basis for the assessment, conceptualization, treatment, and prevention of mobbing and bullying. This model is illustrated with a case example of organizational dynamics operative in a case of mobbing. It begins with the limitations of zero tolerance and related policies. After a brief description of the integrative model, it describes each component: organizational, team, and individual dynamics. Before delving into the substance of this chapter, I would like to share a few words about what informs this model. One of my responsibilities as vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavior Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin was to lead the Division of Organizational Psychiatry and Corporate Health. This division provided training and consultation to organizations dealing with various corporate issues. An issue of increasing concern then was violence, including mobbing and workplace bullying, which the division understood as rooted in organizational dynamics. At the time, this was a minority perspective, the opposite of the prevailing perspective, which was that mobbing and bullying were caused by individual dynamics, that is, the perpetrator was a “bad apple.” A second perspective was that mobbing and bullying could best be understood as interpersonal conflict or the result of interpersonal violence, the “bad apples” explanation. At the time, there was less receptivity to organizational dynamics or the “bad barrel” explanation, and even less to the integrative perspective, the individual, team, and organizational dynamics explanation.

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My research, consulting, clinical work, and writing on mobbing and bullying (Duffy & Sperry, 2012; Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Sperry, 2009) has reflected the organizational dynamics (Sperry, 1993, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2002) and the integrative model (Sperry, 2009). It was not uncommon for others to comment that while my conceptualization on mobbing and bullying is interesting, it is too complex and not essential in explaining, treating, or preventing these forms of violence. Until very recently, the sentiment was that policies and interventions should be based on the simplest possible explanation, that is, individual or interpersonal dynamics. As research would soon reveal, the simplest explanation turned out to be a simplistic explanation. A case in point is the zero-tolerance policy, which for the past two decades has been adopted by nearly all school organizations. This policy is based on the premise that individual dynamics or interpersonal dynamics are the primary antecedents of mobbing and bullying. The corporate world would later follow that lead with zero tolerance for mobbing and bullying behavior with timely and consistent punishment, such as termination. Sutton’s (2007) provocatively titled book, The No Asshole Rule, reflects the belief that zero tolerance and related policies provide the best explanation and most effective way to deal with and to prevent mobbing and bullying. However, mounting research, reports of national organizations and advisory groups, and the everyday experience of administrators and executives have increasingly pointed to the failure of such individually and interpersonally based policies. Then as now, the organizational dynamics viewpoint has been proposed as essential in understanding, treating, and preventing mobbing and bullying (Sperry, 2009). In fact, taken together, these three perspectives—the individual dynamics along with the interpersonal or work team dynamics and the organizational dynamics—intersect in an integrative fashion. A basic premise of this chapter is that organizational dynamics are the basic perspective for understanding, treating, and preventing mobbing and bullying, and when augmented by the individual perspective and the interpersonal work team perspectives, together, all three perspectives provide a much fuller, more comprehensive, more compelling explanation of mobbing and bullying than any single perspectives.

THE FAILURE OF ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICIES AND THE CASE FOR AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL As the tide of negative effects of mobbing and bullying escalated in both school and corporate organizations, there was great hope that a decisive administrative solution, zero-tolerance policies, would stem this tide. Across the United States, school districts moved quickly to implement this “solution.” Corporations moved slower in implementing it.

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Zero-tolerance policies in school organizations are a punitive response to mobbing and bullying. These policies are based on the premise that individuals (students) are perpetrators of violence and that the prospect of punishment serves as a deterrent and that failure to strongly punish such misbehavior sends the message that schools are not serious about the safety of students and staff. A related premise is that nonpunitive interventions allow disruptive students to remain in the classroom and prevent other students from learning. Both of these premises have been repeatedly challenged over the past two decades, even though most school districts have adopted such policies. For example, in 2011, the National Education Association (NEA), in a widely publicized report (Boccanfuso & Kuhfeld, 2011), endorsed several effective, nonpunitive alternatives to zero tolerance. These included both targeted behavioral programs as well as a preventive approach to violence and misbehavior. Rigorous evaluations of these programs have shown them to have significant, positive impacts on student behaviors and academic achievement. All promote positive youth development and skills. In contrast, this report indicated that there was little research to support zero-tolerance policy-based programs. In May 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the influential independent government advisory group of researchers, issued the book-length report Preventing Bullying through Science, Policy, and Practice (NASEM, 2016). In the report, they review all research on zerotolerance policies and conclude that such policies are ineffective in combating bullying. They recommend ending all such policies that automatically suspend or expel students for bullying. In fact, the conclusion of their review was that such policies can do more harm than good because they fail to provide skill training or replacement behaviors to those who are suspended or expelled. The report also noted that zero-tolerance policies lead to an underreporting of bullying because many people—teachers, administrators, and targets—commonly view suspensions as overly punitive. In contrast to school organizations, there is relatively little research on the impact of zero-tolerance policies in corporate organizations. This lack of research support is perplexing given that many such organizations have incorporated punitive policies in their codes of conduct and employee handbooks. Nevertheless, a critical review of zero-tolerance and related policies in corporate settings is necessary. An important research study concluded that organizational dynamics rather than individual or interpersonal dynamics underlie mobbing and bullying in work organizations (Hutchinson, Wilkes, Jackson, & Vickers, 2010). Even though organizations have zero-tolerance and in-house reporting policies on mobbing and bullying behavior in place, “informal organizational alliances may serve to counteract these policies

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and ensure reports are minimized, ignored or denied. Further, the absence of interpersonal conflict as a factor in bullying, suggests the reliance upon mediation premised upon resolving interpersonal conflict maybe an inappropriate response” (Hutchinson et al., 2010, p. 179). This is not to say that zero-tolerance policies are never effective nor appropriate, because in some circumstances they may be (McKay, Ciocirlan, & Chung, 2010). However, there is no research evidence supporting the premise that mobbing and bullying are exclusively caused by individual or interpersonal dynamics. In fact, evidence strongly supports the premise that organizational dynamics underlie mobbing and bullying, and as described in the following sections, it is probably more accurate to say that there are three intersecting sets of dynamics—individual, interpersonal, and organizational dynamics—that best explain this distressing and destructive phenomena (Samnani & Singh, 2012).

RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR THE INTEGRATIVE MODEL As previously noted, the basic premise of the integrative model (Sperry, 2009) is that integrating or incorporating organizational dynamics, individual dynamics, and work dynamics together provides a more comprehensive and compelling explanation of mobbing and bullying than any one of the dynamics alone. Until recently, there has only been a limited research basis for such a model. However, research on mobbing and bullying in the workplace has grown significantly over the past 20 years. Taken together, this research provides considerable support for the integrative model. An extensive review of the existing research literature on workplace mobbing and bullying has recently been compiled and published by Samnani and Singh (2012). Based on their review of this literature, these researchers have developed a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of mobbing and bullying. They have concluded that there are interrelated levels of antecedents or dynamics of workplace mobbing and bullying: individual, group (work team), and organizational. They also posit a societal level, although they note that there is considerably less research on its impact than on the other three levels. In addition, based on their review and conceptual model, they have identified several critical areas for future research that will extend the current literature (Samnani & Singh, 2012). Additional research support for the integrative model comes from research on the multidimensional model of bullying and mobbing described by the research team headed by Hutchinson (Hutchinson et al., 2010). Distinct from the just-described model based on a review of research (Samnani & Singh, 2012), the multidimensional model was derived from structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of randomized

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survey data. Their multidimensional model was the best fit model derived from these sophisticated analyses by both SEM and CFA. Of the three sets of dynamics—individual, work group, and organizational factors— organizational characteristics were confirmed to be the critical antecedents of mobbing and bullying. They were found to influence both the occurrence of mobbing and bullying and the resultant consequences. The following sections review the theory and research on each of the three intersecting sets or levels of the model. These include organizational dynamics, individual dynamics, and work team dynamics.

ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS Organizational dynamics refers to the interplay of influences among an organization’s subsystems. An organization can be visualized as a set of five overlapping concentric circles, wherein each circle represents the subsystems of an organization: structure, culture, strategy, leaders, and personnel within a larger circle representing the organization’s external environment (Sperry, 1996a). Organizations also have a history and developmental trajectory. Each of these six subsystems plus the developmental trajectory is briefly described along with its potential for fostering or preventing abusive actions, that is, mobbing.

Structure Structure refers to mechanisms that aid an organization to achieve its intended task and goals (Sperry, 1993). It specifies the reporting relationship of all roles, their span of control and scope of authority, and their location in a hierarchy of roles, that is, an organizational chart. Structure also specifies the expectations of each role along with the policies, procedures, and routines for interacting and communicating with others in the performance of the task. A key component of an organization’s structure is its policies and procedures, which are written documents that specify how the day-to-day duties of the organization are carried out and by whom. Because the internal and external environments of the organization continue to change, new policies or revisions of existing policies are needed. For example, federal law led to the addition of anti–sexual harassment policies in employee handbooks throughout corporate America. Another element of structure involves the number of hierarchical levels within an organization. Bureaucratic organizations typically have four hierarchical levels: entry-level workers, the supervisory level, the middle management level, and the top management or the executive level. In contrast, flatter and more nonbureaucratic organizations typically have as few as two levels:

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the worker level and the management level. Certain types of abusiveness are more likely to occur at given levels of an organization. For example, although teasing and goading, name calling, physical contact, and overt accusations may occur at any level of the organization, they are more common at lower levels. In the middle levels of the organization, abusiveness can manifest as attacks on professional or managerial skills and abilities and is often accompanied by political maneuvering to discredit others. On the other hand, abusiveness at the executive level can be more subtle and exclusionary (Sperry, 1998). Depending on the level of the organization, abusiveness can function as a means of degrading, controlling, discrediting, or excluding an individual. One of the most tangible structural components of an organization is a given job. Several aspects of a job that can trigger abusiveness include occupational selection, standards of productivity, work pressure, and job stress as well as role conflict, ambiguity, and overload. Certain occupations and organizations are inherently more aggressive, and potentially abusive, than others. This is particularly the case with the construction, mining, and timber industries as well as police forces and football teams (Brodsky, 1976). Defined standards of productivity can also foster abusive behavior. Increased demands for productivity lead to work pressure that can result in abusiveness. Productivity standards are utilized in business because they provide an objective standard against which to measure an employee’s work behavior or a work team’s outputs. Accordingly, a worker may be slow or sloppy and become a target for abusiveness by supervisors (Brodsky, 1976). Or, a worker may be too productive and become a target for abusive behavior by coworkers for being a rate buster, that is, an overperformer. Work pressure refers to externally imposed work demands or pressures exerted on employees to achieve maximum productivity. Increasingly, the private sector is based on maximization of profits through high productivity. Accordingly, the demand is for workers to increase production so that the organization can become even more competitive. Work pressure results and is the inherent tension in a production system. Work pressure is threatening because workers realize that they may lose rewards or control over their environment and that punishment may be imposed if they fail to measure up. Such punishments might be threats, reprimands, job transfers, dismissal, or disruption of friendship patterns (Brodsky, 1976). A recent review of research on organizational factors involved in mobbing and bullying highlights four dimensions of structure. These dimensions are changes in one’s position, work pressure and job stress, performance demands, role conflict, and lack of role clarity. All are identified as antecedents of workplace mobbing and bullying (Agervold, 2009). More recent empirical research found that reward is the aspect of organizational structure that is the most predictive antecedent of mobbing and

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bullying. In an organization, reward takes several forms: salary, benefits, promotions, and personal and professional recognition. Various sanctions, including fines, suspension, and termination, are the reverse side of reward. Teams also reward team members, particularly for their loyalty and willingness to follow group norms and leader initiatives, both positive and negative. The Hutchinson research team found that mobbing and bullying is “more prevalent in environments where actors who engage in the behavior do not receive effective sanctions, and may, instead, be awarded through perks, promotion or favorable treatment. These forms of tolerance and rewards may function to influence the occurrence of bullying and enable repetitive, patterned and escalated forms of the behavior” (Hutchinson et al., 2010, pp. 177–178).

Strategy Strategy refers to the organization’s overall plan or course of action for achieving its identified goals (Sperry, 1993). Corporate strategy is based on the organization’s core values, vision, and mission statements. Strategic planning and implementation is essential for an organization in achieving its goals. These results will also be manifested in job productivity, satisfaction, and morale instead of complaints of bullying or mobbing. A basic axiom is that structure should follow strategy, which is to say that the structure of an organization should be designed to be compatible with its strategy. When the strategy of an organization emphasizes productivity and competitiveness at the expense of the well-being and respect for employees, such a strategy—and its supporting structure—can foster abusiveness in the workplace. Organizations that are serious about being a mobbing-proof organization and whose goal is to create a mobbing-free environment are advised to think strategically. This means integrating this goal into the organization’s strategy. Specifically, this means specifying respect and caring as core values, revising the mission and vision of the organization to reflect those values, and specifying human resources policies that foster a mobbing-free environment. It also requires that the strategy is implemented by addressing the goal in a proactive manner and exemplifying it through management behavior (McKay et al., 2010).

Culture Culture refers to the constellation of shared experiences, beliefs, assumptions, stories, customs, and actions that characterize an organization (Deal & Kennedy, 1982). The major determinants of culture are the actual core values

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manifested by senior executives, the history of the corporation, and the senior executive’s vision of the organization. While an organization’s stated core values are likely to be described in its vision statement, its actual core values are reflected in the corporate culture. Too often, there is a disconnect between stated and actual or manifested core values—what an organizations says it values and what values are actually experienced by the organization’s personnel and its customers. The culture of an organization may be sufficiently offensive, intimidating, or hostile such that it interferes with the ability of certain workers to perform their jobs effectively. In addition, culture can also be offensive and harmful to women, minorities, and other potential targets, such as off-color or ethnic jokes and various kinds of harassing or abusive behavior (Friedland & Friedland, 1994). Organizational climate is a specific facet of an organizational culture. It refers to the shared perceptions or experiences of employees of the policies, practices, and procedures of their organization as well as the behaviors that are expected, supported, and rewarded (Cooper, 2016). While the broad concept of culture is difficult to measure, it is much easier to accurately assess organizational climate, particularly with survey instruments. A recent study of organizational factors found that a poor social climate was an identified antecedent of mobbing and bullying.

Leadership Leadership refers to a process of influence whereby a leader persuades, enables, or empowers others to pursue and achieve the intended goals of the organization (Sperry, 2002). An effective leader can create a vision that tells members where the corporation is going and how it will get there and then galvanizes members’ commitment to the vision by being ethical, open, empowering, and inspiring (Bennis & Nanus, 1986). Furthermore, the leadership subsystem plays a critical role in shaping themes that harmonize the subsystems of structure, culture, and strategy (Kets de Vries & Miller, 1984). For abusiveness to occur in an organization, the aggressive elements must exist within a culture that permits and rewards abusiveness, and leadership must allow or permit the abusiveness. Accordingly, both the type and degree of abusiveness are a function of the extent to which there is a pervading sense of “permission to act abusively” on the part of the abuser (Sperry, 1998). Without this sense of permission, the individual who undertakes to abuse another will himself or herself become the target of ostracism, another kind of abusiveness, by his or her fellows. Abusiveness in the work setting requires some level of acquiescence by management. Typically, supervisors tacitly support one worker’s abuse of another by looking the other way or

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failing to discipline the perpetrator. Other times, supervisors participate in or actually initiate the abusive behavior. Occasionally, a superior may know of a lower-level supervisor’s harassment of employees but will not intervene, believing that to put an end to it would undermine that supervisor’s authority (Brodsky, 1976). Among the various leadership styles are the transformational, the transactional, and the authoritarian. Transformational leadership is characterized by the leader who motivates and inspires a work team to perform tasks and to achieve the desired goal. Transactional leadership is characterized by a leader’s use of authority to reward or sanction team members depending on their results. Authoritarian leadership, also called autocratic leadership, is characterized by the leader’s control over all decisions with little or no input from team members. Recent research findings on the role of organizational leadership style as an antecedent of mobbing and bullying are particularly telling. It was found that while transformational and transactional leadership styles decreased the likelihood of mobbing, the authoritarian leadership style increased it. Furthermore, the paternalistic or authoritarian leadership style was mildly and negatively associated with mobbing (Ertureten, Cemalcilar, & Aycan, 2013). These researchers also found that the more employees perceived downward mobbing, that is, mobbing supported by leadership, the more employees were likely to report lower job satisfaction, lower job engagement and commitment, and a higher turnover intention, that is, a desire to leave the organization (Ertureten et al., 2013). This research confirms earlier findings that an autocratic leadership style fosters mobbing and bullying actions (Agervold, 2009). Finally, Hutchinson and colleagues (2010) found that misuse of legitimate leadership authority was a key antecedent of workplace mobbing and bullying.

Personnel Personnel refers to the members of an organization, particularly employees but not those in formal leadership positions. Since a leader’s success is largely a function of the productivity and behavior of the employees that report to him or her, personnel is an important subsystem in any organization. Personnel function best when the leadership style is responsive and supportive of personnel needs and expectations (Uris, 1964). For example, personnel with an affinity for the autocratic approach may respond favorably to the autocratic leadership style, whereas personnel seldom respond favorably to an abusive leadership style. The lack of match between leadership and personnel can account for conflict, decreased productivity and performance, and the health consequences of workplace abusiveness.

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Recent research on the impact of mobbing on employees who were targets of or knew about mobbing and bullying in their organization found that these employees experienced lower job satisfaction and higher turnover intention (Akar, Anafarta, & Sarvan, 2011). Related research found that increased burnout, lower job satisfaction and a perceived decrease in organizational support were noted among such employees. Decreased engagement and organizational commitment were noted in another study (Gülle & Soyer, 2016).

External Environment These internal subsystems interact and mutually influence one another. The configuration of these five subsystems is also greatly affected by its external subsystem, the environment (Sperry, 2002). The environmental subsystem refers to those factors outside the organization’s internal subsystems that influence it and interact with it. The environment includes economic, legal, political, and sociocultural factors. It also includes technological factors, such as community relations, workforce availability, competitors, shareholders and other stakeholders, market saturation, customers’ demands and changes, government statutes, environmental policies, other regulatory requirements, and standard industrial practices. In times of turbulence and rapid social and technological changes, the environmental subsystem may exert as much or more influence on organizational direction and functioning as other subsystems. Federal legislation, or its absence, in the case of mobbing and bullying, has and will continue to significantly impact the health and well-being of an organization’s personnel.

Developmental Trajectory Organizational dynamics provide a cross-sectional view of an organization but reveal little about an organization’s developmental history or longitudinal view. Just as a person grows and develops and then declines, so do organizations. Six stages of organizational development and decline are described here (Sperry, 1993, 2002). They are new venture, expansion, professionalization, consolidation, early bureaucratization, and late bureaucratization. These stages of organizational development are important in understanding the development of mobbing. Organizations have periods in their growth and development where, during times of expansion, transition, and decline related to increasing external threats, the organization is more likely to create conditions giving rise to the emergence of mobbing.

New Venture The first stage of an organization’s development involves the conception of a new venture. The critical tasks at this stage include defining a target group

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(e.g., pet lovers, students, computer users) and developing a product or service that targets such a group. Accomplishing these tasks requires the ability to extend or create a market need; the willingness to make a risky investment of time, energy, and money to create an organization that satisfies the unmet need; and the ability to create an embryonic organizational structure that can provide that service to the target group. These abilities are characteristic of the entrepreneurial leader, and the entrepreneurial leadership style is most compatible with this stage.

Expansion The second stage of development involves rapid growth. This stage commences very quickly or after the organization has been in new venture for a number of years. The major problems that occur in expansion involve growth rather than survival. Organizational resources are stretched to their limits as a new wave of members joins the organization, as demands for services increase, and as the organization’s original, often primitive, day-to-day operating system becomes overwhelmed. Organizational growing pains are painfully present. Growing pains signal that changes are needed and cannot be ignored; they imply that the organization has not been fully successful in developing the internal system it needs at a given stage of growth.

Professionalization The first two stages represent the entrepreneurial organization. Even though they may have lacked well-defined goals, policies, plans, or controls, these organizations prospered. However, as this critical size is being achieved, the organization begins experiencing growing pains as its members outgrow its initial structure and operating systems (Flamholtz & Randle, 2000). New structures and operating systems must be implemented. Another wave of new members requires more formal planning, defined roles and responsibilities, performance standards, and control systems. Developing a strategic planning and management system then becomes the critical task of the professionalism stage. This in turn requires organizational development efforts that provide the concurrent level of skill training needed to implement this management system.

Consolidation After transitioning to a professionally managed system, the organization can focus its efforts on consolidation. Consolidation means maintaining a reasonable increase in growth while developing the organizational culture. Culture becomes a critical concern in this stage because current members may no longer share the organization’s original core values, vision, and mission of what the organization is or where it is going. At this stage, the knowledge

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base and skills of members are regularly upgraded. Leadership that combines entrepreneurship and integration is most compatible with this stage. Individual members who are able to function interdependently with superiors, coworkers, and subordinates are most compatible with the organization’s collaborative or participative styles.

Early Bureaucratization As the organization transitions to the early bureaucratization stage, there is a subtle but clear shift from substance to form. Status seeking, business as usual, and appearances characterize the behavior of members. Later in this stage, the focus shifts to internal turf wars. Backbiting, coalition building, and paranoia are common. Growing pains are particularly intense as members’ dissatisfaction mounts. In some organizations, negativity threatens to poison the organization’s climate. At first, leadership was content to rest on the organization’s laurels, but now it shifts to a self-protective mode. Cliques become the usual mode of communication, and the best and brightest start leaving the organization. The emphasis has clearly shifted from growth and maintenance to decline. The structures and the planning and development functions are much less responsive than in previous stages. Leadership is marked by administration and, in the later part of this stage, by inefficient administration. Decentralization and delegation become increasingly threatening to leadership, and efforts to recentralize power are frequent behaviors during this stage. Counterdependency behavior, including passive-aggression, becomes commonplace, reflecting demoralization among workers as well as managers.

Late Bureaucratization Many of the subunits and subsystems of the organization become clearly dysfunctional during the final stage of late bureaucratization. Miscommunication is commonplace, and two-way communication is limited or nonexistent. Coordination and follow-through are the exception rather than the rule: “My right hand is seldom aware that my left hand exists, much less knows what it is doing.” New members are no longer informed of the mission statement and strategy, and, for all members, the organizational culture reflects a sense of helplessness and a lack of common direction. “Come late, leave early,” “do as little as you have to,” “don’t try to change anything,” and “protect job security at all costs” are attitudes reflecting the organizational culture in late bureaucratization. The critical function at this stage is to forestall and avoid extinction, as the organization is figuratively in intensive care and is being maintained by external life-support systems. The corporate subsystems are conflictual and

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nonresponsive to the needs of both members and clientele. Little if any training and development occur. Administrators struggle to buy time and prolong the organization’s life. But inefficiency and ineffectiveness are to be expected. Clients find access to responsive subsystems the exception rather than the rule. Not surprisingly, the reemergence of dependency among members complements the autocratic style of leaders. The eventual demise of the organization seems inevitable, and consultants report that the prognosis for organizations at this stage for even heroic interventions is poor (Adizes, 1999). Organizations are particularly sensitive to mobbing and other forms of abusiveness during periods of transition between stages, particularly as an organization attempts to reorganize and restructure. Strandmark and Hallberg (2007) found that periods of workplace reorganization or restructuring often give rise to workplace abuse. In my experience, mobbing is also likely to occur in the expansion and bureaucratization stages.

INDIVIDUAL DYNAMICS The view that individual dynamics, that is, factors such as personality traits, experiences, motivations, and other psychological dynamics, can be sufficient to cause aggressive and abusive behavior has been challenged by considerable research on situational factors, that is, group or team dynamics. While many clinicians and psychotherapists favor this individual dynamics orientation, some researchers consider that an individual’s behavior in an organization is more likely to be influenced by powerful situational and systemic or organizational determinants (Zimbardo, 2007). In fact, in specific circumstances, otherwise morally good individuals engage in abusive behaviors because of situation and systemic factors. Because society is overly invested in the individualistic view of abusive behavior, it should not be surprising that it attempts to treat or manage such behavior by subjecting individuals to therapy, rehabilitation, or incarceration rather than address situational or systemic factors. However, if the principal cause is group or organizational dynamics, such individual interventions are likely to fail or be less effective than if the interventions included these other causal factors. It should be noted that organizational dynamics can provide a useful marker in understanding the likelihood that bullying and mobbing will occur within a given organization. However, while organizational dynamics may be a necessary condition for workplace mobbing and bullying, it is not a sufficient condition. In other words, being employed in an organization with a mobbing or bully-prone strategy, structure, culture, and leadership does not, in and of itself, predict that such abusive behavior will occur.

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Personality Organizational dynamics appear to affect employees differentially. Accordingly, an employee’s personality style and level of psychological maturity interacts with the organization’s dynamics and differentially influences that employee’s response to mobbing and bullying (Mantell, 1994). Because some targets experience more health consequences of mobbing and bullying than others (Einarsen, Hoel, & Cooper, 2003), the hope was that understanding the personality structure of a target would be useful in predicting such consequences. Unfortunately, there has been little research addressing this consideration. However, it has been established that there are at least three different psychological profiles of targets of mobbing and bullying (Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2001). One profile involves an extreme range of severe psychological problems and personality disturbances, that is, depressive, anxious, suspicious, uncertainty, and confusion. A second profile is characterized by depression and suspiciousness. And the third profile reflects a quite normal personality, despite having experienced mobbing. The researchers conclude that specific vulnerabilities and hardiness factors exist among some targets. Specifically, those with psychological problems, low self-esteem, and a high degree of anxiety may be more likely to feel bullied and harassed and find it difficult to defend themselves from such behavior (Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2001). Given the small sample sizes and methodological shortcomings and no replication of the results, the findings of this study are quite preliminary. Other research has consistently found that those with higher levels of neuroticism and higher levels of negative affect (anger, fear, and sadness) are more likely to experience workplace mobbing and bullying. Ethnicity seems to also be a factor in that Hispanics have been reported to be more likely to be targets than Blacks, Asians, and Whites (Samnani & Singh, 2012). Similarly, there is very little research on the psychological profile of those perpetrating workplace bullying and mobbing. In one study, bullies described themselves as being high on aggressiveness and were found to be low on social competence and high on social anxiety (Einarsen, et al., 2003). Based on survey data and clinical observation, Namie (2003) suggests that all bullies are narcissistic and egocentric. Although these individuals may not meet all the criteria for a DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, they do exhibit some narcissistic features. Other research has found that being male rather than female, facing job insecurity, and experiencing high job strain, that is, stress from high job demands and low control over their work, are each predictive of perpetrating mobbing actions (Samnani & Singh, 2012).

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Work Orientation In addition to personality, work orientation may explain why some targets are more vulnerable to the consequences of mobbing and bullying. Work orientation is defined as an individual’s attitude toward work reflected in his or her thoughts, feelings, and behaviors about work (Wrzesniewski, McCaukley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997). Research has identified three work orientations: job, career, and calling. Individuals with a job orientation view their work as simply a job, a means to a financial end so they can engage in nonwork activities such as hobbies. Individuals with a career orientation value prestige, promotion, pay, and status. They work because it leads to higher self-esteem, higher social standing, and increased power (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985). Not surprisingly, their personal identity is tied to their work, and so their professional identity becomes their personal identity. For individuals with a calling orientation, work is their passion. They value the sense of fulfillment it provides while achieving their personal mission to make the world a better place. They also tend to have higher levels of job engagement and organizational commitment (Davidson & Caddell, 1994). Research finds that most professionals adopt a career orientation, while those who adopt a calling orientation report higher job satisfaction and life satisfaction compared to those with job and career orientations (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997). Work orientation might suggest the extent to which a target is physically and psychologically impacted by mobbing as a function of his or her attitude about work. Targets with a career orientation typically experience considerably more distress and disability than those with other work orientations. Because their personal-professional identity is so closely tied to their work, targets with career orientations might view the abusive behavior of others and the threat of job loss as a significant invalidation of their personalprofessional identity. Accordingly, they might conclude that they no longer have a purpose in living, and they may die or commit suicide soon afterward (Westhues, 2005). Recent research indicates that individuals with a high level of organizational commitment are less likely to engage in mobbing, perhaps suggestive that those with a calling orientation are the least likely to perpetrate mobbing (Gülle & Soyer, 2016).

WORK TEAM DYNAMICS In contrast to individual dynamics that are central in clinically oriented psychology, organizational psychology presumes that situational factors are the primary determinants of an employee’s behavior. In the workplace, employees function as members of a formal work team, or of a group led by a

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manager, or as a member of an informal group. Whatever the situation, work team dynamics can serve as a powerful antecedent in workplace mobbing and bullying.

Group or Team Cohesiveness A group of individuals in the workplace tend to function as a unit, or as an in-group, because of group cohesiveness and other powerful forces that keep such individuals together and focused on the same goals. As these cohesive forces fail, disintegration begins to occur, and the group ceases to exist. Among the most powerful of these group cohesive forces are dependency and narcissism (Mantell, 1994). In its most benign form, narcissism is recognizable as group pride. When individual members feel proud of their group, the group itself experiences pride. A universal but less benign form of group narcissism is animosity toward an out-group, that is, the creation of an enemy. A surefire way of increasing group cohesiveness is to incite a group’s hatred of an external enemy. Not surprisingly, shortcomings within the ingroup are easily overlooked by focusing attention on the shortcomings of the out-group.

Formal versus Informal Groups Work groups or teams may be formal work teams or informal groups. The informal group is also known as the informal organization (Leavitt & Bahrami, 1987). It is formed by personnel around a workplace issue or an outside activity. In reality, informal groups can perform many of the organization’s duties. Chance meetings at the water cooler, informal lunch meetings, and impromptu telephone calls can effectively implement the organization’s strategy. In contrast, these informal groups can have an agenda contrary to the organization’s stated mission. They could disrupt work production in a given unit within the organization, or they could harass a particular individual, that is, mobbing. In short, a disgruntled or hostile informal group can effectively undermine the organization’s strategy (Mantell, 1994). Referring to informal groups as informal organizational alliances, Hutchinson’s research (Hutchinson et al., 2010) emphasizes the role of these informal alliances as a central mechanism through which a work team’s mobbing and bullying actions are mediated. Furthermore, this research suggests that the nature and extent of informal alliances significantly influence the likelihood that work team members will tolerate or engage in mobbing and bullying as a function of being socialized into group norms that are tolerant and facilitative of this behavior (Hutchinson et al., 2010).

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ILLUSTRATION OF INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, AND ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS IN A CASE OF MOBBING The following case illustrates how three sets of dynamics intersect: individual, group or team, and organizational. It demonstrates how these dynamics foster workplace mobbing and its impact on the target despite the organization’s policies against harassment. Teresa “Terry” Lopez is a married 25-year-old Mexican American who had worked as a registered nurse for a group medical practice for the past six months. The practice included six physicians, eight nurses, and four support staff. Terry had worked as a floor nurse at a university teaching hospital for two years prior to starting at the group practice. Although she liked the challenge of working with adult medical and surgical patients and got excellent performance reviews, she found the stress of working rotating 10-hour shifts was seriously affecting her health. She experienced chronic insomnia and other health concerns. The group practice offered her regular hour shifts with no nights or weekends and a high salary, which was important given her husband’s unemployed status. Terry was considerably younger than the other nurses and support staff, and she had replaced a well-liked older nurse who it was said “had issues” with the medical director and was apparently forced to “retire.” Needless to say, the nursing staff was not particularly happy to welcome Terry. Initially, most of them were cordial but distant, but two were anything but cordial. Mobbing began almost from the first day Terry arrived at the practice. She soon sensed that two nurses wanted her gone. Soon afterward, two more nurses and three support staff joined that group. After three months, the situation had become intolerable. Terry not only found it very difficult to do her job amid the sabotaging behaviors, but she was unable to be very supportive to her husband who was depressed about his recent job layoff. Terry began experiencing tension headaches and increased asthma symptoms. She reviewed the employee handbook, and after reading the policy on harassment and zero tolerance, she decided it made the most sense to file a complaint with the human resources (HR) director. Soon thereafter she would come to regret this decision. After a week of no response from Claire Radnor, the HR director, Terry at first asked and then later demanded a meeting with Ms. Radnor. The director arranged for them to meet in the lunchroom, which was empty at the time. Terry was surprised to learn that the director downplayed the situation, saying, “These nurses have been here a long time and get along with everyone. Maybe you’re a little thin-skinned. It may take a while longer to feel a part of the group, so hang in there.” The director got up and left. Terry was confused and hurt and began to cry. Her first thoughts were that her future at

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the practice looked grim and that she would probably have a hard time finding a similar position because she could not see herself returning to hospital nursing. For the next few weeks, Terry felt greatly distressed at work and increasingly symptomatic. She got the silent treatment from some, negative comments from others, and harassing unsigned notes. On two occasions, her nursing notes on patients “disappeared,” leading her to stay after her shift ended to rewrite them. No one would talk to her at lunch, and she was not invited to off-site social activities. Any effort on her part to “feel part of the group” seemed to be rebuffed or ignored. She became increasingly depressed and was unable to give emotional support to or receive emotional support from her husband, who remained unemployed and depressed himself. Fortunately, a friend told her about a psychological consultant who worked with people like Terry who had work issues. They arranged to meet, and Terry explained her circumstances. The consultant, Dr. Patricia Danzinger, undertook an investigation of individual, work group, and organizational dynamics. Terry was surprised that the practice was not receptive to the consultant’s request for information and to interview staff members, beyond that of a short meeting with the HR director. Nevertheless, Dr. Danzinger was able to develop an understanding and conceptualization of why and how mobbing behavior occurred and was fostered within the practice. Besides information from Terry and the HR director, the consultant reviewed information from the practice’s Web site, patient brochure, and employee handbook. Here is a brief summary of her notes of that assessment and conceptualization.

Assessment of Organizational Dynamics Strategy The stated mission of the practice was “quality medical care provided by a highly trained and committed professionals.” The actual mission appeared to be meeting profit projections and limiting malpractice and negligence. The stated core values were competency, efficiency, and putting patients first. It is noteworthy that also putting staff first was not mentioned, nor was respect for staff.

Structure The medical practice had three organizational levels consisting of management, the medical director, nursing director, and HR director (first level); physicians (second level); and nurses and office staff (third level). The

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practice had reasonably adequate policies and procedures for business transactions. However, its employee manual only addressed discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, and age, in addition to an anti–sexual harassment policy. While there was a zero-tolerance policy with stipulations for suspension and termination, there was no indication that the policy had been implemented or used. Specifically, there were no procedures in place for reporting complaints of harassment nor for investigating or adjudicating them. Training in prevention of harassment was not part of new employee orientation nor for existing employees.

Leadership The medical director was an older physician who had been a MASH surgeon during the Vietnam War. His leadership reflected both the autocratic and paternalistic styles. The leadership styles of the nursing director and the HR director appeared to be autocratic. All three seemed to focus on efficiency with a minimum of problems and the belief that employee concerns would either solve themselves or be resolved by termination.

Culture The medical practice’s culture reflected the personality of the medical director, a paternalistic older physician who demanded results and was impatient to have patient problems resolved quickly and quietly, and he expected the same for staff issues. For him, the practice was doing well when there were no reported problems. Accordingly, the nursing director and HR director saw to it that the practice was doing well.

Personnel Most of the physicians, nurses, and support staff had been employed at the practice for several years and were quite loyal to the medical director and his way of running the practice. Terry was the newest employee and did not appear to understand and accept the prevailing culture nor share the medical director’s vision for how personnel issues were to be resolved.

External Environment Because of the changing health care environment, it was unlikely that the medical practice would be able to continue its current operation, particularly as other similar practices had been bought out by hospital corporations or affordable care organizations. There was speculation among the physician staff that the medical director would soon sell the practice and retire.

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Developmental Trajectory The practice appeared to be at the early bureaucratization stage, and at the same time, it was facing major restructuring. It has been pointed out that workplace reorganization or restructuring can engender workplace abuse (Strandmark & Hallberg, 2007). Workplace abuse is also likely to occur in the early bureaucratization stages. In this respect, the practice is quite vulnerable to mobbing.

Assessment of Individual Dynamics Terry’s personality pattern is that of being hardworking, conscientious, and pleasing of authority figures. Because of her need to please and be accepted by others, she was particularly sensitive to the abusive remarks and behaviors of her coworkers. Her work orientation appears to be more job-oriented than career-oriented or calling-oriented. It was not always this way, but insomnia and other health problems, as well as family concerns, that is, her husband’s unemployment, have influenced her work values.

Assessment of Group Dynamics The in-group involved in the mobbing consisted of most of the nurses and support staff. Interestingly, the physicians did not seem to be involved in colluding or stopping the abuse. It not known whether the medical director was even aware of Terry’s situation. The nursing and HR directors appeared to have misused their authority by colluding rather than resolving the abuse.

Conceptualization and Recommendations An assessment of the medical practice’s dynamics revealed an organization that seemed to focus on the profit and patient outcomes and not on developing staff or resolving staff issues. Consequently, forces that fostered abusiveness were allowed to develop unchecked and even unwittingly reinforced. It appears that Terry’s need to attend to her health and family concerns increased her proneness to the abusiveness of the nursing and support staff. At the same time, the practice’s strategy, structure, leadership style, culture, environmental factors, and developmental trajectory seemed to support and reinforce the mobbing behavior. It is noteworthy that the zero-tolerance policy had no apparent impact on either dealing with or preventing mobbing in this case.

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CONCLUDING NOTE In sum, an individual employee’s response to abusiveness in a workplace setting is influenced and mediated by individual dynamics, group dynamics, and organizational dynamics. Furthermore, individual, group, and organizational dynamics can either foster or reduce the likelihood of mobbing and bullying in the workplace. Of the six organizational dynamics described, the organization’s structure, leadership, and culture appear to exert considerable influence on group members, both formal work team and informal group, to act in a healthy, supportive way toward fellow workers or to engage in mobbing or bullying behavior. The case of Terry illustrated these three intersecting dynamics. Research was presented that supports this integrative model and discredits more simplistic models. Presumably, this integrative model can be useful to consultants and others in dealing with and preventing abusive behaviors in workplace settings.

NOTE 1. Portions of this chapter have been adapted from Sperry, L. (2009). Mobbing and bullying: The influence of individual, work group, and organizational dynamics on abusive workplace behavior. Consulting Psychology Journal, 61(3), 190–201; and Sperry, L. (1998). Organizations that foster inappropriate aggression. Psychiatric Annals, 28(5), 279–284.

REFERENCES Adizes, I. (1999). Managing corporate lifecycles: An updated and expanded look at the corporate lifecycles. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Agervold, M. (2009). The significance of organizational factors for the incidence of bullying. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50(3), 267–276. Akar, N. Y., Anafarta, N., & Sarvan, F. (2011). Causes, dimensions and organizational consequences of mobbing: An empirical study. Ege Akademik Bakis, 11(1), 1467–1479. American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association. Bellah, R., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, L. & Tipton, S. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. New York: Harper & Row. Bennis, W., & Nanus, B. (1986). Leaders: Strategies for change (2nd ed.). New York: Harper. Boccanfuso, C., & Kuhfeld, M. (2011, March). Multiple responses, promising results: Evidence-based, non-punitive alternatives to zero tolerance. Child Trends, 2011(9). Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/alternatives-to-zero-tolerance.pdf

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Brodsky, C. (1976). The harassed worker. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Cooper, C. (2016). The Blackwell encyclopedia of management. Blackwell Publishing, Blackwell Reference Online. Retrieved from http://www.blackwellreference.com /public/book.html?id=g9780631233176_9780631233176 Davidson, J., & Caddell, D. (1994). Religion and the meaning of work. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33, 135–147. Deal, J., & Kennedy, A. (1982). Corporate cultures: The rites and rituals of corporate life. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Duffy, M. & Sperry, L. (2012). Mobbing: Causes, consequences, and solutions. New York: Oxford University Press. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2014). Overcoming mobbing: A recovery guide for workplace aggression and bullying. New York: Oxford University Press. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., & Cooper, C. (Eds.). (2003). Bullying and emotional abuse in the workplace: International perspectives in research and practice. London: Taylor & Francis. Ertureten, A., Cemalcilar, Z., & Aycan, Z. (2013). The relationship of downward mobbing with leadership style and organizational attitudes. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(1), 205–216. Flamholtz, E. and Randle, Y. (2000) Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm, new rev. ed. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Friedland, L. & Friedland, D. (1994). Workplace harassment: What mental health practitioners need to know. In L. Vandecreek, S. Knapp, & T. Jackson (Eds.), Innovations in clinical practice: A sourcebook (pp. 237–253). Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Press. Gülle, M., & Soyer, F. (2016). Examining mobbing perceptions and organizational commitment levels of physical education and sport teachers. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, 16(1), 210–216. Hutchinson, M., Wilkes, L., Jackson, D., & Vickers, M. H. (2010). Integrating individual, work group and organizational factors: Testing a multidimensional model of bullying in the nursing workplace. Journal of Nursing Management, 18(2), 173–181. Kets de Vries, M., & Miller, D. (1984). The neurotic organization: Diagnosing and changing counterproductive styles of management. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Leavitt, H., & Bahrami, H. (1987). Managerial psychology: Managing behavior in organizations (5th ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mantell, M. (1994). Ticking bombs: Defusing violence in the workplace. Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin. Matthiesen, S. B. & Einarsen, S. (2001). MMPI-2 configurations among victims of bullying at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10, 467–484. McKay, R., Ciocirlan, C. E., & Chung, E. (2010). Thinking strategically about workplace bullying in organizations. Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship, 15(4), 73–93. Namie, G. (2003). Workplace bullying: Escalated incivility. Ivey Business Journal, 68(2), 1–6.

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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). (2016). Preventing bullying through science, policy, and practice. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/23482 Samnani, A. K., & Singh, P. (2012). 20 years of workplace bullying research: A review of the antecedents and consequences of bullying in the workplace. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 17(6), 581–589. Sperry, L. (1993). Psychiatric consultation in the workplace. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. Sperry, L. (1996a). Corporate therapy and consulting. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Sperry, L. (1996b). Leadership dynamics: Character and character structure in executives. Consulting Psychology Journal, 48, 268–280. Sperry, L. (1998). Organizations that foster inappropriate aggression. Psychiatric Annals, 28(5), 279–284. Sperry, L. (2002). Effective leadership: Strategies for maximizing executive productivity and health. New York: Brunner-Routledge. Sperry, L. (2009). Mobbing and bullying: The influence of individual, work group, and organizational dynamics on abusive workplace behavior. Consulting Psychology Journal, 61(3), 190–201. Strandmark, M., & Hallberg, L. (2007). Being rejected and expelled from the workplace: Experiences of bullying in the public service sector. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 4(1–2), 1–14. Sutton, R. (2007). The no asshole rule. New York: Warner Business Books. Uris, A. (1964). Techniques of leadership. New York: McGraw-Hill. Westhues, K. (2005). The envy of excellence: Administrative mobbing of high-achieving professors. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Wrzesniewski, A., McCaukley, C. Rozin, P. & Schwartz, B. (1997). Jobs, careers, and callings: People’s relations to their work. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 21–33. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.

PART II

Examining the Impact of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing and the Health of Targets Melody M. Kawamoto

Contrary to the childhood rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” hurtful words can trigger a spectrum of negative health outcomes. At the mild end of the spectrum, the response may barely be noticeable, such as a fleeting sense of discomfort. However, when hurtful words are repeated and sustained, when attacks evolve into increasingly abusive actions, and when perpetrators use the power of authority or of the group against a target, what might have begun as mild discomfort can progress to severe consequences with respect to the three dimensions of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of health: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (World Health Organization, 1948, para. 1). Unfortunately, bullying, like hurtful words, is often not recognized as harmful, particularly when it appears to be within cultural, social, and organizational norms. Based on a review of publication dates on PubMed, a database of scholarly biomedical and life sciences literature, research on psychological stressors has increased dramatically since the 1930s, when they were reported to cause negative health outcomes in laboratory animals. Research on workplace bullying, a psychosocial stressor, began to increase in the 1980s, after it was linked to negative health outcomes among workers. The stressors and outcomes are varied and complex. Despite decades of research and hundreds of articles published yearly, many questions remain unanswered, and many issues are still being debated. Thus, as new knowledge from ongoing research is continuously revealed and understanding evolves, summaries of the state of current knowledge quickly become obsolete. For this reason, this chapter will not cover all negative health outcomes of workplace bullying. Instead, it presents examples that illustrate important or unresolved issues, such as the evolution of knowledge and understanding, debates about diagnostic

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criteria and interpretations of findings, and implications for treatment and prevention. In an attempt to avoid debates about language and to promote common understanding, this chapter begins by clarifying words and terms that can easily be misunderstood. This chapter focuses on post-traumatic disorders, cardiovascular outcomes, and musculoskeletal disorders because of their clinical and public health importance and because the issues they illustrate are relevant to other negative health outcomes. This chapter closes with an occupational and public health approach to identify and control workplace bullying and prevent its negative health outcomes while also addressing clinical issues.

DEFINITIONS OF WORDS AND TERMS Misunderstandings arise when words and terms are not clear or the meanings are not shared by all. Different groups, such as employees, managers, lawyers, and health care providers, use words and terms that tend to reflect their particular perspectives and frameworks. A word or term may have a commonly accepted definition within a group, such as a profession or discipline, but may not be understood by outsiders. Differences may also exist within a single group. For example, a word or term may be used long after its historical meaning is no longer relevant, while new words and terms arising from new observations and concepts may undergo years of research and debate before acceptance.

Workplace Bullying Mobbing, hostile work environment, harassment, disruptive behavior, incivility, and other terms have been used as synonyms for bullying, making communication confusing. Different groups have different preferences. For example, employees typically use more informal everyday language, such as bullying, while managers tend to use more formal language or jargon, such as disruptive behavior or incivility, which can be misunderstood and misleading. Legal terms, such as harassment and hostile work environment, are defined by very specific laws, resulting in a legal use much narrower than what the general public understands. In addition to multiple words and terms, multiple definitions have been proposed to capture the complexity of workplace bullying. Although definitions used in research on workplace bullying have varied, they have been similar to the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) definition: “Workplace bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is (1) threatening, humiliating, or intimidating; (2) work interference or

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sabotage which prevents work from getting done; or (3) verbal abuse” (WBI, 2015, para. 1).

Stressors and Stress The word stress, which is important when discussing workplace bullying, can be confusing. In 1936, Selye, a medical researcher, reported the syndrome that we now know as stress, the stereotypic biological responses seen after exposure to a variety of harmful agents. Initially, the word stress was used for both the agent and the body’s response. To clarify the difference, Selye (1975) proposed that the agent be called a stressor and the response stress. Some dictionaries (“Stress,” n.d.) and some journal articles still define stress as both the agent and the response. This chapter will use stressor for the agent and stress for the response, whether psychological or physical.

Psychosomatic Illnesses and Somatoform Disorders Before the late 19th century, physical pertained to the body and what was observable. Psychological pertained to the mind and emotions, which were considered to be separate from the body. Definitions of psychosomatic illness included “hysteria,” “imaginary disease,” and “neurosis” (National Institutes of Health, 2011). By the early 20th century, new therapies, psychology experiments, and clinical observations of patients diagnosed with hysteria led to hypotheses that the physical and the psychological were interrelated (NIH, 2011). Subsequently, scientific and technological advances led to observations of what was previously unobservable, showing interactions between physical and psychological processes. The breakdown of the separation between mind and body led to a reconceptualization of psychosomatic disorders. Diagnoses of “hysteria” and “imaginary disease” are no longer made. The term “neurosis” was phased out of the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in 1980, although it remains in the WHO publication, The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: Diagnostic Criteria for Research (Bienvenu, Wuyek, & Stein, 2009). Earlier connotations of neurosis still persist in the popular media (“Neurosis,” 2011) and the general population. Multidisciplinary collaborations among the medical specialties, psychology, and the social sciences now focus on experimental and clinical studies of biological, psychological, behavioral, and social factors that affect health and disease (American Psychosomatic Society, 2016). This is broader and different from the medical specialty of psychosomatic medicine, which focuses on psychiatric disorders, somatoform disorders, and psychological

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factors that affect medical, surgical, and other patients (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, 2015). The term somatoform disorders is still used for conditions with physical symptoms that suggest a physical illness but have no demonstrable biological cause or mechanism and have evidence of a relationship with psychological factors (“Somatoform disorder,” n.d.). Uses of psychological and psychosomatic have evolved to reflect changes in scientific knowledge and will likely continue to evolve as research uncovers previously unknown biological causes and their mechanisms.

Injury, Illness, and Health Outcomes While definitions of a single word may be similar from one dictionary to another, they also vary. Injury is harm or damage. Some dictionaries specify infliction by an external force (“Injury,” n.d.). One definition specifies that the harm is physical (“Injury,” 2014), while another includes psychological harm (“Injury,” 2005). The definition of illness also varies, and some definitions include pathological conditions of the mind or body (“Illness,” 2009, 2011). Both injury and illness indicate harm to health with physical or psychological outcomes. The word injury is probably best understood when the harm is caused by an external factor and the relationship between exposure and harm to health is direct in time and space. Illness is probably best understood when the outcome is ill health or a pathological condition, such as a clinical syndrome or disease, that would not be considered an injury. In this chapter, negative health outcomes will refer to negative states of personal health that could be the result of an exposure to the causal factor of interest. Whether an outcome is called an injury or an illness is not as important as the fact that the outcome is a harm to health. Research studies about relationships between workplace bullying and certain observed health outcomes have shown negative or conflicting results; not all suspected outcomes have been studied, and some true effects may still be unsuspected. Thus, while outcomes could be effects, effects may not be the correct term for all outcomes.

Symptoms, Signs, and Syndromes A symptom is subjective evidence of a health problem that is perceived only by the person experiencing it. A sign or finding is objective evidence of a health problem that can be observed by health care professionals and others as well as the affected individual. A syndrome is a combination of symptoms or signs that may be unrelated but, when they occur together, create a distinct clinical picture that suggests a specific health condition or its cause (“Syndrome,” n.d.).

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Comorbidities Morbid refers to disease or pathological state (“Morbid,” n.d.), and comorbid refers to disease or condition that occurs simultaneously with another (“Comorbid,” n.d.). Other words and terms will be defined as needed where they are used.

NEGATIVE HEALTH OUTCOMES ASSOCIATED WITH WORKPLACE BULLYING Symptoms and Diagnoses In Europe in the 1980s, Leymann (1990) recognized that psychological abuse and terror in the workplace were causing severe psychological consequences for targets. He noted that a variety of stressors triggered the same physiological response and that different individuals experienced different health outcomes. He also noted that secondary consequences, such as loss of job and social support, were additional stressors that magnified the harm. When introducing this phenomenon he called workplace mobbing to the English-speaking world, the negative outcomes he listed included feelings of desperation and total helplessness, rage, anxiety, and despair; depression, hyperactivity, compulsion, and suicide; psychosomatic illnesses; and possible immune system effects. He suspected that the large number of psychiatric diagnoses might have been related to the absence of information about social factors that would have suggested work-relatedness (Leymann, 1990). He commented that the misdiagnosed conditions could have been “psychosocial occupational illness[es]” (Leymann, 1990, p. 122). He listed social isolation, stigma, job loss, and loss of coping resources as some of the negative social outcomes of workplace mobbing (Leymann, 1990). Social well-being, it should be remembered, is a dimension in the WHO definition of health (World Health Organization, 1948). Leymann & Gustafsson (1996) looked at a representative sample of the Swedish workforce and found 350 employees (15%) who were identified as targets of workplace mobbing. The reported symptoms fell into recognizable categories of stressor-related outcomes, such as cognitive effects, psychosomatic symptoms, symptoms of the neuroendocrine stress response, muscular tension, sleep problems, and symptoms that suggested post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and general anxiety disorder. A WBI online health survey of self-identified targets found that the most frequently reported diagnoses and conditions noted by health care professionals were uncontrollable mood swings (70%), heart palpitations (61%), high blood pressure (60%), clinical depression (49%), and migraine headaches (48%; Workplace Bullying Institute, 2012). A diagnosis of PTSD was

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reported by 30 percent and a diagnosis of acute stress disorder by 19 percent. Survey participants reported PTSD-like symptoms, such as anticipation of next negative event (83%), agitation or anger (66%), obsession over personal circumstances (59%), and intrusive thoughts such as flashbacks and nightmares (50%). Other frequently reported symptoms included overwhelming anxiety (80%), difficulty falling asleep or too little sleep (77%), insomnia (60%), loss of concentration or memory (76%), pervasive sadness (64%), panic attacks (52%), loss of affect (50%), and tension headaches (44%). Suicidal thoughts were reported by 29 percent, and 16 percent reported that they had planned how to commit suicide (WBI, 2012). Although these results do not prove that workplace bullying was the cause, they overlap with those of other reports (e.g., Bonde et al., 2016; Leymann, 1990; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996; Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002).

Post-Traumatic Disorders The post-traumatic disorders deserve attention because they can be severely disabling, with consequences for physical and social health as well as psychological health. Leymann and Gustafsson (1996) extensively interviewed 64 patients who had been subjected to workplace mobbing and were being treated for PTSD at a rehabilitation clinic. The results showed that almost all of the interviewed clinic patients had severe PTSD. They also had secondary diagnoses of anxiety, psychosomatic problems, and depression, but not psychosis (Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996). From Germany, Groeblinghoff and Becker (1996) reported a case study of two targets of workplace mobbing. Both targets had symptoms that fit DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria for PTSD. More than 15 years later, the WBI (2012) health survey of self-identified targets found that 30 percent had a diagnosis of PTSD, and higher percentages reported PTSD-like symptoms (e.g., 83% anticipation of next negative event and 50% flashbacks or nightmares).

Post-traumatic stress disorder Physicians caring for soldiers and veterans of the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II described clinical syndromes that they called “shell shock,” “war neurosis,” “combat fatigue,” “battle fatigue,” and other terms (Andreasen, 2010; DiMauro, Carter, Folk, & Kashdan, 2014; Friedman, 2015a; Jones & Wessely, 2007). Debates about causes included exposure to trauma versus personal shortcoming, combat versus noncombat experience, and the possibility of a pension as an incentive. Debates about symptoms and findings included single or disparate conditions, normal or psychopathological responses, and short- or long-term duration of symptoms (Andreasen, 2011; DiMauro et al., 2014). The historical documentation and debates laid

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the groundwork for the recognition of similar clinical findings among large numbers of soldiers and veterans of the Vietnam War. Similar findings were also recognized among those who had experienced other types of trauma, such as Nazi concentration camps, natural disasters, life-threatening injuries, and sexual assault. At the same time, the sociopolitical climate favored recognition of trauma-related health conditions (Andreasen, 2011; DiMauro et al., 2014). In 1980, in its third DSM revision (DSM-III), APA officially recognized PTSD as a diagnosis. It required a traumatic triggering factor, such as warrelated trauma, imprisonment in a concentration camp, natural disasters, lifethreatening injuries, and sexual assault (Andreasen, 2011; DiMauro et al., 2014). Since 1980, DSM criteria for PTSD have undergone several changes. In a review of DSM-IV criteria for PTSD, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that the core clinical features and diagnostic criteria were wellestablished and useful for guiding the diagnosis and assessment of patients (Institute of Medicine, 2006, p. 24). It also noted that “a person might not meet full criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD and yet still be highly symptomatic and in need of treatment. PTSD symptoms might be mild to severe, and functioning might be influenced by other factors, such as comorbid conditions or social support. Severe symptoms might be disabling even in the absence of a full diagnosis” (IOM, 2006, p. 18). The IOM recommended that diagnostic criteria be based on best evidence and that criteria be revised as new evidence becomes available (IOM, 2006, p. 44). Major changes to the diagnostic criteria for PTSD appeared in DSM-5, released in 2013. Changes included moving PTSD from the anxiety disorder cluster to a new diagnostic cluster for trauma- and stressor-related disorders, removing subjective symptoms as stressor criteria, and separating avoidance and numbing into two diagnostic clusters (Friedman, 2015b). The stressor triggering the new onset or significant exacerbation of symptoms could be an exposure to a catastrophic event involving actual or threatened death or injury or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or others. Symptoms were categorized into four diagnostic clusters: (1) intrusive recollection of the traumatic event, such as intrusive daytime images of the event, traumatic nightmares, and flashbacks that evoke panic, terror, dread, grief, or despair; (2) avoidance and behavioral strategies to reduce the likelihood of exposure to trauma-related stimuli or, if exposed, to minimize the intensity of the psychological response; (3) negative cognitions and mood, such as erroneous appraisals of the causes or consequences of the traumatic event, which can result in a wide variety of negative emotional states, such as anger, guilt, or shame; dissociative psychogenic amnesia; diminished interest in significant activities; feeling detached or estranged from others; and inability to experience positive feelings; and (4) alterations in arousal or reactivity, including

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symptoms resembling those of panic and general anxiety disorders, such as insomnia and cognitive impairment; hypervigilance (which may appear to be paranoia) or a startle response; and irritability or outbursts of anger with emotional and behavioral components that include aggressive, reckless, and self-destructive behaviors. The remaining criteria are symptoms lasting at least one month; significant social, occupational, or other distress as a result of the symptoms; and the absence of another explanation, such as medications, substance use, or other illness (Friedman, 2015b). In the 1990s, WHO included PTSD as a diagnosis in ICD-10 (Friedman, 2015b; World Health Organization, 1993) with a definition intended for international use. The ICD-10 definition of PTSD is similar to the diagnostic criteria in DSM-IV (IOM, 2006; World Health Organization, 1993). Proposals for ICD-11, the next revision, are under review. In a large study with samples from multiple nations, the proportions of individuals identified with PTSD were similar when using DSM-5 diagnostic criteria and the proposed ICD-11 definition (Stein et al., 2014). In contrast, studies of three sample U.S. populations (national community [online]; military veterans [online]; and veterans and partners) showed that using the proposed ICD-11 definition resulted in lower prevalence rates than when using DSM-IV and DSM-5 criteria and the ICD-10 definition (Wisco et al., 2016). These differences raised concerns that individuals with clinically significant symptoms might not meet the diagnostic requirements of ICD-11 (Wisco et al., 2016). The importance of this issue is related to the U.S. government’s obligation to implement ICD-11 when it is finalized and the required use of ICD codes for billing and reimbursement transactions covered by the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) of 1996 (Wisco et al., 2016). Thus, severely symptomatic individuals who do not meet the definition of PTSD may not be able to access the treatment they need. The ICD-11 proposals for PTSD have not yet been accepted, and the working group on stress-related disorders was instructed to focus on improving the clinical utility of relevant diagnostic categories (Keeley et al., 2016).

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder Herman (1997) summarized studies about individuals entrapped in prolonged and repeated trauma (such as politically organized mass murder, domestic violence, and childhood abuse). Their symptoms did not fit diagnoses of ordinary anxiety disorders, ordinary psychosomatic disorders, ordinary depression, or PTSD. She noted that, in the context of earlier social attitudes, particularly about women, victims were misdiagnosed, mislabeled, and blamed for their conditions. She suggested that victims’ responses to trauma would be best understood as a spectrum of disorders rather than a single one

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and proposed that the syndrome related to chronic trauma have its own name, complex PTSD (Herman, 1997). This proposal was not accepted for DSM-5 because field trials for DSM-IV indicated that almost all individuals who met the proposed diagnosis for complex PTSD also met diagnostic criteria for PTSD (National Center for PTSD, 2016). A nonspecific diagnostic option was Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS). In contrast, WHO surveys of psychiatrists and psychologists showed that the most frequently recommended addition to ICD-11 was complex PTSD (Keely et al., 2016). Clinicians wanted recognition of severe and enduring responses to exceptionally high levels of trauma (Maercker et al., 2013). The ICD-11 Beta Draft (WHO, 2016) proposes that complex PTSD be defined as a disorder arising “after exposure to a stressor typically of an extreme or prolonged nature and from which escape is difficult or impossible.” In addition to core PTSD symptoms, the definition includes persistent and pervasive disturbances of affect, self-concept, and relational functioning (WHO, 2016). A study of self-referred trauma survivors seeking treatment at a trauma clinic in New York City found three different symptom profiles: PTSD, complex PTSD, and low symptoms (Cloitre, Garvert, Brewin, Bryant, & Maercker, 2013). Differences were based on symptoms rather than type of trauma. Studies of two Internet-based samples, a community sample representative of the U.S. adult population and a sample of trauma-exposed veterans, raised concerns about the ICD-11 proposal to differentiate complex PTSD from PTSD (Wolf et al., 2015). Using a different model, the severity of symptoms explained differences better than symptom profiles. Those with high severity PTSD symptoms had high severity complex PTSD symptoms, and those with low severity PTSD symptoms had low severity complex PTSD symptoms. As with PTSD, many issues about complex PTSD are still under debate. However, clinicians still have to make practical decisions about diagnoses and treatments while awaiting the scientific and epidemiological evidence they need to guide them. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD recognized that special treatment considerations may be needed and included complex PTSD as an outcome of prolonged, repeated trauma (National Center for PTSD, 2016).

Embitterment disorder After the German reunification in the 1990s, embitterment was recognized as a severe condition of persistent mental illness related to social and economic disruptions (Reiman, 2011). Linden (2003), in Germany, studied this condition and proposed a new diagnosis, post-traumatic embitterment disorder (PTED), as a subgroup of adjustment disorders. Core criteria differed from those of PTSD. The triggering event could be an exceptional but not

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extreme life event or a negative but not life-threatening life event that the patient considered unjust or insulting and a violation of basic beliefs and values (Linden, 2003). The patient’s reactions included prolonged feelings of embitterment. In an interview study of 48 patients diagnosed by clinical judgment as having PTED, 73 percent identified a work-related trigger as the critical life event (Linden, Baumann, Rotter, & Schippan, 2007). Sensky (2010), working in occupational health in the United Kingdom, wrote an editorial about embitterment and organizational justice. He pointed out that occupational health clinicians readily recognized the embitterment syndrome. He noted that some cases appeared to be related to a series of adverse events of a similar nature rather than a single event. Thus, he proposed calling the syndrome chronic embitterment instead of PTED. He identified organizational aspects of embitterment, such as nonexplicit psychological work contracts and conflicts between professional and organizational values. Muschalla and Linden (2011) categorized workplace triggers into three types of injustice: (1) organizational, such as discrimination, unfair promotion rules, and unfair pay; (2) informational, such as untruthful communications or unjustified decisions by individuals within the organization, with increased risk for personal insults and humiliation; and (3) interpersonal or interactional, such as undeserved or irrational treatment, including abusive or aggressive supervision. In a questionnaire study of consecutive individuals seen over a three-month period at an occupational health department in the United Kingdom, chronic embitterment was associated with perceived breaches of procedural justice (Sensky, Salimu, Ballard, & Pereira, 2015). Linden and Maercker (2011) defined embitterment in easy-to-understand language: “a complex emotion, typically comprising a sense of having been let down or been insulted and a feeling of being a loser, combined with a desire to fight back and, at the same time, a feeling of being cornered and helpless, which subsequently causes an individual to have fantasies of revenge and aggression towards him or herself and the environment” (p. 1). However, agreement has not yet been reached about whether or how to diagnose embitterment. In an interview study of 48 patients diagnosed with PTED, 48 percent met criteria for major depression, and 98 percent reported persistent negative mood (Linden et al., 2007). However, a diagnosis of major depression was considered unlikely because 92 percent had normal affect when distracted and unimpaired modulation of affect. Dobricki and Maercker (2010) reviewed three studies by Linden and coworkers, including the study reported in 2007. They noted that the proposed core symptoms for PTED are the main characteristics of other categories of mental disorders. Therefore, they recommended classifying embitterment disorders

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in accordance with ICD-10 definitions for adjustment disorders and anxiety disorders, which include PTSD. Sensky (2010) recognized overlaps between chronic embitterment and depression, anxiety, and PTSD but pointed out distinct features, such as anger, frustration, and a sense of injustice. He suggested that, in earlier studies of workplace bullying, a diagnosis of chronic embitterment would have fit targets who had PTSD symptoms but did not meet full diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Ege (2010), in Italy, evaluated 18 individuals who were suffering from workplace conflicts and found that 91.5 percent met PTED criteria. Many had been incorrectly diagnosed with depression or phobia and had been ineffectively treated. In the previously mentioned three-month-long questionnaire study of consecutive individuals at an occupational health department in the United Kingdom, the majority of those with chronic embitterment were not depressed or anxious; however, they were more frequently depressed or anxious than those without embitterment (Sensky et al., 2015).

Post-traumatic disorders and workplace bullying Obvious similarities are seen between the post-traumatic disorders and the health outcomes of workplace bullying, suggesting that research findings in one area can be relevant to the other. For both, the trigger is an external trauma. Some triggers overlap, such as the interpersonal or interactional injustices in the definition of embitterment disorder and the extreme or prolonged trauma from which escape is difficult or impossible in the ICD11 proposed definition of complex PTSD. Some outcomes overlap, such as avoidance, negative cognitions and mood, and alterations of arousal and reactivity in the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Workplace bullying is likely to be recognized as an exceptional though commonplace, negative life event rather than as a life-threatening one, favoring a diagnosis of embitterment disorder over PTSD. However, outcomes related to workplace bullying can be life-threatening, the most obvious being suicide. (Chapter 13 of this book discusses workplace bullying as a life-threatening stressor more fully.) Cognitive impairment can contribute to potentially lifethreatening acute physical injuries. However, injury investigations typically focus on immediate causes and find easily accepted explanations in physical and personal factors while overlooking psychosocial stressors, such as workplace bullying. Other disabling psychological conditions, such as depression and anxiety disorders, can result from exposure to psychological stressors, including workplace bullying. They can also exist with post-traumatic disorders as comorbid conditions. These are discussed in chapter 13.

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Physical Health Outcomes Stressors, stress responses, biological pathways, and health outcomes Selye (1936) discovered that laboratory animals subjected to different acute noxious physical or chemical stimuli, such as cold temperatures, surgical injury, excessive exercise, or sublethal doses of drugs, developed the same pathological physical changes, which included stomach ulcerations, shrinkage of lymphoid tissue, and enlargement of the adrenal glands. The variety of unpleasant stressors causing the same biological responses suggested that specific stimuli were not as important as the stressfulness of the situation. Selye attributed this to the body’s nonspecific response to any stressor. He later demonstrated that the stimuli could also be psychological and did not have to be unpleasant (Selye, 1973). Rather, the body’s response depended on the intensity of the demand on the body to adapt to a new situation. While the biological and physiological responses to stressors were stereotypic, they could produce different syndromes or lesions in different people, such as headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms and ulcers, cardiovascular diseases, and kidney diseases. In the tradition of Selye’s pioneering work, subsequent research has continued to uncover the biological bases for the variety of stressor-related negative health outcomes. McEwen and other researchers studying communications between the brain and the body discovered that the metabolic and immune systems act together with the neuroendocrine system in response to stressor-induced imbalances (e.g., McEwen, Bowles, et al., 2015; McEwen, Gray, & Nasca, 2015a). The responses affect cognition, decision making, anxiety, and mood; can change behaviors and behavior states; and affect physiological processes. (Chapter 7 of this book discusses neuroscience more fully.) Although these biological responses are protective in the short term, when stressors increase beyond the body’s adaptive capacity or when regulatory mechanisms are impaired, the responses become maladaptive. Both structure (such as brain neurons) and function (such as neurotransmitter and hormone activity) are affected. Studies of nonprimate animals and of nonhuman primates in captivity and in the wild have shown that exposures to stressors lead to outcomes such as chronic anxiety and depression, chronic inflammation, atherosclerosis, obesity, and diabetes (e.g., McEwen, Bowles, et al., 2015; Meyer & Hamel, 2014; Sapolsky, 1990; Shively & Day, 2015). Telomeres are DNA-protein caps at the ends of chromosomes that keep chromosomes from deteriorating or fusing with other chromosomes during DNA transcription. They lose a few base pairs with each transcription. Over time, this loss can be observed as telomere shortening, making telomere length a useful biological marker of cell aging. Accelerated telomere shortening has been associated with levels of perceived psychological stress and

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chronicity of stress (Epel et al., 2004; Puterman & Epel, 2012). Telomere length was found to be a predictor of mortality in patients with stable coronary heart disease (Goglin et al., 2016). A study of telomere length and life span adversity of a nationally representative sample of adults over 50 years of age and their spouses showed that lifetime cumulative adversity predicted shorter telomere lengths and that childhood adversity affects cellular aging into later adulthood (Puterman et al., 2016). Thus, many adverse factors, such as early childhood experiences, geneenvironment interactions (epigenetics), socioeconomic factors, physical activity, and diet, may contribute to negative health outcomes. Although they may not be the sole or direct causal factor, they can influence an individual’s vulnerability or resilience on exposure to stressors (e.g., Mathur et al., 2016; McEwen, Bowles, et al., 2015; Puterman et al., 2016; Shively & Day, 2015). Employees in 55 workplaces who reported being bullied frequently or who were exposed to direct harassment and intimidating behavior had significantly reduced levels of cortisol compared with levels among employees who did not report such experiences (Hansen, Hough, & Persson, 2011; Hogh, Hansen, Mikkelsen, & Persson, 2012). These findings show that human responses to stressors of workplace bullying are similar to the findings of animal studies and begin to explain how workplace bullying could lead to chronic negative health outcomes.

Workplace stressors and cardiovascular disorders The Whitehall I studies of British civil servants, which began in the mid1960s, showed that, after 10 years of follow-up, men in the lowest employment grade level had the highest mortality from coronary heart disease (atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries, also called ischemic heart disease in some other studies) and that mortality decreased as grade level increased (Marmot, Shipley, & Rose, 1984). Similar relationships between employment grade and cardiovascular morbidity and risk factors were seen in Whitehall II studies of a subsequent cohort (generation) of British civil servants (Ferrie, Shipley, Davey Smith, Stansfeld, & Marmot, 2002). Whitehall I and other research findings in the 1960s and 1970s suggest a relationship between psychosocial stressors and the development of heart disease (e.g., Karasek, Baker, Marxer, Ahlbom, & Theorell, 1981; Marmot, 1986). However, stressors of interest varied from study to study. Multiple possible risk factors, such as workload and job satisfaction, were studied, but some were not applicable to all workplaces. To address this, Karasek (1979) proposed a job strain model that focused on two types of job characteristics relevant to any workplace: high psychological demands of the job and low decision latitude (or control) at work. In a study of male Swedish workers, Karasek et al. (1981) found that a psychologically

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demanding job increased the risk of symptoms and signs of coronary heart disease and increased the risk of premature death related to cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease. They also found that low decision latitude was associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Since then, many studies have shown job strain to predict increased cardiovascular outcomes (e.g., Belkic´, Schnall, Landsbergis, & Baker, 2000; Chandola et al., 2008; Kivimäki & Kawachi, 2015; Theorell et al., 2016). Job strain has also been associated with increases in ambulatory blood pressure, an early and objective indicator of cardiovascular risk (e.g., Joseph et al., 2016; Landsbergis, Schnall, Warren, Pickering, & Schwartz, 1994). Despite the consistency of findings over the years, many issues remain unresolved (see section on Research and Clinical Issues, this chapter).

Workplace stressors and musculoskeletal disorders Physical work-related stressors, such as repetitive motion, excessive force, and awkward postures, are known to contribute to musculoskeletal disorders. However, research findings have suggested that psychosocial and organizational factors also contribute. In a study of a representative sample of the U.S. population, Yang et al. (2016) found hostile work environment (a term sometimes used as a synonym for workplace bullying) to be one of the workplace risk factors for neck pain. In a cross-sectional survey at a large retail company in Italy, Vignoli, Guglielmi, Balducci, and Bonfiglioli (2015) found that while physical stressors predicted musculoskeletal symptoms, the more workers were exposed to workplace bullying, the more they reported symptoms of the low back, upper back, and neck. Bullying also contributed indirectly through job-related strain. Studies on the role of psychosocial and organizational factors on musculoskeletal disorders are ongoing (E. Hitchcock, personal communication, May 23, 2016).

Physical health outcomes and workplace bullying The role of workplace bullying is likely to be overlooked when evaluating physical health outcomes. Linking cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, and other possible outcomes to work-related factors is difficult when these health conditions are commonly found in the general population and when well-known risk factors, such as individual characteristics or personal habits, are accepted as sufficient and satisfactory explanations. However, ignoring workplace bullying as a possible risk factor ignores the findings of decades of stress research that have shown negative physical health outcomes. No mention of workplace bullying in a medical evaluation does not mean that bullying did not take place, but it does suggest that the relevant questions might not have been asked. Lack of knowledge or understanding

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about biological mechanisms does not mean that bullying can be ruled out as a contributing factor, but it does reflect the current state of scientific knowledge. Since Selye’s discovery that multiple different stressors can cause negative physical changes in nonprimate laboratory animals, research evidence about such relationships has been growing. Subsequent studies of nonhuman primates in captivity and in the wild, recent and current studies about biological mechanisms to explain outcomes, and epidemiological studies about organizational stressors, job strain, and workplace bullying are building a body of knowledge about the relationships between stressors, including workplace bullying, and negative health outcomes.

OTHER FORMS OF ABUSIVE SOCIAL PHENOMENA Workplace bullying is only one form of abusive social phenomena that can trigger biological responses that negatively affect health. Other forms include violence against children and intimate partners, childhood bullying, and sexual harassment. While some features, such as the use of physical violence, are different, a feature in common is the use of nonphysical power and humiliation. Unfortunately, another feature they share is that they are often hidden or not recognized. Research has shown that significant adversity in early childhood can affect the development of the body’s stress response systems; affect development of the brain, cardiovascular system, immune system, and metabolic regulatory controls; impair learning and behavior; and lead to lifelong chronic, stress-related physical and mental illness (Shonkoff et al., 2012). A review of studies on bullied children showed serious negative effects on physical, mental, and social health in adulthood (Wolke & Lereya, 2015). A long-term study showed that children who were bullied had greater increases of a biological marker of low-grade inflammation from childhood to young adulthood than was found in other children (Copeland et al., 2014). Cyberbullying, defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices” (Sabella, Patchin, & Hinduja, 2013, p. 2704), has also been shown to increase health risks (Mishna et al., 2016).

RESEARCH ISSUES, CLINICAL ISSUES While useful for designing research, determining preventive measures or treatment modalities, and managing insurance payments, case definitions and diagnostic criteria are constructs based on hypotheses that may be incomplete or incorrect. In fact, scenarios for workplace bullying are variable and

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complex, with different combinations of multiple possible triggering, risk, and protective factors. Health outcomes also vary and may be complicated by comorbid conditions. Among the post-traumatic disorders, diagnostic criteria vary, even for the same diagnosis: criteria for different diagnoses overlap, proposed diagnoses and their criteria are not universally accepted, and concerns about underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis affect decisions about diagnostic criteria. These complexities complicate the interpretation of research findings and affect clinical practice. Despite agreement that research should inform decisions about diagnosis and care, study criteria may be excluding the most vulnerable individuals, such as those with preexisting risk factors or comorbidities. The issues about cardiovascular conditions and musculoskeletal disorders are relevant to all negative outcomes of workplace bullying, whether physical or psychological. Workplace bullying may not be recognized as a triggering or contributing factor. Even when workplace bullying is recognized, its relationship with negative outcomes may not be obvious, particularly when the time from exposure to outcome (called latency) is long. Factors unrelated to workplace bullying are easily accepted as sufficient explanations, and the need for further evaluation remains unrecognized. As a result, even if the clinical diagnosis is correct, overlooking bullying as a possible causal or contributing factor can affect treatment, prevention, and future research. In clinical settings, ignoring workplace bullying as a possible causal or contributing factor would be similar to relying solely on medications to treat type 2 diabetes while not recognizing the importance of diet and physical activity. In the workplace, identifying, addressing, and eliminating bullying are important for the recovery of affected individuals and preventing negative health outcomes. The importance is magnified when outcomes are potentially life-threatening, disabling, or chronic and when they affect not only the well-being of the individual target but also the well-being of their family and friends. In epidemiological research, the variety and complexity of workplace bullying scenarios and negative outcomes present multiple possibilities for hypotheses and models; selection of variables, their definitions, and measurement methods; type of study; and statistical methods (e.g., Choi et al., 2015; Hershcovis, 2011; Hershcovis & Reich, 2013). For example, job strain questions and measurements vary from study to study, and some psychosocial factors, such as effort-reward imbalance and job insecurity, are not captured by the job strain model. Results of studies that focus on specific populations, situations, or outcomes cannot be generalized (universally applied) to other populations and situations, such as studies in countries with progressive social and workplace health policies to countries without the same protections; studies of white-collar workers to other types of workers; and studies of

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workers with lower levels of exposure to workers with higher levels of exposure (Choi et al., 2015). The same subjective responses may have different meanings in different study populations (e.g., Burr, Formazin, & Pohrt, 2016). Prospective studies, which can examine causal relationships, take longer to carry out than cross-sectional surveys, which can show associations but not causation (e.g., Hershcovis & Reich, 2013). These issues explain why current knowledge and understanding are far from satisfactory. However, overlapping results of studies of stressors and health outcomes in different mammalian species, different scenarios, and different types of studies suggest that the findings are relevant despite the unresolved issues. Moreover, research on the biological effects of stressors on the body and the brain is beginning to uncover physiological mechanisms to explain how exposure to stressors affects health. Nevertheless, whether and how soon issues about diagnosis, classifications, and clinical relevance are resolved will depend not only on research goals, priorities, funding, and findings, but also on social, organizational, and economic issues. For example, decisions about overdiagnosis or underdiagnosis and whether workplace bullying is a hazardous workplace exposure will likely be influenced by those who will be held responsible for the economic costs.

PUBLIC HEALTH AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH Public health focuses on the health of populations through surveillance, research, interventions, and the promotion of policies and programs. Occupational health, the part of public health that focuses on worker populations, works with employers, managers, employee representatives, government agencies, health care and insurance providers, and researchers to address exposures, risk factors, health outcomes, and preventive measures. With such resources, the occupational health framework offers an established approach to address workplace bullying.

Bullying as a Hazardous Workplace Exposure Workplaces are recognized as potential sources of hazardous exposures to chemical, physical, and biological agents and safety hazards that are not commonly found in the home or community, or, if present in those environments, the potential for harm is minimal. Some well-recognized workplace hazards are regulated to reduce the health risk to workers. Other exposures may not be universally recognized as a hazard or may be difficult to detect or measure. Certain workplace exposures, such as ergonomic factors and stressors, are encountered outside as well as in the workplace, making it difficult to determine whether and how much work contributed to the harm.

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Recognizing workplace bullying Workplace violence is recognized as a potential hazardous workplace exposure (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 2011; Romano, Levi-Minzi, Rugala, & Van Hasselt, 2011; Rugala & Isaacs, 2004). Nonphysical threats, harassment, bullying, emotional abuse, and intimidation are included in the spectrum of violence. However, guidelines on workplace violence focus on physical violence, particularly those that result in death and serious injury. They categorize acts of nonphysical violence as warning signs of possible future physical violence, not as real exposures that could harm health. Yet, the negative health outcomes of nonphysical violence can be just as real as the harm caused by physical violence or by well-recognized chemical and safety hazards in the workplace. Linking outcomes to workplace bullying is a challenge when workplace bullying is not recognized or outcomes are not immediately obvious, are heterogeneous in nature, or could be explained by other causes. Often, targets do not feel safe enough to report bullying or do not feel economically secure enough to leave their jobs voluntarily despite deteriorating health. Even when supervisors, managers, or employers are not active perpetrators of workplace bullying, they participate in bullying if they encourage it; do nothing to stop it (i.e., allow it); or do not recognize it. Coworker perpetrators can interpret management’s inaction as approval to continue the abuse. Under any of these circumstances, workplace bullying can become a stressor that triggers biological processes of the stress response and can harm health.

Consequences of unrecognized workplace bullying Repeated or sustained abuse can lead to negative secondary work, social, and economic outcomes that become additional stressors, triggering additional symptoms that could range in severity from mild discomfort to an alarming multisymptom stress response. The symptoms and the alarm can lead to deteriorating work performance, which can provoke further bullying, leading to a self-perpetuating downward spiral in which negative effects become new stressors that trigger new or worsening negative outcomes. (See the discussion of “victimology” in Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002, p. 398). Thus, these cumulative negative outcomes affect all three dimensions of the WHO (1948) definition of health: physical, mental, and social well-being. The downward spiral can continue even after the target leaves the workplace because of ill health; involuntary termination (i.e., dismissal from employment or firing); or voluntary termination (e.g., leaving because of intolerable work conditions, also known as constructive discharge).

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From Recognition to Prevention: Public Health and Occupational Health Identifying and naming workplace bullying as a hazardous workplace exposure, as Leymann (1990, 1996) did, makes it possible for employees, managers, employers, health care providers, family, and friends to respond appropriately. Thus, recognition is the necessary first step to prevent future negative health outcomes and promote the recovery of affected targets. While some health outcomes may respond to clinical treatment, focusing on specific outcomes does not address the role of stressors. Continued exposure to workplace bullying will continue to have a negative impact on health. In the occupational health framework, a fundamental principle for preventing negative health outcomes is to address the root cause by controlling harmful exposures. When the exposure is a tangible agent, such as a chemical, physically removing the hazard from the workplace (elimination) is the most effective measure. Alternative measures (in order of decreasing effectiveness) include replacing the hazard (substitution); controlling exposures through design and technology, such as redesigning the process or the worker-process interface, reengineering machinery or equipment, and improving ventilation; administrative measures, such as scheduling and training; and the use of personal protective equipment by individual workers. As the number of points of control increases, so does the number of opportunities for breaches in protection. Controlling psychosocial stressors is much less straightforward than controlling biological, chemical, or physical agents. Organizational factors play a role, such as when workplace bullying is ignored, allowed, or encouraged by the organization’s leadership, culture, and climate (for more on organizational culture and climate, see Schneider, Ehrhart, & Macey, 2013; also chapter 4 this volume). People within workplace organizations have varying levels of individual competencies in emotional and social intelligence (for more on emotional and social intelligence, see Goleman, 1995, 2006). Organizational issues need to be addressed with preventive measures and restorative approaches that create a safe workplace environment. Making sure that targets of workplace bullying are protected from further harm should be a priority. (Chapters 4 and 9 focus on organizational considerations more fully.) Gallup, Inc., has studied employee engagement internationally as well as in the United States for decades. Over the years, hundreds of organizations and millions of employees have participated (Gallup, 2016). Although the Gallup employee engagement surveys do not specifically address bullying, they are relevant because targets of workplace bullying would likely give negative responses to survey questions, such as “I have received recognition or praise for doing good work,” “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to

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care about me as a person,” and “At work, my opinions seem to count.” Metaanalyses of employee survey results and performance outcomes provided by participating organizations have shown that lower employee engagement is associated with higher employee turnover, more safety incidents, and higher absenteeism (Gallup, 2013; Gallup, 2016). These negative outcomes can also be organizational outcomes of workplace bullying. Organizations that participated in the education of managers and collaborated with Gallup on change initiatives experienced measurable incremental and cumulative increases of employee engagement (Gallup, 2016). Current research and plans for future research include health-related variables, such as sick days and biological markers (e.g., cholesterol, triglycerides, and cortisol; Gallup, 2016). Results of such studies will be important to show whether improving employee engagement can lead to improved health. Adding variables about workplace bullying may show how much of a role workplace bullying plays in poor employee engagement. Choi et al. (2015) also advocate improving workplace conditions. They point out that workplace stressors may be contributing to personal risk factors, such as tobacco smoking, and cite WHO, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and American Heart Association recommendations for health promotion approaches that include improving the work organization and work environment. They justify such changes on the basis of the “precautionary principle,” arguing that “when existing evidence, even if incomplete, strongly suggests that job, organizational and legislative changes are beneficial for worker and organization health, it is imperative to act and evaluate” (Choi et al., 2015, p. 306).

Protective Factors and Resilience When workplace bullying is a stressor, its causal or contributory role in the development of negative health outcomes may be unrecognized or ignored, especially when other stressors or risk factors, such as adverse childhood experiences and domestic violence, are identified. These factors do not negate or diminish the contributions of workplace bullying and may add to the risk. Therefore, addressing workplace bullying by suspecting its possibility, identifying it, and addressing it is important. Eliminating workplace bullying would be ideal, but organizationally initiated control measures may not be timely or effective. Because of this, measures to reduce risk at the individual level become important. Many researchers are now studying resilience, the ability to adapt and thrive when facing adversity (e.g., McEwen, Gray, et al., 2015b; Puterman & Epel, 2012; Puterman et al., 2013; Reul et al., 2015; Rossouw & Rossouw, 2016). One of the most hopeful discoveries is that even “mature and aging

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individuals continue to show the results of experiences, including opportunities for redirection of unhealthy tendencies through a variety of interventions” (McEwen, Gray, et al., 2015b, p. 7). Interventions such as physical activity (exercise), good sleep quality, social connections, and healthy emotional regulation have been shown to change the structures and functions in the brain and have been associated with clinical improvements (e.g., Puterman et al., 2013; Reul et al., 2015, Rossouw & Rossouw, 2016). The journal Neurobiology of Stress devoted its inaugural issue to stress resilience, thus acknowledging the importance of research in this area (McEwen, 2015; Valentino, Sheline, & McEwen, 2015).

Role of Clinicians and the Health Care System When workplace bullying leads to severe and chronic health outcomes, restoring health is a priority. In clinical settings, recognizing bullying as a factor is important but challenging. Comprehensive clinical evaluations include a differential diagnosis, a list of possible diagnoses and their causes, to be ruled in or out. Omitting workplace bullying from the differential diagnosis allows it to remain unsuspected and undiscoverable, and it can lead to misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment choices, as noted by Leymann (1990). Clinicians routinely screen clients and patients for personal and social risk factors for preventable diseases. Adding screening questions about workplace bullying to the routine clinical evaluation should improve diagnoses and lead to appropriate therapeutic and preventive measures. To improve the quality of responses, questions should be asked in a way that minimizes bias, blame, and shame. Some pharmacological agents have been shown to be effective in treating the post-traumatic disorders, and neuroscientific findings can help guide therapeutic decisions (e.g., Arnsten, Raskind, Taylor, & Connor, 2015). However, therapeutic effects may last only as long as medications are continued (e.g., Carlson, Chemtob, Rusnak, Hedlund, & Muraoka, 1998; van der Kolk et al., 2007). A Veterans Administration review of evidence-based psychotherapies showed that cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure therapy improved mean scores on the PTSD Checklist (Rosen et al., 2016). Barriers to patient acceptance of treatment included the demanding tasks of trauma-focused therapy, low distress intolerance, and poor affect management (Rosen et al., 2016). Pharmacologic targeting of physiological contributors to patient nonacceptance may improve psychotherapeutic outcomes (Rosen et al., 2016). Research in alternative treatment modalities also show promise. For example, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) to treat PTSD has been found to be as successful as routine therapy and standard pharmaceutical

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agents and appears to have longer-lasting effects than relaxation-based treatment or medication alone (Carlson et al., 1998; van der Kolk et al., 2007; van der Kolk, 2014). Other body-based therapies, such as yoga, also appear to be useful (e.g., van der Kolk, 2014; van der Kolk et al., 2014). Because of the complexity of possible exposures, outcomes, clinical features, and treatment effects and acceptance, treatments should be personalized to the individual’s needs (McEwen, Gray, et al., 2015b; van der Kolk, 2014). Thus, clinicians have to be knowledgeable about workplace bullying, its diversity of adverse health outcomes, the appropriateness and limitations of available treatments, and the usefulness of integrating different types of treatment.

IN CLOSING In all its complexity and variety, workplace bullying is a psychosocial stressor that can severely harm health in all three dimensions of the WHO definition of health, physical, mental, and social well-being. Research is beginning to uncover the physiological mechanisms of the body’s responses to stressors, leading to possibilities of improved preventive and therapeutic measures. While additional research is necessary to address many unresolved issues, sufficient evidence exists to recommend addressing bullying in the workplace. Bullying is not required for workplace functioning. Rather, it is a hazardous exposure that affects workers and their work. Elimination is the most logical measure for controlling exposure to this nonessential hazard. Unfortunately, elimination is not the easiest measure to undertake. First, the highest organizational levels have to acknowledge that workplace bullying is a harmful work exposure that should be eliminated. Then, they need to have the will to eliminate it. As long as exposure continues, measures should be taken to prevent its negative outcomes. Despite the challenges, the future is hopeful. During the preparation of this chapter, hundreds of relevant articles with new findings and new understandings appeared in the research literature. They provide evidence for future improvements in efforts to minimize and prevent the negative health outcomes related to workplace bullying.

REFERENCES Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. (2015). ACGME program requirements for graduate medical education in psychosomatic medicine. Retrieved from https://www.acgme.org/Portals/0/PFAssets/ProgramRequirements/409_psychosomatic​ _med_07012015_1-YR.pdf American Psychosomatic Society. (2016). About APS. Retrieved from http://www​ .psychosomatic.org/about/index.cfm

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The Psychosocial Impact of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing on Targets Maureen Duffy

The effects of workplace bullying and mobbing on targets are not limited to negative health effects. Targets can experience multiple and spiraling psychosocial effects, including effects on personal and professional identity, damage to reputation, feelings of betrayal, loss of social and friendship networks at work, increased family problems, issues with loss of trust, and loss of belief in the world as a fair and just place. If the bullying and mobbing result in job loss, the negative impact is compounded, and targets can experience difficulties with reemployability in addition to the basic losses associated with job loss, which include financial losses and loss of health and retirement benefits. With some exceptions (Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Lutgen-Sandvik, chapter 8 this volume), the literature to date has primarily focused on the negative physical and psychological consequences to bullying and mobbing targets. While this focus has been essential in helping to understand the damaging effects of bullying and mobbing on targets, it has been incomplete. A broader focus that includes a discussion of this wider array of psychosocial effects and losses is necessary—not for the purposes of painting a gloomy picture for targets but to realistically present the myriad layered effects of workplace bullying and mobbing that targets, their family members, and their health care providers must address to promote sustainable recovery. In this chapter, these psychosocial impacts of workplace bullying and mobbing will be examined. The concept psychosocial refers to the relationship between the individual and the environment within which the individual lives and functions and is the basis of major approaches to understanding the individual (Woodward, 2015). It is a person-in-context approach and includes the influence on the individual of such social factors as school, work, family and friendship relationships, and larger structural social factors such as poverty, education, gender, race and ethnicity, income, and social class.

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For most Americans, having a “good job” is a source of personal pride and satisfaction and is a foundation for faith in the future. Therefore, it is no surprise that when things go wrong at work through bullying and mobbing, the impact goes well beyond work-related concerns and affects every dimension of a target’s life. Self-confidence, self-esteem, faith in a secure future, beliefs about fairness and justice in the world, physical health, mental health, family relationships, social relationships, finances and financial security, health and life insurance, retirement planning, and the ability to obtain other jobs are all potentially impacted when bullying or mobbing happens. When a target first becomes aware that he or she is a target of workplace bullying or mobbing, confusion and disbelief are very common initial reactions. Over time, this confusion and disbelief give way to a flood of emotions, including sadness and anger. Once a person becomes a target of bullying or mobbing, life at work is qualitatively changed, and the target’s feelings and relationships are also changed. Work is no longer normal or routine, and the target knows that he or she has been singled out for very unwanted attention. While most targets ultimately become aware of the profound unfairness of the experience of bullying and mobbing, many initially feel embarrassment and blame themselves for what they might have done or could have done differently. Self-confidence plummets, and the foundation at work that the target relied upon to do an effective job is no longer stable or predictable. For the target of bullying or mobbing, showing up for work is no longer normal or routine. The target is faced with a surge of very strong emotions on a daily basis as well as uncertainty about his or her work future and often experiences compromised self-esteem and self-confidence as a result. Bullying and mobbing are health-harming behaviors. The most widely known harm to targets and victims of bullying and mobbing are the physical and psychological injuries that frequently arise during and after episodes of workplace bullying and mobbing (Duffy & Sperry, 2012). However, harm is not limited to damage to physical and mental health. Harm includes the experience of exclusion that is an inherent part of workplace bullying and mobbing, the social pain that goes along with the experience of exclusion, and the resulting disruptions and loss of workplace friendships and social networks. In the case of the significant numbers of bullying and mobbing targets who ultimately lose their jobs, issues of reemployability and faith and confidence in the future are important concerns that must be addressed by all those involved in helping targets to recover. The degree to which occupational or professional identity is salient to a person also determines the degree to which that person is likely to be overwhelmed and distressed by the experience of workplace bullying or mobbing. Additionally, the intertwining of occupational or professional identity with one’s larger personal identity complicates

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both the experience of bullying and mobbing and recovery from it. Finally, whether an individual sees the world as generally fair and just or sees it as more unjust and capricious is influenced by the experience of bullying and mobbing, which, in turn, influences that person’s ongoing adjustment and contentment in the world. All of these psychosocial effects potentially accruing to targets of workplace bullying and mobbing broaden the range of harms beyond damage to physical and psychological health and will be addressed in this chapter.

WORK AND PERSONAL IDENTITIES Work is central to a person’s identity. Occupational or professional identity and personal identity are tied up with the work that a person does every day. “There is an emergent consensus that identity refers to the meanings that individuals attach reflexively to themselves, and which are developed and sustained through processes of social interaction as they seek to address the question ‘who am I?’” (Brown, 2015, p. 23). In more everyday language, identity refers to how self-definition and self-appraisal arises out of ongoing social interactions. Self-definitions and self-appraisals are an assessment of personal qualities and characteristics, past and present contributions, and future potential around a particular social position, for example, work identity or identity as a parent. Individuals shape these self-appraisals and self-definitions into stories about who they are and about how and why they perform and function in various relational positions and roles in the way that they do. These stories of one’s identity can also be thought of as narratives of identity. Individuals develop narratives through interactions with others and tell themselves stories of who they are as people in the conduct of roles in their lives that are important to them. People have more than one identity in their lives. Most people have many identities, and these identities are associated with the various and important (to the individual) relational positions that they occupy in life. The same person can have a work identity, a spousal identity, a parental identity, a friend identity, a political identity, an athletic identity, an intellectual identity, a religious or spiritual identity, and many more. Together, these multiple identities make up the larger self or personal identity, and all of these identities are mutually informing. Changes in one identity influence and shape the other identities and the overall sense of self or personal identity. As any of these identities change or shift, the stories or narratives that go along with them also change and shift. It is through these narratives of identity that people know and understand their own experiences. Identity work, according to Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003), is the activity of “being engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions

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that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness” (p. 1165) about the self. Identify work, therefore, is basic adaptational work that a person does continuously and that facilitates the person’s engagement in the world with others. Identity stories or narratives change as a result of what happens in interactions with other people who are central to the performing of particular roles or identities. Think, for example, of a mother who defined her identity as a parent as the most important of the many roles or identities she occupied. She spent her life devoted to her child, whom she nurtured, taught, and guided throughout childhood and adolescence. As her child approached early adulthood and independence, this child failed in university and at work and got into moderate trouble with the law. The mother, in significant personal distress, negatively reevaluated her parenting contributions and was distraught over how she could help her child become more productive and successful at this point in her parenting life. She was left with the choice of repairing her parent identity, lowering its priority in her life, or remaining more or less frozen in grief—hard choices all. Like the identity of parent, work identity is also changed by ongoing experiences. A person’s work identity “refers to a work-based self-concept, constituted of a combination of organizational, occupational, and other identities that shapes the roles a person adopts and the corresponding ways he or she behaves when performing his or her work” (Walsh & Gordon, 2008, p. 47). Workplace bullying or mobbing subverts work identity and thrusts a target into a position of having to reevaluate his or her narrative about life as a worker while simultaneously having to justify and defend workplace decisions, interactions, and other behaviors. Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) describes the identity work required of bullying and mobbing targets as difficult and exhausting. Consider the following. A highly regarded physician hired by the senior partners in a large practice and research group was never fully accepted by his colleagues in the new group. The day-to-day practice administrator denied him the same level of clerical and technical support routinely provided to the other group members and moved his office to an isolated location. The administrator, together with other colleagues, consistently demeaned his research and clinical practice priorities, gave him excessive on-call assignments, made arranging time off for professional conferences and vacation extremely difficult, accused of him being abrupt with colleagues and not collegial, and, ultimately, banded together and signed a petition for his removal from the group practice. Then they went further and accused the physician of patient mismanagement and violation of research protocols, thereby jeopardizing his previously unblemished career and threatening his livelihood. No one could go through such an experience without feeling the deep sting of humiliation

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and reputational damage and without questioning the meanings and purpose that had previously given shape to one’s professional life. After such an experience, one’s work identity and work narratives would never be the same again. This is what happens to targets of workplace bullying and mobbing; they are faced with having to reconstruct a work identity that incorporates the painful facts of bullying and mobbing and integrate that reconstructed work narrative of identity into their larger self-identity. For example, prior to being bullied or mobbed, a worker enjoyed the benefits of a good reputation among her colleagues. When she contributed to the discussions in staff meetings, people listened to what she had to say and took her point of view seriously. Her ideas and perspectives were valued, and she was asked for her input. She was consulted about how she thought proposed changes would impact her coworkers and the company’s clients. That she and her opinion mattered in her workplace was something that she had been able to take for granted. After being bullied, that was no longer the case. Her perspective was devalued just as her reputation had been devalued during the bullying. Now when she offered her point of view during staff meetings, if she had the nerve to even do so, her coworkers clearly did not listen, rolled their eyes, and moved on to someone else as quickly as possible. Where before bullying her actions and decisions were trusted and her coworkers had confidence in them, now every action and decision was called into question and scrutinized. Such dramatic changes in how a target of bullying or mobbing is viewed in the workplace are not uncommon. In the face of such changes, how one thinks about one’s work identity and the meaning of work will inevitably change. Tom Fryers, a visiting professor of public mental health at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, described the profound impact on him of an experience in which he was badly mistreated that resulted in his reworking of his personal and work identities: Having free-lanced as a public health physician for over a decade, with the inevitable variation in both the availability and type of work, “retirement” is, perhaps, a vaguer concept than for those with conventional full time jobs. In my middle sixties, I was drifting towards retirement, thinking that I should soon refuse any new work, when an incident occurred quite unconnected with work. Many have experienced being treated by someone with utter contempt, but a dramatic confrontation in which I was made to feel a worthless “nothing” forced me to reflect on my immediate future, my social status in retirement, and the importance of work. I abandoned thoughts of full retirement and took up new research commitments, having concluded that, for me, it was important to be a “something,” whatever that “something” was. (Fryers, 2006, para. 1)

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After being humiliated, Fryers totally reworked his previous plans for retirement to “be something,” demonstrating with his life choices the wrongness of the person who had made him feel worthless. Similarly, bullying and mobbing targets will go to great lengths to challenge their damaged work identities and ultimately to repair and revise them. Bullying and mobbing subvert work identities, and this undermining has effects for both the individual target and his or her wider relational network. For many, work is the principal component of personal identity and serves as a basic source of social legitimacy (Fryers, 2006). When work is threatened through bullying or mobbing, one’s personhood, legitimacy in the world, way of making a living, financial security, source of meaning and purpose, and way of being valued by others are all threatened. Work identity, personal identity, and self-esteem are all interconnected. Bullying and mobbing attack all three and strike at the heart of who a person is.

EXCLUSION, SOCIAL PAIN, AND LOSS OF WORK FRIENDSHIPS AND RELATIONSHIPS The psychological and emotional effects from bullying and mobbing also complicate family and social relationships (Duffy & Sperry, 2014). Targets who have become depressed or anxious frequently find it difficult to interact with family members and friends in their usual ways. Social distancing, isolation, and irritability are common responses to being bullied or mobbed, and these responses, needless to say, can negatively impact family and social relationships. (See chapter 8 for more information about the impact of bullying and mobbing on family relationships.) Similarly, if a target remains in the workplace, a sense of betrayal and confusion about whom to trust among coworkers renders workplace social relationships very difficult. Often, the safest emotional bet for a target is to isolate and distance from workplace interactions as much as possible. The result of workplace isolation and social distancing is the loss of social contact that was previously a source of familiarity and even satisfaction. In addition, workplace social contact is necessary in most situations to get the job done. Social isolation and distancing in the workplace lead to less communication, which leads to targets having fewer tools and resources with which to do their jobs effectively, thus aggravating trouble at work. Work is a site of goal-oriented activity and a place in the world where, all going well, one can build an increasing sense of accomplishment and meaning in life. It is also the practical context within which most people earn a living and the means to support themselves and their family members. In most situations, work is also a social setting where friendships and important social relationships are formed and maintained. Work is a social group to

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which one contributes and from which one derives not only income but also the benefits of social relationships. Employees routinely talk about “my job,” “my work group,” “my department,” “my company.” People at work don’t just have a job. They are connected to the group and to the social relationships that surround and contain their job. The kinds of connections that people form at work are basic and profoundly important to human well-being. Social neuroscientists Eisenberger and Lieberman (2005) state that “along with the evolution of mammals, a species unique in their need for early nurturance and care, came a corresponding lifelong need for social connection. Indeed, this need has proved so essential to survival that social separation, like other unmet needs, is experienced as painful” (p. 110). Eisenberger and Lieberman (2005) explain that a significant portion of the same neural pathways in the brain and nervous system that are responsible for signaling pain after physical injury are also responsible for signaling pain after a social injury, such as exclusion from a group. Their work reveals that it is not just metaphorically or symbolically true to say that being left out or excluded hurts; it is literally and actually true. From this and similar research, we now know that membership in a group is a basic survival need, like food and shelter, and that the removal or loss of that basic need comes with a high price. Ostracism is a kind of “social death,” with consequences that can be both extreme and enduring (Wesselmann, Nairne, & Williams, 2012). Zadro (2004), in her study of chronic ostracism, cited feelings of alienation and isolation, learned helplessness, meaninglessness, depression, and low self-worth as typical outcomes. So, when a person’s job is threatened or lost as a result of workplace bullying or mobbing, the threat of the loss of the job itself is a significant threat to survival. But so also is the loss of connection with the social group that is part of the job. Exclusion from the group is part and parcel of workplace bullying or mobbing, and it brings with it a social pain that is frequently underestimated in both its intensity and effects. Nordgren, Banas, and MacDonald (2011) concluded that the experience of social pain impedes and distorts judgment in interpersonal relationships and can interfere with conflict resolution. Their research also found that people who are not experiencing social pain consistently underestimate the seriousness of the social pain of others and underempathize with those who are suffering from it. This underestimation of the seriousness of social pain has real-world implications in the workplace. Nordgren et al. (2011) reported that their ongoing research would examine how such underestimation of social pain affected organizational policy with respect to such issues as employee victimization (as occurs in bullying and mobbing) and bereavement and other relevant family medical leaves. When coworkers, other organizational members, family, and friends do not recognize the intensity of social

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pain experienced by bullying and mobbing targets and do not empathize with the targets, targets are set up for more loneliness, more isolation, and more social pain in a troubling vicious cycle. Workplace bullying and mobbing represent a real and persistent threat to a person’s job and to membership in the social group surrounding the job with all the associated severe losses just described. As bullying or mobbing progress in a workplace, they interfere with the flow of workplace banter and camaraderie. A bullied or mobbed worker, by definition, is someone who is branded as not worthy of full membership and participation in the workgroup. Workplace bullying and mobbing render the target as “different from,” as “other,” and, therefore, as untrustworthy as a conversational partner in the normal give and take of the office or factory floor. As an employee is targeted in bullying or mobbing, coworkers distance themselves, and, in response, the target also distances from coworkers. Bullying and mobbing result in a reciprocal and mutual dance of social distancing between the target and coworkers. The target ends up increasingly isolated and cut off from the communication flows that are both essential for the full functioning of a workplace and intrinsically enjoyable. When people go to work every day, they develop relationships that become important to them, and the loss of those relationships as a result of workplace bullying and mobbing is another in a long list of losses suffered by targets. Workplace relationships run the gamut from casual to very important and meaningful to the worker. Sias (2009) describes workplace friendships as occurring in all types of organizations and between all types of employees at all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Her research underscores that workplace friendships provide crucial social support to workers while also facilitating both the flow of information within a company or organization and access to its sources of power and influence. Friendships connect an individual worker to the larger social group—the vital importance of which we have already examined. But workplace relationships are more than sources of social support and conduits for information flow within an organization; they are also intrinsically satisfying and rewarding. So, when workplace friendships are lost through bullying and mobbing, those losses can be very painful. Sias, Heath, Perry, Silva, and Fix (2004) researched the deterioration of workplace friendships and found that workers whose workplace friendships had deteriorated were likely to feel isolated, frustrated, and unhappy and to characterize the whole experience as emotionally stressful or traumatic for them. Workplace friendships occur in just about every workplace, and they facilitate the accomplishment of work while also providing essential support and personal meaning to the workers involved. The workplaces also benefit because workers who are satisfied with their workplace relationships are more attached to their organizations (Venkataramani, Labianca, & Grosser, 2013). The loss of workplace friendships through bullying and mobbing reverberates

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through the organization, hurting both the workers involved and the organization itself.

AFTER BULLYING AND MOBBING: PROFESSIONAL REPUTATION AND REEMPLOYABILITY The statistics about job stability and security once one has become a target of bullying and mobbing are sobering. It is bad enough that a target has to cope with workplace abuse and its effects while employed. The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), in its 2014 national survey of adults in the United States, reports that 61 percent of bullying and mobbing targets eventually lose their jobs (WBI/Zogby Analytics, 2014), adding insult to the injury of bullying and mobbing when considering the financial and reputational consequences attendant to job loss. The 2014 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey (WBI/Zogby Analytics, 2014) posed a question to survey respondents who had indicated that the abuse they had either experienced or witnessed had ended about what had made the workplace abuse stop. Twenty-nine percent of the targets had voluntarily quit their jobs to get away from the workplace mistreatment; 19 percent were constructively discharged or forced to quit when their working conditions were deliberately made worse; and 13 percent of the targets were fired. An additional 13 percent indicated that while the target did not actually lose his or her employment, he or she was transferred to a different department or unit. These are staggering figures. All told, 74 percent of the targets either lost their job through quitting, constructive discharge, termination, or through being transferred out of their department (WBI/Zogby Analytics, 2014). In practical terms, these statistics mean that a significant majority of targets of workplace bullying and mobbing are faced with the prospect of unemployment and having to look for and find new employment in the wake of the trauma of workplace abuse. Finding a job when one is unemployed is challenging at the best of times. In the shadow of such an abusive experience as workplace bullying or mobbing, it is demonstratively more so. To appreciate the reemployment challenges for targets of workplace bullying and mobbing, it is helpful to understand what the concept of employability means and how it applies when looking for work. Understanding what employability means provides a window to the special challenges faced by bullying and mobbing targets in their efforts to find new jobs following job loss. Employability is a psychosocial construct that refers to the packages of skills, attitudes, beliefs, flexibility, and openness to change that workers bring to actual and potential employment situations (Fugate, Kinicki, & Ashforth, 2004). The emphasis in current understandings of employability is on the individual’s ability to change, to be resilient, and to approach new situations

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and challenges with both optimism and confidence (Fugate et al., 2004). Three elements of employability have been identified in the vocational and psychological literature: (1) career identity, (2) personal adaptability, and (3) social and human capital (Gowan, 2012). People have multiple identities in life corresponding to the activities, relationships, and roles that are important to them and that they rank order in their lives in terms of salience or importance (Hogg & Terry, 2000). Persons for whom career is the most important of their identities are likely to have more difficulty in adapting to unemployment following workplace bullying or mobbing than someone who, for example, prioritized family identity or religious or spiritual identity over work identity. When work is a person’s primary or most salient identity, loss of work is devastating. It is erroneous to believe that bullying and mobbing targets are happy to get out of their jobs or workplaces. There is a basic and important distinction between getting out of abusive circumstances and getting out of a job. While escaping abuse is unequivocally desirable, losing a job is not. For many, if not most targets, their jobs held meaning, provided at least some satisfaction, and were the focus of their conscientious attention and efforts. Their jobs became problematic as a result of abusive behavior directed toward them, not because of anything inherent in the nature of the work itself. In fact, after job loss, the more strongly that workers had been committed to their previous jobs, the more difficult their overall adjustment to job loss, and the more likely they were to experience negative and pessimistic psychological reactions (Leana & Feldman, 1990). For bullied and mobbed workers, loss of their jobs disrupts their networks of friendships and social relationships at work and results in the loss of opportunities to perform work for which they were trained and to which most were very dedicated. What the research has found, then, is that the more strongly workers are attached to their jobs, the harder it is for them to adjust to ensuing job loss; in other words, they are less adaptable. Again, this adds insult to injury for bullied and mobbed workers who were attached to their jobs and who ultimately lost them as a result of workplace abuse. These targets had to suffer through abusive workplace behavior and face the pain of losing jobs to which they were strongly connected, making it doubly hard for such persons in the period following job loss, when resilience and adaptability are necessary parts of the recovery process. Optimism and confidence in the future are characteristics of personal adaptability—the second constituent of employability. With bullying and mobbing targets more prone to anxiety disorders and depression (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014), targets start out at a disadvantage in terms of personal adaptability when considering others who have lost their jobs for different reasons and who do not have to contend with the layers of harm inherent in bullying and mobbing.

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Social and human capital are the sum total of the knowledge, skills, experiences, and network of social relationships that a potential worker has to bring to bear on the search for new employment (Gowan, 2012). Social capital is particularly important for people who have lost jobs and are trying to find reemployment. Wolff and Moser (2009) describe social capital as the networks of social relationships and contacts that people have available to them. For bullied and mobbed workers, social capital is almost always compromised. When targets have lost jobs due to bullying and mobbing, they are either pushed out or forced out or choose to leave to avoid more abuse. By virtue of having been bullied or mobbed, the trustworthiness of their former workplace relationships has been called into question, and targets are frequently unsure of whom they can trust and safely ask for both new job leads and references. Targets may feel betrayed by coworkers who did not stand up for them when they were subjected to abuse or who became active participants in the bullying or mobbing. Since reputational damage through gossip, slander, and the distribution of false information about a target are common negative acts in bullying and mobbing (Bultena & Whatcott, 2008), it is understandable that targets would be leery of risking the spread of personally and professionally detrimental information by asking people in their former network of work relationships to put in a good word for them with potential employers unless they were sure of the former coworkers’ trustworthiness. If targets asked the wrong person, negative information about them could be disseminated to potential employers, thereby reducing their prospects of obtaining new employment. Bullying and mobbing can lay waste to the social capital of targets, leaving them underresourced in their attempts to find new employment after job loss. For targets, trust is a casualty of the experience of workplace abuse.

BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD: WHY IT IS IMPORTANT Our underlying premises and beliefs about the world influence how we think about the world, how we view our place in it, and how we decide to act in it. One such underlying belief, frequently unexamined yet undeniably influential, is whether we believe the world to be a fair and just place. The basic assumption behind belief in a just world is that people get what they deserve in life: if they do good, good things happen to them. If they do bad, bad things happen. It does not take much looking around the world to figure out that the world can be a very harsh place where plenty of bad things happen to people who are good, innocent, or both. Even individuals who see unfairness and cruelty around them can still hold on to the belief that while the world in general is cruel and unfair, their personal world does not work that way and, in fact, is more fair and just than it is the opposite.

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Most people hold on to a belief in the world as just, at least as it affects them personally, for reasons that have important psychological significance. Believing in a just world allows people to see the world as at least somewhat orderly and predictable, in which their actions will make a difference either for good or for bad. In other words, believing in a just world provides a basis for believing that individuals have a certain amount of control over events in their lives and that their actions will have consequences in relation to their intentions. Research on just-world beliefs (Dalbert, 2001) has identified three primary functions of these beliefs: (1) just-world beliefs promote trust that people will be treated fairly by others; (2) just-world beliefs promote the assimilation of injustices (i.e., victims will try to make sense of injustices without having to give up their beliefs in a just world); and (3) just-world beliefs promote fair and just behavior toward others. The theory of just-world beliefs is complicated, especially with respect to the second function of just-world beliefs, the assimilation of injustice. One of the ways in which people make sense of injustice toward others without having to give up their just-world beliefs is by assuming that the injustice or tragedy was somehow self-inflicted. He was killed in the boating tragedy because he was too tired, was out too late, and was going too fast. She got bullied at work because she had a personality disorder and was difficult to work with. Their house was destroyed in the brush fires because they had built in an area prone to wildfires. Victim blaming or victim derogation has been widely studied and documented with respect to just-world beliefs (Furnham, 2003; Hafer & Bègue, 2005). Believing in a just world has been shown to be a powerful enough belief that when challenged by empirical evidence, that is, bad things happening to good people, observers will tend to view victims as somehow causing their misfortunes to hold on to their just-world beliefs rather than giving them up in the face of evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, with respect to school bullying, some research suggests that the victim blaming often associated with just-world beliefs does not apply in instances of bullying and that the opposite has been found to be the case; namely, strongly held just-world beliefs are associated with strong antibullying attitudes and reduced bullying behavior (Correia & Dalbert, 2008; Fox, Elder, Gater, & Johnson, 2010). More research is required to understand the relationship between just-world beliefs and attitudes toward victims of both workplace and school bullying. Just-world beliefs are double-sided, with one side pointing to the tendency to blame victims as a way of protecting one’s just-world beliefs and the other side pointing to the adaptive and coping benefits of believing in a just world and being disposed to treat others fairly. Both sides of just-world beliefs have important implications for understanding workplace bullying. On the one

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side, victim blaming has tremendous downside potential for victims of workplace bullying and mobbing. On the other side, the adaptive and coping benefits for mental health of believing in a just world have important upside significance for workplace bullying and mobbing victims who are attempting to recover from these devastating experiences. On the positive side, believing in a just world brings with it, to a greater rather than lesser extent, the sense that the world is orderly and predictable and that fairness and justice will prevail over unfairness and chaos. Just-world beliefs support personal autonomy and self-efficacy in that the consequences of behavior are regarded as directly related to the intentions behind the behavior and to the quality of the efforts that people expend to do something. A body of research supports the benefits to personal mental health and well-being and overall psychological adjustment of holding just-world beliefs (Dalbert, 2007, 2009; Furnham, 2003; Maes & Schmitt, 2004; Otto, Boos, Dalbert, Schöps, & Hoyer, 2006). The mental health benefits of just-world beliefs are especially noted with respect to life satisfaction and to the experience of positive affect or mood (Correia, Batista, & Lima, 2009). Believing that one’s personal world is fair and just is adaptive and helps people to carry on in the face of adversity and to believe that how they respond will make a difference. The effects of workplace mobbing on just-world beliefs were researched in a study by Cubela Adoric and Kvartuc (2007). Their research investigated whether repeated and prolonged exposure to workplace mobbing had adverse effects on the just-world beliefs of employees and the relationship between just-world beliefs and psychological adjustment in the aftermath of such exposure. The study concluded that mobbing victims believed less in a personal just world than did their matched counterparts who had not been exposed to mobbing, suggesting that mobbing weakens personal beliefs in a just world. The study also found that mobbing victims believed more in the unfairness of the world and that they placed emphasis on the value of justice. With respect to psychological adjustment in the aftermath of exposure to workplace mobbing, Cubela Adoric and Kvartuc (2007) found that workplace mobbing victims were more depressed and pessimistic and were less trusting in the goodness of others than the control group members in the study. Overall, the study findings indicated that workplace mobbing exposure was marked by less-strong beliefs in a just world, less trust in the inherent goodness of others, and more depression and pessimism in comparison to persons not exposed to workplace mobbing. Mobbing victims experienced weaker belief in a personal just world and stronger belief in a general unjust world. These findings are concerning, and more research on the relationship between exposure to workplace bullying and mobbing and the effect on justworld beliefs and psychological adjustment is certainly needed.

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The small cadre of clinical mental health practitioners in the United States who work with bullying and mobbing targets, this author among them, regularly note in informal communications the emphasis on obtaining justice that motivates so many targets of workplace bullying and mobbing. The experience of bullying and mobbing has violated their sense of justice and fair play, and their actions in response to having become a target of workplace bullying and mobbing are frequently motivated by an effort to restore their lost sense of justice in the world. At least at the outset, these targets who sought professional help are willing to expend any amount of emotional, financial, and personal resources to try and make right a situation they believe has profoundly violated their sense of justice. In her research on the remedial identity work of targets of workplace bullying and mobbing, Lutgen-Sandvik (2008) said, “Targeted workers feel compelled to justify themselves and their behaviour when confronted with accusations, threats and/or social ostracism” (p. 113). Initially, the search for restoring justice outweighs practical concerns about the actual costs in money, time, and emotional resources that must be dedicated to fighting adverse workplace outcomes as a result of bullying and mobbing and the opportunity cost of allocating resources to such efforts. One of the responsibilities of practitioners who work with bullying and mobbing targets is to help them realistically assess both the actual and opportunity costs of a set of various responses to the workplace abuse and to help them determine a “best” course of action given their unique circumstances and preferences. The finding of Cubela Adoric and Kvartuc (2007) that workplace mobbing victims emphasize justice is borne out by this cadre of clinical practitioners who provide clinical support to them. Exposure to mobbing, based on both research and clinical practice, profoundly violates the organizing belief in a just world that is central to how people make sense of the world, and thrusts targets into a costly search for restoration of that lost sense of justice.

PSYCHOSOCIAL IMPACTS OF BULLYING AND MOBBING AND RECOVERY: A BRIEF NOTE As discussed above, clinical experience in working with targets of workplace bullying and mobbing strongly supports the justice motivation of so many targets with respect to their responses to having been targeted. They are willing to fight back, often at huge costs to themselves, to restore their shattered sense of justice. Duffy and Sperry (2014) remind targets, their families, and their health care providers of what may be involved in fighting back: There is a huge asymmetry of power when an individual organizational member decides to take on the organization in whatever context. This power imbalance doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t fight back, but it does

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mean that you need to know what you are getting yourself into. Therefore, it’s essential that if you decide to fight back you set “fight” rules for yourself. • You can’t go this alone. Fighting back is stressful, and you need to know that you have support from family or friends that you can really count on. There are likely to be some dark days ahead. • Set a limit on the amount of time and resources that you are willing and able to commit to fighting back. Adhere strictly to those limits. Know when to cut your losses and walk away. • Don’t make fighting the organization that mobbed you your next career. It isn’t worth it. You can quickly use up all your financial and psychological resources trying to fight the organization in order to prove that you were not as they have portrayed you. (pp. 124–125) As is fairly clear, there is more to recovery from bullying and mobbing than addressing the psychological consequences, such as anxiety and depression, and the physical consequences, such as gastrointestinal disturbances and cardiovascular problems, as critical as addressing these problems is. There are the myriad psychosocial effects of bullying and mobbing that also need to be addressed. These psychosocial effects that must be dealt with during the recovery process include the damage to personal and work identity, the social pain of exclusion, mistrust of others resulting from the actual or perceived betrayal by coworkers, loss of friendships and important social networks, difficulties with reemployability, obtaining references, obtaining leads for appropriate next jobs, and the implications of weakening or collapsed beliefs in a fair and just world. This is a tall order because so many life domains are involved. Consequently, targets are likely to need the support of multiple providers over the course of their ongoing recovery from bullying and mobbing. The most likely service providers to whom targets will turn are physicians and other health care providers for their physical health problems; mental health providers for psychological, emotional, and many psychosocial problems; marriage and family therapists for family problems; career and occupational counselors for career and work problems; and life coaches for a number of psychosocial problems and for taking action and assuming responsibility for making positive changes in recovery. Ideally, all of these professional service providers who provide care and support to targets of bullying and mobbing would be informed and knowledgeable about bullying and mobbing, but that is not the case at the present time. So, again, the burden of protecting oneself and finding the best possible health care and other professional providers falls back on the targets themselves. To help targets choose the best possible professional service providers for help with their recovery from bullying and mobbing and recognizing that there are many providers who know very

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little about bullying and mobbing, two recommendations are offered here and expanded upon in chapters 13 and 14. The first recommendation is for targets to choose a provider who is knowledgeable about and who has been trained in trauma-informed models of care (see chapters 13 and 14). The second recommendation is for targets to bring books, book chapters, and articles about workplace bullying and mobbing to their providers so that their providers can bridge some of the gaps in their knowledge about these severe workplace problems.

CONCLUSION Harms and losses can pile up one on top of the other in the aftermath of workplace bullying and mobbing. The potential damage to the physical and psychological health of targets of bullying and mobbing is now well-established. What have been less considered are the psychosocial effects of bullying and mobbing and their implications, as discussed in this chapter, and the direct and vicarious harm to family members, as discussed in chapter 8. Personal and work identities are subverted by workplace bullying and mobbing, thrusting targets into the intense and difficult work of repair and revision of these identities. Personal and work identities matter because they shape who we believe ourselves to be and what we believe we can effectively do in the world. Damaged narratives of identity lead to less confident futures and to reduced engagement in the world. Less confidence and reduced engagement do not just impact targets; they also impact all those who depend on the targets. The profound effects of social exclusion as a result of bullying and mobbing cannot be understated. Going from a valued member of such an important social group as a workplace to a demeaned, devalued, and isolated member represents a survival threat—not just to economic survival, although it is that, but more importantly to the sense of connection and belonging that is the basis of health, well-being, and productivity. The neuroscience of ostracism and exclusion has made it clear why targets are frequently so psychologically shattered by their experiences. Social exclusion is painful in precisely the same way as physical injuries are painful. From an evolutionary standpoint, the function that pain serves is a warning to the organism that a survival threat is underway (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2005; MacDonald & Leary, 2005). Without having the words to explain why, perhaps targets have long read their own social pain of exclusion as a survival threat. Their sometimes intense reactions are best understood as a response to that survival threat and as a solution attempt to remain whole. Bullying and mobbing can destabilize a target’s sense of present and future financial security as worry and anxiety about job security increases. In situations where job loss is seen as a possible outcome of bullying and mobbing, a

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target may worry about financial obligations and the ability to meet them. A target’s hopes and dreams for the future are then compromised by the threat of job loss. In American society, with its limited safety nets for people of working age, a threat to one’s job can rapidly progress to becoming a survival threat. Withholding or denial of job references is a common negative act perpetrated against targets in bullying and mobbing situations, and the implications of that particular negative act for a target’s future are significant, especially in such market economies as the United States. In terms of work commitment, targets who were most attached to their jobs and who lost them through bullying and mobbing are the very ones most likely to have difficult and complicated post–job loss adjustments. Couple that with the disruption of friendship and social networks as a result of bullying and mobbing and the corresponding loss of social support and of informal contacts through whom an unemployed worker is likely to hear about new opportunities and the bad news for targets just gets amplified. Targets of bullying and mobbing see the world as less fair and less just than their counterparts who were not bullied or mobbed at work. While holding just-world beliefs can increase the likelihood that victims will be blamed for what happens to them—and that is never good news for workplace bullying and mobbing targets—the flip side is that for the targets themselves, holding such beliefs helps in recovery. People who believe the world is fair and just also believe that their personal decisions and actions will make a positive difference in their lives, thus promoting greater personal agency. However, bullying and mobbing targets have had the experience of being treated badly and unfairly at work, often while being fully committed to their jobs. For this group, how they act and what they do seems to make much less of a difference in their lives, and the outcome, for them, is an increased risk of disengagement and depression. Their solution attempts directed at restoring their lost sense of justice and fairness in the world are to engage in intensive efforts to challenge the workplace abuse and unfairness, often with insufficient attention to the personal and family costs of such efforts. Bullying and mobbing should never have been understood as only affecting targets. The effects spiral out and encompass much wider relational networks, including family, friends, coworkers, and the organizations in which the bullying and mobbing have occurred. When workplace bullying or mobbing finally ends for a target, the psychosocial effects continue, and that is a critical fact for all stakeholders to know.

REFERENCES Brown, A. D. (2015). Identities and identity work in organizations. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(1), 20–40. doi:10.1111/ijmr.12035

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Bultena, C. D., & Whatcott, R. B. (2008). Bushwhacked at work: A comparative analysis of mobbing and bullying at work. Proceedings of the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences, 15(1), 652–666. Correia, I., Batista, M. T., & Lima, M. L. (2009). Does the belief in a just world bring happiness? Causal relationships among belief in a just world, life satisfaction and mood. Australian Journal of Psychology, 61(4), 220–227. doi:/10.1080​ /00049530802579515 Correia, I., & Dalbert, C. (2008). School bullying. European Psychologist, 13(4), 248–254. Cubela Adoric, V., & Kvartuc, T. (2007). Effects of mobbing on justice beliefs and adjustment. European Psychologist, 12(4), 261–271. Dalbert, C. (2001). The justice motive as a personal resource: Dealing with challenges and critical life events. New York: Kluwer/Plenum. Dalbert, C. (2007). Introduction to the special section: Dealing with strain at the workplace: A just-world perspective. European Psychologist, 12(4), 250–252. Dalbert, C. (2009). Belief in a just world. In M. R. Leary & R. H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of individual differences in social behavior (pp. 288–297). New York: Guilford. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2012). Mobbing: Causes, consequences, and solutions. New York: Oxford University Press. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2014). Overcoming mobbing: A recovery guide for workplace aggression and bullying. New York: Oxford University Press. Eisenberger, N. I. & Lieberman, M. D. (2005). Why it hurts to be left out: The neurocognitive overlap between physical and social pain. In K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, & W. von Hippel (Eds.), The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (pp. 109–127). New York: Cambridge University Press. Fox, C. L., Elder, T., Gater, J., & Johnson, E. (2010). The association between adolescents’ beliefs in a just world and their attitudes to victims of bullying. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(Pt 2), 183–198. Fryers, T. (2006). Work, identity and health. Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health, 2(12). http://doi.org/10.1186/1745-0179-2-12 Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. & Ashforth, B. (2004). Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 14–38. Furnham, A. (2003). Belief in a just world: Research progress over the past decade. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(5), 795–817. Gowan, M. A. (2012). Employability, well-being and job satisfaction following a job loss. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 27(8), 780–798. doi:10.1108/02683941​ 211280157 Hafer, C. L., & Bègue, L. (2005). Experimental research on just-world theory: Problems, development, and future challenges. Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 128–167. Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (2000). Social identity and self-categorization processes in organizational contexts. Academy of Management Review, 25(1), 121–140. Leana, C. & Feldman, D. (1990). Individual responses to job loss: Empirical findings from two field studies. Human Relations, 43(11), 1155–1181. Lutgen-Sandvik, P. (2008). Intensive remedial identity work: Responses to workplace bullying trauma and stigmatization. Organization, 15(1), 97–119.

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MacDonald, G., & Leary, M. R. (2005). Why does social exclusion hurt? The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin, 131(2), 202–223. Maes, J., & Schmitt, M. (2004). Transformation of the justice motive? Belief in a just world and its correlates in different age groups. In C. Dalbert & H. Sallay (Eds.), The justice motive in adolescence and young adulthood: Origins and consequences (pp. 64–82). London, England: Routledge. Nordgren, L. F., Banas, K., & MacDonald, G. (2011). Empathy gaps for social pain: Why people underestimate the pain of social suffering. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(1), 120–128. doi:/10.1037/a0020938 Otto, K., Boos, A., Dalbert, C., Schöps, D., & Hoyer, J. (2006). Posttraumatic symptoms, depression, and anxiety of flood victims: The impact of the belief in a just world. Personality and Individual Differences, 40(5), 1075–1084. Sias, P. M. (2009), Organizing relationships: Traditional and emerging perspectives on workplace relationships. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sias, P. M., Heath, R. G., Perry, T., Silva, D., & Fix, B. (2004). Narratives of workplace friendship deterioration. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21(3), 321–340. doi:10.1177/0265407504042835 Sveningsson, S., & Alvesson, M. (2003). Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle. Human Relations, 56(10), 1163–1193. Venkataramani, V., Labianca, G., & Grosser, T. (2013). Positive and negative workplace relationships, social satisfaction, and organizational attachment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(6), 1028–1039. Walsh, K., & Gordon, J. R. (2008). Creating an individual work identity. Human Resource Management Review, 18(1), 46–61. doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2007.09.001 Wesselmann, E. D., Nairne, J. S., & Williams, K. D. (2012). An evolutionary social psychological approach to studying the effects of ostracism. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 6(3), 309–328. Wolff, H., & Moser, K. (2009). Effects of networking on career success: A longitudinal study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 196–206. Woodward, K. (2015). Psychosocial studies: An introduction. New York: Routledge. Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI)/Zogby Analytics. (2014). 2014 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/wbiresearch​ /wbi-2014-us-survey Zadro, L. (2004). Ostracism: Empirical studies inspired by real-world experiences of silence and exclusion [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: A Neuropsychotherapeutic Perspective Pieter J. Rossouw

Patterns of engagement are deeply rooted in the neural architecture of the human brain. These patterns form the unspoken rules of living, the way of interacting with each other, and eventually the norms within a society—our way of life. Who we are can ultimately only be studied in how we relate to each other, how we support and interact with each other, how we love and care for each other, and how we enhance the wellness of each other. To be is to be connected, and to be connected facilitates our capacity to thrive. The principles of neuroscience developed over the past 150 years of modern science all point toward one overarching principle: the process of connectivity. All neural principles, from the ionic principle (the chemical actions in the neuron—acetylcholine and calcium releases), to the action potentials (the process of release of neurochemicals to activate the communication process), to releasing transmitters in specific synaptic spaces to communicate with connecting neurons (synaptic potentials), to establishing strong neural networks through ongoing activation of similar patterns, all point toward the overarching principle of neuroscience: the principle of connectivity. Sadly, there is a flipside to the narrative of connectivity; disconnection has a profound affect on neural patterns. Moreover, violations of connectivity cause significant changes in the patterns of connectivity in the brain, and these can ultimately be seen not only in behaviors, thoughts, and feelings but also in the changes that occur in the activation of the brain—the chemicals, structures, and the neural networks. In this chapter, we will explore the effects of bullying and mobbing on the brain, why bullying and mobbing fall within the domain of violation of neural connectivity and thriving, and how such violations affect the function and structure of the brain. The developing human brain is driven by a fairly large (in molecular terms) number of neuronal units whose sole purpose is to establish further

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connections (Kandel, Swartz, & Jessell, 2013). The molecular makeup of neurons is geared toward connections, and neuronal architecture allows for the capacity to develop up to 10,000 connections. The neuron has a close relationship with supportive units (glial cells) that ensure the strengthening of these connections, resulting in an ever-stronger developing network of connection highways within the neural system. These units (neurons) are capable of building the most delicate, intricate, and advanced communications networks in the universe. Approximately 100 billion neurons form a trillion connections to allow a highly complex communications system to exchange information, which we perceive as thinking, feeling, behaving, and being. The complexity of the human brain increases in magnitude when we realize that the system is programmed to develop not in a set way, but in many ways; the communication networks are highly changeable. The brain is not a fixed entity at birth with a fixed set of connections. Nor is its development fixed or set to grow toward an unchanging, preprogrammed outcome. As the brain develops and matures, the external environment plays a role in this development. The ever-expanding science of epigenetics provides important insights into the role of the environment as a facilitating variable in the expression of the genetic footprint. The message is clear. The developing human brain consists of billions of ever-changing connecting units (neurons) and is constantly establishing (and strengthening) vast networks of communication, not just within itself, but also with others. The brain is part of a social system. I am because we are. Even when systems of connection discontinue, the connectivity that was has an ongoing effect. I am now because I was and we were. Healthy neural connections and supportive environmental factors facilitate the ground rules for a proliferating neural network that forms the basis of thriving interactions and a healthy society. The wellness of a society can be measured by the level of thriving, supportive interactivity within it. These healthy neural connections can be scientifically measured by examining neurochemical processes in imaging pictures of neural connections in action, and scientifically demonstrated by looking at the strength of connecting structures in the brain. Neuroscience then effectively provides evidence of the day-today running of society—how we communicate, how we influence each other, and how we thrive together. What severely limits our propensity to thrive is to experience violation of our basic human needs, and this is the effect bullying and mobbing has on the victim—their psychological needs are violated.

BULLYING DEFINED AND THE ABSENCE OF REFERENCE TO NEUROSCIENCE AND THE BRAIN The terms bullying and mobbing are widely used in literature, research, and day-to-day vernacular. Despite the common use of the terms, many countries

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(e.g., the United Kingdom and some states in the United States) do not have a legal definition of these terms. The term mobbing is often used to refer to bullying conducted by a group, and the words abuse, peer abuse, harassment, rankism, and workplace harassment are often used to refer to bullying in the workplace (Fuller, 2006). Sugden et al. (2010) define bullying as “the act of intentionally and repeatedly causing harm to someone who has difficulty defending him or herself, and is a relatively wide-spread school phenomenon. Being a victim of bullying is associated with a broad spectrum of emotional problems; however, not all children who are bullied go on to develop such problems” (p. 2). One of the classical definitions of bullying is from Batsche and Knoff (1994), who define bullying as a form of aggression in which one or more students physically and psychologically (and, more recently, sexually) repeatedly harass another student over a period of time. Another classical definition of bullying was described by Olweus (1994): I define bullying or victimization in the following general way: A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students. It is a negative action when someone intentionally inflicts or attempts to inflict, injury or discomfort upon another—basically what is implied in the definition of aggressive behaviour. Negative actions can be carried out by physical contact, by words, or in other ways, such as making faces or obscene gestures, and intentional exclusion from a group. To use the term bullying, there should also be an imbalance in strength (an asymmetric power relationship): the student who is exposed to the negative actions has difficulty in defending him/herself and is somewhat helpless against the student or students who harass. (p. 1173) The Australian Human Rights Commission (2004) defines workplace bullying as “the repeated less favourable treatment of a person by another or others in the workplace, which may be considered unreasonable and inappropriate workplace practice. It includes behaviour that intimidates, offends, degrades or humiliates a worker.” These definitions (as is the case with almost all definitions) fall short because there is no reference to the neurological effects of bullying nor the long-term consequences for neural development and proliferation due to experiences that violate the basic needs of neural networks (thriving connectivity). In fact, current definitions of bullying and mobbing only refer to situational effects and descriptors, personal effects in terms of physical injury, emotional distress, and behavioral changes, but no definition focuses on the

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most fundamental components of the violation of wellness—that is, changes in neural architecture that in reality guide the cornerstone of the rule of law in society—the nature of connectedness. Connectedness that is facilitated through the principles of neuroscience (ensuring safety, attachment, control, and motivation to engage) will result in a thriving society of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral well-being. When these principles are violated, the essential cornerstones of well-being are compromised, resulting in patterns of disengagement with effects on cognition, emotion, and behavior and a deterioration of societal well-being. These violations can be identified on a neurobiological level.

NEURAL DEVELOPMENT AND CONNECTIVITY The development of the brain from conception to maturity is of significant importance to this topic, as it provides insight into the hierarchy of communication links of neural networks as well as the interaction between the environment and the developing brain (bullying at different stages of neural development has different effects on the brain). The brain develops from the “bottom to the top.” This means that primitive systems develop first, and as they mature and increase in complexity, more advanced systems develop. Some systems are fully developed at birth, others are less developed, and some are completely undeveloped. When the first neural plates establish in the first few weeks after conception, they continue to develop into the brainstem (pons, medulla, and small parts of the cerebellum). This section (referred to as the reptilian brain) is responsible for regulating breathing, heart rate, and procreation (the progression of the species). This section of neural development (reptilian brain) is fully developed and fully functional at birth (MacLean, 1990). As the brain develops and matures in utero, a more advance section starts to develop. These areas, collectively referred to as the limbic system (thalamus, hypothalami, amygdalae, hippocampi, pituitary, basal ganglia, nucleus accumbens, etc.), are responsible for developing neural networks that regulate the person’s interaction with the environment and as such are sometimes referred to as the emotional brain, the downstairs brain (Siegel, 2013), or the impulsive brain (Rossouw, 2014). This neural section is fully developed at birth but only partially functional. This neural cluster needs ongoing interaction with our environment to develop neural networks that facilitate effective connectedness with the external environment and to develop neural capacity (often referred to as resilience) to engage with day-today living. The development of the limbic system continues until the midtwenties, when brain development reaches maturity. Brain development (especially the limbic system) is dependent on the interaction with the environment to express its genetic footprint (genes

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express differently in different environments) as well as to develop neural networks to effectively engage with the environment. For maximal neural development, the brain needs an enriched environment so that healthy systems of connection from engaging with the environment develop into a thriving neural network. An enriched environment does not in any way imply a smooth, nonchallenging environment. In fact, research clearly shows there are detrimental effects of a completely nonchallenging environment (mollycoddling) on neural development. So an enriched environment is one that neuroscientists describe as satisfying the need for controllable incongruence (Grawe, 2007) as one of the cornerstones for healthy neural proliferation. However, when the environment is significantly compromised (as is the case with bullying), then neural systems (especially in the limbic regions) not only respond to the compromised environment but also reorganize (regarding neural connections and physiological development) to enhance systems of protection. This reorganizing may be regarded as the onset of neural patterns of pathology. The symptoms we can observe are evident in changes in mood, cognition, and behavior. What directs these symptoms are changes in neurochemical production, neural structure and operation, and neural networking. These changes are the basic subjects of research into the effects of bullying and mobbing on the brain. The concept of neural plasticity or neuroplasticity has been a hot topic both in neuroscience research as well as in the domains of psychological and physical well-being and recovery studies. The concept is rooted in the fundamental capacity of neurons to establish connections with other neurons and even change the course of neural connections. This capacity is an essential ingredient of neural growth and maturation—the establishment of more and more connections and eventually an extensive set of networks to maximize the interaction with the environment. Neural plasticity is inherent in the genetic makeup of the neural network. The process of maturation is integrally linked with the neural plastic capacity of brain cells. In enriched environments, neural plastic capacity activates on a daily basis to maximize neural proliferation. However, in compromised environments (violations of basic needs, which is often experienced through bullying behavior), the same principle activates. Neural plasticity is the ability of the brain to establish new neural connections. In compromised environments, the brain also changes, and these changes occur with one single purpose—to ensure survival. Neuroscience researchers have found that in compromised environments, individuals establish stronger networks from the limbic system to the reptilian brain (which ensures breathing and controls heart rate, the basic survival responses). This process can be temporary. However, if such violations of basic needs activate at a very young age, or with great intensity or for prolonged periods, neurochemical changes

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and ultimately neural network changes occur, and the brain rewires itself at the cost of discontinuing patterns of engaging and thriving to enhancing neural patterns of protection and survival. This forms the basis of what scientists refer to as the neurobiology of pathology—a brain rewired to survive rather than to thrive. Research is ongoing to identify specific changes and to what extent various experiences of violations of a safe environment (lacking needs fulfillment) cause neural changes in the brain. Research by molecular neuroscientists and Nobel Laureates Bert Sakmann (Betz & Sakmann, 1973) and Eric Kandel (1998, 2001, 2005, 2006) demonstrates an important principle of neural plasticity—that the brain changes its neural connectivity more quickly when pain and distress neural circuits are activated (compromised environments) than when wellness circuits are activated (enriched environments). In one case, a single experience of trauma was enough to facilitate new and permanent neural patterns of avoidance in comparison to 150 activations required to facilitate new neural patterns of engaging and thriving (Betz & Sakmann, 1973). The lesson from neuroscience research is clear: the neural architecture of the brain is geared toward engaging and thriving, but it only activates in this regard when the environment is enriched and not compromised. When compromised, research indicates that the neural system shifts its direction of connectivity to increase messages to the survival networks (connectivity to survive rather than connectivity to thrive). Among others, the severity of neural change is influenced by four key factors: 1. Age: When violation of safe, enriched environments is experienced at a young age (less mature, more vulnerable brain network activation) 2. Intensity: The level of intensity of violation of safe, enriched environments (severity of the incident(s)) 3. Duration: The effect of ongoing violation of safe, enriched environments (time frame of the violation) 4. Proximity: The effect of the perpetrator(s) on the violation of safe, enriched environments (proximity of the person to the victim—a family member or caregiver, trusted friend, colleague, or religious leader)

THE DEVELOPING BRAIN AND GENETICS A well-developing brain requires two key ingredients: a healthy genetic makeup as well as a safe, enriched environment. Traditionally, genes and the environment were seen as unrelated and in line with the Darwinian theory of natural selection. This theory holds that natural selection is the result of the evolution of the genetic material through the survival response (survival of the fittest). If this theory applied in the bullying and mobbing context, it

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can be viewed as the paradigm of “the weak will perish, and the strong will survive”—although the impact of the perpetrators on their victims might also fit the saying, what does not kill you makes you stronger. In 1809, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested another theory whereby an organism adopts traits as a result of the influence of the environment, and the offspring inherit those traits (changes in the gene pool). Today, Lamarck’s work is viewed as the birth of the study of the interchange between genes and the environment: epigenetics. Bird (2007) describes this as “the structural adaptation of chromosomal regions so as to register, signal or perpetuate altered activity states” (p. 398). Studies with genes that generate specific neurochemicals, such as dopamine and serotonin, show variables in genetic makeup that effect the production of these chemicals and as such may impact wellness and enhance risk (LeDoux, 2005; Rudy, 2008). This points to a strong genetic factor regarding risk (Sugden et al., 2010) and toward a deterministic approach (which is all about nature, with nurture playing a diminished role). However, a study by Phu and colleagues found the genetic footprint expressed very differently in different environments (Phu, Reddy, & Cameron, 2013).

BULLYING AND NEUROCHEMICALS Understanding the effects of bullying on the brain has led to studies focusing on the role of neurochemicals and, in particular, changes in neurochemical production and activation as a result of experiencing bullying. One of the major challenges in studying biological data is the limitation of collecting neurochemical samples, and as a result, many animal studies with important indicators have been very difficult to replicate in human research. Advances in sample collection have led to saliva analysis, which provides a noninvasive window to access biological data. This procedure can be used to reliably collect data on such hormones as testosterone, cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA; Hazler, Carney, & Granger 2006; Rossouw, 2013). Elevated cortisol levels appear when the activity of the hypothalamuspituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is elevated. This indicates a state of fear in the individual, which then inhibits patterns of engaging and instead strengthens survival patterns of avoidance behavior. These patterns then become the default neural networks when stimulated and often have detrimental effects on well-being. Specifically, concerning bullying, significant differences in cortisol levels have been found in students who have experienced regular bullying. Students who were not bullied or experienced single or low levels of intimidation were found to have much lower levels of saliva cortisol production than students who experienced regular bullying or high-intensity bullying (Booth, Granger, & Shirtcliff, 2008). The researchers suggested that

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biological markers should be included in both assessments and intervention outcome measures for victims of bullying (Hazler et al., 2006; Rossouw, 2013). The hormone DHEA is a protector chemical in the neural system and inhibits cortisol activity. It has a positive correlation with memory and cortical learning (thriving and learning behaviors—hippocampal and prefrontal cortical activation) in comparison with fear-based learning (protective systems of avoidance—amygdala and HPA activation). Researchers have found there is an inverse correlation between bullying and memory and learning (Vaillancourt et al., 2011).

BULLYING AND NEURAL STRUCTURES The most significant contribution of modern neuroscience research is the shift it has facilitated in the paradigm of understanding of the operation and function of the brain. The classical approach views the brain like a bowl of soup, meaning that the brain consists of a large number of neurochemicals; the primary focus of doctors, therapists, and mental health workers is to enable a chemical balance, because those diagnosed with psychopathology have a chemical imbalance in the brain. Since the landmark publication of Erik Kandel’s New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry (1998), where he proclaimed the dawn of a remarkable scientific revolution that would change our perception of the brain, there were an impressive series of research papers published indicating how the brain consists of networks of neural connections and how the environment shapes these connections. This reconceptualized understanding of the brain opens new frontiers for research as well as our understanding of human wellness. This new paradigm of how the brain operates and functions also furthers the science of understanding the positive and negative effects of the environment on neural development and behavior (positive effects toward higher levels of thriving or detrimental effects, e.g., the results of bullying and mobbing). This new paradigm has prompted researchers to look more closely at neural structures, how they communicate with each other, and how patterns of communication change as a result of enriched or compromised environments. As research has become more and more refined, detailed studies are being conducted into the short- and long-term effects of specific kinds of compromised environments (e.g., bullying and mobbing being linked with key variables, such as age, duration, intensity, and proximity) on neural networks and activation patterns. Additionally, the role of key structures in the limbic region (emotional brain), that is, the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, basal ganglia, and pituitary gland, along with the anterior cingulate, orbitofrontal, and prefrontal regions (both left and right PFC), have been the source of many research

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projects—and there is much synergy in the research findings. The amygdalahypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system has been identified as the brain’s early warning and fear response system. This response system plays a vital role in keeping us safe and protecting us from danger. It forms protective responses very early in life and becomes strongly wired at a young age to protect us from harm. However, researchers have found that these systems can become “overwired” when the environment is compromised, resulting in excessive fearbased responses that inhibit thriving responses and result in compromised neural networks. Bullying overexcites the fear system, resulting over time in increased amygdala volumes and lack of prefrontal decision making as well as an increase in racial stereotyping and patterns of avoidance (Phelps et al., 2000; Viding, McCrory, Blakemore, & Frederickson, 2011). The hippocampus is the powerhouse in the limbic system responsible for short-term memory processing and the production of key neurochemicals (brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)), which enable neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. A well-functioning hippocampus has been directly correlated with inhibiting the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and is the key to a happy, thriving life. Researchers found that exposure to acute psychological stress (like exposure to bullying) resulted in increased apoptosis (the death of neurons) and a reduction of hippocampal neurogenesis (Thomas, Hotsenpillar, & Peterson, 2007). The corpus callosum provides the communication link between the two hemispheres and the deep brain structures (limbic system). Healthy neural networks are critical in the development of a well-integrated personality and ability to effectively navigate our interactions with the environment. A direct correlation has been found with the deterioration of the structural composition of the corpus callosum following verbal abuse (Teicher, Samson, Sheu, Polcari, & McGreenery, 2010). Social rejection and social pain caused structural impairment in the integrity of the anterior cingulate cortex and, in particular, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortical region (dACC) (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003). These researchers found that bullying upregulates the more fear-based survival systems and compromises activity in the frontal (especially the right frontal) cortical regions. These regions are critical for the development of a sense of social connection and empathy and is the very reason why those who experience bullying (in the absence of supportive environmental role players) are at increased risk of developing antisocial personalities, psychopathy, and criminal behavior (Viding et al., 2011). An fMRI study conducted by Catherine Sebastian and colleagues found bullying increased activity in the orbitofrontal regions of victims, but not in the dACC region (Sebastian et al., 2010). They conceded that the marginal difference in regional activation might have been the result of slightly different methodologies and age-related changes.

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The prefrontal cortical regions play a vital role in the development of executive functioning—social interactions, cognitions, mood, and behavior. Lesions or damage to these regions causes significant changes in mood, cognitions, and behavior, and even significant changes in personality. Probably one of the most cited cases of personality change is the case of a railway worker, Phineas Gage, who was severely injured when an iron rod pierced his skull and destroyed a significant portion of his right frontal lobe. He survived the ordeal but experienced a dramatic personality change (Adams, 2009). The case of patient EVR is also often cited as an example of major changes in social conduct and compromised decision making due to bilateral orbitofrontal meningioma (Saver & Damasio, 1991). In his research on the effects of aggressive behaviors, Giancola (1995) found significant detrimental effects on the dorsolateral and orbitofrontal cortical regions, and Ilie and colleagues (2014) found a direct correlation in suicidality, bullying, and mental health correlates of traumatic brain injury of adolescents (Ilie et al., 2014; Kumpulainen et al., 1998). Research with Aplysia californica conducted by Eric Kandel (1998, 2005) has demonstrated this new paradigm in neuroscience. When environments are compromised, neural systems protect themselves; the thriving response shuts down, and the brain wires itself to survive. The result is decreased wellness, decreased longevity, and increased stress responses and pathology. And thus a new understanding has emerged. The traditional view of what does not kill you makes you stronger should read—in compromised environments— what does not kill you makes you weaker. And this deterioration in survival and functioning has profound effects on the strength and thriving of society as a whole.

FROM NEUROSCIENCE TO INTERVENTIONS The principles of neuroscience research about the effects of bullying on the brain—for example, chemicals, structures, and networks—also provide important guidelines for interventions. The development of the brain (from the bottom to the top) indicates that interventions are likely to be more successful when the same pathways are followed.

Safety First For example, a state of fear and unsafety compromises blood flow to cortical regions and, as a result, increases our survival responses. The implication here is that cognitive interventions are likely to be less successful when the victim experiences a sense of unsafety. When a person (neural system) experiences a sense of unsafety, changes in neural activation, as well as neurochemical

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production, take place. The HPA axis is activated, corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) is activated in the hypothalamus, the adrenocorticotrophic hormone is released in the pituitary and norepinephrine, epinephrine and cortisol production are activated (adrenal glands), and the body is pushed into a state of hyperalertness. This state compromises serotonin flow, inhibits effective decision making, and lessens patterns of engaging. Unless the basic condition of safety is met, the likelihood of higher order neural activation will be compromised. So, a bottom-up approach is needed. This bottom-up approach or pathway is often (subconsciously) used because clinicians instinctively realize the importance of safety for their client before higher order strategies are implemented. Neuroscience highlights the reasons why ensuring a physical and psychological sense of safety needs to be the starting point of every intervention (Kaya & Rossouw, 2016; Rossouw, 2013, 2014).

The Basic Needs Once the need for safety is facilitated and ensured, the three basic human needs must be addressed. From a neural perspective, these are the needs to connect (attachment need), to experience control (need for control), and the need to be motivated to engage (the dopamine-related need of avoiding pain and maximizing approach or pleasure). These needs are closely connected to the regulation of regional midbrain activity (involving the sensory activation centers—the thalamus, amygdala, hypothalamus, pituitary, hippocampus, and basal ganglia) and the downregulation of fear-based activation and upregulation of integrative activity (i.e., applying context—primarily hippocampal activation). These needs were elucidated by the brilliant neuroscientist Klaus Grawe (in close alignment with the research of Seymour Epstein) as • The need for attachment, • The need for orientation and control, • The need for avoiding pain and maximizing pleasure, and • The need for self-esteem and self-esteem enhancement (Grawe, 2007). Further research has led to refinement of the activation of these needs (Rossouw, 2014) resulting in the identification of only three needs linked to the activation of the limbic system (the impulsive brain). These needs are • The need for attachment (connection), • The need for orientation and control, and • The need for pain avoidance and pleasure maximization (motivation; Rossouw, 2014).

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The need for the enhancement of self was identified to be aligned with the development of the prefrontal cortex and thus seen as a higher order need (the culmination of all the needs; Rossouw, 2014). The following paragraphs describe in more detail the three needs aligned with the function of the limbic system.

The need for attachment (connection) It has been well established in research that healthy attachment relations are vital to the development of healthy brain function (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1988a, 1988b; Hart, 2010; Newman, Holden, & Delville, 2005; Sapolsky, 2000, 2004; Schore, 2012). Well-established patterns of attachment have been clearly linked to downregulation of the amygdala and upregulation of the hippocampus (Schore, 2012). The flipside—violation of attachment— has been linked to increased amygdala volume, decreased hippocampal volume, and increased presentation of patterns of pathology (Panksepp, 2005; Schore, 2012; Solomon & Siegel, 2013; Sporns, 2011). Bullying violates the sense of attachment (connection). Research has demonstrated the variables that mediate the effect of bullying on the brain: age, duration, intensity, and proximity (Kaya & Rossouw, 2016; Rossouw, 2013). The need to connect (be part of the social construct—the fiber of society) is an integrated need for neural activation to flourish. Violation of this need not only results in changes in behavior; it also results in changes in neural activation patterns and creates patterns of avoidance that eventually result in pathological behavior. In short, bullying changes the brain. Research is now being conducting to investigate how genetic expression changes as a result of compromised environments. This research will not only provide an even more profound chapter in our understanding of the violations of basic needs but will also assist in devising guidelines for early intervention and developing resilience, thereby maximizing wellness.

The need for control Epstein (1993) considered the need for control as the most fundamental of human needs. Flammer (as cited in Grawe, 2007, p. 212) describes this need as having the “maximum number of options available.” This basic need describes the activation of limbic connectivity—hippocampal activation to enhance the development of frontal neural networks. This means the ability to proliferate, that is, to form strong, healthy neural connections, to enhance capacity (resilience) and having the strength to face the challenges of day-to-day life. When this need is compromised, the resulting neural networks develop into patterns of avoidance that enhance the survival response (strengthening primitive neural networks and, as a result, limiting

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the development of frontal neural networks—the “what does not kill you makes you weaker” principle). The effect of bullying and mobbing on the victim, therefore, frustrates the need for control and enhances patterns of avoidance, resulting in the risk of increased isolation, that is, a reluctance to engage or go back to school or work and increased resistance to engage in the day-to-day activities of society (Hunter & Boyle, 2010).

The need for motivation The concept of motivation is often seen as a positive attribute to enhance outcomes. In neural terms, motivation is linked to the release of neurochemicals to enhance patterns of approach. These chemicals—endorphins and predominantly dopamine—are released when approach patterns are activated on a regular basis, and, as a result, they strengthen these patterns. In enriched environments (healthy, supportive contexts), dopamine is released when patterns of engagement occur. As a result, the development of rich prefrontal cortical networks is strengthened, resulting in a healthy sense of self, engaging activity, and patterns of thriving. When the environments are compromised (as is the case with bullying and mobbing), patterns of avoidance activate, leading to less interaction and more avoidance; less contact and more disconnection; less social interaction and more social isolation; and less thriving and more focus on patterns of survival. When an ongoing violation of the motivation need is experienced, dopamine release is activated in association with the patterns of survival, the avoidance and isolation patterns. The result is that these neural activation patterns are then strengthened due to the dopamine release, and the protective patterns hold the networks “hostage”; victims will experience this as becoming “comfortable in their discomfort.” This enhances the risk of disengaging and results in long-term patterns of social decline (Novick, Forster, Tejani-Butt, & Watt, 2011). The implications for the violation of the motivation need indicate that early intervention is vitally important to ensure that the risk of getting stuck in patterns of avoidance is addressed as early as possible (Rossouw, 2013).

Bullying and Prefrontal Cortex Activation—The Integrated Sense of Self Ultimately, violation of the primitive (safety) and basic needs (attachment, control, and motivation) inhibit the development of the integrated prefrontal cortical regions (the integrated social self). This has a highly detrimental effect on self-actualization and social interaction and severely inhibits the capacity to engage effectively in society. Apart from the enormous

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commercial cost that can be attributed to patterns of avoidance, the emotional loss in our ability to socialize and to share and care will have significant short-term (personal cost); medium-term (family, work, and interactions); and long-term (transgenerational effect on wellness) effects (Dulmus, Sowers, & Theriot, 2006; Esbensen & Carson, 2009; Mruk, 2006; Tanti, Stukas, Halloran, & Foddy, 2011).

Antibullying Interventions Interventions for managing bullying and mobbing vary, from behavioral and psychoeducational to cognitive-behavioral and peer support interventions. Table 7.1 provides a snapshot summary of some of the intervention studies in the United States, Australia, and Finland. It is worth noting that these studies are all of school bullying, and although we can hypothesize that the psychological impact and change to brain activation and neural networks would appear almost identical in any scans or neurological assessment, it is acknowledged that there are some differences between school and workplace bullying. Perhaps the most obvious difference would be the greater physicality of schoolyard bullying and, conversely, the greater psychological character of workplace bullying. It is interesting to note that from the range of interventions listed, no intervention strategies focus on dealing with bullying from a brain-based perspective. A neuroscience support program has recently been launched in Australia (Kaya & Rossouw, 2016). The focus of this project is to manage the effects of bullying by focusing on addressing the neural activation patterns. This intervention consists of a self-guided comic book exploring the bullying experience as well as talking through the effects of the experience on our basic human needs—safety, control, attachment, and motivation—and ultimately our sense of self. It is complemented by a clinician’s manual to guide support workers (clinicians, teachers, or parents) to understand the effects of bullying on the brain; the changes in mood, cognition, and behaviors; and how to support young people to identify a sense of safety, reconnect, take control, and reintroduce a sense of motivation. Ultimately, the goal is to facilitate new neural pathways to enhance a sense of self and enhance resilience toward thriving and self-actualization. Comprehensive field testing will complement the project. Preliminary indications are that young people who have experienced bullying and who have used the brain-based workbook are shifting from patterns of avoidance toward patterns of engaging and activating new approach-oriented neural connections (in comparison to patterns of avoidance). These early results point toward higher levels of well-being and a reduction of pathology (reduced anxiety, depression, and avoidance behaviors; Kaya & Rossouw, 2016).

Table 7.1  Intervention Studies in the United States, Australia, and Finland

Study

Participants

Cross, Pintabona, Primary school students Hall, Hamilton, & (N = 2,068) in grades 4–5 Erceg (2004) from Western Australia Friendly Schools Olweus (2004)

Bauer, Lozano, & Rivara (2007)

Slee & Mohyla (2007)

Kärnä et al. (2011)

Focus Focus on social skills development

Intervention Design

Intervention strategies target classroom curriculum work, promotion of peer support, and advice to families and teachers on intervention techniques. Primary school students New national Olweus Intervention Program (N = 21,000) in grade initiative against targets school-wide activities, 4–7 from > 100 American bullying classroom discussions and rules, schools and community awareness. Middle school students from The Olweus Olweus Intervention Program 10 American schools; 7 Intervention targets school-wide activities, intervention schools program was classroom discussions and rules, (N = 4,959); and 3 control evaluated against and community awareness. schools (N = 1,559) a control group. Primary school students Longitudinal School-based application of the (N = 954) aged 8–12 years, evaluation PEACE Pack encompasses from Australian schools of efficacy of education-based, practical resources PEACE Pack for staff to create their own program in interventions. targeting school bullying School students (N = 150,000) Nonrandomized The KiVa program is a whole-school aged 8–16 years, from 888 nationwide trial approach that includes elements of Finish schools of the KiVA disciplinary methods, teacher training, antibullying classroom rules, parent information, program videos, and cooperative group work.

Main Outcomes There was no overall reduction in the frequency of bullying, but a significant reduction in specific indicators, such as “being ignored” or “being called names.” After eight months of intervention, engagement in bullying was reduced by 43% and being victimized reduced by 34%. No overall effect was evident on rates of student victimization. There were significant reductions for subgroups (e.g., for white but not black students). After the yearlong intervention, 29% of boys and 20% of girls reported being bullied less. From pre- to postintervention, substantially more students reported feeling safe in school After nine months of intervention, victimisation was reduced by 2.7% and bullying reduced by 1.9%. Estimated victims reduced by 3,900 and the number of bullies by 2,300.

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One of the essential neurobiological indicators for wellness and neural capacity is the understanding of the neuroscience of resilience. Although the concept has been the focus of research for many decades, it is only recently that neuroscientists have begun investigating resilience from a neural perspective. The work of Richard Davidson explored the neural correlates of resilience and identified domains of resilience linked to neural networks (Davidson & Begley, 2012). These domains have been developed into a Predictive 6-Factor Resilience Scale (Rossouw & Rossouw, 2016), with a cell phone number and online applications available for clients and clinicians to work together to enhance resilience capacity.

SUMMARY Bullying and mobbing is an ever-growing phenomenon in modern society. It is extensively addressed, yet much research is needed to understand the effects on the developing brain; the role of unaddressed bullying experiences on the economy; work-seeking practices (patterns of protection and avoidance); the roles (or lack thereof) of family, friends, and peer support; the countereffect of supervision; the key indicators of a well workplace (an antibullying culture); and the effects of resilience on strengthening neural networks, to name a few.

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rejection: Implications of social neuroscience for education. Neuroimage, 57(3), 686–694. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.09.063 Siegel, D. (2013). Brainstorm: The power and purpose of the teenage brain. New York, NY: Penguin. Solomon, M. F., & Siegel, D. J. (Eds.). (2003). Healing trauma: Attachment, mind, body and brain. New York: W. W. Norton. Sporns, O. (2011). Networks of the brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sugden, K., Arseneault, L., Harrington, H., Moffitt, T. E., Williams, B., & Caspi, A. (2010). Serotonin transporter gene moderates the development of emotional problems among children following bullying victimization. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 49(8), 830–840. Tanti, C., Stukas, A. A., Halloran, M. J., & Foddy, M. (2011). Social identity change: Shifts in social identity during adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 34(3), 555–567. doi:10.1016/j.adolescence.2010.05.012 Teicher, M. H., Samson, J. A., Sheu, Y.–S., Polcari, A., & McGreenery, C. E. (2010) Hurtful words: Association of exposure to peer verbal abuse with elevated psychiatric symptom scores and corpus callosum abnormalities. American Journal of Psychiatry, 167(12), 1464–1471. Thomas, R. M., Hotsenpiller, G., & Peterson, D. A. (2007). Acute psychosocial stress reduces cell survival in adult hippocampal neurogenesis without altering proliferation. Journal of Neuroscience, 27(11), 2734–2743. doi:10.1523/jneurosci​ .3849–06.2007 Vaillancourt, T., Duku, E., Becker, S., Schmidt, L. A., Nicol, J., Muir, C., & MacMillan, H. (2011). Peer victimization, depressive symptoms, and high salivary cortisol predict poorer memory in children. Brain and Cognition, 77(2), 191–199. Viding, E., McCrory, E. J., Blakemore, S.-J., & Frederickson, N. (2011). Behavioural problems and bullying at school: Can cognitive neuroscience shed new light on an old problem? Trends in Cognitive Science, 15(7), 289–291.

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Vicarious and Secondary Victimization in Adult Bullying and Mobbing: Coworkers, Target-Partners, Children, and Friends Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik

It is not enough to just understand the destructive impact [of] mobbing [on] the direct victim because that is only part of the story. Those who love the victim, those who depend on the victim, [and] those who have worked alongside the victim . . . pay a high price for workplace mobbing. (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 95) This chapter explores the harm to people in bullying targets’ lives—coworkers, partners, children, and friends. Bullying (or mobbing) is persistent, harmful, and aggressive verbal, nonverbal, and symbolic behavior directed in a systematic way by one or more persons at work toward one or more others. Undeniably, targets suffer the most, and overwhelming evidence indicates that bullying distresses all aspects of targets’ lives (Hogh, Mikkelsen, & Hansen, 2011); the experience is crippling and devastating (Adams & Crawford, 1992). Targets suffer physical ailments, including gastrointestinal problems (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome), insomnia, weight gain or loss, and musculoskeletal problems (Vranceanu, Barsky, & Ring, 2009). Being mobbed and treated unjustly at work leads to chronic stress, high blood pressure, and increased risk of coronary heart disease (De Vogli, Ferrie, Chandola, Kivimäki, & Marmot, 2007; Kivimäki et al., 2005). Bullying and mobbing erodes targets’ self-esteem, mental performance, and emotional strength (Brodsky, 1976; Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003; Keashly & Harvey, 2005). It often leads to depression (Namie, 2003); alcohol and drug abuse (Rospenda, 2002); symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2004); and even suicide (Leymann, 1990; Soares, 2012). Some targets are so damaged they cannot return to work once they have escaped the bullying, even

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when they go to different jobs where there is no bullying. Other targets can only return to their work lives after considerable counseling (Crawford, 1999; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996). The effects of adult bullying at work, however, are not limited to targets. The people around targets—intimate partners, family members, friends, and even children—experience tidal force changes in their lives (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2016). Coworkers often feel guilty when they fail to help, angry when management does little, and fearful of being the next target (Tye-Williams & Krone, 2015). Intimate partners feel overwhelmed by their targeted partners’ abuse, unsupported by their targeted partner, and generally angry about the bullying situation (Sperry & Duffy, 2009). Parenting responsibilities and children’s needs take a sideline as bullying continues to wear down relational connections and deteriorate communication quality (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). Friends can grow emotionally exhausted or irritated, or targets may avoid social contact as they struggle to deal with ongoing abuse (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011). The current chapter explores these issues; the chapter summarizes empirical research and applicable theory for understanding how adult bullying affects nonbullied others in the target’s work and nonwork domains. Specifically, the chapter explores the dynamics around and effects of bullying on witnessing coworkers, target-partners, family, and friends.

PEOPLE AT WORK: COWORKERS AND BYSTANDERS Workplace bystanders tend to respond similarly to the primary victim in terms of negative health and career effects, but not quite as intensely. (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 95) One of the tendencies, especially in U.S. organizations and popular culture, is to individualize the problem of workplace bullying. Supervisors, managers, and colleagues often blame targets for their own abuse or believe targets’ reports of abuse are exaggerated and questionable. Thinking of bullying as simply dyadic, or between two people (i.e., a personality conflict), glosses over the communal character of workplace communication and impedes efforts toward resolving adult bullying. Because workplaces are sites of collective human interaction, what occurs between dyads or among members bleeds and buzzes throughout the workgroup and affects all in proximity (Namie & Lutgen-Sandvik, 2010). Because bullying is so volatile and aggressive, it typically spreads fear through entire workgroups and pushes members into one of three general bystander groups. Workplace bullying is communal, a part of organizational culture and climate, not a personality clash or conflict between two equally positioned

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organizational members. As a communal phenomena, bullying affects coworkers who see or hear about bullying. Coworkers include anyone working with the target, regardless of position. In bullying situations, coworkers tend toward aligning with (a) those who gravitate toward or support aggressors (aggressor allies); (b) those who support or protect targets (target allies); and (c) those who attempt to distance themselves from the bullying conflict (neutral or silent bystanders).1

Witness Bystanders Witness bystanders are employees who see targets bullied but who are not abused directly themselves, people whose “perceptions, fears, and expectations are changed as a result of being vicariously exposed to violence” (Barling, 1996, p. 35). Witness bystanders often report “significantly more general stress and mental stress reactions than employees from workplaces without bullying” (Hogh, Mikkelsen, & Hansen, 2011, p. 108) and often leave organizations after witnessing bullying (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006). Whether aggressor ally, target ally, or silent audience member, witnessing coworkers suffer a number of negative effects from being exposed to or embroiled in bullying.

Aggressor Allies Aggressor allies side with, or appear to side with, aggressors. Researchers call aggressor allies “passive bullies, followers, henchmen” (Olweus, 2003, p. 67); patrons; and pawns (Boddy, Ladyshewsky, & Galvin, 2010). Passive bullies and followers are those “who participate in bullying but do not usually take the initiative” (Olweus, 2003, p. 67). These “passive bullies can be equally troubling to the victim . . . where others are gathered willingly or unwillingly to participate in continuous malevolent actions” (Vickers, 2006, p. 271). Henchmen, on the other hand, actively take part in bullying conflicts. They loyally follow the aggressor’s lead and work to undermine, remove, and sometimes even destroy the targets’ reputations. Boddy and colleagues (Boddy, 2011; Boddy et al., 2010) argue that aggressors usually have two types of allies: patrons and pawns. Patrons help aggressors ascend to positions of power and are people to whom aggressors turn as third-party allies. Aggressors often choose these people as a support network. Pawns, who often emerge later as targets, are persons initially loyal to the aggressors, siding with them in bullying conflicts, but they later feel or discover they are being used or manipulated. Because emotion is contagious and social, some bystanders will witness and then subsequently model aggressive communication and bullying. Whether bystanders mimic aggression depends in part on group cohesion,

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norms, and culture. If workgroup cohesion is high, bystanders’ direct observations of bullying can increase their own use of aggression (Ferguson & Barry, 2011). Additionally, “norms of toughness . . . tend to reduce the likelihood that witnesses . . . will take action against it [i.e., bullying]. On the contrary, such norms tend to increase the odds that witnesses will join in and even applaud the action of workplace bullies” (Baron & Neuman, 2011, p. 217). The emergence of bullies is not as frequent as people becoming more rude and discourteous in everyday interactions, likely due to the reciprocal nature of communication (McCroskey & Richmonda, 2000). Some members become more uncivil over time, while others empathize with and try to help targets.

Target Allies Target allies comprise the second witness or bystander group. In contrast to aggressor allies, these bystanders witness abusive interactions and side with the targets. They comprise a second, albeit smaller, group of bystanders— those who dislike the aggressors, who believe abuse is morally wrong, or who have relationships with targets. Ferguson and Barry (2011) suggest that directly witnessing another’s abuse “affords the observer an opportunity to witness and, accordingly, vicariously experience the emotions of the target (or victim)[,] . . . [giving] the observer an opportunity to empathize with the victim, and perhaps to mentally place themselves in the victim’s shoes” (p. 89). Other bystanders may eventually gravitate toward the target, especially if they shift from being aggressors’ followers, patrons, or pawns to being targets. Supporting targeted colleagues takes an incredible level of courage. Indeed, witnesses are pressured to distance themselves from targets, to shun targets, and to join in the aggressive or passive-aggressive attacks. Those who choose to support targets typically experience three primary negative effects: extreme negatively valenced emotion (anger, indignation, fear); workplace alienation; and damage to work-related identity. Feeling intense undesirable emotions is common for target allies. They often feel angry at their colleague’s treatment, management’s apparent lack of interest or effectiveness, and the aggressors and aggressor allies. Target allies often get involved because they believe bullying is immoral; their involvement and resistance is a moral imperative (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006). They also experience fear, worrying that their support for targets might bring them to the aggressors’ negative attention. Sadly, this is often the case; target supporters become targets after the original targets have been driven from the workplace (Lutgen-Sandvik & Tracy, 2012). Alienation can also be an effect of supporting targets. Target allies often find themselves estranged from much of the workgroup. Target supporters can be accused of not being team players and called names such as “troublemaker”

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and “mentally ill” (Namie & Lutgen-Sandvik, 2010). Often, loss of reputation or damage to work-related identity also occurs with alienation. Supporting targets of bullying is, quite simply, an unpopular stance. When targets have support, bullying them is more challenging, so aggressors and aggressor allies usually deride target supporters (Lutgen-Sandvik & Fletcher, 2014). Suffering others’ derision may be part of why high turnover rates are linked to witnessing abuse at work (Houshmand, O’Reilly, Robinson, & Wolff, 2012).

Silent Bystanders Neutral or silent bystanders withhold their voice and allegiance, taking a Switzerland-type stance and striving to be uninvolved noncombatants. Members of this group side with no one. Silent bystanders typically want to stay out of the bullying processes that they witness happening to others, seeing targets being “undermined, disenfranchised, and emasculated” (Boddy et al., 2010, p. 124). Quite simply, they want to avoid becoming targets. Silent bystanders also want to maintain their privacy and personal freedom, which can be threatened if they become involved in the bullying situation. Additionally, by appearing neutral, silent bystanders may hope to avoid alienating aggressors, targets, or anyone allied with either side. One might think silent bystanders are somewhat insulated from bullying’s negative effects, but such is not the case. Silent bystanders, like other involved parties to workplace bullying, also suffer. If witnessing bystanders withdraw their support for targets, they can end up feeling quite guilty. “They may feel they stood by and did nothing, the organizational equivalent of watching a mugging on a daily basis” (Crawford, 2001, p. 26). If bullying continues, negative emotions spread; fear, anger, emotional exhaustion, and guilt plague bystanders and infect workgroups. Bystanders most often remain silent, hoping they can avoid involvement. Silent bystanders may hope to avoid alienating aggressors, targets, or anyone allied with either side by appearing neutral. Sadly, this strategy rarely works because bullying conflicts are so emotionally charged—mainly because the stakes are high—that both target and aggressor groups negatively judge those who stand by silently (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2013). Like target allies, silent audience members have increased intentions to leave and exit rates compared to nonexposed workers and report higher rates of workplace negativity and stress and far less job satisfaction than nonexposed workers (Jennifer, Cowie, & Anaiadou, 2003). Silent bystanders can experience dread and fear at work and practice hypervigilance to try and avoid being bullied. When these coworkers see and hear about others being bullied, they make the logical assumption that they could be next (Mulder, Pouwelse, Lodewijkx, & Bolman, 2014). Witnessing

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abuse can contribute to bystanders’ reduced motivation, commitment, and efficiency in part due to waiting to be targeted or feeling unable to help targets.

Shifting Group Membership Connection to bystander groups continuously varies and morphs (LutgenSandvik, 2006). Targets’ supporters may burn out; noninvolved persons can become targets or begin taking sides, and persons in the aggressors’ circles of supporters are ousted. Persons safe from targeting can become targets when aggressors’ alliances shift, which they commonly do. Aggressors often redirect aggression to persons who appear to be a threat or whose actions or words place aggressors in a negative light (Crawshaw, 2012). Past targets may stay silent to avoid further harm, but they slowly begin supporting targets when abuse escalates.

Common Negative Effects across Groups Whether target ally, aggressor ally, or silent bystander, all witnesses to bullying experience some similar negative effects.2 These include increased stress, greater intentions to leave one’s job, lowered job satisfaction, negative ratings of job, and goal displacement. Nearly all workgroup members experience elevated stress when bullying is present (Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2007). Witnesses of bullying, regardless of their loyalties, exit organizations more frequently than employees who are not affected by bullying (Keashly, 2010). Witnesses are less satisfied with their jobs and rate their jobs lower overall than unaffected employees (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007). In workgroups affected by persistent abuse, goal displacement occurs. The organizational goals for productivity or building a strong organizational culture take a backseat when bullying is left unaddressed. For involved workers, the primary goal shifts from work or relational tasks to hypervigilant selfprotection (MacIntosh, 2005).

Aggressors It bears noting that bullying likely also harms aggressors. With the exception of scholarship on school bullying (e.g., Smokowski & Kopasz, 2005), little research looks at the effects of bullying on the aggressors. However, the negative effects from aggressing against others can be extrapolated from research that focuses on the bullying perpetrators’ perspective. Identified aggressors rarely see themselves as aggressors and often explicitly deny being aggressors (DeSanti, 2014), but their aggressive communication and

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symbolic behavior violate social norms and increase others’ discomfort. As such, aggressors likely have difficulty developing and maintaining interpersonal workplace relationships (Lutgen-Sandvik & Fletcher, 2014) or may develop relatively superficial relationships because of others’ fear, discomfort, or distrust (Jenkins, Zapf, Winefield, & Sarris, 2011). Aggressors may use aggressive behavior to get revenge or provoke someone (Neuman & Baron, 2005), which places aggressors in danger of retaliation and counterrevenge. Indeed, many aggressors say they feel bullied by others, which may simply be others’ means of pushing back against the aggressors’ aggression (LutgenSandvik & Fletcher, 2014). When organizational members begin to see someone as an aggressor, a number of unexpected and unpleasant outcomes emerge for aggressors. Bullying begins to have negative effects on their professional images, which can suffer irreparable harm (Lutgen-Sandvik, Dickinson, & Foss, 2012). If out of the fear of being perceived incompetent some organizational members develop a take-no-prisoners professional identity, others in the organization can begin to see the aggressors as interpersonally incompetent, regardless of technical competence. Aggressors can lose their jobs, suffer demotion, or experience transfers to less desirable positions (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006), especially if their aggression seriously disrupts workgroup functioning.

PEOPLE AWAY FROM WORK: INTIMATE PARTNERS, CHILDREN, AND FRIENDS When what happens at work is extreme—like being psychologically terrorized—targets experience intense, protracted negative emotions and moods that are quite likely to bleed into targets’ private lives (Duffy & Sperry, 2014). Targets typically bring home the painful experiences and negative emotions from being harassed. Indeed, boundaries between work and nonwork domains can be quite permeable, especially when emotionally disturbing events occur (Riforgiate & Lutgen-Sandvik, 2014). The spillover of emotion and mood from work to nonwork can have destructive effects for people close to targets. Work-life spillover theory helps explain some of the bleed over between domains that commonly occurs in bullying situations. Duffy and Sperry (2014) call this dynamic “isomorphism[,] . . . what happens in one domain of life is mirrored in another” (p. 100). Work-life spillover theory proposes that an employee’s emotions and moods at work spread, inexorably burning into and damaging the employee’s personal life (e.g., Ilies, Wilson, & Wagner, 2009; Krouse & Afifi, 2007; Staines, 1980). Bullying increases personal life stress, reduces personal life satisfaction, and negatively affects personal life relationships with friends, family members, and intimate partners (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2016).

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Bullying-associated stress and increased personal life stress appear to occur in tandem, which is unsurprising. Targets worry about money, medical insurance, loss of standing, and character damage. They suffer self-doubt, eroded confidence, social ostracism, and harm to mental and physical health (Sperry & Duffy, 2009). In many different ways, these fears and resulting stress effect and involve much of targets’ personal lives and the personal lives of their loved ones. The following sections discuss the proven and potential effects of bullying on target-partners (spouses, significant others); children; and friends. The research reviewed casts a wide net to extend beyond bullying and mobbing research to explore parenting and friendship literatures. Research in these fields point to the potential harms associated with adult bullying.

Target-partners Target-partners are adult intimate partners in long-term committed relationships with bullied employees (e.g., spouses, significant others, domestic partners). Ample research points to how marital partners’ work lives affect one another, both negatively and positively (e.g., Demerouti, Bakker, & Schaufeli, 2005; Ilies et al., 2009; Poelmans et al., 2008; Thompson, Kirk, & Brown, 2005). When an aggressor at work targets one of the relational partners, the relationship can undergo pressures that profoundly test relational bonds, sometimes to the breaking point. As Duffy and Sperry (2014) note, “When both are hurting, it’s much harder for each to know what to do to help and support the other” (p. 101). Target-partner interviews suggest that relationships appear to toughen up, fall apart, or weather the storm when dealing with bullying at work (LutgenSandvik & Namie, 2010).3 About a third talked about how bullying strengthened their relationships. A female target-partner said, “We’ve really gotten stronger, . . . not in the way we would have chosen, but it [her partner being bullied] really did make us work together, stand together against it.” In a similar vein, target-partners talked about bullying like a test they had successfully navigated. Sadly, a third of the target-partners spoke of their partner’s bullying as a shocking tragedy that decimated their relationships. “Mobbing gets in the way of intimacy” (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 96), and targets and targetpartners’ emotional reactions can include “displaced anger, venting, and criticizing[,] . . . the kind of talk likely to inflame and make matters worse between partners” (p. 101). Targets’ social withdrawal is also difficult for target-spouses. As a female target-partner explained, “He won’t go out; he’s afraid of seeing him[,] . . . running into him. He won’t go to the movies . . . or anywhere really, even food shopping. At first, I tried to get him to go out, . . . but I gave up. Now I live my life, and he lives his. I’m just not ready to be a

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shut in.” The final third were couples that simply “rode out the storm,” as a male partner explained. There seems little doubt that in addition to a host of harmful effects (e.g., PTSD, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.), adult bullying is a serious threat to adult intimate relationships. The mechanisms linking adult bullying and relational degradation are varied, many of which are adaptive responses. Displaced aggression, emotional spillover and exhaustion, and reduced social capacity are discussed here.

Displaced aggression Hoobler and Brass (2006) argue that displaced aggression can be the culprit. Displaced aggression occurs when bullied employees come home and vent work-related anger at their family members. In a meta-analysis of displaced aggression (Marcus-Newhall, Pedersen, Carlson, & Miller, 2000), authors invoke a kicking-the-dog metaphor: “a commonly used anecdote to illustrate displaced aggression [is as follows:] . . . A man’s boss berates him but the man does not retaliate because he fears losing his job. Hours later, when he arrives home to the greeting barks of his dog, he responds by kicking it” (p. 670). Because in the United States the primary perpetrators are usually highly placed people, targets are unlikely to fight back directly. Their bottled-up anger and resentment, however, can come out later in aggressive communication and interactions with adult intimate partners (Krahé, 2013). Displaced aggression at home often undermines the family (Hoobler & Brass, 2006). Family undermining is ongoing aggressive and passive-aggressive interactions among family members that directly undercut the family “and diminish the family member or partner’s sense of self-worth” (Hoobler & Brass, 2006, p. 1187).

Emotional spillover and exhaustion Emotional spillover occurs when the emotions evoked in one life domain (e.g., work) spillover into another life domain (e.g., family, friends). Targets beleaguered at work by unrelenting abuse, humiliation, or ostracism feel increasing levels of rage, terror, anxiety, and so forth. These emotions and the negative moods and emotions infect or taint interpersonal communication and relationships through a process of contagion (Sperry & Duffy, 2009). Work-life spillover theorists argue that the emotions and moods people feel in one life domain are similar emotions to what they feel in other life domains (e.g., Ilies et al., 2009; Krouse & Afifi, 2007; Staines, 1980). Additionally, spillover is most likely with elevated or extreme emotions (Staines, 1980), and being bullied at work elicits such emotion. Target-partners can also experience emotional exhaustion from listening to, helping problem solve, providing support or defense, and so forth for

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bullied partners (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 2002). Over time, bullying colonizes targets’ lives and becomes the central topic of conversation between intimate partners, often wearing down and emotionally exhausting target-partners (Lewis & Orford, 2005). When target-partners talked about the effects of bullying on their relationships, they said they felt “tired,” “exhausted,” “burned out,” and “drained” from having to deal with their partners’ ongoing abuse at work.

Reduced social capacity When targets are under attack all day at work, they expend incredible levels of energy just to carry on at their jobs (Hogh, Mikkelsen, & Hansen, 2011). When they leave the abusive environment, they, unsurprisingly, often have little to give others, such as target-partners and children. In many cases, bullying reduces targets’ capacity to respond socially to their intimate partners. Because of the unrelenting abuse at work, being supportive, listening empathetically, or maintaining a consistent level of warmth and affection can be exceedingly difficult (Duffy & Sperry, 2007; Sperry & Duffy, 2009). In many cases, targets talk incessantly (i.e., sensemaking) about their bullying experiences when away from work, which can wear out target-partners (Davenport et al., 2002). Of course, children are also affected by the home environment that adaptive responses to bullying cultivate. Targets’ negative emotion or mood at home can erode interpersonal social support that might help targets deal more constructively with aggressive workplace interactions. Without social support, targets might react at work with reciprocal aggression, which accelerates aggressive communication and negatively affects workgroups and organizations by association. In a kind of destructive feedback loop, the erosion of personal life destabilizes targets that become even less able to deal with the workplace bullying situations.

Children and Parenting When a parent has been mobbed in the workplace, the effects don’t just trickle down to the children, they pour down. (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 103) Successful parenting is labor intensive and requires consistently being present for children, both emotionally and physically. Parenting requires energy, attention, responsiveness, and awareness (Duffy & Sperry, 2014), and bullied adults simply do not have these resources available. Targeted parents have far less ability to attend and respond to children’s needs because of the acute preoccupation with bullying or mobbing, which is characteristic of the phenomena.

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Duffy and Sperry’s (2014) clinical work with mobbed adults and targetspouse interviews (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010) suggests that children can experience considerable harm when a parent is bullied at work. The effects of adult bullying on children is linked to targets’ adaptive psychological and physiological responses to mobbing or bullying, “such as mental and physical health problems, symptoms of post-traumatic stress, burnout, increased intentions to leave [jobs], and reduced job satisfaction” (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012, p. 309). Albeit inadvertently, these adaptive responses commonly lead to serious problems for children that are associated with undermined parenting. Being the target of relentless abuse at work leaves targets drained of energy, anxious, inattentive, and depressed, a state in which they are far less likely to recognize and respond to their children’s needs (Duffy & Sperry, 2014). Parenting involves helping children build new skills, solve problems, and so forth. Being bullied at work “robs a parent of the energy and motivation needed to keep pace with the daily demands that are part and parcel of helping children” (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 105). Workplace bullying and mobbing typically interfere with parenting, so they have the potential to seriously affect children. Similar to bystanders who witness their coworkers’ abuse, children of mobbed or bullied parents are secondary victims—people who are not directly bullied “but whose perceptions, fears and expectations are changed as a result of being vicariously exposed to violence” (Barling, 1996, p. 35). In many cases, target-spouses try to compensate for the bullied partner’s parental lapses or emotional distance, much in the way nondrinking parents compensate for drinking partners (Leonard & Eiden, 2007). In terms of parenting, target-partner interviews are telling. They talk of taking over the bullied partner’s parenting responsibilities, becoming hypervigilant in their efforts to keep children from needing their other parent, and buffering interactions between the children and the bullied parent (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). For children, “multiple risk factor exposure is more harmful than singular risk exposure” (Evans, Li, & Whipple, 2013, p. 1342), and adult bullying can pose multiple risks to children. Workplace bullying is linked to various adaptive responses, which bullied parents are likely to experience. Extrapolating from associated research on parental behavior, parenting, and children, the following explores the potential impact on children of several parental adaptive responses to bullying: job insecurity or loss, destructive marital conflict, alcohol or drug abuse, mental health issues, excessive demands at work, child neglect, and divorce.

Job insecurity or loss When parents talk about job insecurity in front of children or lose their jobs, which is common in bullying, children can internalize negative beliefs

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and attitudes about work. “What may then get modeled for children is lack of faith and trust in work and, to an extent, lack of faith and trust in other people” (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 106). Indeed, Barling, Dupre, and Hepburn (1998) found that parents’ job insecurity affected children’s perceptions of work life more than the number of actual layoffs. Targets of bullying typically experience extreme fear about their jobs; and many lose their jobs, so the fears are warranted (Hogh, Hoel, & Carneiro, 2011). Children, however, see their parents’ loss of fundamental beliefs (e.g., hard work is rewarded; respect is a human right) and may begin to internalize those beliefs (Barling et al., 1998).

Destructive marital conflict When a parent is bullied or mobbed at work, destructive marital conflict commonly follows, which often has a negative effect on family functioning and parenting and has been linked to a variety of risks for childhood disorders, including effects on psychological, physiological, social, and academic functioning (Cummings & Davies, 2002). Destructive marital conflict affects the quality of parental relationships, which in turn affects parent-child relationships, suggesting that when parent-parent relationships are negative, parent-child relationships can also be negative (Erel & Burman, 1995). Even furtive forms of anger, such as nonverbal cues indicating annoyance, irritation, resentment, emotional withdrawal, and the like, although indirect expressions of conflict, significantly contribute to children’s distress (Cummings & Davies, 2002).

Alcohol or drug abuse Research suggests that adult bullying and mistreatment contribute to targets’ alcohol and drug abuse (Bartlett & Bartlett, 2011; Richman, Rospenda, Flaherty, & Freels, 2001; Yildirim & Yildirim, 2007). Parents who abuse alcohol show less positive involvement and express more emotion that is negative with their children than nonusing parents do. For these reasons and others, parental alcohol or drug abuse can have devastating effects on children. Children can develop more aggressive ways of interacting, have lower social competence, experience early-onset alcohol or drug use, and display antisocial behavior (Leonard & Eiden, 2007). Parental alcohol abuse often leads to increased marital conflict, which reduces effective parenting, and contributes to a higher incidence of child behavior problems (Leonard & Eiden, 2007). For example, boys may exhibit increased anger and girls increased sadness (El‐Sheikh, 2005). Children who witness a bullied parent abusing alcohol are likely to experience many of the same things other children experience when parents abuse alcohol—sadness and depression, reduced social engagement with peers, or

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shifts in their peer group toward risky behavior (Leonard & Eiden, 2007). For bullied parents who turn to alcohol, children can emerge as a major stressor. Research points to a negative spiral between parental drinking and children’s behavior problems: parents who abuse alcohol “are at higher risk for having children with behavior problems, and children’s behavior problems may increase parental stress and lead to more drinking” (El‐Sheikh, 2005, p. 14).

Mental health issues Targets are not abused because they have mental health issues, but research consistently points to being bullied or mobbed as antecedents to mental health issues (Hogh, Mikkelsen, & Hansen, 2011; Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2004; see also chapter 13). Bullied adults can, for example, become profoundly afraid or even terrified (Malinauskiene, Obelenis, & Sopagiene, 2005). Children living with a bullied parent may experience some of the effects associated with living with a mentally ill person. Some of the risks of living with someone with a mental illness include poorer physical health, more frequent doctor visits, and limited social activities (Gallagher & Mechanic, 1996). One of the effects of chronic bullying and mobbing is acute depression, especially when targets have to remain in the work environment. Bullying drives targets to question everything about themselves, where they fit in the world, and the people they always thought themselves to be (Hogh, Mikkelsen, & Hansen, 2011; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Answers to these questions are not forthcoming for targeted adults and contribute to depression. Parental depression, in turn, is linked to undesirable outcomes for children, such as becoming depressed themselves or developing decreased self-esteem (Weissman, Warner, Wickramaratne, Moreau, & Olfson, 1997).

Excessive work demands Work demands typically increase exponentially for bullied or mobbed adults (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2013), which can undermine parenting activities (Bass, Butler, Grzywacz, & Linney, 2009). Job-related stress from excessive work demands can have terrible effects on parent-child relationships, usually leading to withdrawal from family interaction (Bumpus, Crouter, & McHale, 1999) and a lower frequency of child-related activities (Roeters, Van Der Lippe, & Kluwer, 2009). Bullied or mobbed parents can find they have little energy left for interactions with their partners or children. In some cases, the parent with fewer work demands compensates for the overtaxed parent (Bass et al., 2009), drawing attention away from what the overtaxed parent is or is not doing at home (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). Bass et al. (2009) found that excessive work demands usually mean “less time spent on child care and less

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time spent on leisure [time] with children” (p. 201). They also found evidence of parental compensation; when one parent had excessive demands at work, the other parent took over more of the parenting responsibilities. In a study of target-spouses, the same parenting compensation was apparent; target-spouses often felt they compensated for the bullied parents’ lack of involvement with children (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010).

Child neglect Workplace bullying appropriates nearly all of the targeted parents’ energy and attention: “[Acute] preoccupation with key players and events in the chronology of mobbing is a typical response to workplace mobbing and doesn’t begin to encompass the acute preoccupation, withdrawal, and impaired focus and concentration that occur in more severe mobbing injuries like depression and PTSD” (Duffy & Sperry, 2014, p. 104). Because of the acute preoccupation, bullied parents often lose interest and lack involvement in children’s activities, show less concern about children’s issues, and focus less on children than prior to the bullying situation (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). This and other forms of social withdrawal or distancing reduce parental functioning and leave children at risk of neglect. Interviews with targets and target-spouses point to the risk of child neglect when one parent is bullied at work (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2013; Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). Neglect, in turn, has a number of long-term negative effects on children and adolescents, including depression, anxiety, high-risk peer friendships, a reduced sense of belonging, and poor self-esteem (Sperry & Widom, 2013). Emotional information processing involves people’s ability to recognize, process, and empathize with others’ emotional expressions, such as joy, sadness, and anger. This ability can be less developed in people who experienced neglect as children (Young & Widom, 2014).

Divorce In my interviews with target-partners, roughly a third talked about divorcing or separating from their spouses because workplace bullying had changed their partners so much, and some were divorced or going through divorce at the time of the study (Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). To assume then that workplace bullying or mobbing can lead to divorce for some couples is not a great stretch, and when marriages or long-term adult relationships dissolve, the dissolution can create considerable turmoil in children’s lives (Amato, 2000; Kim, 2011). Developmental harms associated with divorce include increased likelihood of dropping out of high school, deficits in cognitive skills, losses to psychosocial well-being, and degraded social relations (Kim, 2011). A study of marital instability and its effect on childhood adjustment

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found that children of divorce were at risk of “earlier initiation of sexual intercourse and emotional difficulties, . . . depressed mood, and suicidal ideation” (D’Onofrio et al., 2006).

Friendships Friendship is the deliberate interdependence between people involving the experience and satisfaction of “companionship, emotional security, support, and self-validation” (Demir & Davidson, 2013, p. 527). Friends are crucial to adult well-being, and people with friends usually have a greater sense of wellbeing than those without (Hartup & Stevens, 1999). Basic values underlie most adult friendships: trust, honesty, respect, nonjudgment, being there, and similar life experiences and values (Blieszner & Adams, 1992; Galupo & Gonzalez, 2013). Friends feel satisfied when friendships include such experiences as working together toward a shared goal, respecting each other’s privacy, offering advice, and so forth. Emotional support and shared interests are particularly significant in adult friendships (Blieszner & Adams, 1992). Adult friendships usually center on support and companionship and are marked by in-depth disclosure, being more directive and authoritative, and symmetrical problem-solving interactions (Hartup & Stevens, 1999). These connections and the emotional support people receive through them are especially crucial during life crises, especially something as shocking and world changing as workplace bullying. Friends can help targets analyze the situation and reframe or rethink the situation in new ways (Blieszner & Adams, 1992). A friend’s analysis and reframing may reduce the target’s negative thinking and emotion and point toward better ways of handling the issue. In addition to analyzing and reframing problems, friends help friends manage emotion and emotional displays (Kramer & Hess, 2002). Indeed, targeted adults typically find an empathetic ear with friends, a safe space in which to express volatile emotions, which can diffuse otherwise suppressed emotion in a benign and effective way. Friends help manage emotional reactions by recognizing and confirming targets’ feelings, which reduces stress (Blieszner & Adams, 1992). Friendships satisfy a number of human needs; yet, like all relationships, they require an energy and time investment (Demir & Davidson, 2013).

Workplace friends Friendships can be with work and nonwork people; whichever type, friends can suffer considerably when a friend is targeted (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011). These people have special relationships with targets in which they share personal and work information (Sias, Gallagher, Kopaneva, & Pedersen, 2012). In situations of bullying, workplace friends can play important roles.

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In D’Cruz and Noronha’s (2011) research, when workplace friends became involved in the bullying situation, initially they completely protected the targets. Over time, however, workplace friends who had initially protected and defended targets significantly curtailed their efforts when supervisors and other coworkers communicated negative reactions. Bullying can cement workplace friendships and loyalties (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006) and drastically challenges those relationships (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011). Being friends with targets at work has its risks. Workplace friends, more than other bystanders, are likely to leave their jobs when (or if) their targetfriends are fired or quit (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006; Vartia, 2001). So being a friend at work carries risks for bystanders, as noted in the earlier section. Being friends with a target can be a heartbreaking experience. Even when workplace friends do everything they can, they may still experience “regret over their limited effectiveness and struggle with confusion, guilt and remorse” (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011, p. 272). Workplace friends, like targets in past research (Cowan, 2011), may find that HR’s practices constrain efforts to help target-friends (Cowan, 2012).

Friends (nonwork) Like parenting or being a marital partner, sustaining friendship takes energy and effort that targeted adults are unlikely to have. Maintaining friendships is crucial, but the processes associated with satisfying friendships can be difficult for targeted adults to sustain, especially with nonwork friends who take added effort to see. Workplace bullying strips the energy targets need to engage in these interactions with friends. When targeted adults need their friends the most, those friendships are at considerable risk because of colonization (i.e., acute preoccupation) leading to vitality loss and social distancing (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014). Targets have their lives colonized or taken over by being bullied at work; they respond by becoming acutely preoccupied with the experience as they attempt to make sense of and resolve or end the abuse. Thinking and talking about shocking workplace events and what to do requires a staggering amount of mental and physical energy (Qureshi et al., 2015). Social distancing is a common response and adaptation to being mobbed that affects friendships both at work and outside of work. Ongoing attacks at work and defending against them come to colonize, or take over, nearly all aspects of targets’ lives. Colonization occurs in part because bullying continues for so long; the average duration in the United States is 18 (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007) to 23 (Namie, 2007) months. Targeted adults become acutely preoccupied with the workplace horrors— professional lives crumbling, excruciating loneliness, terror, loss of basic

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beliefs about life and work (Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008)— and far more. The experience leaves little or no energy to invest in friendships with the mutuality so necessary to maintaining adult friendships. Because of the ways bullying colonizes targets’ lives, bullying can lead to the immediate or eventual loss of friendship mutuality that is key to developing and sustaining friendships (Hartup & Stevens, 1999). Because bullying can continue for years, friendship communication can become strained because of the loss of mutuality. When target-friends feel as if they must always hear about the bullying situation or when targets fail to take target-friends’ directive advice, friendships become strained. Friends can become emotionally exhausted and begin to distance themselves from target-friends as a means of self-defense. Friends who earlier listened and tried to help can begin to feel exhausted and irritated (Davenport et al., 2002). They may feel like they are receiving little in return or come to feel irritated because targets appear to ignore their requested and unrequested advice. Part of how bullying colonizes targets’ lives involves ceaseless sensemaking (e.g., talking incessantly about the workplace; Lutgen-Sandvik & McDermott, 2011). The acute preoccupation with identity work and repair (e.g., self-defense to others, fitting abuse into self-image) is another aspect of colonization (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Both of these colonizing dynamics mark targets’ conversations. Targets make sense of bullying by talking about the experience to work and nonwork friends and others (Lutgen-Sandvik, Alberts, & Tracy, 2008). Sensemaking is a feature of adult bullying and mobbing from the beginning to the end and beyond. Targets continually try to figure out what happened and why, what they could have done differently, what they should do, what others think of them and the bully, whether others have been bullied, and on and on and on. Rumination runs rampant in these phenomena. Targets’ acute preoccupation with abuse typically includes co-rumination or excessive problem talk with friends (Boren, 2013). Targets and their friends can feel worn down by chronic co-rumination. Even with very supportive friends, excessive problem talk strains relationships, and research suggests it is less than effective at solving problems (Boren, 2013). Taken together, excessive rumination, sensemaking, identity work, and other colonizing processes and experiences deplete target energy. Like parenting or being a vital part of an adult relationship, maintaining friendships takes energy that targets simply do not have because they are dealing with chronic abuse at work. What energy targets do have is expended in excessive problem talk, self-defense claims, and so forth, which can come to wear out friends. They may come to feel as if they are always on the “giving” side of the friendship because targets are in extreme psychological pain.

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DISCUSSION AND DIRECTIONS OF FUTURE RESEARCH Research on bullying, mobbing, workplace aggression, and the like is impressive and expansive (e.g., Duffy & Sperry, 2012; Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2011; Fox & Spector, 2005; Lutgen-Sandvik & Sypher, 2009). Some considerable gaps exist in our knowledge about the widespread risks bullying poses for targets’ social and work circles. Much of what is discussed here is extrapolated from related research on marriage, children, and friendship, not specifically about how bullying or mobbing affects these relationships. More research is needed into the cohort groups and relationships workplace bullying harms, beyond target-focused research. Target-focused research is rich and abundant; thousands of empirical studies and theoretical reviews comprise this body of work. Bystander-focused research is an emerging field with some great ideas about bystander training (Scully & Rowe, 2009; van Heugten, 2010) and other empirical evidence of harm to people who witness others’ abuse (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011; LutgenSandvik et al., 2007; Vartia, 2001). Work in this area is still the exception in the field, given the number of works published each year on bullying and mobbing. Some ideas follow for extending our knowledge of workplace bullying’s effects on bystanders: • What mental, physical, or psychological harms are associated with witnessing workplace bullying? • What, if any, effect does witnessing workplace bullying have on witnesses’ work productivity? • Does workplace bullying affect organizational commitment, citizenship behavior, loyalty, and so forth? • How do witnesses come to know about workplace bullying? • To whom do witnesses talk, when, and where in terms of others being bullied at their jobs? • How do witnesses respond to bullying? • Are the responses to bullying more or less effective (e.g., in terms of helping the target feel better, ending bullying, protecting others, etc.)? • How likely are witnesses to become targets? • Does moving from witness to target vary depending on the bystander group to which the witness belongs? Bystander research is essential if we are to fully understand the ramifications of workplace bullying and mobbing, and bystanders are the second most frequently examined cohort involved in the phenomenon. Research on targets and bystanders, organizationally situated cohorts, is the foundation

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on which future scholars can build to understand the phenomena’s effects outside the organization. In terms of nonwork cohorts (target-partners, children, friends, family), extraorganizational research on bullying and mobbing is exceedingly rare (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014; Hoobler & Brass, 2006; Lutgen-Sandvik & Namie, 2010). Some ideas follow for extending our knowledge of workplace bullying’s effects on target-partners: • What are the effects of workplace bullying on marital functioning and communication? • Does workplace bullying increase the likelihood of divorce or separation? • How do target-partners deal with their partners’ abuse? • Which ways are most or least effective at helping or supporting targets? • What types of target-partner social support are most effective at helping or supporting targets? • How do target-partners involve themselves in the bullying situation? • Do they avoid getting involved or get overinvolved? In addition to target-partners, workplace bullying places children at risk, as bullying erodes parenting, yet we know very little beyond Duffy and Sperry’s (2014) provocative and alarming work. Considerably more work is needed. Some ideas follow for extending our knowledge of workplace bullying’s effects on parenting and children: • What is the process through which children progress when one of their parents is bullied at work? • How does the child find out? How does either parent speak to the child about it? Does the child notice tension between parents or other cues that something is amiss? • How does workplace bullying change children’s family lives? • In what ways has workplace bullying changed how children talk to parents? • Do children defer to the nonbullied parent or avoid certain subjects or times of the day? • What ill effects has workplace bullying caused for children in the bullied parent’s household? • In what ways does workplace bullying affect children’s school performance? • Does a parent’s bullying affect children’s academic work or afterschool activity involvement?

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When it comes to friends and workplace bullying, we know a little about what occurs between workplace friends (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011), but almost nothing about nonwork friendships. Davenport et al. (2002) anecdotally mention the emotional exhaustion friends experience, likely because targets talk excessively about the problem. Duffy and Sperry (2014) explain that targets also socially withdraw when mobbed, so friendships can suffer at a time when targets need friendships the most. Possibly, the risks to friendship are neglect and exhaustion, but we simply do not know. Empirical research is practically nonexistent in this area. Some ideas follow for extending our knowledge of workplace bullying’s effects on friends and friendships: • How do targets bring up the subject of workplace bullying with their friends? • Does the friend have to “pull” information out of the target? • Does the target go to the friend and ask to talk? • How does workplace bullying affect friendships? • Is there evidence of social withdrawal from friendships? • Is there evidence of emotional exhaustion? • How do friends deal with and respond to a friend’s abuse? • Which ways are most or least effective at helping or supporting targets? • What types of social support are most effective for friends helping or supporting targets? Aggressor-focused and family-focused workplace bullying research are two other areas that have received little or no research attention. Aggressorfocused studies are rare (e.g., Bloch, 2012; DeSanti, 2014), and family-focused work (aside from target-partner focused) is nonexistent. Some ideas follow for extending our knowledge of workplace bullying’s effects on family members: • How has a family member’s bullying at work affected other family members? • Does one member’s abuse at work affect family traditions, events, and so forth? • How does the family talk about bullying at work? • Does blame-the-victim language or advice giving preside? • How has workplace bullying affected family conversation? • How has workplace bullying affected family relationships and connections? Because workplace bullying research has a predominant target-focus, most of it has a pro-target stance, implied or otherwise. Aggressors, although sometimes demonized in the popular press, and sidelined in adult bullying

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scholarship, are likely harmed when they bully others (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2012). Aggressors are the people we love to hate, if only implied. Some may think, “Don’t they deserve to be harmed for hurting others?” People working with aggressors argue that aggressors at work attack others out of fear and ignorance (Crawshaw, 2012). Whatever the reason, aggressors are troubled people who do themselves no good by abusing others at work. Aggressors lose others’ respect; people at work ridicule and avoid them, and continued bullying leads to many being fired or demoted (DeSanti, 2014; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006; Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2012). Some ideas follow for extending our knowledge of workplace bullying’s effects on aggressors: • What happens to aggressors over time in their career trajectories? • Are they fired, promoted, or transferred repeatedly? • Are they rewarded for bullying? • Do guilt and remorse play a part in aggressors’ experiences? • How do they deal with guilt, remorse, or other involved emotions? • What work-related ramifications have aggressors experienced because of bullying others? • What personal-life ramifications have aggressors experienced because of bullying others?

CONCLUSION Damage from dysfunctional working cultures reaches far beyond the workplace; adult bullying strains marriages, burdens friendships, and hurts children. Clearly, the harm from adult bullying at work is not limited to targets. Intimate partners, family members, friends, and even children are at risk when someone close to them is targeted. Coworkers often feel remorseful when they do not help targets, incensed when managers take no or ineffective action, and are afraid of being targeted themselves. Target-partners feel overwhelmed, unsupported, and angry as marriages are strained, some to the breaking point. Parenting and children become less important as persistent abuse at work degrades relational connections and undermines parental communication. Friends become exhausted from hearing about abuse for months and even years or grow irritated. Targets may come to avoid social contact, so friendships may wane from neglect. The current chapter explored these issues; the chapter summarized empirical research and applicable theory for understanding how adult bullying affected people in the targets’ work and nonwork domains—witnessing coworkers, target-partners, children, and friends. Target-adaptive responses to bullying create problems for the people in the targets’ lives, and the number of people bullying and mobbing harms is astronomical. Conservatively, 1 in 10 people are bullied in the United States each

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year (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007), which means approximately 15 million U.S. workers are bullied each year (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). Hypothetically, if each target has one friend, one partner, and one child, adult bullying can devastate an additional 45 million people’s lives. These numbers and the sheer volume of human pain linked to workplace bullying and mobbing call us as researchers to do all we can to restore respect, dignity, and civility to the workplace.

NOTES 1. Twemlow, Fonagy, and Sacco (2004) categorize bystanders as bully bystanders (become involved in bullying); avoidant bystanders (deny all responsibility); victim bystanders (become victimized in the process); and helpful bystanders (attempt to defuse situation). 2. Aggressors were omitted from the list due to limited research. 3. Except in the rare cases where targets suppress workplace experiences, relationships are rarely untouched by a partner being bullied at work.

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Quantitatively refining a qualitative model. Quality & Quantity, 49(1), 93–113. doi:10.1007/s11135-013-9976-4 Richman, J. A., Rospenda, K. M., Flaherty, J. A., & Freels, S. (2001). Workplace harassment, active coping, and alcohol-related outcomes. Journal of Substance Abuse, 13(3), 347–366. doi:10.1016/S0899-3289(01)00079-7 Riforgiate, S. E., & Lutgen-Sandvik, P. (2014, June 19–21). Integrating and separating: Exploring perceptions and emotions associated with work-life boundary strength and spillover. Paper presented at the Work and Family Researchers Network Annual Convention, New York. Roeters, A., Van Der Lippe, T., & Kluwer, E. S. (2009). Parental work demands and the frequency of child‐related routine and interactive activities. Journal of Marriage and Family, 71(5), 1193–1204. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00663.x Rospenda, K. M. (2002). Workplace harassment, service utilization, and drinking outcomes. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 7(2), 141–155. Scully, M., & Rowe, M. (2009). Bystander training within organizations. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 2(1), 89–95. Sias, P. M., Gallagher, E. B., Kopaneva, I., & Pedersen, H. (2012). Maintaining workplace friendships: Perceived politeness and predictors of maintenance tactic choice. Communication Research, 39(2), 239–268. doi:10.1177/0093650210396869 Smokowski, P. R., & Kopasz, K. H. (2005). Bullying in school: An overview of types, effects, family characteristics, and intervention strategies. Children & Schools, 27(2), 101–110. doi:10.1093/cs/27.2.101 Soares, A. (2012). When darkness comes: Workplace bullying and suicidal ideation. In N. Tehrani (Ed.), Workplace bullying: Symptoms and solutions (pp. 67–80). London, England: Routledge. Sperry, D. M., & Widom, C. S. (2013). Child abuse and neglect, social support, and psychopathology in adulthood: A prospective investigation. Child Abuse & Neglect, 37(6), 415–425. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.02.006 Sperry, L., & Duffy, M. (2009). Workplace mobbing: Family dynamics and therapeutic considerations. American Journal of Family Therapy, 37(5), 433–442. doi:10.1080 /​01926180902945756 Staines, G. L. (1980). Spillover versus compensation: A review of the literature on the relationship between work and nonwork. Human Relations, 33(2), 111–129. doi:10.1177/001872678003300203 Thompson, B. M., Kirk, A., & Brown, D. F. (2005). Work based support, emotional exhaustion, and spillover of work stress to the family environment: A study of policewomen. Stress and Health, 21(3), 199–207. doi:10.1002/smi.1056 Twemlow, S. W., Fonagy, P., & Sacco, F. C. (2004). The role of the bystander in the social architecture of bullying and violence in schools and communities. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1036(1), 215–232. doi:10.1196/annals.1330.014 Tye-Williams, S., & Krone, K. J. (2015). Chaos, reports, and quests: Narrative agency and co-workers in stories of workplace bullying. Management Communication Quarterly, 29(1), 3–27. doi:10.1177/0893318914552029 van Heugten, K. (2010, June 2–4). Engaging bystanders as change agents in workplace bullying. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Workplace Bullying and Harassment, Cardiff, Wales.

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Vartia, M. (2001). Consequences of workplace bullying with respect to the well-being of its targets and the observers of bullying. Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment and Health, 27(1), 63–69. Vickers, M. H. (2006). Toward employee wellness: Rethinking bullying paradoxes and masks. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 18(4), 267–281. Vranceanu, A.-M., Barsky, A., & Ring, D. (2009). Psychosocial aspects of disabling musculoskeletal pain. Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, 91(8), 2014–2018. doi:10.2106/JBJS.H.01512 Weissman, M. M., Warner, V., Wickramaratne, P., Moreau, D., & Olfson, M. (1997). Offspring of depressed parents: 10 years later. Archives of General Psychiatry, 54(10), 932–940. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1997.01830220054009 Yildirim, A., & Yildirim, D. (2007). Mobbing in the workplace by peers and managers: Mobbing experienced by nurses working in healthcare facilities in Turkey and its effect on nurses. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16(8), 1444–1453. doi:10.1111 /​j.1365-2702.2006.01814.x Young, J. C., & Widom, C. S. (2014). Long-term effects of child abuse and neglect on emotion processing in adulthood. Child Abuse & Neglect, 38(8), 1369–1381. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2014.03.008

9

When Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Occur: The Impact on Organizations Renee L. Cowan

A recent New York Times article (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015) highlighting Amazon.com’s negative and often abusive workplace culture and practices has brought to the fore an example of the effects aggressive, uncivil, and bullying practices can have on an organization. The article highlights such examples as rampant sabotaging of fellow coworkers, high turnover, employees regularly crying after grueling meetings, and shunning of those who cannot or will not work excessive hours. The article argues these practices are reflective of the Amazon culture. One former employee commented, “I would see people practically combust” (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015, p. 2), and another told the authors, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk” (p. 7). It is clear bullying can be detrimental to perceptions of an organization’s culture, resulting in trouble finding and retaining valuable talent. The focus of this chapter is the negative impact bullying and mobbing have on organizations. In the United States, it is clear bullying has negative effects on employees, groups, and the organizations. This chapter will specifically concentrate on the negative consequences to organizations at the individual, group, and organizational levels.

INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL AFFECTIVE ATTITUDINAL AND BEHAVIORAL CONSEQUENCES U.S. researchers Neuman and Baron’s (2005) general affective aggression model demonstrates that engaging in aggressive behavior can be attributed to a complex of cognitive, attitudinal, and physiological processes as well as past experiences and culture. Some of these aggressive and bullying behaviors include isolation, insults, threats, physically aggressive gestures, yelling and verbal abuse, and others (Fox & Cowan, 2014). Bullying behaviors and

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characteristics are discussed in detail in chapter 1. The effects of the negative behaviors associated with bullying and mobbing and the repetition of these behaviors can lead targets to be insecure, reduce communication, lack initiative, become depressed, and suffer from myriad stress-induced health issues, to name just a few (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 2005; Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Namie & Namie, 2011; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012). The effects on targets are discussed in detail in chapters 5 and 6. U.S. researcher LutgenSandvik (2008), in her work with American employees, found that the bullying experience resulted in a deep rupture to the targets’ sense of who they were or their identity. Likewise, Duffy & Sperry (2014), also U.S. researchers, discuss the severe impacts to the employee, their families, coworkers, and the organization when mobbing occurs. It has been argued that when systematic abuse such as bullying occurs, this moves targets to believe that the organization is also responsible for the abuse and not protecting them (Namie, Christensen, & Phillips, 2014; Rose, Shuck, Twyford, & Bergman, 2015). The Workplace Bullying Institute (Namie et al., 2014) found that 28 percent of targets believe the organization is responsible or to blame for the bullying. And Hollis (2015), who surveyed those in U.S. higher education administration (student affairs, human resources, executives, academic faculty, and others), found that 47 percent of administrators reported the organization did nothing in bullying situations or supported the bully. These effects and negative perceptions have real consequences for organizations, including lower job satisfaction, less organizational commitment, workplace disengagement, lower productivity and performance, increased intentions to leave, and actual turnover. The attitudinal, affective, and behavioral consequences of bullying for organizations will be the focus of this section; consequences will be discussed, and U.S. research will specifically be highlighted.

Attitudinal and Affective Consequences of Bullying Recent research has made it quite clear that contemporary U.S. employees react negatively when subjected to abusive supervisors who bully or are caught working in organizations that condone this type of behavior. From decreased job satisfaction and workplace engagement to lowered overall organizational commitment, there are a host of negative attitudinal and affective consequences of bullying (Rose et al., 2015). Tepper (2000) demonstrated that abusive supervision or working under a bully boss results in less job satisfaction and less normative and affective commitment to the organization for U.S employees. These consequences were even more pronounced for those who felt they could not escape the situation and had less mobility. These findings have been echoed across the world, as evidenced in Nielsen and

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Einarsen’s (2012) meta-analysis of over 60 studies on bullying. Their subsequent model and findings demonstrate several negative organizational consequences of bullying, particularly reduced job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, Hershcovis and Barling (2010) also conducted a meta-analysis using 66 studies and demonstrated workplace aggression, including bullying, results in a host of negative consequences (e.g., turnover intent, interpersonal and organizational deviance, depression, emotional exhaustion), and these outcomes differ in magnitude depending on the perpetrator. Aggression and bullying enacted by supervisors resulted in the strongest negative relationships with satisfaction and organizational commitment; however, coworker aggression also resulted in significant negative relationships with these variables as well. It is clear that when bullying is present in organizations, those who are targeted feel less satisfied and committed to the organization. In many of these studies, the link is also made with lower productivity and intentions to leave as well as actual turnover (Hershcovis & Barling, 2010; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012; Rose et al., 2015). Effects on productivity and intention to leave will be discussed in a subsequent section. Beyond job satisfaction and organizational commitment, U.S. researchers Rose, Shuck, Twyford, and Bergman (2015) recently demonstrated dysfunctional and abusive leadership, seen in some bullying cases, results in negative effects such as lower motivation and less organizational citizenship behaviors (or behaviors that promote effective organizational functioning and are done simply for the good of the organization). Another related affective response to bullying is workplace disengagement (Hollis, 2015). U.S. researcher Hollis (2015) recently found bullying has a significant impact on how employees spend their time at work. In her study with higher education administrators, she found that 62 percent of respondents reported they had been the target of or had witnessed bullying, and this translated to 3.9 hours a day spent avoiding the workplace bully, or, put another way, disengaged from work. Law, Dollard, Tuckey, and Dormann (2011) investigated the effect of workplace bullying on employee engagement more directly. For Australian employees, they found workplace engagement suffered when bullying occurred. Workplace engagement refers to “an individual employee’s cognitive, emotional and behavioral state directed toward desired organization outcomes” (Shuck & Wollard, 2010, p. 103). Although workplace engagement has not been directly studied in U.S. bullying situations, Reio and SandersReio (2011), U.S. researchers, found that workplace incivility (a milder form of workplace aggression) results in negative effects on workplace engagement. It is likely U.S. employees would also report less workplace engagement if being targeted by an office bully or stuck in an organization with a culture of bullying; however, this is an area that still needs to be empirically explored in

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the United States. Taken together, when bullying is present in organizations, targets and others feel less satisfied with their jobs, they are less motivated to work, they feel less valued, and they spend their time avoiding the bullying and disengaged from their job and workplace. With consequences such as these, it is clear there will be behavioral consequences; employees are likely to try to spend less time in this toxic environment, be less productive, and even exit the organization.

Negative Behavioral Consequences of Bullying Absenteeism A significant behavioral consequence of workplace bullying is increased absenteeism (taking sick time to stay away from work). There is much evidence that demonstrates bullying and mobbing are associated with increased absenteeism (Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Hoel, Sheehan, Cooper & Einarsen, 2011; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012). Research in the United States and other countries has found that absence can be attributed to the degrading health status of the targeted employee as well as a lack of motivation to be in the abusive environment (Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Hoel et al., 2011). And recently it was found that long-term sickness absence was more prevalent for those who were frequently bullied (Ortega, Christensen, Hogh, Rugulies, & Borg, 2011). The cost of target illness, long-term sickness leave, and associated medical costs will be the focus of a subsequent section. In the United States, research conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI; 2013) found that when targets take leave, they report using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and workers’ compensation (WC). Bullying and mobbing can also result in presenteeism.

Presenteeism Another significant behavioral consequence of workplace bullying is increased presenteeism, or going to work while sick. According to the same WBI report (2013), 51 percent of workplace bullied targets reported taking no leave and likely went to work sick. Johns (2010) describes presenteeism as “at work, but not working” because of health problems and illness (p. 520). Presenteeism, as a consequence of bullying, could be attributed to the fact that there is no paid sick leave law requiring organizations in the United States to provide paid sick leave to employees (Namie & Namie, 2011; WBI, 2013). This leaves many targets with no choice but to continue to go to work sick and endure the bullying environment. Johns (2010) reports that depression and “mental and nervous” (p. 529) problems resulted in more days lost to presenteeism. These are often health conditions associated with frequent bullying (Namie & Namie, 2011). In the United States, researchers have concentrated on the productivity consequences of presenteeism and found

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that presenteeism actually accounts for more productivity loss than absenteeism (Johns, 2010).

Performance and productivity Aggression, such as that experienced in bullying situations, has been associated with lower performance and productivity. Hershcovis and Barling (2010) argue that when employees (targets and bystanders) are subjected to an extreme stressor, such as workplace bullying, they exhaust their cognitive and emotional energy dealing with the stressor and therefore have less energy to focus on performance and productivity. U.S. researcher Lutgen-Sandvik (2003) similarly argues that when workers experience emotional abuse at the hands of their supervisors or bully bosses, their focus shifts from their jobs and being productive to self-protection. Also, Davenport and colleagues (2005) point to a reduction in the quality and quantity of work when dealing with mobbing. European researchers have found that bullying can lead to insecurity and a lack of concentration that leads to mistakes (Hoel, Sparks, & Cooper, 2001) Similarly, job strain and bullying have been found to result in depression-related productivity loss in Australia (McTernan, Dollard, & LaMontagne, 2013). In the United States, there is empirical evidence that low job satisfaction and organizational commitment are related to lower productivity (Judge, Thoerson, Bono, & Patton, 2001), but clearer links to bullying still need to be explored. Samnani and Singh (2014) argue that performance-enhancing compensation strategies (popular in U.S. organizations) that are supposed to encourage productivity likely have the opposite effect: encouraging bullying and less productivity. Taken together, the negative effects on employees’ attitudes toward and affect for the organization as well as their resulting behaviors (more absenteeism, presenteeism, and lower productivity), it is not surprising many employees exit these organizations.

Intent to leave and turnover Bullying and mobbing have been associated with increased turnover in organizations as well as higher intentions to leave the organization (Namie & Namie, 2011; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012). Escaping the organization and the abuse is often reported as the only action that fully stops the situation (Namie & Namie, 2011; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006) and is an effect of experiencing and acting to escape severe stress. Glambek, Matthisen, Hetland, and Einarsen (2014) found in their longitudinal study that workplace bullying was an antecedent to job insecurity and intention to leave. Turnover costs organizations money and possibly knowledge loss when the target leaves (Namie & Namie, 2011; Hoel et al., 2011). Turnover could hurt the organization’s reputation if talent continues to leave and if employees are considering leaving because of abuse or witnessing abuse (Namie & Namie, 2011). Leading U.S. scholars on bullying

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and mobbing even advise employees to seek out “healthy” organizations and determine the organization’s health status not only on the traditional dimension of profitability and overall performance but also on the well-being of their employees (Duffy & Sperry, 2014). If sought-after employees attend to organizational health preemployment, those organizations not deemed “healthy” will clearly have a harder time recruiting and retaining talent. As the Amazon.com situation reported in the New York Times (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015) demonstrates, U.S. targets leave or intend to leave organizations where abuse such as mobbing and bullying occur. A 2010 WBI research study demonstrates 41 percent of women and 36 percent of men who were bullied quit because of the bullying (as cited in Namie & Namie, 2011). However, WBI (2013) research also found it is hard for bullied U.S. employees to leave their jobs, which, in turn, increases presenteeism. They report that the effect of income loss was reported as the hardest reason to leave, followed by personal pride (or the idea that leaving is losing and the bully wins). Johnson and Rea (2009) found bullying was linked with an intent to leave the organization among nurses in Washington State. Lutgen-Sandvik (2006) found targets threatened to quit, encouraged others to quit, celebrated those who left, and actually left the organization in reaction to bullying. Lutgen-Sandvik (2003) also theorized a cycle of employee emotional abuse, building on Swedish researcher Leymann’s (1990) ideas on what actually happens in workplace emotional abuse situations. Lutgen-Sandvik (2003) theorized that not only do targets typically leave, get fired, or get pushed out of organizations, but this cycle regenerates and begins again with a new target after the previous target exits the organization. This theory points to a seemingly endless exit and turnover of bullied employees, which, if not arrested, will likely have negative effects on those who remain in the organization as well as on the organization’s reputation. Similarly, Keashly (2001) found when targets do not feel satisfied with an organization’s actions and responses to bullying situations, this could also lead to intentions to leave. As Namie and Namie (2011) contend, responsibly dealing with bullying greatly benefits organizations, and left unchecked, bullying “kills good organizations” (p. 31). One way it begins to kill good organizations is through social influence and the infecting of those in and around the bullying situation.

GROUP-LEVEL NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR ORGANIZATIONS It is clear that bullying and mobbing not only affect the targets of the abuse but others in the organization or work group who witness the abuse. The impact of bullying and mobbing on bystanders and witnesses is the focus

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of chapter 8, authored by Lutgen-Sandvik. However, because bullying can have a ripple effect on those witnessing the behavior and an impact on the social relationships in the organization (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2011; Namie & Namie, 2011, Rose et al., 2015), it can thus have an impact on the organization and its functioning, as it is very difficult to remain neutral in bullying cases (Namie & Namie, 2011; Namie & Lutgen-Sandvik, 2010). Therefore, I will also briefly discuss this issue. U.S. researchers Namie and Lutgen-Sandvik (2010) talk about bullying as having a “communal character,” where bullies often have active and passive accomplices. U.S. researchers Rose and colleagues (2015) report there is a spillover effect to groups, teams, and other units when dysfunctional leaders enact abuse. When employees believe that the organization could and should do something about the abuse, they report reducing their productivity in response, which can obviously have detrimental effects on overall organizational functioning and productivity (Davenport et al., 2005). U.S. researchers Andersson and Pearson (1999) point to an almost multiplier effect where incivility escalates and multiplies, spreading and infecting work units and groups and even the organization’s culture. Hoel, Sparks, and Cooper (2001) report bullying often results in a “climate of fear” (p. 4) that produces similar mental and physical health problems for witnesses and bystanders. Davenport and colleagues (2005) suggest mobbing can damage teamwork and cohesiveness in work groups. Other effects include a poor psychological environment (Vartia, 2001), a poor work environment, poor attitudes, and poor individual well-being (Cooper-Thomas et al., 2014) and persistent negativity in the workplace (Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2007). And employees report bullying hurts workplace relationships as well as adds to feelings of work overload and workplace negativity (Jennifer, Cowie, & Ananiadou, 2003). Clearly, these effects can hurt the organization in terms of productivity, morale, and functioning as well as lead to a negative reputation of the company as one that is not healthy to work in (Davenport et al., 2005; Duffy & Sperry, 2014). However, in the United States, issues such as how witnesses and bystanders respond to bullying, how it affects them, what they do and do not do, and how this all ultimately affects the organization as a whole are only beginning to be explored. Research on how the group-level consequences of bullying and mobbing affect the organization, its reputation, and functioning should all be subjects of future bullying research.

ORGANIZATION-LEVEL NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES As discussed in the previous section, bullying and mobbing can hurt organizational culture and a positive working environment (Duffy & Sperry, 2014). Decreased employee satisfaction and commitment, increased presenteeism

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and absenteeism, higher intentions to leave and turnover, the spillover effect of increased aggression and negativity, and damaged workplace relationships all work to harm the organization and its reputation. These negative consequences also distract from the organization’s mission and work to be done. Even the rumor that the organization might suffer from a negative culture or be led by an aggressive and uncaring leader can result in negative perceptions of the organization and repercussions in attracting good talent. (Consider the negative attention Amazon.com garnered after the scathing New York Times article (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015) exposed a “bruising workplace” (see Liacas, 2015; Wemple, 2015).) In this section, I will discuss how bullying and mobbing result in both intangible and tangible costs to organizations (Namie & Namie, 2011). Bullying and mobbing result in negative organizational-level consequences, such as damage to reputation and work culture, as well as increased monetary costs in several areas, including legal costs, threat of litigation, and increased disability and health costs.

Intangible Costs: Negative Organizational Culture and Loss of Reputation A negative, aggressive, and dysfunctional organizational culture is often discussed as an antecedent to bullying situations in organizations (Cowan, 2014; Goodboy, Martin, Knight, & Long, 2015; Keashly & Jagatic, 2011; Salin, 2003). Organizational risk factors that encourage bullying are the focus of chapter 4. Here I will explore how a negative organizational culture and dysfunctional climate can also be an outcome or a consequence of bullying activity left unaddressed. Recent WBI (2013) research demonstrates that many U.S. organizations do nothing about bullying and mobbing when they learn it is occurring. Namie and Lutgen-Sandvik (2010) found that targets and witnesses overwhelmingly believe organizations are also responsible for bullying and do nothing in these situations. Namie, Christensen, and Phillips (2014) also found that U.S. organizations most often react to reports of bullying in a negative way, including denying that it is happening (25%), discounting the situation as not being serious (16%), and rationalizing it as a way of doing business (15%). In the United States, most targets report bullying continues unabated even when the target seeks help from human resources (HR) and other leaders in the organizations (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2003; WBI, 2012b). Targets report that when they went to HR to seek help, HR actions were not helpful and retaliation followed (37%), or HR did nothing and took no action (30%). Targets report their organizations do not have specific antiharassment policies that specifically address bullying (61%), and if they do, these are not applied fairly

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(17%). I found when interviewing U.S. HR representatives that most do not have a policy that addresses bullying, and others have a policy that they feel could be used in bullying situations, even though it is not a specific antibullying policy (Cowan, 2011). However, when the latter were analyzed, it was clear they would provide little tangible help for targets in bullying situations. I speculate in this work that the absence of clear and specific antibullying policies communicates to employees that the organization does not care about these situations and will not act to stop them (Cowan, 2011). Even when organizations have policies that directly address bullying, they do no good unless they are implemented fairly and consistently (Woodrow & Guest, 2014). Mishandling of bullying by HR (especially when leaders or managers are accused) serves to erode trust, which can have detrimental effects and hurt the work environment (Harrington, Rayner, & Warren, 2012). When leadership does nothing to stop bullying and HR does not have a policy that will actually address the situation, bullying becomes the “way things are done” and can result in negative organizational cultures and climates. U.S. researchers Pearson and Porath (2005) argue that incivility (a mild form of workplace aggression) left unchecked erodes organizational values and is too costly to be ignored. Taking this research into consideration, bullying—a more severe form of workplace aggression—likely does even more damage to an organization’s mission, culture, working environment, and productivity (Davenport et al., 2005; Hoel et al., 2011). All of these issues affect reputation and the ability to attract and retain talent (Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Giga, Hoel, & Lewis, 2008; Pearson & Porath, 2005). Bullying and mobbing not only result in intangible costs for organizations but also tangible costs to the bottom line.

Tangible Costs: Leaves, Turnover, and Insurance Claims How much does bullying and mobbing cost U.S. organizations? What is the monetary cost of not addressing this aggression or mishandling complaints and reports of bullying? The answers to these questions will be the focus of this section. The emotional, physical, and psychological impacts of bullying and mobbing are the focus of previous chapters in this book set. The research reported in these chapters demonstrates that in the United States, severe and traumatic health-related consequences are experienced as an effect of bullying and mobbing. Severe anxiety, loss of concentration, depression, mood swings, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are all reported as symptoms associated with prolonged bullying and mobbing (Davenport et al., 2005; Duffy & Sperry, 2014; WBI, 2012a). Severe physical effects of bullying and mobbing are also reported, including headaches, sleep problems, fatigue, and exhaustion (Duffy & Sperry,

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2014; WBI, 2012a). WBI (2012a) also found in its survey of targets that 71 percent seek help from a physician and 63 percent saw a mental health professional. Another WBI (2013) poll found that 49 percent of targets surveyed take a voluntary or forced leave of absence, and 17 percent used shortor long-term disability leave. While it is a good sign that targets are seeking the medical attention they need, at the same time, this results in increased health care costs and risk to organizations. The significant impact on the health of targets and others in the abusive environment leads to increased leaves of absence (medical, disability, and others); turnover and replacement costs; and increased insurance claims (Namie & Namie, 2011). Unchecked bullying and mobbing hits organizations straight in the pocketbook. Some cost estimates can range from $16,000 to $1 million per employee affected by the abuse (Hoel et al., 2011). Disability and medical leaves of absence, turnover, and increased insurance claims are all consequences of bullying and mobbing that cost the organization (Davenport et al., 2005; Namie & Namie, 2011). A recent study conducted by the Integrated Benefits Institute found poor health costs U.S. businesses $576 billion a year (Japson, 2012). This estimate accounts for many of the consequences associated with bullying, including wage replacement costs, medical and disability leaves ($117 billion), and productivity loss from absenteeism and presenteeism ($227 billion; Japson, 2012). We know that targets and others in the toxic culture eventually move to escape it, and one of the ways they do this is by taking sick leave, disability leave, and medical leave (WBI, 2013). One source estimated targets missed an average of 159 days of work on leave due to the psychological stress of bullying (Namie & Namie, 2011). Before these leaves are taken, we know affected workers come to work sick, as previously discussed, which also costs organizations. The Integrated Benefits Institute report (Japson, 2012) argues these costs are due in large part to prolonged illnesses such as depression and heart issues, which are health conditions associated with bullying and mobbing (Davenport et al., 2005; Duffy & Sperry, 2014; McTernan et al., 2013). Hollis (2015) estimated the average cost of turnover associated with bullying for higher education personnel was $100,500. Focusing more specifically on the costs of turnover to organizations, in the United States, it is argued that those who are exemplary workers are those who are often bullied or mobbed, and they exit the organization because of the abuse (Duffy & Sperry, 2014; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006; Namie & Namie, 2011). Organizations lose the value these exemplary workers create (WBI, 2016). This means replacement costs for these workers are high, as loss of knowledge and productivity suffer when exemplary employees have to be replaced. These are general cost estimates. The extent to which a particular organization is monetarily affected by bullying and mobbing will differ and will likely be more expensive for some organizations than others.

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The WBI (2016) Web site gives employees in the United States a way to calculate the actual cost of bullying and mobbing on their particular organization and work unit based on individual employee counts. They suggest that time and number of employees affected estimates should be calculated first. How long was the bully allowed to operate without the issue being addressed? How many employees were affected? They argue, “Individually-based cost estimates calculated should pertain to all the people directly targeted for bullying and those who were aware of it and indicated a desire to quit, transfer or took time off to repair their health. Research clearly indicates that witnesses are affected almost as strongly as the bullied” (WBI, 2016, para. 2). Witnesses and bystanders should be included in these individual estimates to determine a realistic estimate of how much bullying actually costs a particular organization. WBI suggests several factors should be estimated and added together to determine the actual cost of bullying per individual (turnover, opportunity lost, absenteeism, presenteeism, legal defense cost, dispute resolution, trial costs, dispute resolution, settlements, workers’ compensation, and disability claims). For conservative turnover estimates, they suggest multiplying the combined salaries of those employees who left by 1.5 (e.g., $50k salary would result in $75k to recruit and replace just this one employee; WBI, 2016). Absenteeism cost estimates can be calculated by dividing a salaried worker’s annual salary by 2020 and getting an hourly rate (for nonsalaried, just use the hourly pay rate) and multiply this by hours off the job (e.g., $10 an hour multiplied by 1,272 (159 × 8 hours) – 159 is the average number of days missed according to Namie and Namie (2011), which results in $12,720 absentee cost). The tangible costs of litigation, dispute resolution, legal defense and settlements, and consultant costs will be discussed in the next section.

Tangible Costs: Litigation, Legal, and Consultant Costs How much does it cost U.S. organizations to deal with the aftermath of bullying and mobbing in terms of litigation, increased legal costs, and trained consultants? The answer to this question will be the focus of this section. First, when organizations begin to address the toxic work environment and damaged relationships that result from bullying and mobbing, often costly professional consultants need to be retained to make a difference in the situation (Davenport et al., 2005; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2003; Namie & Namie, 2011). The cost of hiring professional consultants to lead mediation and dispute resolution efforts is staggering. Workplace health and safety consultants can cost up to $1,000 a day (this does not include travel and materials costs; United Alliance Services, 2016), and professional mediation services can cost upward of $200 an hour.

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Remember, this is a likely scenario, as those who might normally engage in mediation and dispute resolution in an organization (human resources) are often not trusted by bullied targets (Harrington et al., 2012). It is argued that mediation and dispute resolution conducted by organizations, using their own employees who are often complicit in the situation, are not seen as fair and impartial procedures by targets (WBI, 2011). In many of these situations, it is reported that the bully faced no consequences (52%) or the target was terminated (18%) or quit (14%) (WBI, 2011). If the organization truly wants to deal with the issue in a fair manner and repair the workplace climate, avoiding a conflict of interest or perception of a conflict of interest is a necessity. Clearly, seeking the help of consultants can add up very quickly, costing organizations thousands of dollars. Bullying and mobbing also present costly litigation and legal risks to U.S. organizations (Namie & Namie, 2011). Even though the United States has yet to pass a comprehensive law to address bullying and mobbing in the workplace, employees do still have avenues for legal redress if the situation also includes illegal harassment protected by Title VII (Paetzold, O’Leary-Kelly, & Griffin, 2007; WBI, 2016). A 2007 WBI report found that 20 percent of bullying situations also include illegal conduct related to a protected category (Namie & Namie, 2011). However, it is clear that the majority of bullying cases have little legal recourse. Legal avenues in bullying cases are the subject of chapters 18 and 19. Briefly, the tort of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress is a legal avenue for some, but these cases are rarely successful for a variety of reasons (Yamada, 2010, 2013). It is difficult to determine how much bullying costs organizations in terms of monetary awards through legal action because there is no law speaking to this issue; however, Namie and Namie (2011) discuss two cases where bullying cost the offending organization $325,000 and $1.4 million, so clearly this is a potential cost. Although bullied employees at this point have little tangible legal redress (Yamada, 2013), even the threat of lawsuits is costly to organizations. When threatened with lawsuits, organizations have to retain costly legal teams, and although larger organizations might already employ in-house counsel, small and medium-sized companies may not. The WBI (2016) estimates this costs organizations upward of $30,000 for each threat and $60,000 or more if the lawsuit goes forward. Litigation and legal costs of bullying in countries with developed antibullying laws should prove instructive for the United States. In Norway, a court awarded a bullied target $383,000; in Spain, payouts have been as much as 30,000 euros (Dunn, 2003), and as much as 800,000 euros in the United Kingdom (Yamada, 2010). U.S. organizations should be paying attention, as there is overwhelming support by employees for a law addressing bullying and mobbing in the United States (Namie et al., 2014). And Namie and colleagues’ (2014) research poll found that 93 percent of respondents

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support a new law that would protect workers from repeated abusive treatment over and above existing laws. The response to these calls for a new law are, in part, being answered by the Healthy Workplace Bill, antibullying legislation authored by David Yamada that has served as the template for legal reform efforts in the United States (see Yamada, 2013). The Healthy Workplace Bill will be discussed in detail in chapter 18. Healthy Workplace Bill advocates urge supporters of antibullying legislation to contact their state legislators and let them know of their support for the bill (The Healthy Workplace Bill, n.d.). U.S. researchers Bergen and Cole (2015) found that if constituents contact their legislator about their views on antibullying bills, the probability the legislator will support the bill increases by 12 percent. This is an encouraging sign for the Healthy Workplace Bill and targets of bullying and mobbing. In sum, workplace bullying and mobbing have significant impacts on an organization’s bottom line. From intangible costs such as a negative organizational culture and working climate and damage to reputation, to the tangible costs of leaves, turnover, insurance claims, litigation, and threats of litigation, workplace bullying and mobbing are too costly for organizations to ignore.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have demonstrated the devastating impact workplace bullying and mobbing can have on organizations by discussing the myriad consequences this abuse can have at the individual, group, and organizational levels. To save organizations from the extreme detrimental effects of bullying, U.S. researchers present many prescriptions and solutions for organizational leaders. Lutgen-Sandvik and Tracy (2012) suggest attending to the micro, meso, and macro factors that encourage bullying and mobbing. Cowan (2011) and others suggest a clear and comprehensive antibullying policy. Namie and Namie (2011) suggest leaders need to mobilize their organizations by recognizing when bullying and mobbing are taking place, trusting reports from their employees, and working to stop the abuse. They can do this by instituting an antibullying program in the organization and attending to factors that encourage abusive behavior. Specifically addressing mobbing, Duffy and Sperry (2014) suggest a type of restorative justice is needed to help the mobbed individual to recover and try to become whole again. This includes acknowledgment of the abuse, an apology for the abuse, reparation or a repairing of the environment that led to the abuse, and monetary and other resource compensation. Also, Davenport and colleagues (2005) suggest that prevention is key, and this happens when organizations create awareness of mobbing, employees are educated on this type of abuse, and training is provided. They also suggest antimobbing policy,

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proactive risk assessments by the organization, and clear, fair paths to conflict resolution. The costs and impact of doing nothing in workplace bullying and mobbing situations is too high for any organization, but with action, these negative impacts could be mitigated to the benefit of employees and organizations.

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Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI). (2012b). The WBI website 2012 instant poll-C: Aftermath of requesting help from human resources. Retrieved from http://www.work​ placebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2012-IP-C.pdf Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI). (2013). The WBI website 2013 instant poll-A: Workplace bullied targets forgo taking leave. Retrieved from http://www.workplace​ bullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2013-IP-A.pdf Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI). (2016). Estimating the cost of bullying. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/individuals/solutions/costs Yamada, D. C. (2010). Workplace bullying and the law: Emerging global perspectives. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research and practice (pp. 469–484). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. Yamada, D. C. (2013). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–354.

PART III

Prevention of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing

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How Awareness and Education Can Help with Recognitionof Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie, Ruth Namie, and Carol Fehner

This chapter examines a foundational element of the social justice movement to end workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States: public education, understanding, and awareness. Many audiences comprise this public. Targeted individuals are the primary group to educate about the benefits of recognition. Only after recognizing and naming what is happening to them will they take action to ameliorate the harmful effects. With recognition, health and mental health professionals can more quickly reverse the stress-related consequences for patients and clients. The success of convincing employers their best interests are served by addressing bullying depends on awareness and outrage that employees bring to challenge indifference and inactivity. Lawmakers responsible for advancing legislation to compel employer action are an important audience. They, too, are members of the broader public that has to be educated. In chapter 16, we describe the benefits and shortcomings of raising awareness about workplace bullying in organizations. The focus here is on educating the public, drawing heavily upon over 20 years of work in this arena. Gary and Ruth Namie have been doing so mainly through the Workplace Bullying Institute, while Carol Fehner has engaged in this work as a labor educator. Imagine one knows nothing about bullying. There are several ways to become aware. We first explore the indirect means by which that education can occur. A great deal of education is the accidental or inadvertent discovery of bullying and its potential effects on its targets. Next, we turn to directed activities designed to deliberately raise awareness of bullying and what could be done by different audiences to stop it. We claim modest successes after a 20-year campaign. We end with the emerging societal context—the new zeitgeist—that threatens to reverse all progress in educating the public to date.

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INDIRECT PUBLIC EDUCATION School-Age Bullying Much is owed to workplace bullying’s forerunner—school-age bullying. Dan Olweus launched the bullying-in-schools movement with foundational research in Norway, moving to America five years later (Olweus, 1978). His school training program intervention was the first one introduced in the United States and gained a dominant market position. Over the years, other programs followed. This increase in school antibullying programming meant that some teachers, students, parents, and administrators were aware of bullying and its harmful effects. Several years of continuing media coverage of school bullying has prepared the public to reject taunting, shaming, and ostracism of targeted children as acceptable, routine behavior. Previously, it was considered an inevitable rite of passage. It took a steady bombardment of print and broadcast media coverage to break the silence and reverse its valence from positive or neutral to negative conduct. A spate of student suicides captures media attention like few other aspects of bullying. The vividness of the incidents makes them memorable. The cases highlight, and often hold responsible, social media’s role in the taking of a life. Behind the headline was a child tormented by her or his peers—mocked, shamed, ridiculed, stalked—eventually driven to a decision for which there was no perceived alternative. For many observers, the causal connection is made and accepted that bullying triggered the suicide. For adult bullying, the link between bullying and suicide was established only recently (Nielsen, Nielsen, Notelaers, & Einarsen, 2015). In that longitudinal study, researchers documented the perseverance of workplace bullying’s effect on suicidal ideation over a five-year period. When adults take their lives after being exposed to workplace bullying, the media do not give these cases the same attention as they do to the cases of school-age children. It seems sufficient to discount the victims as troubled souls with myriad reasons to shorten their lives. In many cases, this may be true. However, we have seen the unraveling of strong individuals triggered solely by bullying at work. Their sad trajectories started with workplace bullying, destroyed their relationships with partners and children, and led to abandonment by friends, and all of this was coupled with economic devastation. Over time, the origin of the destructive spiral in the workplace gets lost. One dramatic case for which the author served as expert witness made clear what it takes to link suicide to the workplace. The woman wrote three suicide letters explicitly documenting the record of her abuse by senior managers over the years. She took the letters to her office, where she took her life. Tragically, she made the link undeniable in a rare demonstration of clarity.

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Media Coverage As advocates for targets of workplace bullying, we have generally avoided prominent media suicide stories as a way to advance the cause. We have taken the same tack with reporting of workplace murders. Workplace massacres are cavalierly referred to as “going postal” by American media. Sadly, there was a string of major episodes involving postal workers in the 1990s in which several people were murdered by coworkers or former coworkers with guns (see the documentary Murder by Proxy; Chiaberi, Moll, & Rosen, 2010). A small, unknown number of massacres may have originated from long histories of workplace bullying. In these homicide cases where the murder victims were limited to supervisors or human resources or labor relations union representatives, long-term bullying may have been a potential contributing factor that needed to be ruled out. To be accurate, the media reporting would necessarily have to be as nuanced and complicated as were the origins of the massacre. The experience of the authors of this chapter is that contemporary reporters either cannot, or are not permitted by editors to, produce such reporting. The U.S. antibullying movement has been blessed with years of positive media attention. The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) and affiliated professionals have been featured in print stories or in studio TV segments in well over 1,200 appearances. The outlets have ranged from the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Economist, Bloomberg Business Week, NPR, CBC, CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, Oprah, The Howard Stern Show, and a host of local radio and TV stations. The focus of press coverage has evolved. In the beginning, circa 1998, the human-interest angle dominated. Tales of bullied targets were featured. Sympathy for targets was strong. Then, with the first of WBI’s national scientific prevalence surveys in 2007, coverage emphases shifted to descriptive statistics about prevalence. Next came coverage of the legislative advances of the antibullying Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB). Reporters have repeatedly asked when America will have its first law against workplace bullying. Sadly, interest in the anecdotal—the human toll bullying takes on individuals—seems to have waned. Stories of American workplace bullying have shifted from the human interest to business to the political media sectors. Ideally, the final step in the press’s journey will be to assign responsibility for bullying on employers and institutions. This is a hard sell to media owned by large corporations. Regardless of media placement, stories about bullying have provided the movement with free public exposure comparable to an unaffordable publicity campaign. The value of media coverage for workplace bullying and mobbing to bullied targets is the increased likelihood that targets stumble upon these stories online, in print, or on broadcast media. When targets hear the terms “workplace bullying” or “mobbing,” they have a name for their experiences.

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Naming is powerful. Being bullied is nebulous. Targets are prone to blame themselves for their misery. Media accounts can lead to “aha” moments of clarity and discovery. Often, for the first time, upon hearing or reading a media story on bullying, (1) targets are able to know they are not the only ones to whom this happens, and (2) with the name and depictions reported, they know the problem is not of their making and affects many people in many workplaces. However, it is pure chance, an unknown likelihood that bullied targets will hear, watch, or read the accounts when they need it most.

Academics and Lawmakers When the movement started, there were few American academics conducting bullying research. The numbers have grown exponentially. More graduate students choose to conduct their doctoral research on bullying. In turn, they become the new generation of faculty capable of raising student awareness about adult bullying. Generating research for publishing articles in low-circulation academic peer-reviewed journals is the path to job stability in the academy. It does little to educate the public. However, universities have learned to popularize the work of their faculty and staff. They tell media about the latest campus research. Bullying and mobbing research is instantly identifiable. It grabs headlines. In this way, academics contribute to public education. Attendees at scientific and legal academic conferences are also an audience for messaging about workplace bullying and mobbing. Here are a few disciplines in which national and international themed conference presentations educate academics and practicing professionals: bullying (the longest running group is the International Association on Workplace Bullying and Harassment); management (American Management Association); psychology (American Psychological Association); public health (American Public Health Association); law (American Bar Association); law and mental health (International Academy of Law and Mental Health); law and labor (Oregon Labor Law Conference); arbitrators (National Academy of Arbitrators); social work (National Association of Social Workers); and work, stress, and health (APA, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and Society of Occupational Health Psychology). Academics talking to academics is useful to the public when conference attendees disseminate the findings widely back home. Some professors are adept at social media (see Professor Yamada’s Minding the Workplace blog, https://newworkplace.wordpress.com) and have public platforms to translate academic-speak into usable language for a mass audience. Lawmakers are another limited audience. After the HWB or some legislative variant is introduced in a state’s legislature, it must next be given a public hearing by the committee to which it was referred. At that hearing,

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the public is invited to attend and briefly comment. Advocates mobilize and prepare people to testify. Some statehouses broadcast committee hearings live and archive them as audio or video recordings. Technically, the audience for such hearings is the limited number of committee members, typically 5 to 15; the ability to publicize these hearings and replay testimony from them greatly expands the audiences. Local press coverage amplifies the message. Legislation can inform the public, even when the bill’s progress on its way to becoming law stops in committee. Perhaps a bullied target, bullying manager, executive, or HR representative catches the story.

DIRECT PUBLIC EDUCATION To reach the public, education about bullying and mobbing should not be left to chance. Therefore, advocates strive to provide more direct and permanent forms of education.

The Internet Hosting Web sites is one of the earliest Internet-based activities used by those promoting antibullying awareness. Sites can house an unlimited number of pages and documents to educate any audience. The Internet was in its infancy when WBI began its work. The information related to workplace bullying was in a section devoted to bullied targets embedded in a Web site tailored for employers and general consulting. On New Year’s Day 1998, we launched the first dedicated American site to help workplace bullied individuals at the domain www.bullybusters.org. The message was clear; bullied targets had a place to go and a phone number to call to share their stories. That humble Web site has grown into a one-stop service site (www.work​ placebullying.org) where targets find self-help information on static pages, a set of audio podcasts, and long-form webinars (e.g., impact on the family, preparing for the 1:1 bullying meeting). The WBI Web site unilaterally educates visitors who stumble upon it seeking a name for their experiences and solutions. It is passive. It requires an active visitor willing to search the site (a search engine is provided) for answers. For an emotionally fragile target in the early throes of bullying, the energy and focus to navigate a big Web site can be elusive. Web sites are extended by newer social media—Facebook and Twitter. They allow sharing of experiences by bullied targets and a dialogue among users. The multiway communication enables exchanges of strategies, warnings, and success stories. There are many positives; caution is warranted, too. Targets may find social media easier than finding information through Web sites. Social media, as we have seen with young people, can turn perilously

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destructive and angry. Individuals feel disinhibited and make emotional entries, often without censoring themselves or anticipating the consequences of their words or expressions on vulnerable people. All told, however, in the adult world of bullying, the benefits of social media appear to outweigh the negative risks. Another useful educational tool on the internet is YouTube. WBI has its own channel with over 200 videos. The channel is divided into sections. Television news segments covering workplace bullying cases illustrate the phenomenon with interviews with actual targets. Videotaped legislative committee hearings reside on the playlist for making U.S. antibullying law. Especially useful in those hearings are the arguments opposing any law to combat workplace bullying. There is a section about the engagement of unions in the antibullying movement. A set of videos related to “Freedom from Workplace Bullies Week” is also included.

Freedom from Workplace Bullies Week WBI designated the third week in October each year as Freedom Week. It is held during Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the United States. Freedom Week is described as a chance to break through the shame and silence surrounding workplace bullying. It is a call to be daring and bold whether you are a target, family member, coworker, employer, union, mental health professional, medical professional, or legislator. The tradition is 10 years old. Many cities and counties proclaim Freedom Week. It was created solely to raise awareness about workplace bullying and mobbing.

Books Books are the most traditional mode of education for any topic. The fields of workplace bullying and mobbing are no exception. Books range from the academic to employer-focused to self-help for bullied targets. At the risk of offending many by exclusion, we have included a nonexhaustive list of some of the titles written by Americans (or collections with many American authors) in a short appendix to this chapter.

Speeches: Public and Association Meetings Whenever an advocate gives a speech, seminar, or workshop on the topic of workplace bullying and mobbing, it is direct in-person education. If the event is open to the public, the presenter is guaranteed a room full of bullied targets and their loved ones. Depending on the presenter’s resources, rooms can be large or small. It is always important to remember the personal shame

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associated with being a bullied target. Shame attenuates attendance. Bullies do not attend voluntary events on the topic. Speeches are opportunities for presenters to show empathy for targets. It is validating for targets. During breaks and at the event’s end, presenters face a line of targets desperate for coaching and counseling. In-person speeches personalize the Web sites, the blogs, the books, and media appearances. Consultants and speakers can encourage employer and union clients to host a two-hour seminar free to the public at the end of a day of paid speaking or consulting. It is good community relations for the host, needed by targets in the town, and a way for advocates to reach the most critical subgroup of the public. Above, we discussed reaching academic and professional audiences through conferences. In a similar way, speaking at trade association meetings allows advocates to reach key constituent groups who either affect, or are affected by, bullying and mobbing. At chamber of commerce gatherings, large and small employers can hear the message that they should prohibit bullying for their own self-interest, if not to ensure employee health and safety. At annual conferences of corporate defense lawyers, insurers, risk managers, HR, and executives, advocate speakers can foster positive attitudes toward targets and increase understanding of the entire workplace bullying phenomenon. An association meeting presentation is tailored mass education and a chance to directly recruit allies for the movement to stop bullying.

Union Education Coauthor Carol Fehner has engaged in remediation of workplace bullying situations starting in 1992, five years before the start of WBI. As a union representative for a federal employee labor union, she used her leverage to compel management to stop bullying in a large federal agency. Besides fighting in the trenches, she worked tirelessly to have her union insert antibullying language in the national bargaining agreement. Unions are membership organizations with employees. Nonelected administrative staff are typically members of a separate union. Therefore, the benefits from bullying education in union settings are twofold. The union, as employer, learns to act more responsibly and prevent its occurrence. As advocates for its members, unions learn how to minimize the emotional and health damage suffered by members who have endured bullying and mobbing. This chapter’s authors have all participated in training unions in how to recognize bullying. Some unions have taken extraordinary steps to train an internal team of workplace experts to assist colleagues in profound ways. They take calls from distressed members. The most emotionally fragile callers are triaged to counseling. Others have their experiences clarified to

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minimize harm. The experts partner with bullied members to make their workplaces safe from psychological threats. It is critical that union leaders understand bullying. When union leaders resist antibullying initiatives within their unions, they foster resentment and anger against the unions. Smart leaders know how to leverage antibullying services for members into an organizing edge.

Training for Professionals There is a set of professionals whose roles in various industries touch workplace bullying and mobbing. They are mental health and medical professionals, attorneys, union stewards and representatives, human resources personnel, labor relations personnel, investigators, mediators, arbitrators, consultants, and corporate trainers. For this wide range of people, in 2008, WBI created a three-day education program called Workplace Bullying University (WBU). WBU is an intensive, interactive graduate-level seminar. It includes multimedia instruction, group interaction, and all the resources required to launch an antibullying initiative at the participants’ home organization. The instruction applies to corporations and unions, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, in the public and private sectors. The curriculum covers all aspects of workplace bullying—from profiles of perpetrators, targets, witnesses, enabling managers, and destructive leaders. Solutions are systemic and focus on changes to the work environment rather than reliance on personality change. Union strategies are shared. Finally, the state of U.S. public policy change is reviewed in the context of international precedents. The small group sessions are clearly not education for the masses. However, by training established and emerging specialists, thought leaders, and subject matter experts, the program creators hope graduates will have access to several constituent groups in the future, thereby disseminating the message about bullying and its harmful effects more broadly than the creators alone could have done.

MODEST SUCCESSES The U.S. movement to end workplace bullying and mobbing turned 20 years old in 2017. When we reflect on efforts to date, we observe and claim only modest successes. The greatest progress is symbolic rather than tangible—the societal use of the term workplace bullying. We infer acceptance of the problem from its use. At the start, we were met with giggles. We were asked by everyone, “Isn’t this something about schools? Surely adults don’t do that.” Smirks gave way to acknowledgment. Certainly, targets appreciated

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the term that externalized and helped explain the experiences they were enduring. Once the hosts on the most popular TV shows uttered the phrase, workplace bullying was mainstreamed. Raess v. Doescher (2008), an Indiana Supreme Court decision, also helped normalize workplace bullying. In trial court, the plaintiff, the operator of a heart-lung machine at a hospital, won a judgment against a cardiovascular surgeon defendant who had subjected him to an angry exchange that included physical aggression. The issue of workplace bullying had been introduced in the trial, in part through expert testimony by Gary Namie. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the admissibility of the expert testimony about workplace bullying, finding there was nothing in the record to suggest that the testimony was inadmissible. This case received considerable media attention because of how evidence of workplace bullying had been expressly introduced at trial. The antibullying Healthy Workplace Bill was first introduced in 2003 in California. The bill, authored by Suffolk University law professor David Yamada, does not use the phrase “workplace bullying” in its key terms. Instead, it refers to subjecting an employee to “abusive conduct” (Yamada, 2013, p. 351). As attention to the HWB grew, WBI advocates began to replace “bullying” with “abusive conduct” in all writing and presentations. The transformation was complete when we inserted “abusive conduct” into the definition of bullying in the WBI 2014 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, our scientific national prevalence study (Namie, 2014). “Abusive conduct” raises the seriousness of the phenomenon above lingering associations or confusion with childhood bullying that the term may imply. By casting the circumstances as abusive, advocates are able to describe workplace abuse as the sole remaining form of abuse to not be considered taboo. Worse still, bullying is not yet close to being socially undesirable. It is still widely accepted and practiced. Abusive conduct belongs to the category of interpersonal abuses—child, partner, and elder—that have all been stigmatized and addressed by laws. It is no longer socially desirable to boast as a perpetrator of intimate partner violence. The uniqueness of abusive workplace conduct stands out. It is not yet frowned upon. It needs to become stigmatized and its practitioners portrayed more negatively than they now are. We consider the elevation of bullying to abusive conduct an indicator of progress toward the goal of making abusive conduct taboo. A state workers’ union, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), achieved successes unimaginable when the U.S. movement began. Its story is described in chapter 16. In short, they discovered their members were suffering from exposure to bullying. Then, in three short years, MAPE created a system to rescue their members from bullying situations; nearly passed a law to prod the state, as employer, to collaboratively write the

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first state policy against bullying; and are training a large cadre of members to help their union brothers and sisters. Their committed work is ongoing. MAPE can inspire other unions to fully engage against workplace bullying. Several companies, government agencies, and military organizations have crafted antibullying policies. This is a growing trend, even though no laws currently exist to compel employers to act against bullying. The State of Minnesota was pushed by one of its unions. Corporate defense attorneys regularly advise their clients to preclude litigation by proactively writing a policy to cover mistreatment beyond the boundaries of protected status group membership. Government agencies are making the greatest leap forward. The military is coupling bullying with hazing, a physical form of abusive conduct that the military academies are committed to eliminating completely. For these and other reasons, there has been steady progress in employers voluntarily adopting policies to address workplace bullying and mobbing. There has also been some progress in the legislative arena. The reader is referred to chapter 18 of this volume for a thorough assessment of the status of the legislative advocacy work to enact state laws in the United States. Some bills have passed using the HWB definition of abusive conduct.

AMERICAN ZEITGEIST Positive gains in the U.S. movement against workplace bullying and mobbing should not be assumed to be increasing in the direction of a smooth upward slope. There have been many ups and downs—all to be expected. The movement is not anticorporate, but its opponents have portrayed it as such. It is antiabuse. Defenders of abuse have a morally dubious task of defending its use. Yet defend they do. But advocates can claim the high ground while waiting for society to realize the indefensibility of employing abusive tactics in the workplace. The gains mentioned above have been achieved. Workplace bullies are often regarded as narcissistic, Machiavellian, and subclinically psychopathic—a melding of personality traits called the dark triad (Paulhus & Jones, 2015). As such, they are grandiose thinkers and can become aggressive when challenged or threatened; they strategically manipulate others for personal gain, are callous, lack empathy, poorly control their own behavior, are pathological liars, are irresponsible, and mask it all under a charismatic cloak. Such perpetrators willingly destroy coworkers or subordinates who pose a threat, real or imagined, when the work environment encourages or fails to stop the psychological assaults. These individuals are the abusers we need to stop. The organizations in which such disturbing behavior is tolerated urgently need to transform their cultures. The conduct and results of the 2016 presidential campaign and election present an external threat of enormous magnitude to this growing

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antibullying movement. Donald Trump’s bullying style quickly became evident in the United States and worldwide. He insulted groups by race, color, gender, nationality, and disability. His presence as America’s president may damage this movement, possibly reversing years of progress. His unlimited media exposure is likely to capture his unchecked propensity to insult, berate, and humiliate others. In this way, America has a bully as role model on constant display. Children and adults alike have mimicked him and likely will continue to do so. Our principal concern is that watching Trump dominate challengers to his authority will embolden bullies in the workplace. In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s election, the Southern Poverty Law Center (2016) tracked a sharp increase in hate incidents in the United States, with the most prevalent forms being harassment apparently motivated by immigration status and race. The majority of incidents happened in K–12 schools, followed closely by businesses and then universities and colleges. Executives and managers who were growing accustomed to conforming to new standards of conduct dictated by new no-bullying policies will be free to revert to old ways. Executives can easily cancel policies that make them feel uncomfortable as long as no law compels the policies. The abusers’ rationale for reversion will be, “If the president can abuse, then why do I have to stop?” When prominent individuals are shown to behave with impunity in unacceptable and destructive ways, it increases the likelihood that a more antisocial norm will evolve. We fear a mocking of the antibullying movement, tagging it as somehow honoring, or manufacturing, weak individuals who could not defend themselves. There will be a greater emphasis on celebrating strength, however manifested. In the more aggressive world, everyone needs to learn to fight. America risks becoming an even coarser society. If we are ever to stop bullying and mobbing in the workplace, we need workplaces to operate in a more, not less, collective manner. We should value communal efforts with team members engaged in affiliative behaviors instead of interpersonal aggression. Unremitting exposure to a bully who must constantly “win” (a zero-sum game in which others must be obliterated as threatening competition) cannot be good for American society. The fight may be more uphill than ever, but we will prevail. Education can help us to overcome the darkness.

REFERENCES Chiaberi, E. (Producer/Director), Moll, J. (Producer), & Rosen, M. (Producer). (2010). Murder by proxy: How America went postal [Motion picture]. United States: Aldamisa.

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Namie, G. (2014). 2014 WBI U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http:// workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf Nielsen, M. B., Nielsen, G. H., Notelaers, G., & Einarsen, S. (2015). Workplace bullying and suicidal ideation: A 3-wave longitudinal Norwegian study. American Journal of Public Health, 105(11), e23–e28. Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the schools: Bullies and whipping boys. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Paulhus, D. L., & Jones, D. N. (2015). Measures of dark personalities. In G. J. Boyle, D. H. Saklofske, & G. Matthews (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological constructs (pp. 562–594). London, England: Academic Press. Raess v. Doescher, 883 N.E. 2d 790 (Ind. 2008). Southern Poverty Law Center. (2016). Update: Incidents of hateful harassment since election day now number 701. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/18​ /update-incidents-hateful-harassment-election-day-now-number-701 Yamada, D. C. (2013). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–354.

APPENDIX The following is a partial listing of books that serve as useful introductions to workplace bullying, mobbing, and related behaviors written by American authors or containing chapters with many contributions from American authors. Along with the other chapters in these volumes, they provide readers with insightful, informative, and accessible information, analyses, and commentary on bullying and mobbing at work. Babiak, P., & Hare, R. D. (2007). Snakes in suits: When psychopaths go to work. New York: Regan Books. Balcerzak, J. (2015). Workplace bullying: Recognizing, preventing, and treating emotional abuse in adult work environments. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Social Workers. Curry, L. (2016). Beating the workplace bully: A tactical guide to taking charge. New York: AMACOM. Daniel, T. A., & Metcalf, G. S. (2016). Stop bullying at work: Strategies and tools for HR, legal & risk management professionals (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: SHRM Books. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2012). Mobbing: Causes, consequences, and solutions. New York: Oxford University Press. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2014). Overcoming mobbing: A recovery guide for workplace aggression and bullying. New York: Oxford University Press. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D., & Cooper, C. L. (Eds.). (2011). Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research and practice (2nd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Hornstein, H. A. (1997). Brutal bosses and their prey: How to overcome abuse in the workplace. New York: Riverhead.

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Lutgen-Sandvik, P. (2013). Adult bullying—a nasty piece of work: A decade of research on non-sexual harassment, psychological terror, and emotional abuse on the job. St. Louis, MO: ORCM Press. Maltby, L. (2009). Can they do that? Retaking our fundamental rights in the workplace. New York: Portfolio. Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2009). The bully at work: What you can do to stop the hurt and reclaim your dignity on the job (2nd ed.). Naperville, IL. Sourcebooks, Inc. Namie, G. M., & Namie, R. (2011). The bully-free workplace: Stop jerks, weasels and snakes from killing your organization. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Pearson, C., & Porath, P. (2009). The cost of bad behavior: How incivility is damaging your business and what to do about it. New York: Portfolio. Schnall, P. L., Dobson, M., & Rosskam, E. (Eds.). (2009). Unhealthy work: Causes, consequences, cures. Amityville, NY: Baywood. Schnurr, P. P., & Green, B. L. (Eds.). (2004). Trauma and health: Physical health conse­ quences of exposure to extreme stress. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Sutton, R. I. (2007). The no asshole rule: Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn’t. New York: Warner Business Books. Twale, D. J., & DeLuca, B. M. (2008). Faculty incivility: The rise of the academic bully culture. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Zimbardo, P. (2008). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

11

The Role of Human Resources in Bullying and Mobbing Prevention Efforts Teresa A. Daniel

HR serves as a “serious buffer” for other employees in the organization— between management and employees. We are the “organizational shock absorbers.” If HR professionals won’t stand up to a bad manager, who will? But HR pays a heavy price for doing that. (Study participant in Daniel, 2012a) The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that workplace bullying and mobbing can seriously damage the health and well-being of affected employees (Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; Porath, 2016b). It can also poison an organization by undermining employee morale and by eroding any sense of loyalty, trust, or teamwork (McLaughlin, 2014; Pearson & Porath, 2009; Porath, 2016b; Society for Human Resource Management, 2012). Moreover, the “climate of fear” created by a bully-prone environment is likely to impact an organization through the loss of productivity as well as increased absences, disengagement, and higher turnover (Rayner, 1999). In a nutshell, bullying is bad management at its absolute worst, and it represents real risks to organizations if left unchecked. In this chapter, we will examine the role of human resources (HR) in responding to and preventing—or at least minimizing—the occurrence of workplace bullying and mobbing, the complexities of managing these various responsibilities and organizational expectations, and some promising strategies that may be useful in HR’s efforts to tackle this complex workplace problem on behalf of both employees and their organization.

ORGANIZATIONAL ROLE OF HR PROFESSIONALS A review of the relevant management and practitioner literature suggests that HR professionals have at least five unique organizational roles when it comes to their involvement in bullying and mobbing prevention efforts.

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These include corporate insider with primary responsibility for managing workplace conflicts, employee advocate, protector of management interests, and toxin handler. In addition, HR is sometimes personally the target of this type of management abuse. Each of these roles will be examined next.

Role as Corporate Insider with Responsibility to Help Manage Conflict In addition to their myriad other responsibilities, HR professionals are integral actors in situations of workplace conflict and are widely viewed as the organizational insiders best suited to take a leading role in the prevention and elimination of bullying and mobbing in the workplace (Cowan, 2009; Curry, 2015; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016; Fox & Cowan, 2015a, 2015b; Harrington, Warren, & Rayner, 2015; Lewis & Rayner, 2003; Maxwell, 2015; Yamada, 2012, among others). The results of the 2012 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey also confirm HR’s central role in situations of bullying and mobbing (SHRM, 2012). Based on the responses of 401 HR managers, SHRM found that targets bring their bully-related complaints to HR in 89 percent of all situations. They also report that the HR department has the official responsibility for handling employee complaints in 87 percent of the companies represented in the study. These findings suggest that HR professionals in most organizations deal with the issue of workplace bullying from start to finish. That HR tends to be a reflection and extension of the management philosophy and practices of the top organizational leaders is widely regarded as true (Yamada, 2009). As a result, senior leaders must lead and model respectful behaviors at work, as it is the tone set at the top that either allows bullying to flourish or prevents it (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2016). HR cannot do the important job of preventing workplace bullying without support from the organization’s senior leaders.

Role as Employee Advocate Another key role for HR professionals is to serve as an employee advocate for those who are targets of bullying or mobbing (Grillo, 2014; SHRM, 2016d; Ulrich, 1997). This requires taking action to protect employees from abusive managers, while at the same time safeguarding the prerogative of managers to push employees to meet (or exceed) company performance goals, even though they may be perceived as a “tough” boss (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016). Striking that balance, though, is not an easy task due in large part to conflicts among multiple and competing HR roles, a lack of specific organizational policies and guidelines for dealing with

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bullying, and ambiguous definitions and criteria for determining when behavior rises to the level of bullying (Fox & Cowan, 2015b).

Role as Protector of Management and Organizational Interests Senior leaders in a study by Daniel (2013a) suggest that HR practitioners possess considerable strength in four key areas that serve to benefit and protect the interests of both management and the organization: education and training of the workforce; mitigation of risk to the organization (e.g., minimizing the potential for lawsuits or regulatory violations); providing reliable basic HR services (e.g., policy development, strategies about human capital deployment, hiring, benefits, and communication); and protecting the interests of both employees and management (e.g., investigating and resolving workplace conflicts, coaching and challenging senior leaders about important people-related decisions). In partnership with the company’s legal counsel, HR is called upon to investigate employee complaints, including those related to workplace bullying and mobbing. If the allegations of misconduct are confirmed, HR generally first confers with legal counsel and then with senior leaders to determine the appropriate consequences for the bully and support for the target (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016). The investigative aspect of the role has often caused HR to be perceived as the “internal police” of the organization, a characterization to which most practitioners object and a role that they generally find to be uncomfortable (Daniel, 2011, 2012a; Fox & Cowan, 2015a). Ulrich (1997) acknowledges the paradox inherent in the multiple roles that HR must navigate, especially when it comes to representing the interests of both the employee and the organization. He argues that HR professionals “can both represent employee needs and implement management agendas, be the voice of the employee and the voice of management, act as partner to both employees and managers” (p. 45)—but it clearly is not easy to straddle these often competing roles. It is not surprising, then, that more than half of the HR leaders responding to a recent survey by a global talent management firm about the complexity of the HR role reported feeling “overwhelmed,” and 52 percent reported that they “did not have the ability to fully cope” with it (SHRM, 2013). Unfortunately, HR is often perceived by employees as siding with management in some of the worst workplace bullying situations brought to their attention. There is all too often some truth to that perception. The uncomfortable dilemma commonly faced by HR practitioners is aptly stated by Yamada (2013a): In good and bad workplaces alike, HR answers to top management, not to individual employees. Too many well-meaning team players have learned that lesson painfully, thinking that a seemingly empathetic HR

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manager is a sort of confidante or counselor. There are plenty of good, supportive HR people out there, but ultimately their job is to support the employer’s hiring and personnel practices and interests. (para. 6)

Role as “Toxin Handler” HR practitioners are regularly confronted by distressed employees who bring emotionally charged problems to them—issues such as layoffs, harassment complaints, substance abuse, and personality or work conflicts—based on their desire to ensure that the issues are properly addressed (Kulik, Cregan, Metz, & Brown, 2009). In responding to these situations, HR practitioners serve their organizations as “toxin handlers”—defined as empathetic managers willing to try to address the pain and suffering often experienced by employees at work (Frost, 2003, 2004; Frost & Robinson, 1999; Metz, Brown, Cregan, & Kulik, 2014). Fox and Cowan (2015b) use the term emotional laborers to describe the role HR plays in resolving conflict situations. Similarly, it has also been suggested by HR practitioners that they serve as “organizational shock absorbers,” given their frequent involvement with the emotional stress and tension caused by the bully in their efforts to resolve the situation (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2011, 2012a, 2012b). In a study conducted by Kulik, Cregan, Metz, and Brown (2009), HR managers reported that “almost 25% of their time, on average, is spent on emotionally charged problems” (p. 707). That practitioners assume this role is not unexpected given that “caring about people” has historically been a hallmark contribution of the HR profession (Falcone, 2002; Meisinger, 2005). However, what is unexpected (and somewhat startling) is the perception among HR professionals that about a quarter of the time they spend at work is spent on stressful issues and situations eliciting intense emotions.

Role as the Personal Target of Management Abuse It may be somewhat surprising to learn that HR professionals are sometimes caught in the crossfire too. Recent studies suggest that between 27 percent (SHRM, 2012) and 31.4 percent (Daniel, 2011, 2012a) of HR practitioners have personally been the targets of bullying at work. Interestingly, most of the abuse is generated toward HR by members of the organization’s senior leadership (SHRM, 2012) or their immediate supervisor (Daniel, 2012a). How do HR professionals make sense of this mistreatment? In a study conducted by Daniel (2011, 2012a), HR practitioners suggest that it is the nature of the organizational role of HR itself that may substantially contribute to the dynamic. Study participants noted that HR practitioners are frequently required to coach or challenge business leaders to achieve the best

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decisions possible for the organization. At times, these discussions can get quite intense, triggering a negative or defensive response that subsequently results in backlash or retribution, including bullying. As a result, study participants posit that insecure managers may see competent HR managers as a professional threat. They also suggest that their organizational role is not fully appreciated or understood and that they are often perceived as lacking business knowledge, professional credentials, education, or organizational fit. Regardless of the justifications used by senior leaders for bullying HR practitioners, there is no doubt that personally being a target of bullying makes it exponentially harder for HR to protect other employees in the organization (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Ferris, 2004; Griffith, 2013; Harrington, Rayner, & Warren, 2012; Namie & Namie, 2011; Lewis & Rayner, 2003).

PERCEPTIONS OF HR’S ROLE AND PERFORMANCE There are vastly different views of HR’s role and judgments about how their effectiveness in handling situations of bullying and mobbing that largely depend on one’s organizational position. As a result, the perceptions of HR professionals, bullied targets, perpetrators of bullying or mobbing, senior organizational leaders, and the national SHRM organization will be examined next.

The View of HR Professionals Cowan (2009) reports that HR professionals generally define and understand bullying much like targets do, but they have a difference of opinion about the elements required to cause a situation to be labeled “bullying.” Concerns about how to define and identify the problem, management style, conflict skills, and personality clashes as well as their low power position within the organization were identified as causing a high level of complexity in terms of their response to target concerns—equating their role to “walking a tightrope” (p. 238). Importantly, they were strongly of the opinion that HR take complaints of bullying very seriously and that they act appropriately to address these types of situations. Confirming Cowan’s earlier research, a more recent study by Fox and Cowan (2015b) suggests that, as a profession, HR practitioners do not perceive themselves as failing to assist targets who come to them for help. Instead, they understand their roles in bullying situations as follows: trusted listener; an objective, neutral third-party investigator; a management adviser; and a mediator, trainer, and coach. HR professionals are strongly of the opinion that it is incumbent upon them to intervene when they become aware of a conflict situation. In fact,

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97 percent of the participating HR practitioners in SHRM’s 2012 study indicated that they personally felt that it was their responsibility to step in (e.g., to investigate, document, discipline, etc.) when bullying is reported or suspected—with 77 percent agreeing “to a large degree” and 20 percent agreeing “to some degree” (SHRM, 2012). In combination, these studies suggest that HR practitioners are of the opinion that it is their responsibility to try to resolve issues of workplace conflict. Moreover, they are of the general opinion that they take a balanced approach—looking out for the interests of both the employee and the organization when attempting to solve a complaint of workplace bullying. Interestingly, their understanding of the role of HR was often in conflict with how they believed bullied employees and senior management viewed their responsibilities, creating yet another paradox and adding further complexity to their role (Fox & Cowan, 2015a).

The View of Bullied Targets Despite the fact that bullied employees are often publicly humiliated, viciously teased, called derogatory names, are the subjects of malicious rumors, stripped of their responsibilities, ostracized, denied promotional opportunities, and much more, research consistently confirms that HR often fails targets by not taking their issues seriously enough (Barrow, 2012; Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; Workplace Bullying Institute, 2000, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014b). Once a target files a complaint with HR, the bully often then takes steps to discredit, discipline, demote, and ultimately terminate the targeted employee for poor job performance—often labeling them as “incompetent” or as a “troublemaker” (e.g., Barrow, 2012; Curry, 2015; Namie, 2003, 2010a, 2010b; Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; WBI, 2014a, 2014b, among others). Porath (2016b) reports that more than 85 percent of individual targets who chose to avoid or confront perpetrators are unsatisfied with how the situation ended. Moreover, they report that relying on institutional remedies—like going to HR—rarely works either. A mere 15 percent of those who reported the incidents to their employers confirmed that they were satisfied with how their employers responded to their bullying complaints. In a study designed to understand how HR professionals interpret and respond to claims of bullying in the United Kingdom, Harrington, Warren, and Rayner (2015) found that HR enacts “symbolic violence” on employees who raise claims of bullying against their managers. They do this by taking hard evidence of bullying behaviors and interpreting it to favor the manager. In so doing, HR determines such abusive misconduct to be a legitimate management practice, thereby protecting the interests of the organization at the expense of HR’s employee advocacy role.

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Similarly, Harrington, Rayner, and Warren (2012) report that the typical HR response is to take action favoring the bully. In their study, HR practitioners “rarely” determine that a situation rises to the level of bullying when a manager is accused. They conclude that HR practitioners prioritize their relationships with managers and automatically distrust bullying claims made by employees—leading to a reasonable conclusion that dealing with employee complaints of bullying may simply be “too hot to handle” for HR practitioners (Harrington, Rayner, & Warren, 2012). D’Cruz and Noronha (2010) found that HR is viewed by targets as a “onesided managerial function”—meaning that HR is viewed as being focused solely on the interests of the organization. Because of this, they concluded that, in most instances, the bullied employee is left with “nothing more than their own individual voice,” rendering them “completely vulnerable, with no avenues for redressal” (p. 530). Similarly, Lewis and Rayner (2003) found that the typical execution of human resource management in most organizations—as a management ideology that promises to put “people issues” at the center of strategic decision making—creates an environment in which bullying remains unchallenged, is allowed to thrive, or is actually encouraged in an indirect way. Paradoxically, they found that the prevalence of bullying incidents actually increases in such environments. This led them to descriptively refer to the HR function as it exists in many organizations as a “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” (p. 370). Given these dismal statistics and findings, most would conclude that seeking counsel and protection from HR is essentially a no-win situation for bullied targets (Namie, 2010a, 2010b, 2012). Sadly, the outcomes consistently reported by these empirical studies are the reason that many targets report feeling victimized by both the bully and the HR department (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Ferris, 2004, 2009; Harrington et al., 2012; Lewis & Rayner, 2003).

The View of the Perpetrators Curiously, bullies rarely suffer career setbacks because the bully’s supervisor often protects the bully and ignores the evidence—particularly if the individual is viewed as a “high performer.” Recent survey data supports this conclusion. The 2014 study by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI, 2014b) found that 72 percent of employers react in a way that either condones or explicitly sustains the behavior, while less than 20 percent take action to stop the abuse. According to the study, 25 percent of employers denied and/or failed to investigate allegations of bullying, 16 percent dismissed the allegations as not being serious, 15 percent of employers rationalized the abusive behaviors, and 11 percent actually defended the actions because executive-level officials

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and midlevel managers were being accused. Astoundingly, 5 percent actually encouraged the workplace abuse. These results are not a fluke; they have been repeatedly confirmed in prior empirical studies as well (WBI, 2000, 2007, 2010, 2012). Accordingly, with little to no organizational accountability, bullies often feel fairly confident about using abusive tactics as a management technique, safe in the belief that HR will either take their side or do nothing at all—and the empirical evidence is on their side.

The View of Senior Organizational Leaders Daniel (2013a) examined how senior leaders in organizations throughout North America perceive the effectiveness of HR professionals to identify the friction points that most commonly lead to incidents of bullying or increased conflict. Executives in this study expressed frustration with HR due to their widely shared perceptions that HR practitioners (1) lack an understanding of business fundamentals; (2) are so focused on administration, rules, and processes that they are impediments to progress; (3) frequently say “no” without suggesting alternative solutions; and (4) are slow to act—or simply fail to respond at all. While much of the criticism is undoubtedly valid, it should be noted that there are also a number of contributing factors that may help to explain why HR professionals are not perceived by many in the organization to be strong advocates for the interests of bullied targets: 1. HR practitioners are often personally bullied by senior leaders (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2011, 2012a; SHRM, 2012). It is extremely difficult to be an employee advocate at the same time that one is also a victim (D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Ferris, 2004; Griffith, 2013; Harrington et al., 2012; Lewis & Rayner, 2003; Namie & Namie, 2011). 2. Senior organizational leaders often tie HR’s hands by failing to hold perpetrators accountable for their abusive actions, particularly if the bully is a high performer (Daniel & Metcalf, 2013, 2014b; D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Ferris, 2004, 2009; Harrington et al., 2012; Lewis & Rayner, 2003, Namie & Namie, 2011). 3. There are concerns among HR practitioners that if they are perceived by senior management as too closely aligning with the interests of bullied targets, their own job security and personal advancement may be jeopardized (Daniel, 2011, 2012a; D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Ferris, 2004, 2009; Harrington et al., 2012; Lewis & Rayner, 2003). Importantly, while there is evidence to support the view that bullies act with malice or intent to harm their targets (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c;

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Namie, 2014; WBI, 2014a), it should be noted that there is no evidence to suggest any malice or bad intent by HR professionals toward targets when they respond to their complaints of bullying or mobbing (Daniel, 2011, 2012a; Fox & Cowan, 2015a; Woodrow & Guest, 2014). Instead, the actions and response of HR practitioners are often dictated by the policies and tone of their senior leadership, as noted by Yamada (2010): All too often, however, it boils down to these truths: In workplaces that adopt and practice strong ethical values, HR practitioners can play a significant role in advancing a positive mission. By contrast, in workplaces that regard employees as expendable commodities, HR practitioners frequently become willing executioners of bad employment practices. (para. 14)

The View of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) SHRM is the world’s largest HR membership organization devoted to HR management, with more than 285,000 members in over 165 countries (SHRM, 2016a). SHRM provides resources to serve the needs of global HR professionals and advance the professional practice of HR management. To this end, this global organization recently issued the new SHRM Body of Competency and Knowledge (2016d) guidelines, which help to provide further clarity about expectations for HR’s role when dealing with, among many other issues, the management of workplace conflict. These guidelines are very explicit about the expectation that HR will help manage relationships in the workplace; in fact, this competency specifically includes “serving as an advocate when appropriate” (Behavioral Competency #4—Relationship Management). In addition, HR professionals are expected to supervise HR investigations (together with legal counsel), recognize excessive HR liabilities and provide proactive strategic guidance for remediation, and coach executives on people-management issues (Behavioral Competency #5—Consultation). The expectations for HR professionals move from relatively basic transactional responsibilities at an early level (e.g., provide basic information for the resolution of conflicts); to more complex relationships at the senior level (e.g., mediate difficult employee relations or other interactions as a neutral party); to even more complex and strategic responsibilities at an executive HR level (e.g., create conflict resolution strategies and processes throughout the organization). Importantly, the guidelines specifically require HR professionals to interact in situations of workplace conflict “as a neutral party.” Additional discussion about executive expectations for HR success can be found in the

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recommendations included in the SHRM Survey Findings: Using Competencies to Achieve Business Unit Success—The Executive Perspective (SHRM, 2016e). This examination of HR’s role confirms that there are a growing number of empirical studies that help to explain and illuminate HR’s role in mobbing and bullying situations. Because it is a complex and nuanced issue, it is fair to conclude that there is still much to be learned (Salin, 2008). Deciding when (or even whether) to intervene in a workplace conflict is one of the areas with which HR professionals have struggled for some time, but for which there are now some guidelines. How to make this important call will be discussed next.

HR’S DECISION TO INTERVENE IN A WORKPLACE CONFLICT—IS IT BULLYING OR NOT? Despite the perception that HR is frequently not an advocate for bullied employees, they are usually the first group to be notified about a complaint of bullying or mobbing (SHRM, 2012). As is often the case with other types of complaints made by employees, the facts of these types of situations are frequently in dispute. Because of this, it can be difficult for HR professionals to ascertain whether the problem described is actually bullying (and should be further investigated and addressed) or whether it is simply the complaint of an employee working for a tough boss with demanding performance standards (in which case it is not bullying and no organizational intervention is required). This distinction is an important one. Why? Because once this identification is made, the HR practitioner can then make a more informed decision about whether to intervene by further investigating the situation—or not. For years, the argument was that it was simply not possible to deal with this type of conflict because there was no clear definition of bullying, making it a difficult problem to identify and correct. Fortunately, that is no longer the case, and we now have clear definitions to work with in the United States (Healthy Workplace Bill, 2016; Workplace Bullying Institute, n.d.). Moreover, there is now some general guidance to assist HR practitioners in identifying a workplace bully as opposed to someone who is simply a “tough boss” (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c). These guidelines will be examined next.

Actions of a Workplace Bully In a study of HR professionals, Daniel (2009a, 2009b, 2009c) found that workplace bullies can be identified by several common characteristics, including widespread perceptions that bullies • frequently misuse their power and authority • focus on their own personal self-interests, as opposed to the longer-term good of the organization

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• are prone to emotional outbursts • are often inconsistent and unfair in their treatment of employees The actions of bullies are perceived as overwhelmingly negative and typically include these behaviors: a need for control, exploitation, intimidation, threats, humiliation and embarrassment, a failure to communicate, manipulation, engaging in a pattern of obstructive behavior over time, ostracizing and ignoring employees, and gossiping or spreading rumors about their targets. In their own words, participants in the study describe a workplace bully like this: “With a bully, there’s no goal orientation. There’s nothing to do with your job. There’s nothing to do with the company. It’s simply something that has irritated the individual.” (Daniel, 2009c, p. 129) “It has maddened him to the point that [he] is driven to make a person’s life miserable . . . either with verbal threats or actual actions against” the individual.” (Daniel, 2009c, p. 187) “[Bullies] throw caution to the wind as far as feelings are concerned, and their agenda is simply ‘I’m going to get you.’” (Daniel, 2009c, p. 130)

Actions of a Tough Boss Conversely, the behaviors and tactics of tough bosses are described quite differently. They are widely perceived to be • objective, fair, and professional • self-controlled and unemotional • performance-focused—insistent on meeting high standards and holding employees accountable for meeting those expectations • organizationally oriented—consistently operating to achieve the best interests of their companies The actions of a tough boss are perceived by their employees to be overwhelmingly positive. Tough bosses are perceived as possessing several common characteristics: they are typically highly interactive, frequently engage in two-way communication, and really listen to their employees. In addition, they also engage in the active mentoring of their subordinates through coaching, counseling, and frequent performance feedback. Although groups led by tough bosses most certainly do experience conflict, the perception is that they work hard to quickly resolve problems by engaging in honest and respectful discussions. In addition, while their intense focus on results may create tension and stress, their employees do not take the situations personally, nor do they experience diminished feelings of self-worth

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or adverse personal or health effects. In their own words, participants in the study describe tough bosses like this: “Fairness and intent differentiate a workplace bully from other conflicts. . . . I didn’t mind him saying ‘That’s bull’ because he respected me.” (Daniel, 2009c, p. 146) “People understand that the boss has the ‘right intent’ even when she is being tough on them. [They have] good intentions geared toward making the company better.” (Daniel, 2009c, p. 147) “[There was] no intent to intimidate, threaten, or embarrass.” (Daniel, 2009c, p. 146)

A Clear Distinction—The Presence of Malice This study unequivocally suggests that bullying is an unambiguous and intentional form of abusive workplace behavior. It is the presence or absence of malice that determines whether a conflict at work is actually workplace bullying—with malice being defined as “the desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another” (“Malice,” n.d.), a finding that has also been confirmed by the Workplace Bullying Institute’s 2014-B Instant Poll: Intent of Workplace Bullies (WBI, 2014a) and which is also included in the definition of bullying included in the draft legislation of the Healthy Workplace Bill (2016).

Making the Call—To Intervene or Not? If the facts do suggest that malice is present, this would serve as a signal that the next set of organizational protocols should be followed—moving from the target’s subjective complaint to a more objective fact-finding investigation (much like what occurs after a sexual harassment complaint is filed with HR). This is clearly a huge responsibility and, in most situations, a fairly difficult assessment for HR practitioners to make. Conversely, if the facts presented do not suggest that malice is present, it would be appropriate to have a discussion with the complaining employee about why the situation is not considered to be bullying (and not waste time and organizational resources investigating the matter further). At that time, it would also be prudent to discuss possible strategies that the target might consider to minimize the tension and improve the existing workplace situation as well as to discuss resources that are available to support and care for the employee who is experiencing the situation as highly stressful. It is mission critical for HR to be able to identify and distinguish bullies from tough bosses so that an informed decision can be made about how to respond to the situation. However, rather than dealing with such conflicts

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after the fact, proactively taking action to prevent the abuse from occurring in the first place is the preferred approach. As a result, a wide array of promising strategies that may be considered by HR professionals and their organizations to respond to or prevent—or at least minimize—these types of workplace conflicts will be discussed next.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES TO DEAL WITH WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING Researchers and practitioners have suggested a fairly broad range of potential responses to prevent and manage bullying at work. Hubert (2003) proposes a systematic approach to addressing workplace bullying that includes five key phases: prevention, uncovering, support, intervention, and aftercare. Similarly, McCarthy, Henderson, Sheehan, and Barker (2002) suggest that any effective response to workplace bullying needs to include “prevention, redress/resolution, and support” (pp. 27–30). As is the case with most organizational interventions, there is no one-sizefits-all approach when it comes to the prevention of bullying and mobbing; instead, companies should take a systemic and tailored approach, adopting strategies at multiple levels that fit their unique culture and individual needs—all of which will work together to mutually support and reinforce the company’s changing expectations (D’Cruz, 2012; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016; Ferris, 2004; Harrison, 2015; Harrison & Daniel, 2014; Salin, 2008; Tehrani, 2012; Woodman & Cook, 2005, among others). Building on earlier frameworks offered by McCarthy et al. (2002) and Frost (2003), four key approaches will be discussed next: prevention strategies, intervention strategies, restoration and recovery strategies, and accountability strategies. Each of these alternative approaches will be considered separately; however, organizations should proceed cautiously, as there is still relatively little known about the long-term effectiveness of any of these suggested ways to deal with the problem (Branch & Murray, 2008; Einarsen, 2000; Raver, 2005).

Prevention Strategies Based on a growing body of evidence-based research, some recommended strategies are described next.

Develop a culture of respect It is recommended that organizations take steps to move from a culture of fear to a culture of respect by establishing and maintaining a workplace culture that requires that both respect and dignity be afforded to all employees, that

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is, a workplace climate where employees feel valued and supported and where they are encouraged to do their best work (Daniel, 2003a, 2003b; Rayner, 1999). In research released by the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation (SHRM, 2016b, 2016c), the respectful treatment of employees at all levels is the single most important contributor to the overall job satisfaction of employees. When employees perceive that their organization is fair, respectful, and committed to them, they tend to reciprocate by giving their best effort as well—a concept which has been referred to as perceived organizational support (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986; Rego & Cunha, 2008). Moreover, there is research suggesting that organizations that create an ethical infrastructure to support a respectful culture (through the implementation of their policies, conflict management training, formal sanctions, communication, social norms, and conflict management climate) are perceived as more successful in their interventions against workplace bullying (SHRM, 2016b; Einarsen, Mykletun, Skogstad, Einarsen, & Salin, 2015).

Adopt new policies or update existing ones Researchers and practitioners have recommended that antibullying policies should be adopted or updated to include language that specifically details the type of abusive misconduct that is prohibited (along with examples). In addition, the policy should assure that there will be no retaliation for raising an issue and detail the possible consequences for failing to observe these behavioral expectations (e.g., Cowan, 2011; Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016; Deschenaux, 2007; Namie, 2016; Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; Richards & Daley, 2003; SHRM, 2012, 2016a, just to name a few). Including a provision requiring all employees to notify management if they see a fellow employee being mistreated will ensure that coworkers who witness a problem feel obligated to speak up and alert the company’s management before the situation escalates further (American Bar Association, 2012; SHRM, 2016d). Given that policies and practices are considered to be contractually enforceable in most jurisdictions, it should be noted that HR typically works in close partnership with the company’s legal counsel to navigate the myriad potential issues with legal implications.

Ensure periodic communication and training about conduct expectations HR can implement and enforce the company’s conduct expectations through periodic training and frequent internal communications (Branch, 2006). It may also be pragmatic—as well as both cost- and time-effective— to incorporate antibullying expectations into existing policies and programs rather than launching a brand-new antibullying initiative from scratch

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(Daniel, 2009a; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016; Namie & Daniel, 2012; Richards & Daly, 2003; McCarthy et al., 2002). Moreover, consistent with recommendations by the EEOC’s (2016) Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, it is a good idea for companies to offer workplace civility training that focuses on the promotion of respect and civility at work. In addition, teaching bystanders to recognize potentially problematic behaviors can improve the sense of collective responsibility that employees feel and provide the tools and resources that bystanders need to intervene when they witness bullying or mobbing behavior. When trained properly, witnesses to problematic behaviors (e.g., supervisors, colleagues, and managers) can be an organization’s most important resource in preventing and stopping this form of workplace abuse.

Track key metrics and regularly audit key processes Critical HR processes should be regularly audited, and metrics should be tracked in key areas (e.g., employee complaints, employee discipline, workers’ compensation claims, absenteeism, and termination). Regular monitoring of this data can serve as an “early alert” to the organization about potential problems that may be developing (Daniel, 2003a, 2003b, 2009a; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016; McCarthy & Barker, 2000).

Conduct periodic climate surveys Employee satisfaction surveys are typically used by organizations to assess the “climate” of the organization—how employees are feeling about key issues related to employee engagement. This data can also serve to alert the company about problems that may be developing; however, action should be taken quickly to address any problems identified by the survey data. Doing so will help to generate trust among employees because they will see that the organization is taking their feedback seriously (Van Rooy & Oehler, 2013).

Intervention Strategies Other strategies focused at the individual level—but which are also likely to positively affect an organization’s culture—include efforts to screen, hire, and promote individuals with high emotional intelligence and competency to lead or manage people. Some promising initiatives are discussed next.

Conduct extensive interviews and background investigations Extensive interviews and background checks should be conducted on potential new hires with the goal of learning as much as possible about the

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quality of their communication and conflict resolution skills (Aamodt, 2015, 2016; McKee, 2016; Porath, 2016a, 2016b). It is also a good idea to review turnover statistics in departments or divisions under the candidate’s control because a high departure rate can be a potential danger signal—or at least a reason to conduct more due diligence.

Hire, promote, and train leaders with high emotional intelligence Truly effective leaders are distinguished by a high degree of emotional intelligence (widely referred to as EQ) that includes self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill (Goleman, 2004, 2006; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). An emphasis on hiring, training, and promoting leaders with high EQ can help an organization move toward the creation of a more positive workplace environment (Arnold, 2016; Bradberry, Greaves, & Lencioni, 2009; Deloitte University Press, 2016; Huhman, 2014; Jordan, Murray, Ashkanasy, & Connor, 2005; Lynn, 2008; McKee, 2016; Millennial Branding, 2014; Murray & Jordan, 2006; Porath, 2016a, 2016b). Behavioral interviews, structured interviews, and role-playing exercises, while expensive, can also be effective screening measures to prevent a bad hire (Porath, 2016a; Wilkie, 2016).

Expand orientation programs to include conduct expectations The on-boarding process for new hires is an ideal time to stress the organization’s values and its desire to maintain an ethical and respectful culture. Asking senior leaders to make brief comments to new groups of employees about these issues can also send a strong message about cultural norms that may help to minimize the potential for future misconduct (Van Maanen & Schein, 1979).

Provide early coaching and management and leadership skills training The literature supports the contention that actions taken to increase the competence of an organization’s leaders in dealing with bullying is of critical importance (Dugan & O’Shea, 2014; Salin, 2008; Schramm, 2016). All too often, new managers are promoted into management roles without having been provided with the requisite training to actually prepare them for the new job (Frost, 2003; Lesko, 2015). Mentoring and coaching as a part of professional development can be an important way to create strong leaders (DiGirolamo, 2015; Germain, 2011; SHRM, 2016e). In addition, leadership training that includes a focus on emotions and interpersonal skills can help individuals improve their emotional intelligence and better understand how their behavior impacts others, which may cause them to adopt a more positive and effective management

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style (Frost, 2003; Goleman, 2004, 2006; Jordan et al., 2005; Kets de Vries, 2010; Murray & Jordan, 2006).

Provide enhanced “soft skills” training Hard skills are the technical expertise and knowledge needed to perform a job, while soft skills are interpersonal qualities and personal attributes that an individual possesses (also referred to as people skills). Soft skills training focuses on the issues related to the development of greater emotional intelligence, integrity, communication, courtesy, responsibility, social skills, positive attitude, professionalism, flexibility, teamwork, and work ethic (Feffer, 2016; Higginbottom, 2015; Robles, 2012; SHRM, 2015). These skills are vital to the development of strong managers but are often missing. Robles (2012) found that executives overwhelmingly indicate that integrity and communication are the top two soft skills needed by employees in today’s workplace but are often in short supply.

Modify performance evaluation and reward systems It is recommended that steps be taken to incorporate measures of civility, empathy, and kindness into performance evaluation and reward systems so that employees are evaluated and rewarded not only on the results that they achieve but also on how they accomplish those results (Daniel, 2013b; Daniel & Metcalf, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2016). Implementation of 360-degree performance reviews can also be an effective strategy so that leaders and managers regularly receive feedback from not only their immediate supervisors but also from their colleagues and subordinates; however, it is generally recommended that this type of feedback only be used for purposes of employee development—not for evaluation (McKee, 2016; MuellerHanson & Pulakos, 2015).

Restoration and Recovery Strategies It is typically up to HR professionals to help targets strategize about how to handle the bully’s negative behavior and guide him or her to available resources. This can include help with coping and stress management strategies, support via employee assistance programs, access to coaching and counseling, plus information about employee benefits (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014; Griffith, 2013; McCarthy et al., 2002; Richards & Daley, 2003; Tehrani, 2003). There is clear evidence to suggest that the provision of support to those affected by bullying can reduce its negative impact on the target’s ability to cope (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014; Lewis & Orford, 2005; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996; Quine, 1999).

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Some of the most promising ways to provide this support and assistance for targets are discussed next.

Offer coping skills, conflict resolution and resilience training The development of coping skills and resilience have been suggested as strong ways to help targets handle workplace bullying experiences (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014; McCarthy et al., 2002). In an earlier study, McCarthy et al. (2002) found that training in interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, and stress management assisted targets to cope with workplace bullying and manage their emotions better. In addition, counseling and rehabilitation are appropriate interventions for targets (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014; Tehrani, 2012; Vartia, Korppoo, Fallenius, & Mattila, 2003).

Establish restorative justice procedures The implementation of restorative justice practices has also been deemed a helpful response to workplace bullying situations. With this process, targets and bullies are brought together to discuss the harm done to the target and to identify ways to make amends and repair the relationship, including an apology from the perpetrator to the target. The goal of a restorative justice process is to make the target “whole” again—to the maximum extent possible (e.g., Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014; Duncan, 2011; Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; Yamada, 2013b; Zehr, 2001).

Accountability Strategies It is also important to ensure that there is accountability for those who fail to observe behavioral norms at work (Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; Posen as cited in Owens, 2014). To this end, some possible strategies are discussed next.

Provide early intervention and coaching for abrasive employees If an individual displays abrasive characteristics (e.g., behaviors that do not rise to the level of bullying or mobbing but do create tension and friction between employees), it is important to intervene early. With the help of an experienced coach, it is possible for abrasive managers to overcome their personal limitations or blind spots—if they are personally willing to accept the fact that they need to change—by developing more self-awareness and learning more effective ways to interact with others (Harrison, 2015; Harrison & Daniel, 2014). However, when coaching and confronting the bully fail to change that person’s behavior, it is up to HR to counsel targets and confer with managers to decide on the appropriate disciplinary action for the bully,

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up to and including termination (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Daniel & Metcalf, 2016, Yamada, 2012).

Establish fair reporting and investigation processes Internal processes designed to resolve conflict create an incentive for employees to try to resolve conflicts directly with their employer (rather than filing complaints with regulatory agencies or engaging in costly and timeconsuming litigation). If established, these complaint procedures should be easily accessible, fair, and transparent and should include timely reporting and investigation processes as well as strong antiretaliation protections (Daniel, 2003a, 2003b, 2009a; Merchant & Hoel, 2003).

Ensure that the risks of bullying are greater than the rewards Bullies are likely to assess the potential risks associated with using abusive tactics and the potential benefits to be gained from their use. If the likelihood of discipline is low and the potential payoff is high (e.g., higher bonuses, promotions, etc.), bullying is likely to continue to be a viable strategy for personal success. As a result, it is imperative that the cost of bullying (e.g., the risk of discipline or other sanctions) outweighs the potential to personally benefit from its use through increased pay, promotions, and other rewards (Daniel, 2009a; Daniel & Metcalf, 2013, 2014b, 2015, 2016; Ferris, 2004, 2009).

Engage in postproject after-action evaluations The U.S. military is widely credited for creating the process of after-action reviews—a structured review or debrief process analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better by the participants and leaders responsible for the project or event (Department of the Army, 1993). The implementation of a similar process within an organization can create greater self-awareness among those involved in a bullying situation, thus potentially creating a stronger impetus for personal behavioral change (Daniel & Metcalf, 2014a, 2015).

Impose real accountability and consequences Harrison (2015) suggests that abrasive leaders should be put on notice and given a chance to correct their abusive behavior. After a reasonable period of coaching and training, though, the employment relationship should be terminated with those who are not able (or simply not willing) to change (Daniel & Metcalf, 2015, 2016; Harrison, 2015; SHRM, 2016d; Yamada, 2012). Organizations where interpersonal bullying is ignored or overlooked permit it (either directly or unwittingly) because bullying gets normalized—and

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subsequently reproduced—because it remains unaddressed and begins to be an accepted part of the organizational culture (Branch, Ramsay, & Barker, 2007; Daniel & Metcalf, 2013, 2014b, 2015, 2016; Lewis & Rayner, 2003; Owens, 2014; Salin & Hoel, 2011). Many of these practices have been described in the HR literature as “highperformance work practices” (Huselid, 1995) or “sophisticated” HR practices (Heffernan & Flood, 2000) and are generally viewed as viable strategies for creating sustainable organizational change. Importantly, as outlined in the SHRM Body of Competency and Knowledge (2016d) guidelines, HR professionals are expected to possess the foundational competencies necessary to implement most, if not all, of these recommendations. While a more detailed examination of the competency guidelines is beyond the scope of this article, it should be noted that SHRM has provided important guidance about HR’s expected organizational role and competencies with respect to numerous workplace matters. Accordingly, SHRM’s competency and knowledge guidelines for HR professionals are highly recommended to the readers desiring additional information and clarity in this regard. In addition, an expanded discussion about the strategies and tools discussed in this chapter can be found in a newly released book by Daniel and Metcalf (2016) titled Stop Bullying at Work: Strategies and Tools for HR, Legal, & Risk Management Professionals.

CONCLUSIONS As the information discussed in this chapter has shown, HR professionals are front and center in responding to and preventing situations of workplace bullying and mobbing—as they should be. Namie and Namie (2011, pp. 128–130) provide an important note of caution about HR’s role, though, suggesting that the primary responsibility for antibullying initiatives should be retained by the organization’s senior leaders and not simply delegated to HR to handle on its own. If senior leaders do not take an active and visible role in promoting antibullying efforts, employees can easily misinterpret their absence to suggest that they do not find the issue to be serious enough to warrant their time and attention. Spearheading change is hard under the best of circumstances, and implementing changes to an organization’s culture is an especially difficult undertaking. Those who currently benefit from the use of bullying tactics have much to lose if the changes are successful and bullying as a management strategy is no longer accepted by the organization (Daniel & Metcalf, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2016; D’Cruz & Noronha, 2010; Ferris, 2004, 2009; Tehrani, 2012;). As a result, HR professionals should prepare for the fact that these individuals will be vigilant in their efforts to sabotage any efforts to change the culture (Namie & Namie, 2011). It is no doubt a serious understatement

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to suggest that change is usually complex, messy, and often brings out the worst in people (Kotter, 1995). Despite the organizational complexity that can reasonably be anticipated, new strategies should be implemented with the ultimate goal of impacting the culture of the organization, while at the same time strengthening and supporting the organization’s leaders and managers, providing restoration and recovery measures for targets, and ensuring that there are accountability measures for those bullies who cannot—or will not—change. The essence of HR’s unique (and often difficult) organizational role in managing conflict situations is to “walk the tightrope” to ensure that employees are protected from abusive and bullying managers and that managers retain the right to require performance excellence, even though they may be widely considered to be tough bosses (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c; Cowan, 2009). When it comes to bullying at work and HR’s role, Yamada (2013a) succinctly nails it when he observes these common workplace relationships: • Good workplace + Good HR = Ideal combo. Reports of bullying are likely to be treated fairly and workplace bullying is much less likely to occur in such organizations. • Good workplace + Bad HR = Bullying is still less likely to occur. However, when it does, HR may impede a just response while keeping management out of the loop. • Bad workplace + Good HR = Lousy organization. These types of companies are not good for the target or HR. In fact, HR may also be bullied if it rallies to help the target. • Bad workplace + Bad HR = Situation is very likely hopeless. Creating and sustaining a psychologically healthy workplace—built on mutual respect and dignity for all—benefits both employees and their organizations. The empirical evidence unequivocally confirms that a respectful workplace environment results in higher levels of employee morale and job satisfaction, lower turnover, reduced health costs, higher productivity, and greater profitability for the organization (Namie & Namie, 2003, 2011; Pearson & Porath, 2009; SHRM, 2012, 2016b, 2016c, and many others). Coincidentally, demonstrating the courage and leadership necessary to confront this destructive workplace issue is also likely to result in a more effective and admired HR department.

REFERENCES Aamodt, M. G. (2015). Using background checks in the employee selection process. In C. Hanvey & K. Sady (Eds.), Practitioner’s guide to legal issues in organizations. New York: Springer.

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12

Innovative Practices in Workplace Conflict Resolution John-Robert Curtin

Workplace bullying and mobbing situations call upon organizations to respond fairly, promptly, and thoughtfully. In this chapter, some innovative practices in organizational and workplace conflict resolution will be presented. These practices can be effective in working with stakeholders in bullying and mobbing scenarios. They include alternative dispute resolution, restorative justice, behavioral transition, and processes involved in creating empathic organizations. Selected existing programs designed to proactively address troublesome workplace behavior will also be reviewed, such as the Cup of Coffee Program at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. How minimizing or denying the presence of conflict can actually intensify conflict in settings will also be discussed. Thus, the importance of how conflict is managed relative to bullying and mobbing, rather than the existence of the situations themselves, is the primary focus of this chapter, which will also cover the following: • Understanding conflict: both positive and negative conflict. • The underlying causes of negative conflict: seven states of human beings. • Bullying as a learned behavior. • Treating bullying as a public health issue. • Creating a three-part system for preventing and correcting workplace bullying, harassment, and other negative behaviors: stakeholder knowledge, safe reporting, and restorative practices. • The value of an independent ombuds. • Creating and empowering work unit trust leaders. • Building workplace capacity for civility.

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UNDERSTANDING BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CONFLICT Human conflict is normal and natural. How conflict is managed determines whether the outcome is positive or negative. Workplace conflicts that are civil, respectful, open, truthful, and discussed with active listening can lead to better organizational outcomes, better products, stronger and more cohesive teams, and positive overall outcomes. Conflicts left unmanaged or that hide below the organizational radar will fester and turn negative with wrongful assumptions by the parties involved, and, over time, they can undermine the core interpersonal relationships needed for successful teams. Harassment, intimidation, bullying, mobbing, social exclusion and other negative power imbalances should have no place in the modern workplace, but just as in society as a whole, organizations often find they have more negative behavior than they would have expected, sometimes with tragic effect. A preferred workplace should transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship and civility, but, unfortunately, common standards, much like common sense, are not that common.

UNDERSTANDING COMMON ROLES IN CONFLICTS Successful outcomes necessitate successful strategies for identifying and managing conflicts, both positive and negative. Most negative conflicts, bullying, and harassment and many negative behaviors have three roles in common: offenders, targets, and bystanders. Offenders usually instigate the initial conflict, even if it is only mild disagreement or criticism. Targets tend to react with a real or perceived lack of power and tend to interpret the actions of the offenders as threatening personal attacks. Bystanders are an evolving constellation of interest and include witnesses to the event and those that learn of the conflict after the event. Bystanders include supporters of the offenders, supporters of the targets, supporters of justice, and supporters of drama (Curtin, 2016). Each of these groups of bystanders can continue to grow, evolve, and mutate, as is often the case if the conflict progresses into a typical drama triangle (Karpman, 1968). The drama triangle is a psychological and social model of human interaction, based on the work of Eric Berne (1996). Typically, the drama triangle evolves and interchanges the roles of offender, target, and bystander multiple times, thereby becoming cyclical. For example, in bullying incidents, if some bystanders intervene and physically or electronically attack the bully, then the original bully becomes bullied, and therefore the new target. The bystanders become the bullies, and the original target becomes the new bystander. If the original target, now the new bystander, attempts to intervene with the bullying of the original offender, by the original bystanders, then the cycle is

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again reversed. If not interrupted or treated, the drama triangle can simply continue as a sick, damaging, and expanding game. This pattern can often be observed in organizations, and as even the bizarre becomes normal over time, the drama triangle becomes embedded in the culture as a never-ending game of corporate “gotcha.” The drama triangle will provide continued drama to all three groups, unless interrupted through a restorative process.

EXPLAINING WORKPLACE BULLYING Among youth, to be considered bullying (Massetti, Swearer, Potter, & Martin, 2011), behavior must be aggressive and include the following: • An imbalance of power: Power imbalances, such as physical strength to control or harm others, can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people. • Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once. Adult bullying is sometimes an extension of youth bullying behaviors and includes abuse of company position, denying information, hiding behind tough management perceptions, and intentional isolation. Bullying often includes such actions as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking or threatening someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group or from needed information. It also includes both personal actions and electronic actions that are often referred to as cyberbullying.

Bullying as a Learned Behavior Although there is not a single sociology theory that explains bullying, several theories combined can give some insight into the behavior. Over time, many organizations have failed to recognize the seriousness of bullying and its long-term effects on offenders, targets, and bystanders. Often, organizations fail to take positive corrective actions for all three groups, leaving everyone involved to the mercy of the consequences of unmanaged negative behavior (Belak, 2013). Defiance theory can explain some negative reinforcement, as youth and adult bullies sometimes feel a compelling need to express defiance of authority (Christensen & Dorn, 1997). If this behavior is rewarded by peer admiration or other consequences that the bully interprets as positive, defiance theory will have a continuing impact on the repetition of the negative behavior. Defiance theory also reinforces the learned nature of bullying whereby bullies will continue their damaging behavior due to peer admiration

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and other perceived rewards, such as reinforcement by senior management considering the bully’s behavior as tough management.

Labeling Theory and Bullying Some bullying can be explained under labeling theory (Lemert, 1951), where others label a person and the person often accepts and mimics the label. Labeling theory can be a form of stereotyping and, more often than not, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). When told that they are a bully, some will rationalize this label as their tough management style and continue to act accordingly. The initial label and any secondary labels explain the reason some bullies continue with the behavior as they try to live up to the negative labels that have been assigned to them. If labeling theory is considered with defiance theory, as mentioned above, as well as with social learning theory, it is possible to see how all three theories can be interconnected to somewhat explain bullying behavior. However, strain theory (Merton, 1957) may also play into bullying, where bullies see their actions as a way of getting what they want. In workplace situations, bullies often use their behavior to control peers or subordinates to achieve their own personal objectives. Strain theory may also help explain how friends and associates of the bully often join in the bullying so as not to become targets themselves or to be accepted in the group surrounding the bully. Strain theory shows that social structures within a society can pressure individuals to commit negative acts to obtain what they believe they need to function in the society. It can therefore explain the discrepancies between culturally defined goals and the desire to find any means to achieve those goals. Merton described five types of deviance: conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. Again, learned behavior plays an important role in continued bullying and demonstrates that bullying might best be explained though a combination of justice theories acting in concert. The most powerful arguments may be explained by bullying being seen as a learned behavior (Sutherland, 1947), and it is reinforced as the bully continues to use the bullying behavior to either self-medicate or to satisfy an underlying need.

States of Being and Bullying Most offenders, whether they are violent, bullying, lying, promoting social exclusion, committing harassment, or practicing other negative behaviors, have the roots of their behavior in a problem that manifests itself in the offense committed. The offense is almost always a symptom of a deeper problem (Curtin, 2016). Therefore, when we simply punish the offender or

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conduct a corrective conference around the offense, we often correct that particular symptom but do little to address the underlying problem. That problem is almost always some form of reaction to one or more of the offender’s states of being. People have seven states of being (Curtin, 2016; see table 12.1). The amount of positive control one has with each of the seven states is a measure of positive stability. When one does not have positive control or stability over one or more of the seven states of being, there is a tendency to compensate for the lack of control, typically with negative thoughts, actions, and deeds. Control is then established through conscious or unconscious rationalization as justification for negative behavior (Curtin, 2016). This is the trap in which most offenders are caught as they continue to “medicate” themselves with the same negative behavior as a means of personal control. Consequently, as this form of “medication” often produces a desired outcome, the negative actions are rationalized, and the behavior becomes learned and is often repeated. It logically follows that if we only treat actions or behaviors, the underlying problem may continue to manifest itself in other negative actions. It is often easier to see this phenomenon in adolescents who have been acting as bullies. If only the bullying behavior is addressed, without a restorative process, the problem may manifest itself in other areas. The new behavior is actually the underlying problem manifesting itself in a different action. Treating just the negative action will usually result in new negative actions until the real problem is addressed. If the bully is punished, without a restorative process, the bully may actually feel rewarded by receiving what he or she was looking for, that is, attention, status, and recognition. Japanese automakers actually have a process that is useful to mention here. Their process involves thinking of every defect as an onion. They will continue to peel the layers of the onion/problem until they find and can document that they are at the original source. For example, they may find that a

Table 12.1  States of Being for Each Individual 1. Mental state of being (measure of stability, intelligence, competency) 2. Emotional state of being (emotional orientation, emotional control) 3. Physical state of being (health, mobility, fitness) 4. Transpersonal state of being (how we see others and how we perceive they see us (emotional intelligence)) 5. Values state of being (one’s concept of morality) 6. Ethical state of being (personal ethics, spiritual intelligence) 7. Historical and inherited state of being (ranges from a sense of entitlement to one of being repressed and discriminated against and can include levels of wealth, inherited traits, or learned inherited prejudices and hatred)

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defect in a part is caused by another related part. Rather than stopping the analysis at this point, they ask why the other part is reacting that way. They may find that it meets their specifications, but the specifications were not exactly what the engineers had suggested, or purchasing or contracting may have amended the original specifications, or the quality control at the receiving and testing of the part was faulty. They will continue down all paths until they find the original source and correct it. They have learned over time that only correcting individual symptoms produces new and different symptoms. Negative behavior often has the same result; namely, when only the symptom is corrected, new symptoms will appear. They will look new and different, but they are still the result of not correcting the problem at its source.

RESTORATIVE PRACTICE: A PROMISING WORKPLACE INTERVENTION Restorative practice coupled with safe reporting and stakeholder knowledge can provide organizations with the tools they need to reach root problems and correct negative behaviors in a positive reintegrative manner. Restorative justice is a process that focuses on the harm done to targets and the obligation that it creates for the offender and the society to rectify the harm and reintegrate the offender into society. Its adoption in workplace settings is just beginning to be utilized as a way of moving from progressive disciplinary intervention to interventions designed to reintegrate offenders back into productive and healthy roles within the workplace (Wachtel, O’Connell, & Wachtel, 2010). To understand how restorative practice can be beneficial to a workplace environment, it is important to understand restorative justice and restorative practice. Restorative justice roots are ancient, dating back to a time when we existed in clans and tribes (Zehr, 2002). At that period in human history, small groups of people needed every member of their group for the group’s survival. Because they needed everyone for the survival of the clan, they did not have the luxury of banning or disposing of members of the group simply because they broke one of the rules or offended another member of the clan. They did not use progressive discipline and human resources checklists to fire members of their group. In their simple sophistication, they knew that reintegrating offenders was the best way for the group to succeed. Many early tribes in North America, New Zealand, and Australia used what is now commonly referred to as restorative justice, through tribal councils or societal circles, to determine the harm caused by an offense, to rectify the harm, and to reform the offender to full functioning as part of the tribe (Zehr, 2002). If we compare the ancient need to include all members of a clan for survival to modern organizations and businesses, it should be readily apparent

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that organizations, having spent precious resources recruiting and training personnel, should be reluctant to needlessly lose any employees. They should be reluctant to lose employees that have been targets of abuse who exit to avoid continued abuse. They should be reluctant to lose any offenders through disciplinary action that either results in dismissal or has them angry and quietly seeking revenge. They should also be reluctant to lose employees in place, those that stay but become increasingly disengaged and begin practicing presenteeism—I will have my body at the workplace, but not my heart or mind. To fully understand restorative practice, it is helpful to examine its ancient roots and to understand how restorative practice is reemerging as a system counter to our present “blame and punishment” system. Modern-day restorative justice in North America grew out of an interesting experiment in Elmira, Ontario, Canada. Mark Yantzi, then a probation officer, was working with two juveniles who had vandalized several properties in Elmira in 1974. He wondered what would happen if the young men actually met the people who owned the properties the young men had vandalized. Would a face-toface meeting with the people they had harmed change anything? The property owners agreed to meet. The success of the meeting and the subsequent healing that took place for the owners and the offenders was profound, as the property owners finally had answers to their questions of why, and the offenders learned that their bad choices had affected many more people than they had imagined (Butler, 2004). Mark Yantzi was an active member of the Mennonite Church, and word quickly spread throughout the church of the remarkable success that he had achieved. The practice was adopted by other Mennonite churches and the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and modern-day restorative justice was born in North America. New forms of restorative justice are beginning to gain acceptance in present Western societies, with New Zealand and Australia leading the way. In Australia and New Zealand, the civil and criminal justice systems began by adopting the family group conferencing patterned after the original people’s tribal conferencing circles (Wachtel et al., 2010). New Zealand adopted the system based on the ancient traditions of the Maori people, and in 1989, its entire juvenile justice system was revised to make restorative justice the norm for virtually all of its juvenile cases (Zehr, 2002). Workplace intervention personnel need to be trained in restorative justice practices to correctly address all three groups: targets, offenders, and bystanders (Braithwaite, 1989). First, they must restore all parties to a stable position that deals with the harm done and the obligations to rectify that harm (Wachtel et al., 2010). Second, they need to assist targets, offenders, and bystanders in moving in a positive direction and in setting goals, objectives,

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and necessary progressive steps to achieve these goals and objectives. The restorative process provides all three groups the opportunity to establish the foundation for their own personal growth and to begin the collective development of an environment of trust, respect, and dignity (Duncan, 2010). The two standard forms of justice in the United States are the civil and criminal justice systems. As discussed below, the civil justice system compensates individuals for injuries to person and to property, primarily through monetary damages and other orders issued by the courts. The criminal justice system involves the state holding individuals responsible for harmful behavior, with the possibility of imprisonment and other forms of punishment. The restorative justice system differs dramatically, in that it is victimfocused, in a way that involves the offender. It uses a process that is directed toward the harm that has been done to the victim and the responsibility and obligations the offender has to rectify the harm. The principle underlying restorative justice is dealing with the harm done to the victim, repairing the harm with the help of the offender, and then reintegrating the offender into society (Zehr, 2002). In the restorative justice process, the victim plays a central role in determining what will repair the harm and how the offender might agree to meet his or her obligations and responsibilities of restoration from that harm. The offender’s agreement should not only repair the harm but also allow the offender to be reintegrated into society. The criminal and civil justice systems are better known by most Americans and are based on the premise that offenses are either crimes against the state or violations against another person’s or institution’s property or ownership. The court system will determine who is to blame and decide what the correct penalty should be for the violation. In the criminal justice system, the prosecutor’s role is to represent the people as a whole, which includes policy goals of punishment, deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation, and mercy, while exercising discretion on decisions to prosecute. The victim may play a role in providing statements and evidence, and, increasingly, victim’s assistance and compensation programs operating out of a prosecutorial framework play a role too. Nevertheless, the focus tends to be on the alleged perpetrator’s actions. In the civil justice system, notably tort and employment law, the policy goals may include compensation, prevention, and deterrence, plus occasionally punishment. Monetary damages and injunctive orders (such as reinstatement in wrongful discharge claims) are the main forms of relief. Clearly, restorative justice is different from the criminal system; it is focused on victims, while the criminal justice system is focused on offenders. In fact, the entire criminal justice system is offender-focused. In the civil system, the focus is most often on damages. Damages are defined as an amount of money representing the solution to a problem or harm done. Money damages typically do not address the deep feelings of each of the parties to the complaint.

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The practice of restorative justice addresses feelings and underlying interests and needs and can provide a more complete and lasting solution than either a court ruling or a settlement conference.

Steps in the Restorative Justice Process The restorative justice process normally begins with an explanation of the process to the three main groups involved: the offender, the victim, and the bystanders or supporters. The initial meetings should be conducted independently to determine whether the parties understand the process and whether the victim is willing to go forward. The victim has the right to refuse to participate, and that right should be completely and totally honored without any pressure. Because the process focuses on the harm that has been caused and the damage done to a real person, the rights of the harmed supersede the rights of the offender and the bystanders. If the victim does not want to participate or is unable to participate, the restorative justice practitioner should still meet with the offender to begin the process of the offender confronting the harm that he or she has caused. Often, a bystander or supporter of the victim might agree to stand in as a surrogate and offer insight into the effect the offense has had on the victim. This storytelling can have almost the same effect as having the victim present (Harvey, 2010). At this point in the process, the purpose is for the offender to begin to understand that the victim is a human being and has a real name, a family, a life interrupted, and a need to understand “why”: “Why did you do what you did, and why to me?” It is also an important part of the process for the offender to hear from his or her own family and friends to understand the impact that the offense has had on them as well. After hearing from their supporters, offenders often feel what has been called reintegrative shaming (Braithwaite, 1989), and they begin to realize that their actions have affected not only the victims but also their own family and friends. Reintegrative shame centers on the act, not the person, and separates the act from the actor (Morrison, 2002). There continues to be debate over the term shame, with many misunderstanding or confusing what Braithwaite (1989) meant by “reintegrative shame.” Personal embarrassment might be a better term, without the negative connotations of shame, which is perhaps what Braithwaite meant when he coined the term reintegrative shaming. Offenders often feel embarrassed when they realize the harm they have caused to the victim as well as to their own colleagues, family, and friends. It can be a powerful moment in the process when offenders make this realization and feel this embarrassment. Only a small number of people, 1–3 percent, are estimated to be true psychopaths or sociopaths who cannot feel empathy (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

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Mental Disorders, 4th ed., text revision, American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The rest of the population can develop and grow a sense of caring and empathy. Variations of this restorative process are beginning to be employed in the workplace, with some promising results. Some of the first attempts have taken place in school settings, where schools have adopted restorative practices for their students and then applied the same practice to staff incidents (Wachtel et al., 2010). For the victim, the process toward understanding and forgiveness begins at this stage as well, especially if the victim understands that forgiveness does not mean forgetting, but understanding. It is an understanding of the “why,” even if it does not make logical sense. It is the end of asking “why” and the beginning of understanding. This crucial step allows the victim to adopt forgiveness, not for the offender, but for himself or herself. For as long as victims hang on to the question “why,” the offense continues to control their lives. The process of forgiveness is to free one’s own life, not necessarily the life of the offender. Once the offender and the victim have begun to move forward, it is important to address and seek the cooperation of the bystanders or support group. The bystander group includes persons occupying various positions with respect to the originating conflict, and it is important to recognize to which group each individual belongs. For example, some bystanders may have been witnesses to the offense, and others may have learned about it later from any one of the parties involved. There may be supporters of the offender, supporters of the victim, or supporters of justice. There will be bystanders who just enjoy the drama and would like it to continue (Karpman, 1968). All of these group members are involved in the process and can be invaluable, or they can destroy the process and any good work that has been done. Each must be either brought into the process for good or, if this is not possible, at least separated from the process. The following are examples of restorative statements and questions that can be used in a restorative justice conference. “If you really want to help [name of target], then you will” is a good statement. A useful question can be, “What would you like to do to help [name of target or name of the offender] heal and move forward with [his or her] life?” The facilitator should listen carefully to the participants’ answers and, if possible, have them commit them to writing to be utilized later in the process when creating a statement of agreement with all the parties involved (International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), 2009). At this point in the process, it may be possible for the offender, the victim, and the constructive bystanders or supporters to begin a facilitated discussion to help determine what corrective measures are possible. Again, the restorative justice facilitator must have the correct skills and questions to ensure

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that the meeting does not cause further harm. Questions must be asked and answers given to begin the restorative process. The process continues until the three groups—victim, offender, and bystanders—come to a shared bond and possible agreement. At this point, much like in a compassionate mediation settlement, the question becomes, “Where do you want to go from here? What would cure the harm done? What does justice look like in this case, and how can we achieve it” (Harvey, 2010)? As the process unfolds, the restorative justice practitioner begins developing a written contract in sufficient detail so that each person signing will know the role that he or she has agreed to perform moving forward. The contract becomes a morally binding agreement, and in some cases, when the courts or criminal justice system are involved, the contract may become a legal document. Restorative justice is a true attempt at real justice, with both the victim and the offender being able to understand and move forward in positive directions. It can restore the faith of the victim and be the first step in changing a pattern of negative actions for the offender (IIRP, 2009).

Myths and Realities about Restorative Justice in the Workplace There are some common myths about restorative justice that are important to address: • Myth: Restorative justice/restorative practice does not fit the workplace environment. Reality: It can be a great fit if used wisely by a trained coach or facilitator. The healing process for all three groups—the target, the offenders, and the bystanders—can be transforming for a work team, thereby demonstrating that the organization cares about and values all of its employees and is willing to spend the necessary time to correct and improve workplace culture. • Myth: Restorative justice is too time consuming, and there are not available resources to pay for it. Reality: It is important to consider the amount of time spent in continuing to address additional symptoms. Then there is the time and cost of continued interventions and progressive discipline. Often, after a confrontational intervention, none of the parties involved feel satisfied. It can be difficult for any of the parties to a trial, for example, to begin to move forward. Often the harm has neither been addressed nor repaired, and the parties continue to trade punches, at least mentally. It can be hard to see whether justice has truly been served, unless one only considers punishment as serving justice (IIRP, 2009). In workplace situations, too much time can be spent repeatedly correcting the same negative behaviors. Bullying and harassment are often a symptom of an underlying problem or a learned behavior that

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offenders perceive as a reward, so taking the time to help correct the underlying problem can have lifelong positive effects. Restorative justice can help the offenders to understand the harm that their underlying problem is causing them. They can also learn the harm that it has caused to the victims, their work communities, and the families and friends of the victims as well as to the offenders’ own families and friends (Wachtel et al., 2010). • Myth: Restorative justice is difficult for the victim and the victim’s supporters. Reality: As restorative justice is victim-focused and the victim’s safety and well-being are paramount, it is not nearly as difficult on the victim as being revictimized in court by both the prosecutor and the defense attorney or in a workplace with inadequately trained supervisors or human resource staffers controlling the meeting. In court, the victims rarely get to tell their own stories or fully understand what is destroying their self-confidence or self-esteem. The prosecutor and the defense attorney will both tell a story that may have only some reference to the victim’s story. Victims almost never learn to understand the “why.” Why did this happen? Why me? Victims are often trapped in the “why,” some for the rest of their lives. Restorative justice can be the first step in escaping the “why” trap. In addition, because restorative justice is victim-focused, a victim can avoid the process, if it will be too traumatizing, by allowing a surrogate to stand in and explain the effect the offense has had on the victim. Once a conference has occurred, if the offender is ready to be part of the restoration process and has agreed to a designated plan, the victim can often reenter the process and begin healing (Harvey, 2010). • Myth: Restorative justice does not hold the offender accountable. Reality: The process is designed to truly hold the offender accountable, because real accountability comes when the offender understands and accepts the harm that he or she has caused (Braithwaite, 1989). Restorative justice can be a powerful process to not only correct harms and reintegrate the offender into society, but also to help the victim and the society heal from the offense and build new positive relationships. When used correctly in the workplace, it can help reestablish trust, increase motivation, promote civility, and heal employees, supervisors, and managers.

COACHING WORKPLACE OFFENDERS During the restorative process, if a coach is familiar with behavioral transition (a concept that this author has developed through coaching experience), it is easy to spot a condition that affects most offenders. It is what can

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be described as “being stuck in the what.” Most offenders are “stuck in the what,” and they are trapped in the “what.” It is how people refer to them: “He is a bully” or “She is a liar.” That is “what” they are. The label traps them, and they are equally trapped in the “what” because their underlying problem continues to guide them into bad decisions as they try to “medicate” for it. If that underlying problem remains untreated, then additional labels will usually be added to the original label as more symptoms manifest into other offenses. In the workplace, this labeling is often conducted through the grapevine and rumor mill within the rank and file. Sometimes, if this negative behavior is from a supervisor, the behavior will be interpreted by senior management as tough management, causing those who suffer under the behavior to believe that management approves of the offender’s management style. For the supervisor, this tacit acceptance reinforces their medicating actions and continues their rationalized learning. Those that suffer under the behavior are left with few choices, and all of them are less than desirable. They can leave, and those who can leave usually do, thereby depriving the company of some of its best employees. Employees who cannot leave go into survival mode and protect themselves with one or more destructive behaviors, such as presenteeism, disengagement, or petty sabotage. They may also turn the pressure inward and suffer depression, stress, and other physical and debilitating illnesses. In such cases, the employee, his or her family, and the company all suffer. It is not only the direct targets of bullies who are affected, but the bystanders as well, and some bystanders will join in the bullying for acceptance, or decide to leave the company, or go into their personal survival mode as protection. Understanding what it means for the offender to be trapped in the “what” allows for a desired behavioral transition. It starts with addressing the “what” and changing the “what” to a “why.” Why does the offender make these bad choices? The best way to find out is with a trained coach working with offenders to help them talk about what they think is the “why.” Behavioral transition, my concept from coaching, allows the trained coach to work with an offender to help him or her establish a direction and develop a transformative prescription and immediately begin taking small steps in a positive direction. The facilitator should discuss the trap of the “what” and how to begin to move from the “what” to the “why.” With coaching, offenders can begin to understand how to stop treating their problems with negative actions and begin to ameliorate them with positive actions, opening the door to liking their new selves and their new actions more. When offenders begin this kind of journey and follow their own transformative prescriptions, it empowers them to change their actions, their attitudes, and their lives.

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WORKING WITH WORKPLACE TARGETS Restorative justice treats the target as the focal point in restorative justice conferences. The target can decide if and how to participate. If targets, or targets’ surrogates, choose to participate, their stories become a critical part of the restorative process, and their feelings, fears, and needs become central to the process. The process is designed to do “no further harm” to the target, and the target becomes an active participant in the restorative process and reintegration plan for the offender. As previously discussed, the work of helping an offender move from the “what” to the “why” and a target move from the “why” to the “what” is critical to the healing process. Targets get stuck in the “why” the same way that offenders get stuck in the “what.” Being stuck in the “why” begins a downward spiral that can ultimately lead to victim syndrome, depression, and all the associated negative health consequences. One way that targets become victims is through their own difficulties in dealing with why the bullying or negative behavior has occurred. Ironically, targets bully themselves into becoming victims by getting stuck in the “why” and going round and round asking, “Why me? Why am I always the one? What could I have done differently? Did I bring this on myself?”—and on and on and on. There is often no logical answer to this “why” question, only a whirling around and around without any direction, except slipping down into depression. Understanding the “why” is an important step in the process, and trained coaches can often present questions during the session that will help the target understand the “why.” Behavioral transition can take this a step further in a private session with the target after the original restorative justice session has concluded to further help the target deal with any lingering “why” thoughts. The coach should also explain that they are not saying, “Get over it” or “Just forgive and forget.” What has happened to the target is an affront to humanity, and targets did not bring it upon themselves. Targets can be helped to understand that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and henceforth a “target” that was part of another person’s life-problem drama. Being a target is no different than if while walking through a shopping mall, one was knocked down by a chandelier that fell from the ceiling. If that happened, should the target spend a lifetime asking whether that chandelier was just waiting for them to walk underneath so it could attack? Was it because the target was wearing the wrong clothes? Was the target asking for it? Of course not. It was an accident that happened when the target was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, not all bullying is merely an accident, but understanding the concept of target is important to help the target avoid taking on the destructive role of victim. If targets did have

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some complicity in the cause of the offense, they need to address it, take some responsibility, and begin changing their behavior to amend their actions going forward. Once targets can understand that they are in fact targets and not victims, they can begin taking small steps toward the renewed goals they have identified. They may begin to see that the negative behavior they have endured would probably have happened to another employee if they had not been available. At this point, targets begin to understand that what happened to them was an accident of time and place, a “what,” and that there are no real answers to the “why,” only huge amounts of negative energy that have been holding them back. Changing the “why” to a “what” will allow targets to proceed with their transformative prescription and their lives by converting the previous negative energy to positive energy empowering their small forward steps.

WORKING WITH WORKPLACE BYSTANDERS AND SUPPORTERS Bystanders and supporters are critical to the success of the process. It is important for bystanders to be part of the story and the solution; their active involvement and subsequent role in the behavioral transition process is essential. Unless bystanders and supporters are helping the offenders or the victims move forward, they will help keep them trapped in place. It is therefore equally important to work with the various bystander members to help them understand their roles within the healing process. Bystanders need to learn the difference between giving support versus enabling. They need to understand how they can give small bits of encouragement to help the offender or the target take the next small step. Sometimes comments like, “Maybe you can just finish this small piece and then decide what you want to do next,” can be helpful. Each time a person takes that next small step, he or she will feel a sense of accomplishment and like himself or herself for it. Each time a person feels that sense of accomplishment, no matter how small, it provides the energy for the next step. When this researcher was a teenager, he worked for his father, who was a builder and cabinetmaker. As he was learning the trade, his father taught him an important lesson that serves as a good example for people involved in coaching. All a carpenter really needs to know, at any moment, is where to put the next nail. He does not need to be fretting about future steps because he can read the blueprints and look at the sketches to understand the big picture. He will never accomplish the big picture goal on the blueprints until he puts the next nail in its proper place. Then he can decide where the next nail should go. With all things in their proper sequence, in their proper time,

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the big picture will soon become reality. It is a lesson and an example that can be passed on when working with all three groups, namely, the offenders, the targets, and the bystanders.

THREE-PART SYSTEM FOR PREVENTING AND CORRECTING WORKPLACE BULLYING A comprehensive holistic approach to preventing and correcting bullying involves addressing the three distinct roles in all incidents: the offender, the target, and the bystanders. If a program is to become effective in changing bullying behavior, all three groups must be included and become part of the solution (Braithwaite, 1989). However, long-term, well-trained, and active bystanders can be the most important group for continual improvement of the work environment. Through education of their work community, and thereby potential future bystanders, an employer can begin to change the organizational norm from one in which bullying is attractive and acceptable, to one in which bullying is seen in a negative context by all, including offenders. It is important to encourage employers to adopt a three-part strategy consisting of stakeholder knowledge, safe reporting, and restorative practices to fully address bullying.

Stakeholder Knowledge Companies should ensure that all participants, management, employees, board members, vendors, clients, and consultants understand the seriousness of bullying, cyberbullying, and harassment. They need to realize what potential consequences occur if bullying behavior is ignored and not corrected. They also need to know how dangerous it is to do the wrong things, that is, zero tolerance, immediate punishment, or other punitive actions without restorative practices.

Safe Reporting Companies need a safe and secure reporting system for their stakeholders to report incidents. The system needs to be safe in the eyes of the reporter, not just the administration, if it is to be fully utilized by those needing to file reports. “Just come and tell us” is not a safe system, and neither is the “anonymous box.” These systems are perceived by victims and bystanders as another way in which they can be further victimized by the offenders. Additionally, simply telling human resources or a senior manager can be ineffective because many times the information is misunderstood. For example, people who hear the reports often do not fully understand or are not trained

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to clarify what they are being told (Curtin, 2016). The reporters misbelieve that the company heard them or believe that the company chose to do nothing. The following examples illustrate this problem. There is a famous case from South Hadley, Massachusetts, in which a 15-year-old recent Irish immigrant, Phoebe Prince, committed suicide after weeks of cruel bullying by her classmates. In the court case, the mother explained how six weeks before Phoebe’s tragic death, she had notified the school. The school personnel testified that they only learned about the bullying two days before the tragedy and not from the mother. In reading the transcripts and in discussions with several parties who were involved in the case, it is clear that both the mother and the school personnel were telling the truth. The mother told the school how unhappy Phoebe was with the new school but did not specifically say that Phoebe was being bullied. As people frequently do not really hear each other, the school personnel did not ask whether Phoebe was being bullied and incorrectly assumed that she was just going through a new student adjustment period. There was no safe-reporting system, so the communication was incomplete. Had there been a safe-reporting system, the mother could have used the system or the school personnel could have asked her to input into the system. The South Hadley, Massachusetts, school would then have known the extent of the negative behavior that was occurring, and the mother would have known that she had formally told them. A second famous case involves the child molestation problem at Penn State University, in which a graduate assistant from the football program attempted to report the incident. The language used to describe what had occurred included the phrase “horsing around,” which may have been interpreted by those who received the verbal reports as normal locker room banter. As there was no formal safe-reporting system, the verbal reporting was misinterpreted, and no corrective action was taken. Therefore, no one intervened, and numerous young men were physically abused until the incidents exploded in the national press and resulted in major penalties for Penn State and its president, athletic director, hall-of-fame coach, and the original offender, who is now in prison. If Penn State had had a formal safe-reporting system available to the graduate assistant at the time of the incident, a more complete investigation could have taken place. Penn State would have had formal records to show their due diligence. The safe-reporting process would have allowed for the speedy restoration of the incident, with help for the child and his family, prosecution for the offender, and protection for the graduate assistant, coach, athletic director, and president. As those involved would have had the facts, we can assume they would not have participated in a cover up. Without a formal safe-reporting system, it appears that the persons in authority interpreted

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the information they were given in their own ways, minus the facts that were either confusing or unknown. Each then made a serious mistake in judgment as distorted information moved up the chain of command. This process frequently happens in workplace organizations, with the net result that negative behavior often goes unreported and untreated. It is no coincidence that estimates show over 74 percent of American employees have reported being disengaged at work, and in a recent survey by SailPoint (2016), 27 percent of American employees stated that they would be willing to sell their logins and passwords to their company’s data systems. A third of these reported they would sell them for as little as $100. A safe-reporting system should provide for complete protection for those needing to report workplace abuse, with attention paid to assuring that there are not misperceptions about how the information is gathered, protected, and utilized. The reporters should be assured that their identities are protected and that they will not be retaliated against by the bully, the bully’s supporters, or the company. A safe-reporting system can be implemented in person through a trained independent ombuds, it can be online, or it can be an outside service, provided that each system protects the identities of those reporting. The most important part of the system is the belief and reality that the system is safe for the reporters. One system created by the Connected Learning Network (CLN) (which I developed in my role as chief executive officer of CLN) is as follows: Online Incident/Concern Reporting System: Web-based monitored reporting system for employees, managers, and vendors whereby those affected can easily report incidents or concerns in a secure system that is accessible 24/7 via the Internet. A trained ombuds or other trained professional receives, assesses, and responds to each report. They can act immediately, if necessary, and can at any time or place, with access to the Web, check reports, compare data, input actions taken, sort and pull reports and take any corrective measures they deem necessary. They are able to “hold” reports in a temporary file as they investigate circumstances, and they easily move the report, along with their notes and actions taken, into the permanent database. The Online Incident/ Concern Reporting System gives each organization a secure, Webbased, active database of all reported incidents and concerns and allows administrators to compile and compare data through multiple parameters and reports. The 4Civility System provides secure Web-based reports that will identify problems, concerns, trouble spots, bullies, victims, and bystanders. The reports will provide ongoing information, comparisons, trends, and statistical information to access the effectiveness of prevention efforts and the changing workplace environment.

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This technological advance gives organizations the control and accurate information they need to monitor and improve their workplace environment. The designated mediator or ombuds can reach the system from any computer connected to the Web in a fully secured and protected system. The secured reporting system can be reached by Internet 24/7 and provides a monitoring system for the entire organization. Designed for easy adoption and operation, there is no equipment to buy, nor is there any instructional technology support needed from the organization’s busy IT professionals. (4Civility Institute, 2016)

Restorative Practices Companies and organizations should consider being trained in restorative practices to correctly address all three groups and restore them to a stable position that deals with the harm done and the obligations to rectify that harm. The restorative process should help all three groups move in a positive direction to set goals, objectives, and progressive steps to achieve their goals and objectives. The restorative practice process provides all three groups with the opportunity to establish the foundation for their own personal growth and to collectively begin to develop a shared environment of trust, respect, and dignity. Most importantly, the process can reintegrate offenders, targets, and bystanders into a functioning company with a healthy culture.

THE VALUE OF AN INDEPENDENT OMBUDS FOR SAFE REPORTING An integral part of a safe-reporting system can be an independent ombuds. A professional independent ombuds can provide all stakeholders with a safe and truly neutral professional to help them sort through personal options. What makes a professional ombuds so valuable is that very few people ever have the opportunity to openly discuss options in a completely secure and confidential manner with a person that is truly neutral. Most people we consult in stressful situations are spouses, relatives, friends, and coworkers, all of whom have their own biases. A spouse will frequently take your interpretation of a situation and not challenge your underlying assumptions. A human resources professional might be sympathetic, but their underlying responsibility is to the organization, not the individual. Friends or coworkers might base their advice on their own agendas. Only an independent professional ombuds can provide a truly neutral environment for an employee to discuss and analyze a situation. The ombuds will not give recommendations, but he or she will help the employee to consider all possible options and to test underlying assumptions.

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If a law has been broken, the ombuds will understand the legal requirements and can begin to take action while keeping the employee’s identity protected. The role of an ombuds is similar to that of an attorney or a priest in that almost all confidential information is protected. In many instances, the ombuds can help correct a negative situation without disclosing the source of the information. The most effective ombuds are truly independent and not employees of the organization. The value to a company of having a truly independent ombuds is the confidence that the company is fulfilling its obligations to help root out dangerous and negative behaviors within the organization. Their employees and other stakeholders can be assured that the organization is serious about its culture, and regulators can be assured that the company has a truly effective harassment and whistle-blower protection system.

BUILDING WORKPLACE CAPACITY FOR CIVILITY The combination of having stakeholder knowledge of negative behaviors— including bullying, mobbing, harassment, and other destructive actions with an understanding of the consequences of either ignoring or taking wrong actions—and a safe-reporting system and a restorative system of responding will go a long way toward building workplace civility. Implementing the systems described above and helping employees to understand that they are responsible for how they treat each other and for overall workplace civility can improve employee morale and productivity. Core values that promote trust, diversity, personal and professional growth, mutual respect, and productive communications are absolute necessities in modern, innovative, and successful organizations. Unfortunately, even the most well-intentioned corporate policies can be undermined by unmanaged conflict within the organization. Unresolved conflict is a distraction from otherwise productive use of time, energy, and resources, as it diminishes internal and external relationships and eventually impacts the organizational culture in a negative way. To help facilitate this understanding and to foster discussions and limit wrongful assumptions, it is possible to use civility surveys (part of the CLN Safe-Reporting Software System referenced earlier):

Civility/Kindness/Compassion Survey Tool The purpose of this brief online tool is to measure, at regular intervals, each person’s and unit’s perception of the work environment. The tool measures interpersonal and group relations as part of a civility, kindness, and compassion strategy. Each group member rates how they and their colleagues treat each other on a scale of 1 to 5, with a 1 being as kind and wonderful as possible and a 5 as awful, mean, and cruel. They

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are asked to cite any significant acts of civility, kindness, or compassion they have observed within the group. They are asked to cite any acts of meanness and also any concerns they have about questionable things, related to the group, they have seen in cyberspace. The reports are automatically compiled and can be reviewed for information and for discussion items. Acts of special kindness can be acknowledged, and acts of negative behavior can be discussed. Giving all group members the ability to anonymously report concerns for themselves or others, coupled with the ability to cite concerns they have from the cyberworld, provides important insight into the work environment. Group discussions based on the results encourage participants to work together to improve civility, kindness, and compassion. Often misunderstandings emerge in the reports and can be discussed in a nonthreatening informative way, thereby removing personal emotion and resentment. The reports can also serve as an early-warning system, allowing compassionate intervention before more serious incidents develop. The most successful groups use the Civility/Kindness/Compassion surveys on a regular schedule, i.e., every 4–8 weeks. The survey takes less than 5 minutes to complete but will generate a great deal of information. The use of the surveys reminds participants that they are responsible for their work environment and how they treat and relate to each other. The anonymous nature of the instrument and its purposeful design to foster reporting on good things helps groups to redirect their collective efforts toward civility, kindness, and compassion. Regular use of the surveys will promote a positive environment and can prevent or reverse a toxic workplace. (4Civility Institute, 2016) The civility surveys have been used in numerous organizations and have opened up positive workplace discussions and improved interpersonal understanding while reducing misconceptions and misunderstandings. Negative conflict often grows out of incorrect assumptions, with each party reinforcing their incorrect assumptions as the parties move further and further apart. Without a system for measuring and testing assumptions, misunderstandings often fester and grow, with the parties involved becoming more and more disconnected and either openly or passively aggressive toward each other. Many times, if the parties are engaged in a workplace restorative practice session, they can find their way back to the original wrongful assumptions, start over, and rebuild a positive relationship. The civility surveys provide a positive way to surface those wrongful assumptions and allow for face-saving resolutions to occur without having to proceed to formal mediation.

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OTHER PROMISING WORKPLACE BULLYING INTERVENTIONS Vanderbilt University Medical Center has developed an early-intervention protocol that has been successful in addressing and changing negative behavior at the earliest sign of dysfunction (Hickson, 2009). They commonly refer to the protocol as the “Cup of Coffee” program. Essentially, the protocol is designed to provide an informal intervention in a relaxed, nonthreatening setting at the first instance of incivility, bullying, or general harassment. The program’s goal is to prevent the issue from escalating through wrong assumptions and misunderstandings while employing a graduated protocol to address and intervene in the case of harassing and bullying behaviors. Workplace restorative practice can be a powerful tool to positively change negative environments. It should seriously be considered as an alternative to escalating disciplinary actions that only temporarily correct situations and ultimately break down, causing continued exiting or disengaged employees. In many instances of workplace bullying and incivility, employees who have other job options will exit even if the bullying was not directed at them. As they observe the bullying behavior and the negative reactions to it, they begin to seek options as they realize that their current workplace has become toxic. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “fast rats get off the ship,” which means that those without immediate options, the “slow rats,” are forced to stay and try to survive. As mentioned previously, there are several coping strategies for survival, and almost all are negative for both the employee and the organization.

CONCLUSION Organizations that wish to improve their workplace culture and avoid becoming a toxic workplace should adopt a three-part strategy that includes (1) stakeholder knowledge with clear policies and plans; (2) a safe-reporting system, coupled with an independent ombuds; and (3) restorative practices to rectify harm and reintegrate offenders. Organizations should adopt an operating strategy that works to help all employees focus on their jobs and not be distracted by fear, intimidation, shame, or blame. As stated in the introduction to this chapter, harassment, intimidation, bullying, social exclusion, and other negative power imbalances should have no place in the modern workplace. However, just as in society as a whole, organizations often find they have more negative behavior than they might have expected, sometimes with tragic effect. A preferred workplace should transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship and civility; but, unfortunately, common standards, much like common sense, are not that common.

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REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author. Belak, A. (2013, September). Understanding the mental health effects of bullying. Presentation at the Second Annual Symposium on Pediatric Behavioral and Mental Health, Louisville, Kentucky. Berne, E. (1996). Games people play: The basic handbook of transactional analysis. New York: Ballantine Books. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, shame and reintegration. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Butler, D. (2004, September 11). How a drunken rampage changed legal history. Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved from www.ottawacitizen.com Christensen, C. A., & Dorn, S. (1997). Competing notions of social justice and contradictions in special education reform. Journal of Special Education, 31(2), 181–198. Curtin, J-R. (2016). An exploratory study of existing anti-bullying statutes. Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing. Duncan, S. (2010). Restorative justice and bullying: A missing solution in the antibullying laws. New England Journal on Criminal & Civil Confinement, 37, 701–732. 4Civility Institute. (2016). Retrieved from www.4civility.org Harvey, L. (2010). Restorative justice training. Center for Planning, Policy, and Performance, Lexington, Kentucky. Hickson, G. B. (2009). Discouraging disruptive behavior: It starts with a Cup of Coffee! Presentation at the What’s Right in Health Care Conference, Chicago, Illinois. International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP). (2009). SanerSaferSchools. Retrieved from http://www.iirp.edu/education-programs/continuing-education​ /projects/safer-saner-schools Karpman, S. (1968). Fairy tales and script drama analysis. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7(26), 39–43. Lemert, E. (1951). Social pathology: A systematic approach to the theory of sociopathic behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. Massetti, G., Swearer, S., Potter, S., & Martin, L. (2011, September). Bridging research, policy, and programming. Panel Discussion at the Second Annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit, Washington, D.C. Merton, R. (1957). Social theory and social structure (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Morrison, E. W. (2002). Newcomers’ relationships: The role of social network ties during socialization. Academy of Management Journal, 45(6), 1149–1160. Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom: Teachers’ expectations as unintended determinants of pupils’ intellectual competence. In M. Deutsch, I. Katz, & A. R. Jensen (Eds.), Social class, race, and psychological development (pp. 219–253). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. SailPoint. (2016). Market pulse survey: Weak security practices leave organizations exposed. Retrieved from https://www.sailpoint.com/identity-governance-market-pulse​-survey

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Sutherland, E. (1947). Principles of criminology (4th ed.). Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincort. Wachtel, T., O’Connell, T., & Wachtel, B. (2010). Restorative justice conferencing: Real justice and the conferencing handbook. Bethlehem, PA: International Institute for Restorative Practices. Zehr, H. (2002). The little book of restorative justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States

Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States Volume 2

Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada, Editors Foreword by Gary Namie

Copyright © 2018 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Duffy, Maureen P., editor. | Yamada, David C., editor. Title: Workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States / Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada, editors ; foreword by Gary Namie. Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017013247 (print) | LCCN 2017031060 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440850240 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440850233 (set : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781440850257 (volume 1) | ISBN 9781440850264 (volume 2) Subjects: LCSH: Bullying in the workplace—United States. | Harassment—United States. Classification: LCC HF5549.5.E43 (ebook) | LCC HF5549.5.E43 W67168 2018 (print) | DDC 331.25/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013247 ISBN:

978-1-4408-5023-3 (set) 978-1-4408-5025-7 (vol. 1) 978-1-4408-5026-4 (vol. 2) 978-1-4408-5024-0 (ebook)

22 21 20 19 18   1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available as an eBook. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

VOLUME 1 Forewordix Gary Namie Prefacexiii Maureen Duffy and David C. Yamada PART I: UNDERSTANDING WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 1 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: Definitions, Terms, and When They Matter David C. Yamada, Maureen Duffy, and Peggy Ann Berry

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2 Prevalence of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing among U.S. Working Adults: What Do the Numbers Mean? Loraleigh Keashly

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3 Risk Factors for Becoming a Target of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie and Ruth Namie

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4 Organizational Risk Factors: An Integrative Model for Understanding, Treating, and Preventing Mobbing and Bullying in the Workplace Len Sperry

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PART II: EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 5 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing and the Health of Targets Melody M. Kawamoto 6 The Psychosocial Impact of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing on Targets Maureen Duffy

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7 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing: A Neuropsychotherapeutic Perspective 151 Pieter J. Rossouw 8 Vicarious and Secondary Victimization in Adult Bullying and Mobbing: Coworkers, Target-Partners, Children, and Friends Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik 9 When Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Occur: The Impact on Organizations Renee L. Cowan

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PART III: PREVENTION OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 10 How Awareness and Education Can Help with Recognition of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie, Ruth Namie, and Carol Fehner

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11 The Role of Human Resources in Bullying and Mobbing Prevention Efforts Teresa A. Daniel

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12 Innovative Practices in Workplace Conflict Resolution John-Robert Curtin

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VOLUME 2 PART IV: UTILIZING EFFECTIVE INTERVENTIONS IN RESPONDING TO WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 13 Best Practices in Psychotherapy for Targets of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Maureen Duffy and Jessi Eden Brown

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14 Best Practices in Coaching for Targets of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Jessi Eden Brown and Maureen Duffy

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15 Best Practices in Coaching for Aggressors and Offenders in Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Benjamin M. Walsh

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16 The Role of the Consultant in Assessing and Preventing Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie and Ruth Namie

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17 The Role of the Ombuds in Addressing Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Tony Belak

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PART V: THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE IN THE UNITED STATES FOR WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING 18 The American Legal Landscape: Potential Redress and Liability for Workplace Bullying and Mobbing David C. Yamada 19 Comparing and Contrasting Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Laws in Other Countries with the American Legal Landscape Ellen Pinkos Cobb

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PART VI: WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING WITHIN SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT SECTORS 20 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Health Care Sector Susan Johnson 21 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in K–12 Settings: School Principal Mistreatment and Abuse of Teachers Jo Blase and Joseph Blase 22 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in U.S. Higher Education Loraleigh Keashly and Joel H. Neuman 23 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Public Service Sector and the Role of Unions Gregory Sorozan

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24 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Corporate Sector Kelly H. Kolb and Mary Beth Ricke

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25 Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Nonprofit Sector Vega Subramaniam

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Epilogue: An Agenda for Moving Forward David C. Yamada and Maureen Duffy

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About the Editors and Contributors

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Index 627

PART IV

Utilizing Effective Interventions in Responding to Workplace Bullying and Mobbing

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Best Practices in Psychotherapy for Targets of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Maureen Duffy and Jessi Eden Brown

In this chapter and in chapter 14, we examine counseling and coaching strategies for working with targets and survivors of workplace bullying and mobbing. In the current chapter, we focus on best practices in counseling and psychotherapy and provide a detailed overview of the concept of traumainformed care. In chapter 14, we extend the application of trauma-informed care to the practice of professional coaching with targets of workplace bullying and mobbing. In both chapters, we will use the terms professional counseling and psychotherapy synonymously to refer to the provision of professional mental health care services. Professional coaching is distinct from counseling and psychotherapy, and that distinction will be described in the next chapter, which focuses specifically on professional coaching. By definition, bullying and mobbing are health-harming processes (Duffy & Sperry, 2007, 2012, 2014; Namie & Namie, 2011). The health-harming effects can be both physical and psychological and may include the aggravation of preexisting health problems or the development of new health problems during and after bullying and mobbing episodes (Duffy & Sperry, 2007, 2012, 2014). A thorough review of these health effects, both physical and psychological, can be found in chapter 5. Because we are looking at counseling and coaching interventions for targets and survivors in this and the following chapter, our focus is primarily on the negative psychological consequences of bullying and mobbing while acknowledging that stress impacts a person’s overall health, including physical health (Duffy & Sperry, 2007; Kivimaki et al., 2003). The psychological negative consequences associated with bullying and mobbing include full clinical syndromes and disorders meeting psychiatric diagnostic criteria as well as subclinical syndromes that do not meet full diagnostic criteria but result in significant emotional and psychosocial distress.

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Understanding the clinical diagnoses and subclinical syndromes associated with workplace bullying and mobbing is important because it is for these conditions that targets, survivors, and family members are most likely to seek help and treatment. Existing research supports a strong association between bullying and mobbing and certain health conditions and subclinical syndromes. Workplace bullying and mobbing have been found to be associated with clinical diagnoses of depression (Cassitto & Gilioli, 2003; Hansen et al., 2006; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1998; Niedhammer et al., 2006; Pompili et al., 2008; Punzi, Cassito, Castellini, Costa, & Gilioli, 2007); anxiety (Brousse et al., 2008; Cassitto & Gilioli, 2003; Chen, Hwu, Kung, Chiu, & Wang, 2008; Hansen et al., 2006; Tomei et al., 2007); post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (Balducci, Alfano, & Fraccaroli, 2009; Hoel, Faragher, & Cooper, 2004; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996; Matthiesen, & Einarsen, 2004; Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002; Nielsen, Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2005; Nielsen, Tangen, Idsoe, Matthiesen, & Magerøy, 2015; Rodríguez-Muñoz, Moreno-Jiménez, Vergel, & Garrosa Hernández, 2010; Tehrani, 2004) and misuse of alcohol and drugs (Richman, Flaherty, & Rospenda, 1996; Rospenda, Richman, Wolff, & Burke, 2013; Traweger, Kinzl, TrawegerRavanelli, & Fiala, 2004). Results from the National Health Interview Survey (Khubchandi & Price, 2015), which included 17,524 U.S. adults, indicated workplace harassment to be associated with “significantly higher rates of serious mental illnesses, disrupted sleep patterns, and psychosocial distress symptoms” (p. 559).

THE QUESTION OF POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) From the above brief review of mental health diagnoses associated with workplace bullying and mobbing, it is clear that depression, anxiety, and PTSD have repeatedly been diagnosed in targets and survivors of workplace bullying and mobbing. PTSD has been assigned as a diagnosis for targets and survivors of bullying and mobbing since Leymann’s original clinical work in the 1980s and 1990s (Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996) and has continued as an assigned diagnosis to the present day. For those who provide clinical mental health services for targets of bullying and mobbing and their family members, it is no surprise that PTSD is a frequently considered or assigned diagnosis. Westhues (2004) referred to workplace mobbing as the “stressor to beat all stressors” (p. 4), and the renowned traumatologist Dr. Robert Scaer (2005) described the workplace as a common site of traumatic experiences. Scaer said that “almost any social setting where control is lost and relative helplessness is part of the environment can easily progress to a traumatic experience. Perhaps the most obvious and pervasive source of this insidious societal trauma is in the workplace” (p. 132). Yet, whether the diagnosis of PTSD can

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appropriately be applied to targets and survivors of workplace bullying and mobbing remains a topic of debate. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013) is the most widely used system of classification of mental disorders by clinicians and researchers globally. How a diagnosis is defined and explained in the DSM has theoretical, clinical, legal, and practical implications, including whether reimbursement for treatment is likely to be available and for how long and whether a person is eligible for benefits such as workers’ compensation and Social Security disability insurance. PTSD is now included in the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) in a new section under the heading “Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders” and not under the heading “Anxiety Disorders,” as in past editions. As a diagnosis for targets and survivors of workplace bullying and mobbing, PTSD raises particular issues. On the one hand, clinicians and survivors frequently identify PTSD as the most appropriate mental health diagnosis for many targets and survivors, given the traumatic nature of the experience of workplace bullying and mobbing and the resulting symptom set. On the other hand, the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) criteria necessary to accurately make the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder present some specific problems for clinicians who wish to use the diagnosis for targets and survivors presenting with a cluster of traumatic stress symptoms.

Criteria for Making Diagnosis of PTSD The DSM-5 (APA, 2013) lists eight sets of criteria (Criterion A through Criterion H) required for the diagnosis of PTSD to be accurately made. Criterion A describes the nature of the initiating traumatic stressor necessary before a diagnosis of PTSD can be rendered, and it is this criterion that is most problematic for clinicians working with targets and survivors of workplace bullying and mobbing. The criterion requires direct exposure or witnessing to actual or threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence. Indirect exposure through learning that a significant other was exposed to this same set of traumatic events is acceptable for the diagnosis provided that, in the case of indirect exposure to death or threatened death, the death was violent or accidental. Repeated exposure to extremely unpleasant details of the triggering event, often in the course of discharging occupational or professional responsibilities (for example, first responders, child abuse investigators), also can satisfy Criterion A. Criterion B explains the requirement that intrusive and repetitive memories, thoughts, and feelings are present in the symptomatic person. These thoughts and feelings are forms of traumatic reexperiencing, such as nightmares, flashbacks, and unwanted images of the events surrounding the

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initiating traumatic stressor. Criterion C describes symptoms of avoidance necessary to make the diagnosis of PTSD. These avoidant symptoms can be avoidance of actual thoughts, memories, or feelings about the initiating stressor or avoidance of persons, places, things, conversations, or any other reminders of the initiating stressor. Criterion D outlines negative changes in thought or mood that either began or got worse after the initiating traumatic stressor. These negative changes in thought or mood include the inability to remember key details of the traumatic stressor, a persistent and often distorted sense of blame of self or others for the traumatic event and for its consequences, persistent and strong negative emotions related to the initiating traumatic event, persistent and often distorted beliefs and expectations about the world and oneself, diminished interest in activities once found to be pleasurable or a source of satisfaction, a sense of detachment from others, and a persistent inability to experience positive emotions. Criterion E describes arousal symptoms either beginning or worsening after exposure to the initiating traumatic stressor. These arousal symptoms include irritable, aggressive, reckless, or self-destructive behavior; hypervigilance (excessive watchfulness or scanning the environment for threats); problems with focus or concentration; and sleep disturbances. Criterion F specifies that the symptoms in Criteria B, C, D, and E must have lasted longer than a month. Criterion G specifies that these symptoms must have resulted in significant subjective feelings of distress or impairment in functioning. And, finally, Criterion H specifies that these symptom sets must not be due to illness, medications, or substances. The full, detailed diagnostic criteria with respect to the number of symptoms that must be present in each cluster and other explanatory details may be found in the DSM-5 (APA, 2013).

Difficulties with Criterion A If we return to Criterion A, the qualifying stressor for a diagnosis of PTSD, it is debatable whether exposure to workplace bulling or mobbing satisfies the criteria for a diagnosis. For some and perhaps many bullying and mobbing targets, the threat of job loss, with all its attendant financial implications and associated loss of personal and professional identity, is directly experienced as an actual (if job loss is the outcome) or threatened serious injury and, therefore, arguably is a qualifying stressor. There is a seldom-discussed bias in the DSM toward overemphasizing the precipitating stressor as representing a threat to physical injury or death and underemphasizing the psychological threat and terror accompanying a range of human experiences that typically do not result in physical injury or death but that equally trigger intense psychological reactions consistent with the remainder of the criteria for establishing a diagnosis of PTSD.

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A notable exception is the work of Roberts et al. (2012), who, in their study, used data from the PTSD subsample of the Nurses’ Health Study II consisting of over 3,000 nurse subjects. They concluded that subthreshold stressors (i.e., those stressors not meeting the life-threatening criteria of the DSM) also resulted in PTSD symptoms as significant as those from the diagnostic life-threatening stressors. Their overall conclusion is that PTSD may be a severe, nonspecific stress response syndrome and that a range of stressors, both life-threatening and non-life-threatening, can operate as precipitating events. Another area of controversy surrounding Criterion A is the diagnostic legitimacy of pairing a narrowly defined precipitating event with a set of psychological reactions or sequelae (Breslau & Davis, 1987a; Roberts et al., 2012). Almost all other diagnoses in the DSM are based only on symptoms and do not connect a precipitating factor as imputed cause, as does the diagnosis of PTSD. Additionally, the professional literature has amply documented the presence of PTSD in the absence of a Criterion A (life-threatening) stressor (Brewin, Lanius, Novac, Schnyder, & Galea, 2009; McNally, 2003, 2009; Roberts et al., 2012, Rosen & Lilienfeld, 2008, Scott & Stradling, 1994). Severe financial and legal problems; marital problems; job loss; sexual harassment; divorce (Roberts et al., 2012); caring for a partner with a life-threatening condition; workplace harassment (Scott & Stradling, 1994); being stalked (Pathe & Mullen 1997); and chronic stress experienced by military personnel (Breslau & Davis, 1987b) are among the examples of subthreshold stressors associated with the subsequent development of PTSD. With specific reference to workplace bullying, Matthiesen and Einarsen (2004) found a very high level of post-traumatic stress symptoms among the workplace bullying targets whom they studied. It is worth noting that most of these subthreshold, non-life-threatening stressors associated with the subsequent onset of PTSD involved the experience of prolonged periods of stress, as is the case in workplace bullying and mobbing. From a clinical and treatment perspective, therefore, an individual who experienced workplace bullying and mobbing and who presents with symptoms of reexperiencing, avoidance, arousal, emotional numbing, or other changes in thoughts or mood should be assessed for PTSD irrespective of the ambiguity and controversy over Criterion A.

Not Everyone Who Is Bullied or Mobbed Develops Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms Not everyone who is exposed to life-altering or chronic stressors such as bullying and mobbing develops PTSD or post-traumatic symptoms. Individuals exposed to significant life stress can experience long-term traumatic responses, short-term traumatic responses, or none at all (Breslau, 2009).

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Recent research sheds some interesting light on factors associated with more severe and long-lasting traumatic responses. Those factors include previous exposure to a range of different types of traumatic stress, suggesting that cumulative trauma exposure is related to poorer outcomes, and interpersonal trauma marked by high betrayal is likewise associated with poorer outcomes (Martin, Cromer, DePrince, & Freyd, 2013). Severity and duration of the trauma exposure are also directly related to symptom development (Martin et al., 2013). By definition, bullying and mobbing are experiences that go on over a protracted period of time, from months to even years. It should also not escape our attention that many workplace bullying and mobbing targets feel betrayed by coworkers whom they previously trusted and may have counted as friends. Additionally, other risk factors, such as inadequate family or social support systems, other health or mental health problems, and financial pressures, are likely to increase the risk of a traumatic response to workplace bullying or mobbing. Risk information is important for counselors and coaches in planning the best treatment strategies in collaboration with their clients.

TRAUMA-INFORMED CARE Effective counseling or coaching for targets of workplace bullying and mobbing and their families is an important step in recovery for many survivors. Research has yet to be conducted about what kinds of interventions work best for targets and is certainly needed. In the meantime, targets of workplace bullying and mobbing, their families, and mental health and coaching professionals need to have some framework for selecting and structuring counseling and coaching services. Keeping in mind the research about the psychological and emotional health effects of bullying and mobbing summarized above and the frequency with which either PTSD or post-traumatic stress symptoms are identified in the literature as an associated outcome, we support earlier recommendations (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014) that counseling and coaching services for targets of workplace bullying and mobbing be provided within the framework of trauma-informed care. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the United States is the federal agency in charge of public health efforts to promote the behavioral and mental health of the country and has taken a leadership role in promoting the incorporation of trauma-informed models of care in mental health education and intervention. A growing emphasis in the United States on the importance of trauma-informed models of care is based on the fact that trauma is a common experience as opposed to an uncommon experience, as was once thought

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(El-Gabalawy, 2012; Kessler et al., 1999), and on the belief that trauma has actual and potentially far-reaching and enduring effects on the health, well-being, lives, and relationships of those who have experienced it (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014a, 2014b). SAMHSA has described the basic elements, or three Rs, of trauma-informed models of care as “(1) realizing the prevalence of trauma; (2) recognizing how trauma affects all individuals involved with the program, organization, or system, including its own workforce; and (3) responding by putting this knowledge into practice” (2012, p. 4). Two primary ethical principles underlie models of trauma-informed care. Those principles are nonmaleficence and beneficence. Nonmaleficence is the principle of “do no harm,” and beneficence is the principle of doing good for others. When working with trauma victims and survivors, nonmaleficence requires that mental health care professionals are aware of the pervasive effects of traumatization and that they work proactively to avoid retraumatizing a client. In the case of workplace bullying or mobbing, examples of harmful counseling or coaching actions would include target or victim-blaming, minimizing or dismissing the impact of the negative workplace situation on the client, or suggesting that it is all or mostly on the target’s shoulders to improve the situation at work. Trauma-informed professionals would be aware of the harm that such misguided actions could produce and would work consciously to practice from a perspective that is trauma-informed and that avoids retraumatization. In clinical mental health practice, beneficence is the obligation to work to improve the welfare of one’s clients. In the case of workplace bullying and mobbing, the principle of beneficence requires, for example, that clinical professionals who work with targets become knowledgeable about the nature of workplace bullying and mobbing and its negative health impacts and about the nature and impact of trauma, especially interpersonal trauma. Putting that knowledge into action would include, for example, beneficent actions such as helping a client to develop a personal support group for the grief and recovery period after bullying or mobbing or helping a client to give voice to the values and strengths that his or her unique response to being bullied or mobbed signifies.

Principles of Trauma-Informed Care For mental health and coaching professionals, it is not enough to understand the principles of trauma-informed care. These principles must be translated into professional practices that give expression to their full meaning. Ten basic trauma-informed principles (Elliot, Bjelajac, Fallot, Markoff, &

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Reed, 2005; SAMHSA, 2014b) are listed here and are expanded below in terms of how these principles might be translated in clinical or coaching work with clients:   1. Recognizing the importance of trauma awareness   2. Thinking of trauma-related symptoms and behaviors as forms of adaptation to traumatic events and experiences   3. Viewing trauma in relation to the unique life histories and circumstances of individual clients  4. Minimizing the risk of retraumatization or of reproducing trauma dynamics   5. Creating a safe and secure environment   6. Identifying recovery from trauma as a primary goal   7. Supporting client autonomy, choice, and control   8. Building collaborative and supportive relationships   9. Familiarizing clients with trauma-informed services 10. Utilizing a sociocultural lens through which to view trauma These trauma-informed principles in health care function similarly to universal precautions in infection control. Utilizing universal precautions means treating all blood and body fluids as if they were infectious to prevent and reduce actual infection and cross-contamination. Putting trauma-informed principles into practice requires treating all clients as if they have been exposed to trauma in their lives and thereby minimizes the risk of retraumatization for those who have experienced trauma. These principles are designed to maximize client psychological and emotional safety without having to know any details of previous or current traumas or psychological injuries.

Translating Trauma-Informed Principles into Practice with Bullying and Mobbing Clients Principle #1: Recognizing the importance of trauma awareness Counselors and coaches are proactive and responsible in thinking through the therapeutic or coaching context for their bullying and mobbing clients so that clients experience safe and secure environments with minimum risk of retraumatization. From the initial contact with the client, it is important that counselors and coaches are welcoming and supportive. Bullying and mobbing clients have routinely been characterized as incompetent, difficult to get along with, or the cause of workplace problems, so a mistrust of authority figures, including counselors and coaches, should not be surprising. Frequently checking in with clients about how they are reacting to the counseling or

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coaching sessions, what they find helpful or not helpful, and what topics they feel they need to spend more or less time on are examples of ways of interacting that recognize the importance of trauma awareness.

Principle #2: Thinking of trauma-related symptoms and behaviors as forms of adaptation to traumatic events and experiences Counselors and coaches work hard to understand the behaviors and symptoms of their bullying and mobbing clients as forms of adaptation to the experience of being bullied or mobbed rather than as instances of pathological behavior that must be diagnosed and labeled. Counselors and coaches avoid pathologizing and labeling the emotional and behavioral responses of bullying and mobbing clients. Their clients’ behavior is best understood as a set of solution attempts to cope with the negative experiences of being bullied or mobbed—even if the solution attempts are not working. For example, the behavior of bullying and mobbing clients who are mistrustful of authority and who isolate themselves socially from contacts with others is understandable when considering that the client(s) felt betrayed by coworkers who did not stand up for them at work when they were under attack from supervisors or other coworkers. For the clients, it may be safer to remain skeptical of the motives of others or to mistrust them and to reduce contact with others who could end up betraying them again. Mistrusting most other people and isolating may be easier and less exhausting for the bullying or mobbing client than trying to figure out who is safe to trust.

Principle #3: Viewing trauma in relation to the unique life histories and circumstances of individual clients Counselors and coaches take a relational and contextual perspective when working with their bullying and mobbing clients. They understand the cumulative nature of trauma (Martin et al., 2013) and its influence on client responses to current trauma. They also understand that what clients bring to the table in terms of strengths, social support, and other resources is one of the two largest factors in determining counseling outcome—the other being the relationship between the counselor and client (Hubble, Duncan, & Miller, 1999). Therefore, counselors, but not necessarily coaches, gently inquire, without pressure or coercion, about any previous trauma exposure. Counselors and coaches also seek information about the level of social support that their bullying and mobbing clients have in their lives and about the presence or absence of other resources, including educational, career, financial, spiritual resources, and the role of family and friends. Counselors and coaches recognize that understanding the contextual and relational backdrop of a bullying or mobbing client will help them to assess whether the client is

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more or less vulnerable in a particular situation and will enable them to utilize client strengths and resources in a proactive way. The fewer the resources and social support that a bullying or mobbing client has, the more at risk that client is likely to be. A contextual factor central in bullying and mobbing cases is the organizational context within which the bullying or mobbing occurred. What were the structure, climate and culture, and leadership of the organization in question? What kind of power dynamics operated between supervisors and subordinates within the workplace? Were there antibullying policies in place? Did the organization have procedures for addressing allegations of workplace harassment? Did the organization have a history of harassment claims to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or reports in the news media or elsewhere? What kind of reputation did the organization have as a place to work? For many bullying and mobbing clients, developing a wider perspective about their organization and workplace can be useful in helping them to make sense of their experiences and to locate those experiences within their developing narrative of what happened and its impact on them. Such conversations about their organization and workplace, like other conversations about difficult topics related to their trauma exposure, should only be conducted if and when the bullying or mobbing client expresses a desire to participate in them and with the advance understanding that the client is in charge of the direction of the conversation and when to stop.

Principle #4: Minimizing the risk of retraumatization or of reproducing trauma dynamics Counselors and coaches who work with bullying and mobbing clients are aware of the risks of retriggering traumatic experiences, thoughts, and feelings, and they work cooperatively with their clients to minimize the risk of retraumatization. By its nature, trauma is associated with powerlessness and, often, helplessness. Expert or authoritarian standpoints in counseling and coaching risk reproducing in a different context the unequal power dynamics of interpersonal trauma such as bullying and mobbing and, therefore, must be avoided to minimize the risk of retraumatization. Think about what it would be like for a client who was bullied by a boss or supervisor to be in a counseling or coaching relationship with a professional who followed his or her own agenda rather than the client’s. The bullying or mobbing client must be in charge of what to talk about, how much to talk about, and pausing or ending conversations. Paying careful attention to timing, pacing, and leading in counseling and coaching is necessary to avoid retraumatization. Details of the bullying or mobbing may be very difficult for the client to talk about, especially early on in the counseling or

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coaching process, and any pressure to elicit details is inadvisable and contrary to trauma-informed best practices. Counselors and coaches working with bullying and mobbing clients make explicit at the beginning of their work with clients that ensuring psychological safety and comfort is paramount. They frequently check in with their clients and invite feedback about how the session is going and what they, as the counselor or coach, might do to make the session even more helpful. This check-in process happens throughout the session, not just at the end. Regular checking in puts the client at the center of the counseling or coaching process and gives the client control over the topics and the depth of clinical and coaching conversations, thereby reducing the risk of retraumatization.

Principle #5: Creating a safe and secure environment Counselors and coaches communicate to their bullying and mobbing clients that their well-being and psychological safety and security are top priorities. They adopt an approach that is client-centered and convey positive regard and warmth to their clients. The process for scheduling appointments is not cumbersome, and counselors and coaches convey to their clients that they will work with them to facilitate their recovery and will make referrals, as needed. Counselors and coaches also let their clients know that they are not made uncomfortable by the expression of strong emotion and that they have confidence that their clients can also successfully manage strong emotion. A safe and secure environment for clients is reinforced by honesty and transparency. For example, if a counselor is unsure about whether a particular topic is helpful for the client to focus on in a session, the counselor increases psychological safety for the client by expressing that uncertainty to the client, sharing the rationale for it, and soliciting the thoughts and ideas of the client about the topic. Acknowledging and apologizing for any errors or mistakes that may arise also increases psychological safety. Many bullying and mobbing clients, like other trauma-exposed clients, may be hypervigilant to perceived threats in their environment, and they respond best when afforded the respect of honesty and transparency.

Principle #6: Identifying recovery from trauma as a primary goal Counselors and coaches who work with bullying and mobbing targets identify recovery from trauma as a primary goal and instill hope that recovery is a realistic goal. Common factors research (Hubble et al., 1999; Wampold, 2010) demonstrates the therapeutic importance of harnessing hope and positive expectations as a primary common factor in successful clinical outcomes. While it may be difficult and take time and professional support, recovering from trauma involves acknowledging that trauma happened and recognizing

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its impact on current functioning. Targets of bullying and mobbing are frequently in a state of disbelief about what has happened to them, especially in the initial stages of the process of bullying or mobbing. It is common for them to have a very hard time accepting that they could have been bullied or mobbed given their commitment and conscientiousness to their jobs. When they realize that they have been bullied or mobbed, they typically respond with both sadness and anger and then begin to look at the losses they have incurred as a result of being on the receiving end of bullying or mobbing. Naming (Smith, 2012) what happened at work, its effects on one’s life and relationships, and its meaning for a bullying or mobbing target is a primary part of the recovery process and provides a framework through which to develop realistic and positive goals for one’s future. Naming does not mean the elicitation of details that can retrigger traumatic memories and feelings. It simply means an acknowledgment that negative events directed toward the client occurred at the workplace in the context of carrying out one’s job. Looking at the effects of bullying or mobbing on a client’s life and health is not a one-session process; it takes place over time and with the client always in charge of whether or not to discuss particular topics. In our collective clinical experience, bullying and mobbing targets want the opportunity to discuss what happened to them and its meaning in their lives with professionals who are knowledgeable about bullying and mobbing. For targets, such knowledgeable professionals can be hard to find.

Principle #7: Supporting client autonomy, choice, and control Counselors and coaches who work with bullying and mobbing clients embrace a collaborative and supportive standpoint in therapy and coaching and, consistent with trauma-informed best practices, reject acting from an authoritarian standpoint. Counselors and coaches encourage their bullying and mobbing clients to make decisions in their own best interests, including decisions about how counseling or coaching should proceed. In counseling and coaching, the moment-by-moment practice of respect, open dialogue, and promoting clients’ abilities to make choices and exercise control over their decision making reduces feelings of powerlessness and helplessness and replaces those with actual in-session experiences of choice and control— essential elements of empowerment. A word about techniques associated with specific clinical counseling models is in order here. Supporting client autonomy, choice, and control is not consistent with the use of some confrontational counseling techniques that place the counselor in a “one-up” more powerful position than the client and in which the counselor acts from an “I know best” point of view.

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Principle #8: Building collaborative and supportive relationships Counselors and coaches value collaborative and supportive relationships with their bullying and mobbing clients and work to build collaborative relationships with other professionals whose services may be needed to help clients fully recover. The importance of collaboration as an antidote to a bullying or mobbing client’s experience of the misuse of power in a work setting has been discussed at length in this section. There are other important reasons for counselors and coaches to think in a collaborative and multidisciplinary way when working with bullying and mobbing clients. The effects of bullying and mobbing can lead to multiple losses and problems in many domains of life (Duffy & Sperry, 2012, 2014). Physical and mental health problems, family problems, financial problems, career problems, and legal problems are some of the major ones. Hence, bullying and mobbing clients may need to obtain professional services from a range of physicians and health care providers, mental health providers, career counselors, marriage and family therapists, employment attorneys, and insurance and credit counselors. Counselors and coaches who have links to other professional service providers in the community, especially to providers who are familiar with bullying and mobbing, can facilitate the process of making necessary referrals for their clients or simply the process of obtaining needed information.

Principle #9: Familiarizing clients with trauma-informed services Counselors and coaches understand that trauma-informed care is an established framework for providing physical and mental health services to victims and survivors of trauma within a context of maximum safety and security. The trauma-informed care framework takes into account common psychological and emotional reactions of persons who have experienced trauma and also emphasizes the importance of minimizing the risk of retraumatization. The core principles of trauma-informed care are based on best practices from research evidence, clinical experience, and stakeholder input and preferences (SAMHSA, 2012, 2014a, 2014b). By explaining to bullying and mobbing clients that a framework for trauma-informed care exists to safeguard clients who have experienced trauma in their lives, clients will have more information about the nature and context of services available to them and will be able to make more informed decisions. At a minimum, bullying and mobbing clients will be able to ask whether the treatment services and context are trauma-informed. If the provider or program never heard of trauma-informed care, then that is important information for clients to factor into their decision making about potential services and treatment.

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Principle #10: Utilizing a sociocultural lens through which to view trauma Counselors and coaches take a broad view when considering the meaning of trauma and make every effort to situate their understanding of trauma within the contextual framework of a client’s family, community, and culture. For example, when counselors and coaches work with clients who have been bullied or mobbed, it is important to develop an understanding of how work and conflict at work were viewed within the client’s family. What did a client learn from his or her family about what it means to do a good job at work, about conflict at work, about job loss and unemployment, about standing up for oneself at work, or about being treated poorly in the workplace? Such information can be invaluable for counselors and coaches and helps to locate a client’s response to being bullied or mobbed within a broader relational system. Likewise, information about the values of a client’s community and culture about work, employment, unemployment, conflict, and mistreatment helps to situate a client’s perspective about workplace bullying and mobbing within a broader community and cultural framework. Similarly, how individuals respond to trauma is situated within this broader sociocultural system. Clients, when responding to trauma, are influenced and shaped by the values, experiences, and customs of their families, communities, and cultures. Knowing some of these influences opens up a window for clinical conversations about whether the values and experiences about work that have shaped the client, upon reflection and within professional dialogue, are ways of thinking and acting that continue to make sense or that perhaps would be better if revised. Taking a sociocultural perspective encourages clients to think about the profoundly shaping values, beliefs, and experiences of their families and cultures and also gives openings for clients to talk back to those values, beliefs, and experiences if they do not fit or do not help to make sense of current experience. Families, communities, and cultures have had much to say about the topic of work. Clients who have been bullied or mobbed can benefit immensely from counselors and coaches who are skilled at initiating conversations about the influence of family and culture in understanding and responding to having been bullied or mobbed.

Case Illustration: Lisa Lisa sought counseling at the end of a very difficult year as a librarian in a new middle school where she had transferred so that she could be closer to home. She was a midcareer professional who had spent most of her career in middle and high schools, both as a language teacher and then as a librarian. In her roles as a language teacher and librarian at her previous schools, she had easily accepted leadership positions and had excelled in them, based on

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the feedback of her peers and principals. She was recognized as a leader and innovator in community and team building and was often asked by parent associations throughout her district to speak to parent groups about community and team building. At her new school, Lisa’s principal started to criticize her about everything from the layout of the tables and chairs to the book displays and bulletin board exhibits in the library. Some of the criticism was private, but a lot of it took place at full faculty meetings in front of all the other faculty members. Lisa was humiliated, and she also became angry over what she saw as the principal’s continued interference and hostile comments about her opendoor policy for the teachers and the way in which she conducted her classes with the kids. At the beginning, other teachers were supportive of Lisa, but by the end of the year, most had backed off from supporting her and many had stopped talking to her altogether except about essential work matters. Lisa figured that the other teachers really liked her but were scared that what they saw happening to her would happen to them if the principal saw them engaging with her. When it came time for Lisa’s performance review, she was shocked to see the disparaging comments that her principal had written about her and included in her permanent record. Lisa felt helpless and was told by her union leader that this principal had a bad reputation and seemed to pick on a particular teacher every year and this year it was Lisa’s turn. Lisa became increasingly distraught and told the counselor that she would blow up over the simplest things that went wrong and that this had been going on for months. She also told the counselor that she had quit socializing with people from work and with her friends outside of work and had turned down all of her recent invitations to talk at parents’ groups about community and team building. Lisa didn’t want to risk anybody else turning away from her and not supporting her, so she reduced her contacts with other people across the board. She also started to doubt whether she was a likeable person. One of the first things that Lisa’s counselor did was to suggest that Lisa take her time about deciding whether the counseling was helpful or not and encourage her to ask each and every question that she had about the counseling process and the counselor. The counselor checked in with Lisa frequently during each session to see whether the conversations were helpful for her, whether Lisa had topics other than the one they were talking about that she wanted to get in before a session ended, and whether there were questions that the counselor had not asked that Lisa wished the counselor would ask. The counselor was mindful from the outset to respect Lisa’s understandable difficulties with trusting others and to counteract Lisa’s perceived powerlessness in her work situation by acting to support Lisa’s personal agency and autonomy in their counseling relationship.

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Over time, these basic trauma-informed practices made a positive difference for Lisa, who felt increasingly secure within the counseling relationship. Lisa’s growing sense of psychological safety and autonomy in counseling made it possible for her to explore with her counselor the effects of being bullied on her personal and professional identities and on her relationships with coworkers and others.

SPECIFIC TREATMENT MODALITIES FOR TRAUMA The general trauma-informed principles discussed above provide a framework for counselors and coaches who practice from a variety of helping models to incorporate best practices in their work, irrespective of their preferred treatment modality. To a large extent, counseling practice and the selection of a preferred treatment model is a function of professional training. Counselors tend to practice from the models in which they received formal professional training. This makes sense because counselors cannot ethically practice from models in which they were not trained. Professional counseling training takes place in graduate school and then is extended through postgraduate training and continuing education, including self-learning. The general trauma-informed principles for working with survivors of trauma can be mapped on to a counselor’s preferred treatment paradigm for good general practice. Nonetheless, there are likely to be times when counselors and coaches need to refer to clinicians who have more specialized training in the treatment of trauma or when clients want practitioners who are trauma specialists. The models briefly described here have either been developed for the treatment of trauma or have some quantitative or qualitative evidence to support their use as primary interventions for the psychological treatment of trauma. The list is intended to be representative rather than exhaustive.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on changing unhelpful or counterproductive thinking and acting to reduce traumatic symptoms. It has been utilized with a range of populations who have been exposed to various traumatic stimuli. Its efficacy as an intervention model for PTSD has been extensively studied and reviewed (Najavits et al., 2009; Rothbaum, Meadows, Resick, & Foy, 2000).

Exposure Therapy Exposure therapy is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that combines relaxation techniques with in vivo exposure or imagined recall of traumatic events, situations, stimuli, or related memories to reduce the avoidance and

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fear associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms. Clinician training and skill in the use of this treatment modality is essential to avoid client retraumatization. Exposure therapy in the treatment of trauma is well studied and has demonstrated efficacy (Watts et al., 2013).

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is an informationprocessing therapy developed to relieve distress associated with traumatic experiences and memories. Clients focus on bilateral external stimuli, for example, hand tapping or tracking the therapist’s finger movements while attending for short periods at a time to internal memories of the distressing experiences. Traumatic memories stored in the brain are thought to be accessed and processed and then linked to new associational networks in the brain that are more adaptive. Its effectiveness as a treatment for PTSD has been widely studied and supported (Lee, Gavriel, Drummond, Richards & Greenwald, 2002; Seidler & Wagner, 2006).

Mindfulness and Meditation Practice Mindfulness practice is focused and intentional awareness of the present moment together with nonjudgmental acceptance of accompanying thoughts and emotions. These practices can be used by clients without the need of a counselor or coach once the techniques have been learned. While mindfulness and meditation may or may not be sufficient as a primary treatment for post-traumatic stress symptoms, there is evidence that they may be useful in relapse prevention (Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002), and there is growing interest in their general use with PTSD survivors (Vujanovic, Youngwirth, Johnson, & Zvolensky, 2009).

Relaxation Therapy Relaxation and breathing training are a set of techniques for regulating and relaxing various parts of the body as a way of reducing anxiety and stress. Clients learn to recognize internal cues and sensations indicating stress and anxiety and to respond by using relaxation methods. Relaxation therapy is a self-help strategy that has fairly robust evidence to support its use in clients who are anxious (Manzoni, Pagnini, Castelnuovo, & Molinari, 2008).

Narrative Therapy Narrative therapy is an approach centered on the development of clients’ stories and narratives about key events and situations in their lives, the

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ongoing processes of sensemaking and meaning-making about those events, and the identification of unique responses to those events that have helped them move forward in life (White, 2007). Centers of narrative training are encouraging more effectiveness research. A pilot study using narrative therapy with PTSD survivors showed promising results (Erbes, Stillman, Wieling, Bera, & Leskela, 2014).

Neurofeedback Neurofeedback is a form of biofeedback that gives clients real-time information about the state of their brain in terms of frequencies and amplitudes displayed visually and with sound on a computer using neurofeedback software. Through these visual and auditory stimuli, brain frequencies and amplitudes in desired ranges are rewarded, and brain wave activity outside of the desired range is inhibited. Neurofeedback can be used, depending on the clinical goals, to both increase alertness and deepen relaxation. Empirical research into the efficacy of neurofeedback for PTSD is limited, but some early evidence suggests it can be effective (Hammond, 2005; Peniston & Kulkosky, 1991).

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Sensorimotor psychotherapy is one of a number of psychotherapies developed for the treatment of trauma (Ogden & Fisher, 2015). Like other bodybased approaches, sensorimotor psychotherapy is based on the understanding that traumatic memories are stored in the body as well as in the mind. The approach utilizes methods like movement, as well as emotional and cognitive processing, to help clients deal with unassimilated sensorimotor reactions to trauma. The approach taken by sensorimotor practitioners is highly regarded by a number of trauma and attachment specialists. Effectiveness research is ongoing in London, Toronto, and Oslo.

Somatic Experiencing Somatic experiencing is a body- and mind-based approach for releasing what is referred to as trauma residue that can remain in the body in the wake of traumatic experiences that have not been fully discharged or processed (Levine & Frederick, 1997). This approach utilizes supportive methods for helping trauma clients to complete interrupted or unfinished traumatic fight, flight, or freeze responses, thereby restoring physiological systems that may have been overwhelmed and dysregulated by the trauma response. Some effectiveness data exists (Leitch, 2007). Proponents of the model identify its

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assumptions as in accordance with basic principles in trauma, attachment, and neuroscience (Payne, Levine, & Crane-Godreau, 2015). The above descriptions of a variety of specific treatment modalities for PTSD and post-traumatic stress symptoms include such well-known approaches as cognitive-behavioral therapy and newer body-based approaches such as sensorimotor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing. Most of the modalities listed require professional counselor facilitation. Some however, such as mindfulness practices and relaxation strategies, can be used by clients themselves after training in the methods, without the presence of a mental health professional or coach. For symptomatic clients struggling with the effects of post-traumatic exposure, professional mental health intervention is usually necessary to facilitate recovery (Taylor et al., 2003).

CONCLUSION Workplace bullying and mobbing are associated with a range of negative psychological consequences and conditions, among them anxiety, depression, alcohol and substance misuse, and PTSD and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Targets of workplace bullying and mobbing and their family members look to professional psychotherapists, counselors, and coaches to receive help for these often severe and life-altering negative consequences and symptoms. At present, there is no body of outcome research identifying best psychotherapeutic, counseling, and coaching models and strategies for working with targets and their families. Nonetheless, given workplace bullying and mobbing prevalence rates, targets and their families will continue to seek counseling and coaching services to obtain relief for their symptoms and help in planning for life after bullying and mobbing. In the United States, SAMHSA has taken the lead in promoting traumainformed care as a model of general principles and practices for health care professionals. These principles and practices are based on the view that trauma is a common, as opposed to a rare, phenomenon, and that many clients, mental health workers, and other personnel have been exposed to trauma in their lives. This view of trauma as a common experience for people is counter to the older view of trauma as relatively uncommon. The trauma-informed care model provides a way of working with trauma clients that recognizes the pervasiveness of traumatic experiences and that avoids retraumatization during treatment. Given the high frequency of diagnoses of PTSD and post-traumatic stress symptoms in workplace bullying and mobbing targets, described above, we strongly endorse the adoption of a trauma-informed model of care for psychotherapists, counselors, and coaches who provide professionals services to workplace bullying and mobbing targets. In combination with specific

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training and study about workplace bullying and mobbing and the health impact and psychosocial effects on targets and their families, the traumainformed care model provides the basis of current best practices in treating targets and their families. In this chapter, we described the psychological health impact of workplace bullying and mobbing and provided a robust overview of the trauma-informed model of care for psychotherapists and counselors working with targets and their families. In the next chapter, we will extend the trauma-informed model of care and apply it to the provision of professional coaching services.

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Best Practices in Coaching for Targets of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Jessi Eden Brown and Maureen Duffy

Target-victims of workplace bullying and mobbing need helping professionals who are well versed in trauma-informed principles and practices. Normally, practitioners are only able to accurately determine the role and extent of trauma experienced by a client after services have been initiated. The basic tenets of trauma-informed care, as outlined in chapter 13, help to create a sense of safety. By incorporating trauma-informed practices from the first point of contact with a bullied individual, we can be sure we are creating the best possible conditions for exploration, understanding, and healing. In this chapter, we discuss coaching as an intervention for targets of workplace bullying and mobbing and overlay principles of trauma-informed care onto coaching practices.

HOW COACHING DIFFERS FROM PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR TARGET-VICTIMS OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING Coaching and psychotherapy are separate and unique modalities for supporting targets of workplace bullying and mobbing. This chapter outlines the ways in which coaching assists bullied targets by creating a road map for achieving goals and addressing well-defined problems. Admittedly, there is some overlap between coaching and psychotherapy; both modalities are goal-directed approaches aimed at increasing clients’ understanding of their concerns and exploring possible solutions (Biswas‐Diener, 2009; Green, Oades, & Grant, 2006; Hart, Blattner, & Leipsic, 2001). However, coaching is not diagnostically driven and cannot be effectively or ethically utilized to treat psychological issues or mental illness (Grant & Cavanaugh, 2007). Coaching is a forward-focused, nonclinical approach that is more akin

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to a working partnership between the helping professional and the client (Ives & Cox, 2012). The International Coach Federation (ICF) emphasizes that the coaching relationship stresses accountability and action. Coaching builds opportunities for discovery, clarity, responsibility, and brainstorming of client-driven solutions and strategies (ICF, 2016). As compared to psychotherapy, the coaching client may perceive the process as being more directed, shorter-term, and more singularly focused on a particular goal or set of goals (Hart et al., 2001). Although coaching may produce some mild emotional upset in a client, it never aims to push the individual into a state of chaos (Cavanagh, 2006). Most coaches are neither trained nor experienced in the skills necessary to contain and appropriately deal with acute levels of emotional distress (Hart et al., 2001). Williams (2004), a life coach and author, summarizes the differences between coaching and psychotherapy: “While therapy and coaching may share a common background, their differences are vast. Therapy is vital for those with psychological problems—what we call pathology. Coaching is for those who are healthy and already self-motivated. Both fields have their place and should not be confused” (p. 39). Coaches must possess an ability to quickly triage the situation and assess the client’s level of functioning (Buckley & Buckley, 2012; Grant, 2006). Bullied workers often present with significant levels of emotional distress. The coaching process will be ineffective (and could inflict additional harm) if applied to individuals with considerable psychological injury or impairment, particularly if the coach lacks advanced education and training in mental health treatment. In these cases, the coach must encourage the client to seek the assistance of a qualified local mental health or medical practitioner (Buckley & Buckley, 2012; Cavanagh & Buckley, 2014; Grant & Cavanagh, 2007). It may be possible for a client to engage in coaching and psychotherapy concurrently (via different providers), but this decision should be determined on a case-by-case basis and defined by the individual’s needs, goals, and current health state. Counselors and coaches working in concert must pay close attention to any legal and ethical concerns, including matters related to clarifying roles and responsibilities, obtaining informed consent, managing confidential information, and maintaining professional boundaries. When multiple professionals simultaneously support an individual, collaboration and coordination of those efforts is valuable and likely to produce the best possible outcomes (Fewster-Thuente & Velsor-Friedrich, 2008).

Advantages of Coaching One advantage is that the options or modes for service delivery are often more flexible in coaching than they are in psychotherapy (Hart et al., 2001).

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For example, coaching sessions might take place in person, by telephone, through video chat, via e-mail, or through other communication platforms. The profession of psychotherapy, on the other hand, is regulated in every U.S. state and territory. The psychotherapist is bound by laws that influence how services can be delivered, and many states specifically restrict or limit the practice of telemedicine (Shifflett, 2016). Likewise, the route to becoming a professional coach has fewer educational and experiential hurdles. There is no nationally accepted educational standard as an entry point into this profession (Grant & Cavanaugh, 2007; Grant, 2006). By contrast, state licensing boards maintain stringent requirements regarding the formal education, practical training, and documented clinical experience of psychotherapists. In addition to an advanced academic degree in the field of psychology, most states and U.S. territories require thousands of hours of post-master’s supervised clinical experience and passing scores on national board examinations prior to eligibility for licensure (Shifflett, 2016). State licensing boards also enforce laws pertaining to confidentiality, record keeping, informed consent, mandated reporting, and other practices related to the occupation of psychotherapy. The coaching profession is not regulated in this way, thereby simplifying matters of documentation and compliance for the practitioner (Biswas‐Diener, 2009). However, it should be noted that the majority of organizations offering training and certification in coaching do create and enforce their own standards. As well, most certifying bodies ask coaches to abide by ethical codes of conduct, which often address topics such as confidentiality and professionalism (Association for Coaching, 2016; European Mentoring & Coaching Council, 2016; ICF, 2015).

Limitations of Coaching Professional coaching is a relatively young profession. Despite the growing popularity of coaching, there has been little rigorous research into its effectiveness or outcomes. Coaching, as a helping modality, lacks the empirically based evidence and theoretical underpinnings of psychotherapy and other more developed practices (Ives & Cox, 2012). Elliott (2003) pointed out that without foundations in behavioral science, coaches are more likely to rely on popular motivational approaches that have not been validated. Whereas, in psychotherapy, the consumer can be assured that licensed professionals with distinguishable credentials have met the minimum state standards in terms of education, clinical instruction, supervision, and board examination, coaches hail from a wide variety of educational and experiential backgrounds. While that diversity undeniably brings unique perspectives, it may also make the selection process more difficult for consumers

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attempting to understand and synthesize varied information about a coach’s training or qualifications (Grant, 2006). It is worth restating here, as an additional limitation, that coaches without clinical training are not qualified to work with clients experiencing significant psychological distress. This is especially important because clients may purposely seek out coaching because they perceive it as being a less threatening form of help. At the time of this writing, the health insurance community does not recognize professional coaching as a qualifying medical expense. Prior to processing or paying a claim, insurance companies require procedural codes, diagnostic codes, and other medical billing details. There is no medical billing code for coaching, and the vast majority of coaches are not qualified or legally permitted to make clinical diagnoses. Therefore, the client is unlikely to be able to access his or her insurance benefits when seeking coaching services, even if the goals and nature of the work are entirely health-focused. Another area of concern about coaching with providers who do not have clinical psychotherapy training involves boundary issues. In psychotherapy, clinicians are trained to protect the welfare of clients by continually maintaining professional boundaries. Codes of ethics published by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) and the American Counseling Association (ACA, 2014) require practitioners to safeguard the integrity of the therapeutic relationship by establishing clear boundaries, avoiding all nonprofessional contact, and thoroughly documenting any extension of a relationship outside of the treatment setting. Crossing these lines may lead to legal action and sanctions against a provider from the licensing board. Coaches are not subjected to the same stringent guidelines and oversight. As stated by Hart et al. (2001), “Looser boundaries allow the coach much more latitude than the therapist” (p. 232). Some may see this as a good thing, but there is also reason for concern, especially as coaching lacks a unified professional body to collect and respond to consumer complaints, including complaints about practitioners who practice outside of their areas of competence or those who blur boundaries in ways that potentially exploit or harm the client.

THE COACHING PROCESS The first step in initiating a coaching relationship is to define and clarify the partnership, including the roles of participants and the nature of the work to be accomplished (Peltier, 2011). This may involve teaching the client what to expect from the process, stating the risks and benefits associated with coaching, discussing how information will be documented and stored, and covering other details about the coach’s practice. It is recommended that coaches create contracts and define their terms of service (in written and

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verbal formats) to help ensure that clients comprehend the scope of the work and give appropriate consent (Buckley & Buckley, 2012). The coach must assess for full client understanding before initiating the relationship. Very early in the process, the trauma-informed bullying coach will inquire about the client’s comfort level in remembering and discussing details of the bullying experience as well as its impact on various areas of the client’s life. In our clinical and coaching experience, most target-victims want to talk with someone knowledgeable about bullying and mobbing. They actively seek out practitioners who understand the phenomena and the associated negative health outcomes. Most target-victims with whom we have had contact express fairly intense frustration about the lack of knowledgeable professionals, thus restricting their opportunities for obtaining well-informed, secure support for coping with bullying and mobbing in the workplace. Nonetheless, the trauma-informed bullying coach recognizes that not every target-victim may wish to talk about the details of the bullying experience early on in the coaching process, and the coach is mindful about not exerting any pressure whatsoever on a client to do so. If the client indicates, after being asked, a desire to talk about the details of the bullying or mobbing experience, the coach will then ask the client to share his or her experience as a target of workplace bullying and mobbing—complete with before, during, and after the bullying details of how he or she has been affected. The trauma-informed coach is at all times cognizant of the fact that target-victims vary in their comfort levels and willingness to bring up distressing details. If the client does want to talk about the bullying experience and its aftermath, it is useful to discuss what he or she has tried so far to resolve the matters of concern and to ascertain the outcomes of those attempts. In the less common event, in our experience, that the client does not want to review the bullying and its impact, the coach will ask the client to identify what aspects of life he or she wishes to focus on at this stage of the coaching process. These conversations lay the course for goal setting.

Goal Setting and Strategic Planning Next, the coach and client outline and identify realistic goals to steer their efforts toward positive change (Palmer, 2007). Coaches should encourage bullied individuals to explore desired outcomes regarding their situations at work. Sometimes, a goal identified by the target may be impractical or unfitting (e.g., turning others against the bully, publically humiliating the bully or his or her managers, etc.). These exchanges are teachable moments where coaches can assist clients with contemplating barriers (and possible repercussions) to pursuing particular aims. They may also be opportunities to stimulate deeper reflection on paths toward resolution.

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Many targets of workplace bullying and mobbing outline goals consistent with common and foreseeable themes (e.g., seeking justice, exposing the abuse, restoring personal health, protecting coworkers from the same fate, etc.). The coach promotes a reframing of any unrealistic goals by exploring the higher-order themes that emerge from reflection and discussion of unrealistic goals. Having discarded unrealistic goals in favor of realistic goals as a result of this reflection and discussion, the coach and client are free to brainstorm strategies for accomplishing the reframed goals and objectives. The coach serves as a sounding board while encouraging the client to explore possible solutions to problems. With the initial goals laid out, the coach and client work together to develop strategic plans (Palmer, 2007). They dedicate time to mapping out specific steps and establishing measureable outcomes to assess the client’s progress. At this point, the coach might choose to share relevant resources and information to guide the client along the way of discovery and transformation. The coach provides accountability by maintaining a consistent focus on the stated goals and encouraging the client to evaluate results on a session-tosession basis, which is a trauma-informed consistent practice (Biswas‐Diener, 2009; Ives & Cox, 2012). It is the coach’s role to facilitate clarification of the client’s objectives as needed. The coach may assist with generating ideas and solutions for accomplishing identified aims, but this is primarily a task for the client (ICF, 2015). It is also the client’s responsibility to implement any plans born from the process.

Strengths-Based Approach Coaches should strive to take a strengths-based approach when partnering with targets of workplace bullying and mobbing. During each session, the coach must carefully listen to the client’s words to pick up on his assets, strengths, and evidence of past success (Biswas-Diener, 2010). Coaches actively seek out opportunities to engage the client’s potential as a means of challenging him based on personal attributes, strengths, and ambitions. According to the ICF (2016), these challenges serve to expose blind spots, reveal new perspectives, and promote the creation of alternate solutions. Focusing on client strengths and resources is at the heart of trauma-informed practice for both coaching and counseling. Effective coaches find ways to keep the workplace bullying client tethered to his strengths, which promotes self-esteem and self-efficacy (Biswas-Diener, 2010). Furthermore, coaches and clients should actively weave recognized assets into the strategies and solutions they implement (Biswas‐Diener, 2009). Building on what already works well creates an important touchstone for the

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client and provides a useful springboard toward positive change (Gelso & Woodhouse, 2003).

Planning from the Beginning for the Termination of the Coaching Relationship The coaching process continues session-by-session with the coach and client evaluating progress, breaking down steps as necessary, and problemsolving to achieve desired outcomes (Biswas‐Diener, 2009). Keeping the goals in the forefront guides the work and also allows the coach and client to identify when their efforts should come to a conclusion. It is important to incorporate a discussion of how and when the coaching work will end (Cox, 2010). As the last session nears, the coach and client will take time to examine their results, with an emphasis on highlighting the skills and tools used to achieve success. This should include a conversation about how these skills can carry forward and help the client in any future situations involving workplace bullying or mobbing.

Examples of Coaching-Related Inquiries, Interventions, and Interest Areas • Using a trauma-informed approach, consistent with the client’s preferences and comfort level, ask deepening and open questions to learn about the client’s bullying experience. • Teach the client about the phenomenon of workplace bullying and mobbing to provide context and to deepen understanding. • Review what strategies have been attempted by the client. Were they effective? Why or why not? • Challenge the client to answer his or her own questions—after all, he or she is the “resident expert” on his or her workplace and bullying experiences. • Assuage the client’s shame (e.g., from assaults on personal or professional identity or from false characterizations of the target as a worthless person) and guilt (e.g., for not having countered the bullying when first assaulted). • Clarify and validate emotions. Normalize thoughts and feelings common to targets of workplace bullying and mobbing. • Help the client discover ways to rally support from professionals, family members, friends, or carefully chosen coworkers. • Educate the client about typical defensive (bully-protecting) tactics employers use that have the potential to derail target-initiated actions.

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• Share known outcomes from other workplace bullying clients (without any personal or identifying information). This may aid the client with idea generation, while also decreasing a sense of isolation. • For clients who face an imminent confrontation or meeting with the employer, provide tips for protecting oneself in meetings, especially where representation by advocates is forbidden. • For clients who have lost their jobs, advise them on alternative approaches to employment interviews that may identify and avoid potential toxic work environments.

Helping the Client Understand the Health Impacts Throughout the coaching process, coaches can normalize the client’s feelings (anger, shame, guilt, confusion, fear, etc.) as they teach about the phenomenon of workplace bullying and mobbing. Bullied workers report symptoms of hypervigilance, a waning sense of trust in others, self-doubt and eroded confidence, and other reactions common to trauma (Keashly & Neuman, 2005; Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Many targets feel traumatized by a bully’s repeated attacks in conjunction with the unrelenting and prolonged exposure to stress at work. Without delving into the world of psychotherapy, a coach might educate targets, in general terms, about trauma reactions to provide context and understanding. Workplace bullying and mobbing has been linked to posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, substance abuse, and other forms of mental illness (Duffy & Sperry, 2007; Leymann, 1990; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996; Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2004; Namie, 2012; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012; Simpson, Byrne, Gabbay, & Rannard, 2015; Tehrani, 2004). As previously mentioned, targets may find that working with a local counselor will be important for addressing the psychological effects and consequences. Likewise, the coach can help the client recognize the physical and cognitive components of the stress response. As the client describes his experiences with the bullying, the coach listens for symptoms and complaints stemming from the abuse. Occupational stress, including stress from workplace bullying, has been linked to cardiovascular problems, gastrointestinal issues, sleep disorders, musculoskeletal complications, headaches, skin conditions, and other medical concerns (Di Rosa et al., 2009; Kivimäki et al., 2003; Namie, 2012; Ray, Chang, & Asfaw, 2014; Vedaa et al., 2016). Cognitive effects of occupational stress include difficulties with concentration and focus, distraction, indecisiveness, and mental fatigue; these cognitive effects can impair memory, increase the likelihood for making errors, and increase the risk of job burnout (Allen, Holland, & Reynolds, 2015; Farley, Coyne, Sprigg, Axtell,

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& Subramanian, 2015; Namie, 2012; Ray et al., 2014). Coaches should urge affected workers to promptly seek medical treatment to address health-related symptoms associated with bullying, mobbing, and general occupational stress. Life outside of work is also affected. The Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) conducted an online study of targets in 2010 to examine the effect of the bullying on the target’s primary support relationship (e.g., spouse, parent, child, best friend, etc.). The majority of respondents (76%) reported negative consequences, indicating the relationship was marked by more conflict and stress or had been completely dissolved since the onset of the bullying (Brown, 2010). Coaches can encourage clients to expand their social support networks to help distribute this type of strain.

PRACTITIONER SKILLS REQUIRED FOR EFFECTIVE COACHING FOR TARGETS OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING Boundary Setting Coaching targets of workplace bullying requires well-honed skills of boundary setting and maintenance (Buckley & Buckley, 2012). Coaches must draw clear lines to avoid shifting into territory and topics more appropriate for psychotherapy, medical treatment, or legal counsel (Hart et al., 2001). The coach and client may need to revisit and reestablish boundaries as necessary over the course of the working relationship, depending on the nature and intensity of their work.

Listening Listening skills are paramount. As a sounding board, the coach must be able to truly hear the client’s concerns while conveying empathy and understanding (Biswas‐Diener, 2009). Targets report significant isolation associated with the bullying that contributes to feeling unheard (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008). Targets protest that even when they do speak up about the bullying, they are often not believed (Hallberg & Strandmark, 2006; Namie, 2014). Strong listening skills not only foster safety and build rapport for the coaching process, but they also offer targets of workplace bullying a much-needed chance to feel heard and believed. Providing opportunities for target-victims to reclaim their own voices and agency is an integral part of trauma-informed practice.

Practice and Feedback As clients begin to take steps toward change, it is beneficial for them to have a safe place to experiment with new responses or behaviors to address

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the bullying. The coach and client may choose to work together to identify and solve common situations at work. The client can explain, role-play, and rehearse alternative strategies with the coach prior to applying them in the workplace. The client receives immediate feedback from the coach and works through any issues or concerns before settling on an implementation plan.

Patience Coaching targets of workplace bullying and mobbing requires patience. The client’s level of distress may dictate a slower, more methodical approach. Coaches have to carefully consider the client’s available reserves (e.g., physical energy, time, money, emotional resilience, etc.) during the formation of goals and action plans (Biswas-Diener & Dean, 2010). A skilled and effective coach assesses and mobilizes the client’s resources without unduly taxing him or her or adding to his or her current strain and distress. A coach that cannot recognize and appropriately deal with a client’s real limitations risks inflicting serious harm and complicating the healing process for the bullied target.

Resources and Referrals Knowledge of reading materials, dedicated Web sites and apps, relevant research articles, and other tailored items are valuable coaching tools. Coaches can accumulate a library of information specifically aimed at understanding and addressing workplace bullying and mobbing. Recommended reading lists and other references aid coaches in educating clients and enhancing the work done during and between coaching sessions (ICF, 2015). Coaches should also have a familiarity with available services and experts in the field of workplace bullying and mobbing. This knowledge allows the coach to provide appropriate referrals when necessary in support of client goals. Coaching often requires good networking skills and an ability to cultivate relationships with other professionals to ensure the best possible outcomes for clients (Nash & Sproule, 2009; Sperry, 1993). Coaches with specializations in workplace bullying must have basic knowledge about a wide variety of resources appropriate for their clients. One of the most essential roles a coach can play is to assist target-victims with identifying and triaging current needs and then addressing those needs by offering valuable, dedicated resources. For example, coaches can help educate and advocate for clients by sharing information related to the following: • How to obtain legal assistance and prepare to meet with an employment attorney. • How to solicit involvement from the labor union (when applicable).

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• Considerations in reporting issues to HR or management. • How to locate qualified counselors or medical practitioners. • Where to get additional support or counseling for career-related concerns. • How and when to apply for unemployment benefits. • How to find and utilize common job-seeker resources (e.g., job boards, recruiting firms, professionally focused social media sites, resume writing services, etc.).

Specialized Knowledge and Training in Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Finally, and most importantly, coaches who choose to partner with targets of workplace bullying are duty bound to firmly educate themselves on the phenomenon. Workplace bullying and mobbing are complex and multifaceted systemic problems. There are rarely simple or straightforward solutions to the issues clients face. Coaches can receive specialized professional training, read books and research published on the topic, and draw from personal experience as they delve into the subject. Of special note, when coaches are former targets themselves, they must be far enough removed from their own exposure to bullying to be effective and to avoid becoming triggered by the stories of clients. They must not allow their own experiences to impede their abilities to focus fully on their clients and deliver objective, professional support. This may require receiving counseling to work through personal trauma, as well as the passage of time and other hallmarks of distance from targethood.

LEGAL AND REGULATORY ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH COACHING TARGET-VICTIMS OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING Although the coaching profession is not currently regulated, coaches should seek out education, training, and accountability for their work (Grant & Cavanaugh, 2007). Career seekers may choose to obtain specialized instruction or certification in coaching practices. Coaching is a talent that is rehearsed and acutely honed over time. Professional development and education is important for keeping skills current and ensuring the use of sound, evidence-based practices (Grant, 2006; Williams & Davis, 2002). Coaches who are licensed professionals in other fields (e.g., counselors, social workers, physicians, attorneys, etc.) must use extreme caution when delineating their coaching work from their licensed profession. The onus falls on the coach to ensure that the client is clear about the coach’s role as well as the nature and scope of coaching as a helping modality (Williams & Davis,

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2002). Coaches who blur these lines incur risk, including potentially breaking laws, violating ethical codes of conduct, jeopardizing their professional licenses, and compromising malpractice insurance coverage. An intentional lack of clarity or overstepping of bounds does a profound disservice to clients and the helping professions as a whole. Duty to warn issues may come up for coaches who are also licensed or certified in other fields (e.g., health care providers, educators, law enforcement, certain public servants, etc.). These professionals are responsible for informing coaching clients, prior to initiating services, of the circumstances and conditions under which information will be disclosed to protect the lives or rights of others. Duty to warn statutes differ by state, but, in general, they require disclosure when a client makes a threat of self-harm or communicates an intent to harm an identifiable other or others. Coaches may consider carrying professional liability insurance to cover their practice. For those with licenses in other areas, who already have malpractice insurance, it is advisable to carefully examine the terms and limitations of the policy. Many liability insurance companies sell add-on policies to cover activities performed outside the licensed area of practice. Coaching is likely to be an area of practice falling outside of licensed, regulated activity, although, as mentioned, licensed professionals are always bound by the ethical codes of their professions no matter what professional activity they are performing. Regardless of the coach’s background, he or she must work with clients only within established areas of competence. It is essential for a coach to consult with other professionals or obtain supervision, as needed, under more experienced practitioners to ensure responsible and ethical behavior in all coaching-related interactions (Hart et al., 2001).

CASE ILLUSTRATION: JENNIFER Jennifer, a 53-year-old woman, contacts a professional coach with expertise in workplace bullying and mobbing after realizing her work-related stress stems from interactions with her boss. After reviewing the coaching process and ensuring the client understands the nature of the work (including the terms of service), the coach and client begin. Coach: Jennifer, why don’t you give me a little background on the situation at work. What are your most significant concerns right now? Jennifer: I’m worried I might be fired at any moment. My boss is always angry and quick to jump on every mistake I make. When my work is excellent—which it often is because I care about my job immensely—my

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boss simply makes up an issue or blames me for another employee’s mistake. I feel like I can’t win! Why do I even try anymore? I’ve attempted many approaches to dealing with this problem, including putting in more hours and effort at work, avoiding my boss whenever possible, asking a trusted colleague for ideas, searching the staff handbook for guidance, and so much more. I even talked to an attorney, but I learned I don’t have any legal options for making her stop. It’s upsetting because my boss is so well liked by the district manager and the VP of operations that I doubt anyone would even believe she is treating me this way. Jennifer continues her story by offering examples of bullying incidents and detailing some of the ways the situation at work has compromised her wellbeing. Note: For brevity’s sake, we’ve indicated Jennifer looked into many resources and solutions prior to initiating coaching. In reality, most coaches will find they spend a great deal of time helping the client brainstorm and explore initial options for addressing bullying and mobbing. Coach: I imagine the whole ordeal has been confusing, frustrating, and very painful. I can tell you’ve given the matter significant thought and have been looking for answers for some time. Jennifer: I really have! I want to keep my job, and I do love the work. I feel like I could thrive there—if only I had a different boss. Coach: Yes, your passion for the work certainly comes through in your story. I believe I have some ideas for addressing your concerns. But first, let’s break this down a bit and see if we can identify a few concrete goals for our work together. Jennifer and the coach analyze possible areas for goal setting. The coach frequently checks in to ensure Jennifer remains comfortable with the coaching method and is not becoming triggered when discussing distressing details. As needed, the coach teaches Jennifer more about the phenomena of workplace bullying and mobbing. In the process, they generate a list of outcomes Jennifer wants and then decide to categorize the aims into two primary areas that fit well into the coaching model. Coach: Nice job! To summarize, you identified two main areas to focus our work. First, you stated you are looking for ways to build up your support network, hoping this will improve your ability to cope with the stress. Second, you said you’re interested in searching for opportunities to stay with the company but get away from your boss. Jennifer: Yes, exactly! Where do we start?

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Jennifer and her coach then dig deeper into these goals to outline the initial steps and establish measures for their progress. They break her goals down into week-by-week objectives so they will have clear checkpoints for their sessions. This creates direction and accountability for their efforts. At the end of the first session, it becomes clear to the coach that while Jennifer has some coping mechanisms, she would likely benefit from working with a therapist to learn additional self-care techniques. The coach suggests the idea, and Jennifer contacts her doctor for a referral—armed with helpful information supplied by the coach (e.g., the different types of mental health practitioners, the importance of seeking out a clinician experienced in trauma-informed care, who is either well versed in workplace bullying and mobbing or is willing to learn more about the phenomena to effectively treat the client, etc.). Jennifer begins meeting with a therapist. She signs a release of information that allows her coach and therapist to collaborate and coordinate on any overlapping goals. Coach: This is our third session, and I want us to begin, as always, by checking in. Tell me, how have things been going at work? Jennifer: Unfortunately, not much has changed with my boss. Just this week, she failed to tell me about an important meeting; so, of course, I didn’t show up. Later, she tracked me down to ask where I was and why I “didn’t find it important enough to grace the team with my presence.” I was completely shocked! She confronted me in front of my colleagues, and I’m pretty sure her boss overheard it as well. I told her I didn’t know about the meeting, and she quickly countered, “Oh, Jennifer, that’s not true. I told you yesterday to be there.” She lied! Again. I just can’t take this anymore! Coach: Oh no! I can understand why you’d feel incredibly angry about that. I imagine it feels like a setup. Jennifer: Yes, absolutely! Coach: So, how did you deal with it? Jennifer: I calmly stated that there must be some misunderstanding because I had not been informed, but that I would like to get caught up on what took place at the meeting ASAP. I then took a short break from my desk, used the self-soothing skills my therapist taught me, and documented the incident in my own notes. For me, this was the last straw! When I went home that night, I talked with my husband, my sister, and my best friend about the possibility of seeking an immediate transfer to another department. Coach: I’m so glad you reached out to your support network! I’m also really happy to hear you are incorporating more self-care skills into stressful situations as they come up at work.

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Jennifer: Yes, thanks! Everyone has been really understanding and patient with me. I only wish I’d opened up to them sooner. The incident with my boss this week was also the spark I needed to mobilize our idea to try to stay with the company by getting a safer position under a different supervisor. Coach: Excellent. So, what are the next steps? Jennifer and her coach map out the next steps. The coach offers materials and information to prepare Jennifer for approaching HR about a transfer. Jennifer plans what she wants to say to justify the request. She practices it on the coach and gets feedback. It is through this dyadic process of revision that Jennifer finalizes her message and strategy. They discuss potential pitfalls, and the coach asks Jennifer to outline how she will engage her support network, her self-care skills, and other resources they’ve covered to accomplish the task. Jennifer successfully persuades HR and management to grant an expedited transfer. She and her coach decide they will continue to meet while Jennifer makes the transition to the new position at work. As they approach the end of their work together, they define how they will wrap up the process. During the last coaching session, they recap Jennifer’s progress. Coach: It has been a real treat watching you work so hard and achieve your goals, Jennifer! You courageously opened up to family and trusted friends about your problems at work. You established an effective support network you will be able to rely on now and in the future. You put a lot of effort into exploring solutions for the false accusations and bullying you experienced at the hands of your boss. You made an excellent, compelling case to HR and management for a transfer. You remained focused and never gave up. You did it, Jennifer! I’m relieved to know you feel safer at work and no longer have contact with your former boss. I’m proud of what you accomplished and how you applied your strengths to overcome such a painful and difficult situation. Jennifer: It has been quite the journey! While I miss aspects of the old position, I’m so much happier at work now. I no longer feel nauseous going into the office each morning. I feel like my work is finally recognized and appreciated. It is almost like I’ve rediscovered myself! Most importantly, I’ve learned to use my support at home and with my friends when I’m stressed out. Thank you for your guidance, knowledge, and encouragement. I’m glad you were there to help me make this all happen. Coach: You are very welcome, Jennifer. As we discussed, this marks the end of our coaching relationship for now. However, if you felt this process was useful, you are invited to contact me again in the future should you want assistance with setting and achieving other work- or stressrelated goals.

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CONCLUSION Psychotherapists and coaches choosing to work with bullied individuals must first educate themselves. The information in this chapter is not a substitute for obtaining thorough professional training on the topic of workplace bullying and mobbing. Workplace bullying and mobbing are complex and destructive phenomena that have been associated with serious health harm for targeted individuals. Unremitting exposure to stress at work has been linked to debilitating physical, relational, economic, and psychological injuries. Target-victims of workplace bullying and mobbing need knowledgeable, supportive, and skilled psychotherapists and coaches to navigate this terrain. Coaching and psychotherapy are separate and unique modalities for supporting bullied workers. Both modalities, when anchored in trauma-informed principles and practices, are effective methods for helping target-victims understand their experiences and begin to heal from abuses they have suffered in the workplace. Psychotherapy is better suited for responding to acute situations and for treating the mental illnesses or injuries associated with work trauma. Coaching is a short-term, forward-focused approach designed to help clients address specific goals related to their bullying experiences. Not infrequently, a combination of psychotherapy and coaching works best for target-victims of workplace bullying and mobbing. Public interest about workplace bullying and mobbing has been growing in the United States over the past couple of decades. Employers, legislators, legal professionals, health care providers, and other workplace stakeholders increasingly view workplace bullying and mobbing as a significant problem. It is hoped this trend of inquiry continues and that it produces much-needed empirical, outcomes-focused research into effective psychotherapeutic treatments and coaching approaches for targets of workplace bullying and mobbing.

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Biswas‐Diener, R. (2009). Personal coaching as a positive intervention. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 544–553. Biswas-Diener, R. (2010). A positive way of addressing negatives: Using strengthsbased interventions in coaching and therapy. In G. Burns (Ed.), Happiness, healing and enhancement: Your casebook collection for applying positive psychology in therapy (pp. 291–302). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Biswas-Diener, R., & Dean, B. (2010). Positive psychology coaching: Putting the science of happiness to work for your clients. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Brown, J. E. (2010, September 30). Workplace bullying strains relationships. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/2010/09/30/relat-strain Buckley, A., & Buckley, C. (2012). A guide to coaching and mental health: The recognition and management of psychological issues. London, England: Routledge. Cavanagh, M. (2006). Coaching from a systemic perspective: A complex adaptive conversation. In A. M. Grant & D. R. Stober (Eds.), Evidence based coaching handbook: Putting best practices to work for your clients (pp. 313–354). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Cavanagh, M., & Buckley, A. (2014). Coaching and mental health. In E. Cox, T. Bachkirova, & D. A. Clutterbuck (Eds.), The complete handbook of coaching (pp. 405–417). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cox, E. (2010). Last things first: Ending well in the coaching relationship. In S. Palmer & A. McDowall (Eds.), The coaching relationship: Putting people first (pp. 159–181). London, England: Routledge. Di Rosa, A. E., Gangemi, S., Cristani, M., Fenga, C., Saitta, S., Abenavoli, E., . . . Abbate, S. (2009). Serum levels of carbonylated and nitrosylated proteins in mobbing victims with workplace adjustment disorders. Biological Psychology, 82(3), 308–311. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2007). Workplace mobbing: Individual and family health consequences. Family Journal, 15(4), 398–404. Elliott, R. (2003, February). The state of the coaching industry. In-Psych, 20–21. European Mentoring & Coaching Council. (2016). The EMCC code of ethics. Retrieved from http://www.emccouncil.org/webimages/EMCC/Global_Code_of​ _Ethics.pdf Farley, S., Coyne, I., Sprigg, C., Axtell, C., & Subramanian, G. (2015). Exploring the impact of workplace cyberbullying on trainee doctors. Medical Education, 49(4), 436–443. Fewster-Thuente, L., & Velsor-Friedrich, B. (2008). Interdisciplinary collaboration for healthcare professionals. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 32(1), 40–48. Gelso, C. J., & Woodhouse, S. (2003). Toward a positive psychotherapy: Focus on human strength. In W. B. Walsh (Ed.), Counseling psychology and optimal human functioning (pp. 171–197). London, England: Routledge. Grant, A. M. (2006). A personal perspective on professional coaching and the development of coaching psychology. International Coaching Psychology Review, 1(1), 12–22. Grant, A. M., & Cavanagh, M. J. (2007). Evidence-based coaching: Flourishing or languishing? Australian Psychologist, 42(4), 239–254.

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Green, L. S., Oades, L. G., & Grant, A. M. (2006). Cognitive-behavioral, solutionfocused life coaching: Enhancing goal striving, well-being, and hope. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(3), 142–149. Hallberg, L. R., & Strandmark, M. K. (2006). Health consequences of workplace bullying: Experiences from the perspective of employees in the public service sector. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 1(2), 109–119. Hart, V., Blattner, J., & Leipsic, S. (2001). Coaching versus therapy: A perspective. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 53(4), 229–237. International Coach Federation (ICF). (2015). Code of ethics. Retrieved from http:// coachfederation.org/about/ethics.aspx?ItemNumber=854 International Coach Federation (ICF). (2016). Retrieved from www.coachfederation.org Ives, Y., & Cox, E. (2012). Goal-focused coaching: Theory and practice. London, England: Routledge. Keashly, L., & Neuman, J. H. (2005). Bullying in the workplace: Its impact and management. Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, 8, 335–373. Kivimäki, M., Virtanen, M., Vartia, M., Elovainio, M., Vahtera, J., & KeltikangasJärvinen, L. (2003). Workplace bullying and the risk of cardiovascular disease and depression. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 60(10), 779–783. Leymann, H. (1990). Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces. Violence and Victims, 5(2), 119–126. Leymann, H., & Gustafsson, A. (1996). Mobbing at work and the development of posttraumatic stress disorders. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 5(2), 251–275. Lutgen-Sandvik, P. (2008). Intensive remedial identity work: Responses to workplace bullying trauma and stigmatization. Organization, 15(1), 97–119. Matthiesen, S. B., & Einarsen, S. (2004). Psychiatric distress and symptoms of PTSD among victims of bullying at work. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 32(3), 335–356. Namie, G. (2012). The WBI website 2012 instant poll-d: Impact of workplace bullying on individuals’ health. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf​ /WBI-2012-IP-D.pdf Namie, G. (2014). The WBI website 2014 instant poll-c: The many ways workplace bullying offends its targets. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi​ /pdf/WBI-2014-IP-C.pdf Nash, C. S., & Sproule, J. (2009). Career development of expert coaches. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 4(1), 121–138. Nielsen, M. B., & Einarsen, S. (2012). Outcomes of exposure to workplace bullying: A meta-analytic review. Work & Stress, 26(4), 309–332. Palmer, S. (2007). PRACTICE: A model suitable for coaching, counselling, psychotherapy and stress management. Coaching Psychologist, 3(2), 71–77. Peltier, B. (2011). The psychology of executive coaching: Theory and application. Abingdon, England: Taylor & Francis. Ray, T. K., Chang, C. C., & Asfaw, A. (2014). Workplace mistreatment and healthrelated quality of life (HRQL): Results from the 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Journal of Behavioral Health, 3(1), 9–16.

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Shifflett, E. T. (Ed.). (2016). Licensure requirements for professional counselors: A stateby-state report. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association. Simpson, G. W., Byrne, P., Gabbay, M. B., & Rannard, A. (2015). Understanding illness experiences of employees with common mental health disorders. Occupational Medicine, 65, 367–372. Sperry, L. (1993). Working with executives: Consulting, counseling, and coaching. Individual Psychology: Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice, 49(2), 257–266. Tehrani, N. (2004). Bullying: A source of chronic post traumatic stress? British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 32(3), 357–366. Vedaa, Ø., Krossbakken, E., Grimsrud, I. D., Bjorvatn, B., Sivertsen, B., Magerøy, N., . . . Pallesen, S. (2016). Prospective study of predictors and consequences of insomnia: personality, lifestyle, mental health and work-related stressors. Sleep Medicine, 20, 51–58. Williams, P. (2004). Coaching vs. psychotherapy: The great debate. Choice 2(1), 38–39. Williams, P., & Davis, D. C. (2002). Therapist as life coach: Transforming your practice. New York: W. W. Norton.

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Best Practices in Coaching for Aggressors and Offendersin Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Benjamin M. Walsh

Workplace bullying represents a form of interpersonal workplace mistreatment that is destructive not only to targets but also to the organizations within which it occurs (Hershcovis, 2011). Consequently, organizations must engage in efforts to prevent and address the occurrence of workplace bullying (Saam, 2010). Many tactics are encouraged by researchers and practitioners, such as the development of zero-tolerance policies on workplace bullying (Namie & Namie, 2009); regular antibullying training for all workers (Fox & Stallworth, 2009); and utilizing systems designed to effectively manage workplace conflict (Saam, 2010), among others. An additional tactic recommended is the use of coaching (e.g., executive, managerial, leadership) for aggressors of workplace bullying (Crawshaw, 2007, 2010; Ferris, 2009; Fox & Freeman, 2011; Kets de Vries, 2014), specifically, and to improve interactions between supervisors and subordinates and prevent manager derailment (Kelloway & Barling, 2010; Mackey, Frieder, Brees, & Martinko, 2015; Nelson & Hogan, 2009; Wasylyshyn, Shorey, & Chaffin, 2012), more generally. The goal of this chapter is to review what is known from both research and practice about utilizing coaching with aggressors of workplace bullying and mobbing to reduce and prevent problematic and abusive workplace behavior. First, given the focus specifically on coaching as a means of intervention, coaching is defined, and research on the effectiveness of coaching is briefly summarized. Second, literature on coaching for bullying (and related topics) is discussed. Third, following a review of the literature on coaching, a model for the application of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying is presented. Finally, as will be seen, although frameworks exist for the use of coaching for aggressors of bullying (e.g., Crawshaw, 2010; Fox & Freeman,

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2011), empirical research evaluating the effectiveness of these frameworks is sparse. Thus, the chapter concludes with a call for research to evaluate the effectiveness of coaching for aggressors of bullying, with the goal of developing evidence-based best practices. Various perspectives are considered, including the client’s (aggressor’s), his or her employer’s, and the coach’s. To supplement the discussion of literature on the topic, throughout I summarize themes derived from semistructured phone interviews conducted with five subject matter experts (SMEs). Four are active in the practice of executive coaching with doctoral-level training, and all have worked with clients who are aggressors of workplace bullying, ranging from a low of 6 clients and a high of 460 clients. The fifth SME is a registered social worker who has worked with perpetrators of domestic violence and has observed that the abusive behavior of the clients often extends into the workplace, hence the relevance to the present topic. Questions were structured around the steps in the model presented in figure 15.1, and interviews lasted approximately 60 minutes.

What Is Coaching? Given our focus on organizations and the use of coaching for aggressors of bullying, it is important to first define what exactly coaching entails. Indeed, many definitions of coaching appear in the literature (e.g., Feldman & Lankau, 2005; Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999; Kilburg, 1996). For example, the International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential” (ICF, 2016). An oft-cited definition is offered by Kilburg (1996), who defines coaching as “a helping relationship formed between a client who has managerial authority and responsibility in an organization and a consultant who uses a wide variety of behavioral techniques and methods to help the client achieve a mutually identified set of goals to improve his or her professional performance and personal satisfaction and, consequently, to improve the effectiveness of the client’s organization within a formally defined coaching agreement” (p. 142). Gregory, Levy, and Jeffers (2008) highlight four components of Kilburg’s conceptualization of coaching that align with other conceptualizations. These features include that coaching is a collaborative one-on-one relationship, involves the collection of data on the client’s behavior and other factors (e.g., personality), relies on goal setting that is guided by the collected data, and involves using and delivering feedback. Coaching shares characteristics with other comparable working relationships, such as counseling or mentoring, as well as therapy (Hart, Blattner, & Leipsic, 2001). Some individuals emphasize the differences between coaching and therapy (e.g., Feldman & Lankau, 2005). For example, Feldman and

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Lankau (2005) state that coaching is more short-term in its focus on behavior change, whereas therapy is more long-term in its focus. The length of therapy is also a function of how well the client responds, whereas coaching is defined by a contract with a set number of sessions. Feldman and Lankau (2005) also assert that therapy is usually reserved for those with some fundamental problem, whereas coaching is for healthy clients. Others perceive a close connection and considerable overlap between coaching and therapy (e.g., Kets de Vries, 2014; McKenna & Davis, 2009; Nelson & Hogan, 2009). Gebhardt (2016) reiterates that the basis for coaching lies in clinical psychology and highlights the trend of psychologists, including those with clinical training turning toward work as a coach. The lines between coaching and therapy appear particularly blurred when focusing on its application for aggressors of workplace bullying, given that bullying (and potentially its root causes) is a problem to be addressed. Kets de Vries (2014) relies on both coaching and therapy, when appropriate, to address toxic leaders. As discussed in greater detail below, Fox and Freeman (2011) propose a coaching intervention for aggressors of bullying that is grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy. Thus, given the nature of workplace bullying, the line between coaching and therapy does appear blurred.

Research on Coaching Effectiveness Although limited in number, research from primary studies suggests that coaching is effective for driving change on various criteria. Grant, Curtayne, and Burton (2009) conducted a randomized controlled study with executives in a public health agency and found that coaching increased goal attainment, resilience, and workplace well-being and lowered depression and stress when compared with the control group. McGonagle, Beatty, and Joffe (2014) tested the effectiveness of a coaching intervention among workers with chronic illness and observed improved work ability, exhaustion, core self-evaluations, and resilience among those in the coaching group when compared with the wait-list control group. Reviews and meta-analyses suggest promising benefits from coaching (Feldman & Lankau, 2005; Jones, Woods, & Guillaume, 2016; Sonesh et al., 2015; Theeboom, Beersma, & van Vianen, 2014). For instance, Jones et al. (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of coaching on various outcomes and found evidence for positive effects of coaching on affective outcomes, skill-based outcomes, and individual-level results outcomes. However, there was evidence for some moderators, suggesting variability in coaching effectiveness, and empirical evidence for the effectiveness of coaching, especially those using experimental methods, is limited. This suggests that it may be too tentative to speak to “best practices” in coaching for aggressors of bullying, in particular.

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A Model for the Application of Coaching for Aggressors of Workplace Bullying While there is evidence for the effectiveness of coaching, generally, evidence specifically on the effectiveness of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying is especially limited. Following a review of the literature and request for information to listservs, I am aware of no systematic empirical research on the effectiveness of coaching for aggressors of bullying. Nonetheless, some frameworks for coaching bullies exist, such as Crawshaw’s (2005, 2010, 2012) and Fox and Freeman’s (2011) approaches, which will be summarized in a subsequent section. Likewise, coaches are engaging in this work, as is evident from various case studies (e.g., Sargent, 2011; Schlatter & McDowall, 2014); the literature on manager derailment (e.g., Hogan, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2010), for which abusive and bullying behavior is one of several reasons for manager failure; and in discussions with the SMEs. To provide guidance on utilizing coaching with aggressors of workplace bullying, I developed a model by drawing on the literature on coaching (general), coaching for workplace bullies (and related terms such as abusive supervision and aggression), and related literatures on multirater feedback and management derailment. The model developed by Gregory et al. (2008) of the feedback process in executive coaching served as the basis and was adapted for the model presented herein. Indeed, Gregory et al. (2008) note, “Coaching, feedback, and development should be considered in concert, as opposed to isolated practices” (p. 43). Below, I describe steps in the model, highlight key decisions through the process, and summarize themes derived from the aforementioned SMEs. The model presented in figure 15.1 provides a framework for the application of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying. Although the model distinguishes between the various steps, in practice there may be considerable overlap. For example, assessing and building client motivation to change through coaching is an ongoing process. It is important to emphasize that the model assumes the presence of a workplace climate or culture that is intolerant of mistreatment (Yang, Caughlin, Gazica, Truxillo, & Spector, 2014). That is, coaching is assumed to be effective only when the workplace climate indicates that mistreatment such as bullying is not tolerated, as evidenced by the presence and enforcement of policies, practices, and procedures intended to deter mistreatment. In this context, coaching would be merely one tactic among many to address bullying. SMEs were clear in conveying that the key for effective coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying is such a climate or culture, and it starts first with the behavior modeled and held accountable by senior leaders; without the presence of a climate that is clear in its intolerance of

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Figure 15.1

workplace mistreatment, coaching is likely to be ineffective. In a workplace where bullying is tolerated, such behavior may even be seen as strategic, reinforced, and instrumental for performance (Ferris, Zinko, Brouer, Buckley, & Harvey, 2007; Fox & Freeman, 2011). Upon returning to such a work environment following coaching, it is likely that clients would simply revert to their abusive ways, if the context is one in which abusive behavior is tolerated or, even worse, accepted and expected. Moreover, although a systematic managerial coaching program may even be used as a means of preventing workplace bullying, the focus of the model is largely on coaching for identified aggressors of bullying, once bullying has occurred.

Catalyst for coaching The catalyst for coaching means that the impetus for coaching—workplace bullying—has been identified (Gregory et al., 2008). To identify workplace bullying, an organization first has to understand what it is and what it is not by establishing an antibullying and respectful workplace policy and communicating this information to its employees (Fox & Stallworth, 2009; Namie & Namie, 2009). SMEs agreed that identifying bullying will be easier in a climate intolerant of workplace mistreatment, where an established policy, regular employee

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training on bullying, and surveying practices are used to define workplace bullying, build awareness of the problem, and measure its incidence and prevalence, respectively. Just what exactly is workplace bullying? The academic literature on workplace mistreatment is fragmented (Hershcovis, 2011) and ranges from lowlevel rudeness and workplace incivilities (Andersson & Pearson, 1999) to more intense behaviors such as aggression and bullying where intent to harm is clear (Neuman & Baron, 1998). For the purposes of this chapter, the definition of bullying provided by Fox and Cowan (2015) is used; they considered input from human resource professionals to put forth a revised definition of workplace bullying: “Actions and practices that a ‘reasonable person’ would find abusive, occur repeatedly or persistently, and result in adverse economic, psychological, or physical outcomes to the target and/or a hostile work environment” (p. 124).1 Although their conceptualization differs from researcher definitions (e.g., Leymann, 1990), it nonetheless may be a useful definition for inclusion in organizational policies to guide the identification of bullying in practice, given its development based on input from human resource professionals. Likewise, this definition clearly distinguishes bullying from an intermittent rude remark made by a manager having a stressful day or employee that may, from time to time, be a little tough on their colleagues. Although such incivilities are inappropriate and are not to be condoned, they are not bullying. Bullying, per Fox and Cowan (2015), is repeated and persistent abuse that results in harm. After bullying is defined, such behaviors can be monitored through surveying and reporting processes. Measurement of workplace bullying can be done in regular employee surveys, using such measures as the Workplace Bullying Checklist (Fox & Cowan, 2015), which aligns with the aforementioned definition of workplace bullying. Moreover, it is important that all employees as well as organizational outsiders (e.g., customers, where applicable) be empowered to report bullying when it occurs (Swiggart, Dewey, Hickson, Finlayson, & Spickard, 2009). Once bullying is identified, intervention with the aggressor is necessary. If the focus of the organizational climate is one of intolerance of bullying, and the decision to use coaching implies a desire to develop one’s employees, then ensuring justice in this process is critical. Without a sense of justice and fairness, aggressors of bullying may feel alienated and rejected by their employers. Jenkins, Winefield, and Sarris (2011) surveyed and interviewed managers accused of workplace bullying to learn about their experiences, including in the accusation of bullying and the investigation conducted by their employer. The authors found that those accused of bullying often experienced a lack of fairness and justice following the accusation, in particular in the way the process was handled by their organizations. Thus, organizations must ensure that basic

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principles of procedural justice—the fairness of the process used to conduct the investigation into alleged workplace bullying—are followed. Basic components of procedural justice would include allowing the alleged aggressor to express their views concerning the allegations, consistently applying these procedures, ensuring that the process is free of bias, and ensuring that the process allows accurate information to be gathered, among others (Colquitt, 2001). It is at this stage that the decision to use coaching is made (Gregory et al., 2008). Does coaching always have to mean a formal contracted engagement with an external coach? Although this approach is the primary focus of this chapter, SMEs generally agreed that informal intervention is generally preferred over more formal approaches. Graduated intervention from informal to formal is preferred. Along these lines, it may be possible to intervene early when a colleague engages in incivility, prior to the behaviors manifesting as bullying. One such program that aligns with this model is the Cup of Coffee program in the Vanderbilt Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy (“Cup of Coffee program,” n.d.). It is designed to make a colleague aware of their unprofessional behavior in a nonjudgmental, more informal fashion, prior to relying on more involved interventions, such as external intervention from a coach. Several SMEs suggested that, ideally, it is the manager or supervisor of the aggressor that should be empowered and trained to intervene following reports of disrespectful behavior. One SME emphasized that bullying is ultimately about power, which aligns with academic conceptualizations of bullying such that an imbalance of power exists between perpetrator and target (Einarsen, 2000). The SME noted that it is important to have someone in a position of greater authority and legitimate power to address the issue early on, such as the person’s manager. Although informal intervention may inhibit bullying, a formal contracted agreement with an external coach may be necessary. Assuming that the work environment is one in which mistreatment is not tolerated, it may be that the bullying stems from internal (e.g., prior experience, personality) as opposed to external (e.g., a climate that tolerates mistreatment) factors, and hence coaching may be effective. Research suggests that a number of individual differences are predictive of bullying and aggression, more generally. For example, individuals that lack self-control may be more aggressive (Douglas & Martinko, 2001). Bullying may be a reaction to threats to self-esteem and to one’s competence (Fast & Chen, 2009; Fox & Freeman, 2011; Zapf & Einarsen, 2003), which aligns with what Crawshaw (2010, 2012) argues are reasons for the abusive behavior she sees in the leaders she coaches. Bullying may also stem from a lack of self-awareness, perspective taking, empathy, and emotional intelligence (Fox & Freeman, 2011; Martinko, Harvey, Brees, & Mackey, 2013; Zapf & Einarsen, 2003), problems that are also highlighted in Crawshaw’s (2010, 2012) abusive clients and others (Salisbury, 2009).

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An inability to effectively cope with work stress may also trigger bullying (Wheeler, Halbesleben, & Shanine, 2010). Thus, given the connection between theory and research on individual differences that are predictive of aggression, and the aims of coaching, there is reason to believe that coaching may be effective for addressing bullying behavior. However, some argue that coaching may not be an effective strategy. For example, Kets de Vries (2014) argues that some toxic leaders are impossible to change. This concern regarding client motivation for coaching will be revisited. What experience and background are needed to effectively coach aggressors of bullying? Gregory et al. (2008) suggest the need to select a coach with expertise in the area of the problem, workplace bullying in the present case. Given the nature of workplace bullying and the fact that such behavior may stem from issues of personality such as narcissism (e.g., Fox & Freeman, 2011) or other dark side personality traits (Goldman, 2006; Hogan et al., 2010), selecting coaches with psychological (e.g., clinical psychology, counseling psychology, social work) graduate training may also be helpful in coaching aggressors of bullying. SMEs largely agreed that coaches doing work with aggressors of workplace bullying need to be experienced (i.e., this work is not for a new graduate); have an understanding of the phenomenon of bullying; and may benefit from a clinical background so as to effectively understand human behavior. One SME also noted that coaches must model the behaviors the clients need to develop, including compassion and capacity for empathy.

Establish relationship In the second stage, the coach and client have an initial discussion of the reason for coaching, and an assessment of readiness and motivation for coaching is conducted. The focus needs to be on building the coach-client relationship (Gregory et al., 2008). Although Gregory et al. (2008) point to a coach-client meeting, several SMEs emphasized that their initial meeting include three parties: the coach, the client, and the organization. This is particularly important with aggressors of workplace bullying for several reasons. As one SME pointed out, it is the organization that is seeking assistance and relief from suffering, and very often the entity from whom the request for coaching is made. There may also be differences in the perspectives held by the client and his or her employer concerning the facts surrounding the bullying. This meeting is a time in which the coaching agreement can be set and informed consent can be provided and obtained from the client (Gebhardt, 2016). Informed consent would be required of those with clinical training, such as by coaches with training as psychologists (American Psychological Association (APA), 2010), but it is a recommended ethical practice

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regardless of one’s training, and also aligns generally with recommendations in the International Coach Federation’s code of ethics concerning the content of coaching agreements (ICF, 2015). An informed consent would present such details as the roles, rights, and responsibilities of the coach, client, and organization; the number of coaching sessions to be held; the types of feedback provided by the coach to the client (and organization, if applicable); steps taken to ensure confidentiality of gathered data; and any consequences for the client that are associated with not participating in or terminating the coaching, among others. Indeed, the organization may require that participation in coaching is a condition of continued employment, but it is critical that such requirements be specified in detail and understood up front, prior to initiating coaching. This coach-client-organization meeting is critical to ensure that all parties have the same information and are on the same page, so to speak, before moving forward. As noted, it is most likely that the organization (as opposed to the client) will be the impetus for coaching aggressors of bullying (Jenkins et al., 2011; Salisbury, 2009). Hence, motivation for the coaching will, at least initially, stem from external as opposed to internal factors. Thus, the client will likely react negatively to the initial reason (bullying) for the coaching (Salisbury, 2009). This is consistent with the experience described by Crawshaw (2010, 2012) when working with abrasive leaders, such that they often dismiss or deny there is a problem in the first place. Various theories and research highlight the importance of perceiving that there is a need to change one’s behavior as being critical for individual behavior change, such as Prochaska’s transtheoretical model of change (Prochaska et al., 1994). In the training literature, motivation to learn before training predicts such training outcomes as knowledge and skill acquisition (Colquitt, LePine, & Noe, 2000). Coaches of bullies likely have a challenge ahead of them in building such motivation and awareness of the need to change, yet this is critical for coaching to be beneficial. Wasylyshyn et al. (2012) note, “Leaders with predominately toxic behaviours warrant particular scrutiny at the needs assessment stage for they may or may not be viable coaching candidates” (p. 74). This may be the stage at which it is concluded that coaching is not a viable option given a lack of client motivation. Gregory et al. (2008) as well as others (e.g., McKenna & Davis, 2009; Salisbury, 2009) highlight the need to build a trusting relationship between the coach and client in this second stage. Research shows that the coachclient relationship predicts coaching outcomes, including client self-efficacy (Baron & Morin, 2009). When coaching aggressors of bullying, SMEs completely agreed and emphasized that building and establishing trust between coach and client is of paramount importance. Crawshaw (2010, 2012) provides guidance on how to build this trusting relationship with aggressors.

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For example, she notes the fundamental need to treat clients as capable of change, at least until there is reason to believe this is not the case. The basic fact that one’s continued employment may be contingent on engaging in coaching may facilitate greater motivation. In addition, ensuring confidentiality concerning the collected data is critical for building trust. Several SMEs also stressed that aggressors of bullying are often vilified. They want to convey to the client that they are there to help them be successful and that it is their bullying behavior that is hindering their ability to be successful. By partnering with the client in this way, and framing their disrespectful behavior as a problem standing in the way of professional growth, coaches may be able to help build the readiness the client needs to grow from the coaching. SMEs conveyed that gauging readiness and motivation for coaching was an ongoing and iterative process. One SME establishes a three-month trial when he sets up a contract, within which he expects to see improvement; another expects to see improvement within the first three sessions. SMEs have avoided working with clients exhibiting a lack of motivation to change. If a coach deems the client incapable of change or simply unmotivated to change, early on or in subsequent sessions, then it is up to the organization to determine the appropriate consequences and discipline, up to and including termination. Ideally such consequences were already agreed upon during the initial meeting. If and when such issues arise, to maintain the confidentiality of the coaching process, one SME noted that she redirects any questions from the referring organization to the client so that the client is ultimately responsible for his or her behavior and confidentiality is not breached by the coach.

Gather data This stage focuses on gathering data to inform the coaching, providing feedback to the client, and working to solidify the coach-client relationship (Gregory et al., 2008). Continuing to build motivation for the coaching during this stage may also occur and may be aided by feedback provided via collected data. There are several places from which existing data may be gathered. Organizations with a strong intolerance of workplace mistreatment are likely to engage in proactive monitoring of workplace bullying via their own survey data collections, such as with the Workplace Bullying Checklist (Fox & Cowan, 2015) referenced earlier. However, such data may lack important identifiers to specifically link the bullying behavior to the client in question. More specific information may be derived from an investigative report provided by the organization, should one be available. One SME requests the letter or investigative report prepared by the organization to get a baseline

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assessment of the nature of the problem, and often relies only on this report before moving forward with the coaching. Collecting additional types of data is also likely to be helpful. It may be helpful to collect data multirater feedback (e.g., 360-degree feedback) specifically on bullying behaviors (e.g., client report of bullying behaviors and subordinate reports of bullying behaviors). Coaching and multirater feedback are often used in conjunction with one another (Hooijberg & Lane, 2009; Luthans & Peterson, 2003), and if at least part of the problem stems from a lack of awareness of one’s behavior and its impact (Crawshaw, 2007; Salisbury, 2009), then comparing self (client) and other (subordinate) ratings of the client’s behavior may aid in demonstrating the nature of the problem and building readiness and motivation for coaching. This data need not be exclusively quantitative in nature. For example, Crawshaw (2007, 2010, 2012) collects qualitative data (after ensuring confidentiality of the data) from the client’s coworkers regarding the abusive behavior and its impact and then shares this data with the leader so as to build insight into the problem. Several SMEs also rely only on qualitative data when working with aggressors of workplace bullying. For example, one SME collects qualitative data via interviews with five to seven key people working right around the client (e.g., peers, direct reports), noting that the interview is the best way to gain insight on the context surrounding the mistreatment (e.g., exactly what kinds of bullying behaviors, when the bullying behavior occurs, and who is targeted). If such data is captured, it is incumbent on the coach to ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of the data. Coaches may also find value in including personality and individual difference assessments (e.g., dark side personality, emotional intelligence) in the multirater feedback instrument, as is recommended in the literature on manager derailment (Nelson & Hogan, 2009). With respect to emotional intelligence, research shows emotional intelligence is predictive of performance among managers above and beyond other factors (Iliescu, Ilie, Ispas, & Ion, 2012) and ties in conceptually with potential reasons for bullying described above (e.g., lacking empathy). One SME commented that they often rely on an emotional intelligence assessment, given that it is helpful in diagnosing the underlying reasons for the bullying behavior. Other SMEs noted that they generally do not rely on assessments beyond the organization’s investigative report and (qualitative) data collected from coworkers regarding the client’s bullying. If the plan is to gather such data, it is important that the client be provided with the opportunity to refuse to undergo such testing, as would occur in the ongoing process of informed consent, while simultaneously ensuring that the client appreciates the potential consequences associated with failure to participate as stated in the coaching agreement (e.g., termination).

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Once data is collected, feedback must be provided to the client. Feedback during this stage will focus on highlighting gaps between self-other perception of bullying behavior (and potentially dark side personality if conducted). Hogan et al. (2010) argue that “the key to development is self-awareness” (p. 17), and, similarly, Nelson and Hogan (2009) assert that leaders need to develop “strategic self-awareness” (p. 14). Research suggests that leaders very often do not see themselves as others do (i.e., self-other disagreement; Fleenor, Smither, Atwater, Braddy, & Sturm, 2010; Gentry, Hannum, Ekelund, & de Jong, 2007), and self-other rating discrepancies are associated with ineffective leader behavior (Kaiser, LeBreton, & Hogan, 2015). Crawshaw (2007, 2010, 2012) and others (e.g., Salisbury, 2009) highlight that abusive leaders lack awareness of their behavior or its impact: “these individuals were clueless; they were profoundly lacking in psychological insight into the impact of their behavior” (Crawshaw, 2010, p. 62). Providing feedback at this stage may help to reinforce that there is indeed a problem, which may further aid in driving motivation to resolve bullying behavior. With that said, it is plausible that not all workplace bullying stems from a lack of awareness of one’s own behavior and its impact. Some aggressors of workplace bullying may be acutely aware of their behavior and use such aggression as a means to an end. Schwartz (2015) says as much about some of the most well-known leaders of our time, such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. Jobs was sensitive and aware, yet he still engaged in regular displays of hostility toward his employees. For such individuals, attempting to build self-awareness may be fruitless, and coaching, more generally, may be equally futile. Two SMEs remarked that for such examples of predatory bullying, coaching is likely to be ineffective; instead, clinical intervention (i.e., therapy), rather than coaching, may be necessary. This is a complex issue, as it suggests the possibility that not all clients will be capable of true behavior change (Kets de Vries, 2014), at least through the use of coaching alone.

Using feedback In the feedback stage, the coach and client work together to set goals and identify areas for improvement for the coaching intervention (Gregory et al., 2008). No matter the reason for coaching, the use of goal setting is an inherent component of effective coaching (Grant et al., 2009; Gregory et al., 2008; Kilburg, 1996; Stern, 2004). Gregory et al. (2008) emphasize that a fundamental role of the coach is to aid the client in establishing goals and then assisting the client in meeting the set goals. Thus, the exact goals set will likely vary depending on the client in question. Plausible goals for coaching aggressors of workplace bullying may include increasing self-awareness, which could ultimately be measured via a reduction in the gap between self-other reports from multirater feedback, assuming such

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data is gathered. Goals may also relate to one or more of the various plausible reasons for bullying behaviors, such as increasing self-control, increasing emotional intelligence and empathy, increasing coping strategies to effectively manage work stress, decreasing bullying behavior (and hence improving employee well-being), and building more productive leadership behaviors. Salisbury (2009) provides an example of goals and tactics for one client, which included (a) learn to listen and coach (e.g., practice active listening); (b) communicate respectfully at all times (e.g., delay responses to situations when aware of one’s own frustration and anger); and (c) create an inclusive teamwork environment (e.g., identify ways to build relationships among team members). SMEs were consistent in expressing that their ultimate goal as a coach is for their client to be successful. One SME noted that he essentially wants to help create a better human being, one that is capable of returning to the workplace and repairing relationships that have been damaged. To do so, SMEs were also clear that increasing self-awareness and insight into one’s own behavior is merely one goal to be met. Clients also need to build the skills they need, such as in the examples provided above (e.g., coping skills, self-control, active listening), to effectively work with others and help meet what is arguably the ultimate goal of coaching aggressors of workplace bullying: decreasing the client’s bullying behavior.

Implementation This stage was added to Gregory et al.’s (2008) modified model so as to elaborate on the approach taken in existing frameworks for coaching aggressors of bullying. Several frameworks for coaching have been discussed in the literature, although empirical research on their effectiveness is lacking. Nonetheless, given their theoretical alignment with identified predictors of bullying, they do show promise. These frameworks are summarized next. One framework for coaching aggressors of workplace bullying is presented by Crawshaw (2005, 2007, 2010, 2012). She defines abrasive leaders “as any individual charged with managerial authority whose interpersonal behavior causes emotional distress in coworkers sufficient to disrupt organizational functioning” (Crawshaw, 2010, p. 60). Although it is possible that not all abrasive leaders meet the definition of workplace bullying presented earlier, they do engage in behaviors that have the potential to harm, including overcontrol, threats, public humiliation, condescension, and overreaction (Crawshaw, 2007). Crawshaw presents an action-research framework that rests on the theory that abrasive leaders are unaware of their behavior and its impact on others and that their bullying behavior is fundamentally the result of perceived threats to their competence (e.g., including poor-performing employees that are perceived by the manager as a threat to his or her own competence). Such threats are theorized to provoke anxiety and defensive

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reactions in the leader, where such reactions can manifest in the aforementioned bullying behaviors. Crawshaw (2010) relies on an action-research model to build self-awareness and empathy in abrasive leaders, including planning, action, and fact finding. The planning stage involves gathering data from coworker interviews (i.e., to collect evidence of bullying behavior); analysis and feedback of results to the client (i.e., to build awareness in the client of the problem); preliminary diagnosis (i.e., negative perceptions held by coworkers of the client); and collaborative action planning (i.e., where more positive management tactics are identified). In the action stage, which occurs after awareness of the destructive impact of the client’s behavior is achieved, action is taken by having the client implement more productive leader behaviors and tactics. Crawshaw employs the client to test a hypothesis that by engaging in these more productive behaviors, clients will be able to eradicate the negative perceptions previously held by coworkers. Finally, in fact-finding, data are gathered again from coworkers to examine the degree to which behavior has changed. This pattern is iterative, and repeated cycles are conducted until behavior change is achieved. Crawshaw is in the practice of distributing this method of coaching to individuals and organizations (Boss Whispering Institute, 2016), for which continuing coach education is offered through the International Coach Federation. Another approach for coaching aggressors of workplace bullying is presented by Fox and Freeman (2011). They link the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 2002) and the stressor-emotion-control model of counterproductive work behavior (Fox & Spector, 2006) to reasons for client bullying. They argue that bullying may be proactive, or instrumental bullying, based on the theory of planned behavior, wherein clients hold a positive attitude toward bullying (e.g., bullying is productive); perceive a subjective norm supportive of bullying (e.g., the client keeps getting promoted with this behavior); and perceive control to engage in bullying (e.g., there is a lack of punishment for bullying). In addition, they argue based on the stressor-emotion-control model that bullying may be reactive. In this case, bullying is a reaction to perceived stressors, such as a perceived threat to one’s identity. Fox and Freeman (2011) propose a cognitive behavioral therapy-based coaching for narcissistic leaders, in particular, given their lack of empathy. They provide the basis for a cognitive behavioral therapy approach to coaching, where the “objective is to change the coachee’s behavior through changing cognitions regarding the instrumental value and social acceptance of bullying” (Fox & Freeman, 2011, p. 178). They also note that their approach may be applied not only to clients (i.e., aggressors of workplace bullying) but also to targets and others. The goals of the coaching align with general goals of cognitive behavioral therapy, and for aggressors of workplace bullying, the

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goals include being able to “recognize, transform, [and] channel dysfunctional cognitions and behaviors” and “bring[ing] out the positive, creative, engaged behaviors that adaptive narcissism can facilitate” (Fox & Freeman, 2011, p. 184). Their focus on cognitive behavioral therapy also highlights the blurred line between coaching and therapy when addressing aggressors of bullying. A third example is outlined by Salisbury (2009), for which the focus is on coaching for respectful leadership by increasing emotional intelligence. Salisbury emphasizes that workplace bullying is not the intended focus of coaching for respectful leadership, asserting, “More often than not, these behaviors result in termination and are not likely to change through a coaching process” (p. 184). Yet, I discuss the framework here given the comparable focus on improving client behavior and because it shares some similarities with the aforementioned frameworks. Salisbury’s (2009) framework rests on a series of stages. In stage I, Salisbury collects data from employees concerning the basis of disrespect and its impact and shares this data with the client. She notes that threat reactions from clients are likely when presented with this data, yet also that this stage is critical before moving to subsequent stages. In stage II, the reasons for disrespectful behavior are explored, and Salisbury comments that a primary reason is lack of awareness of the impact of the client’s behavior on others. Then in stages III, IV, and V, goals and a plan for change through the coaching process are defined; the coach uses various methods to assist the client in acquiring more positive leader behaviors (e.g., developing empathy); and transformations are sustained, respectively. Salisbury (2009) notes that not all stages may be needed for all clients and also that coaching may fail, for example, due to the client’s denial of feedback or lack of motivation to engage in the coaching process. Thus, several frameworks exist to facilitate the implementation of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying. It is evident from these frameworks that although there are differences, there are also many similarities, such as the possibility that bullying stems in part from perceived threats and that clients lack awareness of their behavior and its impact on employees and coworkers. The frameworks also reinforce the individualized nature of coaching and how specific strategies, tactics, and goals may differ depending on the reason for the bullying, as noted by others (e.g., Kets de Vries, 2014; Wasylyshyn et al., 2012). Ultimately, though, research is needed to examine their effectiveness.

Outcomes In the final stage, the coaching is concluded once defined goals and outcomes are obtained or the coaching is deemed ineffective (Gregory et al., 2008). Effectively evaluating coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying

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requires attention to various outcome criteria as well as methods of measurement. Jones et al. (2016) provide a framework for differentiating among outcomes of coaching, generally, that may also provide guidance for evaluating the effectiveness of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying, more specifically. In particular, Jones et al. (2016) draw on the training outcomes literature (e.g., Kirkpatrick, 1967; Kraiger, Ford, & Salas, 1993), given the connection between coaching and training. Specifically, they differentiate between affective outcomes, cognitive outcomes, skill-based outcomes, and results (Jones et al., 2016). Affective outcomes capture client attitudes about the coaching (e.g., satisfaction) and variables related to motivation, such as motivation to use knowledge gained from coaching after the contract ends. Cognitive outcomes relate to knowledge acquisition (e.g., declarative and procedural knowledge). Skill-based outcomes pertain to the acquisition and use of skills from coaching, such as leadership skills. Finally, results include factors related to performance, be that for the client, team, or organization. With some tailoring, Jones et al.’s (2016) framework is useful for conceptualizing outcomes of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying, which can then be used to understand and measure the effectiveness of such coaching. For aggressors of bullying, affective outcomes could include client satisfaction with the coaching process. Affective outcomes could be readily assessed via self-report surveys collected from the client. Cognitive outcomes could include such variables as knowledge and self-awareness of one’s bullying behavior and its impact on employees. Such knowledge could also be assessed via self-report assessments as well as multirater feedback systems. Skill-based outcomes for aggressors of bullying could include the use of more positive and productive leadership behaviors rather than bullying behaviors. Rather than relying on the client to selfreport such skill-based outcomes, skill acquisition and use could be assessed via reports from others that work directly with the client (e.g., employees, coworkers) to minimize any bias in reporting. In addition, cognitive and skill-based outcomes can be measured prior to and after coaching to provide data for a stronger test of coaching effectiveness as it relates to these criteria. Results are the final step and generally align with organizational performance and goals being achieved. In the case of coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying, results would be achieved if the initial goals made at the outset of coaching (e.g., reduced bullying behavior) are achieved. As suggested previously, keep in mind that the specific goals of coaching for aggressors of bullying may vary depending on the client in question, although the elimination of bullying behavior may be a common goal across aggressors of bullying. Additional results may also be

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realized given the harm associated with bullying, such as increased health and well-being of employees and increased retention. Ultimately, the coaching intervention should conclude when goals are met and when the organization is satisfied with the results. To maintain confidentiality in the coaching process, one SME stated that it is up to the organization to determine whether the results are satisfactory by using their own definition and measurement (e.g. lack of complaints to human resources). It may also be that the coaching is ineffective in the sense that one or more of the aforementioned coaching outcomes is not met, with reduced client bullying seemingly being the outcome of greatest importance. Wasylyshyn et al. (2012) emphasize that coaching for executives displaying toxic behaviors (i.e., bullying) is “not successful generally” (p. 78), and a similar message is conveyed by Salisbury (2009). Crawshaw (2012) acknowledges that coaching may not be effective. In these cases, the leader may be terminated, but in this case, it can still be beneficial because the bullying behavior will be stopped. Although SMEs saw a role for coaching aggressors of bullying, some also conveyed skepticism that coaching alone could address workplace bullying. This theme harkens back to the role of the organization in creating a work climate and culture that truly does not tolerate workplace mistreatment from top to bottom.

CONCLUSION AND A CALL FOR EMPIRICAL RESEARCH Coaching for aggressors of workplace bullying is an intriguing tool to use to address bullying in organizations. On the one hand, many coaches work with clients engaged in bullying behavior, and, as described in this chapter, several frameworks exist with which to guide the coaching process. Yet, there is reason for some skepticism regarding its effectiveness; while some may respond well to such coaching, others may not. Ultimately, what is needed is systematic empirical research to inform best practices regarding the effectiveness of coaching for aggressors of bullying. Crawshaw (2012) acknowledges the need for empirical research, and Fox and Freeman (2011) call for such research as well. Important research questions abound: For example, which process for coaching aggressors of workplace bullying is most effective, and for which coaching outcomes? What percentage of clients fail to experience positive outcomes from coaching? Is coaching more effective for clients engaged in incivility as opposed to workplace bullying? What factors explain the link between coaching and effectiveness? And how do characteristics of the client and coach impact these relationships? These and other questions will be important to address to guide the ongoing practice of coaching aggressors of workplace bullying.

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NOTE 1. Fox and Cowan’s (2015) definition of workplace bullying was presented to SMEs prior to initiating the semistructured interviews.

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The Role of the Consultantin Assessing and Preventing Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Gary Namie and Ruth Namie

This chapter first considers factors that can convince public and private sector American organizations to adopt methods to mitigate internal bullying and mobbing. Current employer attitudes are gleaned from responses of executives to a survey about bullying. They are contrasted with perceptions of the public and individuals who have been targeted for bullying. Given that employers are not widely open to comprehensive solutions, we review the partial steps employers are willing to take. There is some agreement that policies, codes, or behavioral expectations prohibiting abusive conduct are required. Essential components of an ideal policy are discussed. There have been employers who have embraced systemic approaches. One such program is outlined. However, the majority of programs are, at best, incomplete endeavors. Though it often takes months or years to build interest in and executive support for an antibullying initiative, commitment can be instantly withdrawn. Successes are fragile. Suggestions to make programs sustainable are shared. In the absence of strong employer demand for consulting, American unions have taken steps to protect the health of their bullied members. Finally, we discuss the authors’ experience with educating courts about workplace bullying and mobbing, though no legal standard yet exists. The record began with the nation’s “first bullying trial” in 2005. Helping plaintiffs as well as defending good employers that terminated abusive employees are both discussed.

ANTECEDENTS TO TRADITIONAL CONSULTING The authors began consulting with organizations in 1985, offering services for executives, managers and work teams on a host of human resources (HR)–related themes. We have watched, and participated in, “fad of the

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year” consulting programs that rose swiftly in popularity and then faded as the novelty wore off. A few substantive programs, such as Six Sigma, have stood the test of time. The timeless initiatives yield results that client organizations seek. What is less well understood is that leaders of those organizations had recognized their needs and voluntarily sought solutions to the identified problems. We define a market as mature when leaders (1) are willing to gauge the scope of problems, (2) actively seek solutions, and (3) design and implement programs that directly confront the problems to improve the organization. The current American workplace bullying market is immature with respect to all three criteria. In 2010, a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine credited us, the founders of the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), with originating the workplace bullying consulting specialization (Morgan, 2010). The writer exaggerated the field’s development. In 1998, we limited our consulting practice to workplace bullying. The work of WBI primarily focused on educating and helping bullied targets. So, we dropped all former consulting processes. Everything we did flowed from, and supported, the emerging social justice movement around workplace bullying. Our consulting principles, too, became target-centric. American employers have a general aversion to being early adopters of consulting practices in new areas. Workplace bullying qualifies as new, even though researchers have been plumbing its depths since the 1980s (Leymann, 1990). Employers traditionally wait for others to experiment and prove the worth of interventions. But in the case of bullying, leaders are not yet ready to admit or assess the prevalence of bullying within their organizations. We rely on anecdotal evidence to prove the point. WBI conducts its online research using a proprietary data collection Web site. In 2013, we offered a free online prevalence survey for organizations of any size wishing to assess bullying through a survey of employees (Namie, 2013), and 112 showed interest. We were contacted by representatives from government agencies, medium-size for-profit enterprises, and several large nonprofit organizations. All we required was a signature from a member of their senior leadership team approving the project. Not one contact person, typically in an HR role, was able to win approval! Executives did not want to know the size of the problem, if any, that existed within their ranks. In fact, the only organizations willing to subject themselves to assessment of bullying prevalence were two public school districts. We attribute their willingness to the fact that they are perhaps the institutions most familiar with being measured and tested in the country. Leaders rarely seek solutions. That is done by middle-ranking staff who see the harm bullying inflicts on employees. However, if they cannot win either

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active endorsement or a promise to not interfere from senior leaders, consulting initiatives will fail or have to be partial solutions, at best. This was the theme of our book (Namie & Namie, 2011) that was written to guide wellintentioned internal champions. They face many internal hurdles just to gain acknowledgment that a problem exists. In 2009, there were two very different depictions of national marketplaces for bullying and mobbing consulting. The German consulting industry was by then well developed with several consulting options available for employers. Practitioners were either focused on mediation, individual coaching, or organization development (Saam, 2009). By comparison, the United States trailed behind German consultants (Namie & Namie, 2009). In this immature consulting marketplace, consultants themselves must manufacture the need for their services. Executives have to be convinced that it is in their best interests to acknowledge that bullying occurs naturally in nearly every organization without an explicit plan to minimize it. Here are some of the interest-based perspectives used by bullying consultants.

Making the Business Case The “business” case centers on loss prevention or mitigation. Bullying leads to talent flight by the most-skilled employees. They flee for their health’s sake and so do witnesses, the ones who vicariously experience bullying. A review of patterns will spotlight certain units or divisions with disproportionate turnover rates. Those spots are where bullying is most likely occurring. Costs of turnover can be estimated using HR formulas for recruitment and replacement rates (typically a multiple of the displaced person’s compensation). Absenteeism costs are easily calculated when attributable to bullying. Increases in insurance premiums for employment practices liability (EPLI), workers’ compensation, and disability accompany bullying. Finally, there are legal expenses—mounting case defenses, settlements, damages—that should convince employers that bullies are too expensive to retain. Of course, the business case assumes that employers are rational actors. Executives, representing employers, should want to minimize losses and maximize profits (or balance limited budgets in cash-strapped government agencies). We have found that few employers are rational in this way. Executives tend to give greater weight to their personal bonds with accused perpetrators than to fiscal matters. That is, the business case falls on mostly deaf ears. It is the duty of the consultant to identify high-ranking individuals in organizations who take their fiduciary responsibility seriously. Risk managers are important allies to consultants in that they know well the losses for which bullies are responsible.

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Promoting Health and Safety Another interest-based appeal is based on the damage bullying causes employee health. Stress-related diseases can develop from long exposure to frequent bullying incidents. Perpetrators’ misconduct is a stressor for bullied targets. Therefore, one approach is to identify individuals in organizations responsible for health and safety. Good employers should care. American employers can be shown that safety is not limited to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)–relevant physical safety standards. Employers must comply with regulations related to minimizing employee exposure to hazardous materials (MSDS information sheets must be posted describing the risks of chemical exposure and remedies for exposure). Though no U.S. ergonomic standards were promulgated, employers are familiar with repetitive stress injuries and the need to heal those injuries. Workers’ compensation programs readily address broken bones from falls on the job. However, there is a multistate legislative initiative by employers to eliminate job stress as a compensable workers’ compensation injury. A 2002 South Australian workplace bullying conference was sponsored by the state workers’ compensation board. A board representative opened the conference by reminding attendees that stress claims in that Australian state were uncontested. Quite a contrast. Bullying-related safety is “psychological safety” (Edmondson, 1999). Workers need to feel free to express themselves without ridicule, threat, or humiliation. Psychological safety involves an equality of participation, allowing colleagues to take risks (“conversational turn taking”), and a high level of social sensitivity to the needs of others. Specifically, psychological safety depends on a workplace climate of interpersonal trust and mutual respect. It is a key ingredient to successful teams in innovative organizations (Duhigg, 2016). American employers are not accustomed to considering psychological aspects of work. Enlightened European and Australian counterparts have a “duty of care” obligation to ensure safety, both physical and psychological, for their employees. In the United States, job stress is discounted, psychological safety is unknown, and employer accountability for nonphysical injuries is largely absent. This combination of factors makes appeals to health and safety to justify antibullying initiatives difficult.

Aligning Organizational Values and Practices Appeals to an employer’s morality could be made. Religious-based organizations, large health care systems, and universities should be open to challenges to honor their moral pronouncements regarding “respect for all individuals,” including employees. Unfortunately, such principled espoused values are rarely enacted in the trenches where bullying occurs. Mission, vision, and

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value statements do not obligate unscrupulous employers to adhere to principled leadership. WBI polled bullied targets in an online poll (Namie, 2012d) and asked what would be required for the majority of U.S. employers to take workplace bullying seriously. Forty-two percent of targets did not believe American employers will ever address bullying in their workplaces, either because it serves a purpose or they do not know how to stop it. Another 23 percent believed it will be stopped when employers learn how expensive bullying is (the business case rationale); 4 percent relied on recognition of bullying’s immorality to convince employers. Nearly one-third (30%) of targets said employers will respond positively to bullying only when compelled by law to do so.

Assessing Legal Environment Compliance with state or federal laws does explain the majority of proemployee action by American employers. Research on bullying and mobbing in the workplace has been known about for 30 years. No significant voluntary U.S. employer action followed. The world’s first antimobbing ordinance passed in 1994 in Sweden, with many other industrialized nations adopting laws or occupational health and safety provisions. Canadian provinces passed laws and OHS regulations. Still, American employers have not voluntarily taken action. Lessons from nondiscrimination policies inform the route to widespread employer adoption: pass laws that trigger policies so that enforcement must follow if legal penalties are to be avoided. The absence of laws allows employers to ignore bullying and mobbing. To date, no law compelling action exists. Details about American efforts to enact much-needed legislation can be found in David Yamada’s chapter (chapter 18) in this volume.

Mobilizing Union Support Unions can provide the impetus for employer action. The strongest example of union-driven change comes from one of the unions for state workers in Minnesota, Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE). The union discovered that several of their members were suffering the ill effects of bullying. The first ones to report being harmed were clinical psychologists working in state facilities. (WBI started as the result of abuse in an HMO psychiatry clinic.) A business agent sensitive to those members’ needs mobilized the union to provide emotional support. A task force formed. Leaders sought education in bullying and mobbing. More important, MAPE sought to compel the state, as the employer, to collaborate and write an antibullying policy. It took the threat of legislation to convince the state to “voluntarily” cooperate with the union. A policy

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was written. With much hoopla and support from the governor’s office, the policy was launched. Officially, the state adopted an antibullying position in 2015 for all state workers, not just MAPE members. In 2016, MAPE focused its effort on holding the state accountable for promised supervisory training in bullying and policy enforcement. The union-led initiative continues. A vigilant union can push employers to do what they should do voluntarily for the sake of self-interest, loss prevention, employee health and safety, and congruence with espoused values. Other unions have encouraged their employers to learn about bullying and mobbing in a different way. Joint management-labor committees provide the forum. First, union members educate themselves about bullying. Then, they use regularly scheduled committee meetings to persuade management to take steps to prevent and correct bullying for all of the reasons stated above.

AMERICAN EMPLOYER ATTITUDES AND REACTIONS WBI had the rare opportunity in 2013 to query 315 U.S. business leaders— owners, administrators, presidents, and vice presidents—about workplace bullying. We used the term workplace bullying and defined it parenthetically as abusive conduct, “status-blind harassment” that is currently legal. With respect to question one, in asking these corporate executives (CXOs) their opinion of workplace bullying, 68 percent characterized it as a serious problem, 17 percent had never heard of it, and 15 percent considered it irrelevant because bullying only affects children (Namie, 2013). The second question we asked the CXOs was what their companies were doing about workplace bullying. Thirty-two percent of executives said nothing was being done because bullying did not occur in their workplaces, 23 percent relied on HR to handle bullying on a case-by-case basis, and 17.5 percent believed there was internal awareness raising being done. Sixteen percent thought their organizations had bullying-specific policies and procedures to address the problem systematically. A dubious response was that 6 percent claimed bullying was a top corporate priority (Namie, 2013). An illuminating response was that 5 percent of executives claimed to have personally intervened in bullying cases (Namie, 2013). We believe this proportion of reports of bullying incidents rises to the executive team level. The C-suite dwellers (e.g., CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, or CNO) are the most important representatives of employers as institutions. They determine the workplace culture more than others. However, bullied targets most often experience HR as the employer’s representative. But HR is not free to act without the guidance of, and approval from, executives. The low rate of executive familiarity with bullying reflects the efficiency of gatekeepers who

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prevent tales of bullying from becoming known beyond the HR level. It is a disservice to executives to be prevented from learning about the costs—fiscal and human—associated with bullying and mobbing. Because independent consultants external to organizations are traditionally granted more access than internal staff, an important role for those consultants is to convince senior leadership to take workplace bullying seriously. Education from them is critical. Of course, large organizations have a cadre of internal consultants, often designated as organizational development (OD) specialists. When OD reports to HR, their access to the C-suite can be limited. However, some OD internal consultants do have the ear of executives, and they must convince senior leaders that they alone have the power to launch and guarantee the success of antibullying initiatives. As described above, this model of change and influence assumes that actors are rational. That is not always the case. Resistance to antibullying efforts ensues. The 2014 WBI U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey (Namie, 2014) provides another assessment of American employers’ reactions to abusive conduct when it is not illegal discrimination. The respondents were adult Americans as part of a stratified random sample that enabled us to generalize the results of all adult Americans. The respondents were clear that employers fail to appropriately react. Denial (“it doesn’t happen here,” 25% of the sample) and discounting (“describes impact as not serious,” 16%) were the most frequent descriptions of employer actions. Next came rationalization at 15 percent (“it’s an innocent, routine way of doing business”). Other negative employer reactions to abusive conduct were defending abusive conduct (“when offenders are executives and managers,” 11%) and encouraging it (“it is necessary for a competitive organization,” 5%). All told, 72 percent of employers’ reactions to abusive conduct were described by respondents as negative in nature. Three categories of positive reactions accounted for the other 28 percent of employers’ reactions: 12 percent of respondents said employers eliminated abusive conduct (“creates and enforces policies and procedures”); 10 percent acknowledged it (“shows concern for affected workers”); and 6 percent condemned bullying and mobbing (“exercising zero tolerance”; Namie, 2014). Bullied targets are part of the population of all adult Americans, but their immersion in the phenomenon gives them an unrivaled perspective of what employers are doing. According to a WBI online survey of bullied targets (Namie, 2012b), 30 percent of employers believe that bullying does not happen in their organizations. Note how closely this approximates the opinions of executives about their organizations. Only 12 percent of employers, according to targets, considered it management’s responsibility to fix bullying. Sadly, one-quarter of employers (24%) conveyed the message that the targeted individuals themselves were responsible for reversing their plight.

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INDIRECT ALTERNATIVES TO WORKPLACE BULLYING CONSULTING A guiding principle of all consulting, not just for workplace bullying, is that solutions should match the identified problem. An example of a mismatch from the authors’ prior consulting experience was an intervention in response to a workplace homicide-suicide by a state worker. The root problem was a cruel manager who had been shuttled to various offices across the state to “clean up” those offices on orders from senior administrators. The appropriate solution would have been to address administrators who treated the state agency as their experimental playground with total disregard for nonsupervisory workers and to have worked with the bullying manager on alternative processes until he either abandoned the cruelty or left the organization. Instead, the agency commissioned training for staff on “dealing with the hostile public client.” This was the wrong solution for two reasons. First, it was the wrong target audience. Staff did not contribute to the deadly shooting event. Second, training is an effective solution only when there is deficiency in skills. There may have been a shortage of skills in this case, but it was managerial skill that was lacking. Misnaming the problem leads to unsatisfactory solutions. In cases of workplace bullying in which several individuals are harmed and deserve relief from psychological violence, wasting time with a solution-problem mismatch precludes saving lives. We lament that at the time this volume was written, what might be labeled as workplace bullying consulting by trainers, mediators, and consultants is a mislabeling of the problem for which solutions are being provided. Most consultants are delivering the wrong products and processes to adequately attack the root causes of workplace bullying and mobbing. They may be doing this for one or several reasons. Employer reticence or denial makes a direct intervention impossible. Consultants can only sell what client organizations are buying. Most consultants do not have the in-depth knowledge about the work environment factors that foster workplace bullying. So, they deliver what they know, mistakenly believing that bullying can be reduced by indirect approaches. The simplest and least direct approach involves improving communication in the workplace. Of course, communication is important. A great deal of misunderstanding between bosses and subordinates is preventable with the clear and consistent expression of performance expectations. If communication were the only problem in bullying, it could be resolved by teaching supervisors to first identify what it is they need to accomplish. Then they can be taught how to express themselves clearly, with an emphasis that messages have to be consistent with regard to expectations. Unfortunately, consistency is the antithesis of disparate treatment that characterizes bullying. The targeted workers are deliberately deprived of

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information. Most perpetrators are excellent communicators. They could do the training. The problem is not a paucity of communication skill, but rather its application in abusive ways that end up dominating individuals. Communication is not the key issue, but more specifically how to make communication about undiscussable issues safe for all employees. Driving out the realistic fear of reprisal for refusing to accept mistreatment that renders one subservient is a goal that communication training insufficiently addresses. While workplace bullying consulting is a nascent field, conflict resolution enjoys a long history of employer acceptance. Conflict is perceived as natural and common within groups and between individuals. Intragroup conflict is addressed through team building and standard leadership training. Part of being a leader is cultivating loyal and engaged followers. Resolving interpersonal conflict, the appearance of which can look very much like dyadic bullying, is a specialty consulting industry with thousands of practitioners. Conflict resolution is the domain of trainers, mediators, arbitration specialists, and attorney-mediators. There are proponents of mediation (Fox & Stallworth, 2004) who believe that the art of finding middle ground between two parties with intellectual differences is applicable to workplace bullying and mobbing. A working assumption is that reasonable people can hold divergent views. This is a version of the “personality differences” explanation for bullying. Mediation finds solutions by getting past personalities. In bullying cases, one party—the target—may be initially reasonable, but perpetrators seldom are reasonable, rational actors. Individuals willing to abuse their authority (when a boss) or to exploit a peer (when a coworker) do not consider themselves equal to their targets of mistreatment. Most bullying experts do not approve of mediation as an appropriate or effective tool to deal with bullying. For example, in the definition of bullying for a recent study (Glambek, Skogstad, & Einarsen, 2015), the authors include the following: “It is not bullying when two persons of approximately equal ‘strength’ are in conflict” (p. 163). Thus, bullying, with its characteristic power differential between the actors, cannot be conflict. An additional reason to discount the conflict resolution toolkit for bullying and mobbing is that they are forms of violence, albeit nonphysical violence. Mediation is not used in domestic violence cases in which the abused spouse is dominated by the other. Neither should mediation be used for abused workers. At WBI, we receive tales of employer-forced mediation or arbitration. Here’s a first-person account of the impact of arbitration on one woman: I just finished forced arbitration against my employer for retaliation, harassment, and failure to accommodate. A ruling has not been made. But this system allows for further bullying. My employer’s attorney

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pulled police reports from over 10 years ago regarding past domestic violence that I had endured. I was forced to read line by line the report and stopped each line by the attorney to ask if it was true. I begged to stop as the bullies smirked while I cried. My attorney tried to stop it but the arbitrator allowed it. He said I had brought the suit against them so my life needs to be an open book. However, the bullies’ lives were protected. My employer never once defended what happened to me, they just continued to attack me. The evidence showed that management and HR thought this was all a game. As I had begged my employer for help from the abuse, they forwarded my emails with comments like “for your reading pleasure,” which was disgusting. I again was made to feel worthless. I attempted suicide and failed. My health has suffered, my family has suffered, and my financial future has suffered. Another well-intentioned, but indirect, tack is to mistake bullying and mobbing for diversity. Diversity refers to an institutional recognition and valuing of differences across individuals and social groups. In its narrowest view, it pertains to differences by race, sex, disability, age, and other civil rights–based group definitions. Proponents broaden diversity to include differences in life experiences, personalities, and professional disciplines. Inherent in diversity approaches is that differences are positive and strengthen a culture, in the workplace or in society. However, differences also create tensions that can lead to conflict. Bullies and targets could be considered “diverse” with respect to differing attitudes toward violence. Perpetrators employ it, and targets abhor it because they are victimized by it. That difference is so great that it seems diversity hardly applies. A very public illustration of diversity’s misapplication to bullying happened in 2013. Jonathan Martin, a second-year professional football player, walked away from his lucrative NFL career weeks after the season had begun. He voluntarily sought treatment for clinical depression he attributed to an “abusive locker room culture.” He bravely discussed bullying by other players as unacceptable. Walking away as he did had never happened before. The sport is a violent one. The stereotype that a “tough guy” with a physique like his—300 pounds and six foot two—should be able to resist and thwart bullying was reinforced by sports reporters, broadcasters, and fans. One of Martin’s perpetrators was publicly identified—Richie Incognito. Martin is African American, and Incognito is white. The public saw race as the cause. The association of team owners, the National Football League (NFL), acted quickly. First, they commissioned a prominent attorney to conduct an investigation. Second, they implemented a solution—mandatory diversity training for coaches and players—a one-hour session. The NFL was content to say that race was the root cause of Martin’s mistreatment. Training delivered, and problem solved—or so they thought.

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Martin walked away from his team, the Miami Dolphins, in October. The report was issued on February 14, 2014, after the season had concluded. The report contained information with which the authors of this chapter were familiar as the retained experts for Martin in the case. Incognito, the white perpetrator, always had two accomplices, both African American teammates. The problem for Martin was bullying, not racial discrimination or a diversity issue of intolerance of his race. The abuse he keenly felt transcended racial boundaries. It had nothing to do with diversity. Another consultant mislabeling error when parties are eager to tackle bullying and mobbing is the desire to effect culture change. The goal is a longterm project. To stop bullying, there must be a coordinated effort to break the contingency link between abusive actions and positive reinforcement by persons or the institution, whether implicit or explicit. Behaviors that once brought promotions or indifference will now result in bothersome complaints, investigations, and negative consequences. Over time, the culture will change. Consultants who enter organizations proclaiming to change the culture engender resentment and resistance from workers who cling steadfastly to their traditions. We do not reject culture change as inappropriate as much as we question its timing. It is certainly not a quick solution. We introduce our continuum of negative conduct that first appeared in our book, The Bully-Free Workplace (Namie & Namie, 2011). The continuum is a gradient connoting less impactful and less negative behaviors on the left side. The scale begins with minimally bothersome impoliteness. Bullying is nonphysical violence. Physical violence, battery, and homicide fall to the right of it on the continuum. Importantly, incivility and disrespect are placed to the left of bullying, indicating behaviors that are of lower-level impact (see figure 16.1).

Figure 16.1

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Incivility is one phenomenon used interchangeably with bullying and mobbing, as if they are synonyms for the same level of interpersonal exploitation. People behaving in an uncivil manner are rude, boorish, and nonnormative. They violate norms of respect and regard for others. They do not do things the “way we do things here.” They are countercultural independent actors. Work groups attempt to bring uncivil workers into the fold informally at first. If resistance to accepting operational norms of conduct continues, attempts to make the person conform are made explicit. Continuing to reject norms leads groups to ostracize uncivil actors. Incivility is an affront to the group and somewhat impersonal. Andersson and Pearson (1999) defined incivility as “low-intensity deviant behavior” (p. 457). Only 12 percent of workers surveyed considered looking for another job when faced with an uncivil workplace. Its impact on individuals is mild. Incivility authors do not use the terms bullying or mobbing, though they believe incivility could “spiral” into aggressive behaviors. Bullying is certainly an uncivil act and subsumes incivility, but incivility is not necessarily bullying. Disrespect is more negative than incivility. It is personalized contempt for other persons. People who disrespect others believe they are superior, suggesting narcissistic tendencies. They disregard the opinions, qualifications, status, reputation, and experience of others. They believe that respect granted by them to others must be earned. To them, respect and dignity are not inherent rights of persons. Bullying is also disrespectful. Disrespectful negative conduct toward an individual is harmful, primarily because it is aimed directly at someone. It triggers distress. The range of stressrelated diseases that accompany the human stress response (think of the fightor-flight response) becomes possible with disrespectful mistreatment. That is why we indicate the onset of harm above the gradient line in our model. We pair incivility with disrespect as two subbullying phenomena that American employers will accept. Though both are negative, neither seems to scare away employers. Bullying is denied, discounted, or rationalized as described above. But policies proscribing uncivil or disrespectful conduct abound. It is common for employers to choose the positive valence. Policies encourage civil or respectful workplaces. Because incivility and disrespect are accepted and attempts to ameliorate bullying resisted, we consider the two benign labels as inappropriate substitutions for bullying and mobbing. If employers adopt such policies, they are stopping short of addressing the more serious problem of bullying. On our continuum, we insert sexual harassment to the left of bullying, making sexual harassment less severe than bullying. We learned from the WBI 2007 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey (Namie, 2007) that 20 percent of bullying cases also had an illegal form of harassment present. In other words, targets could have complained to their employers about violations of

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nondiscrimination policies. It is a misnomer to say that bullying is not serious unless it rises to the level of illegal harassment. Findings from a metaanalysis of 112 studies suggest that health harm (anger and anxiety) from bullying is more damaging to affected individuals than harm from illegal sexual harassment (Hershcovis & Barling, 2010). The construct for this study was workplace aggression, defined as the combination of incivility, bullying, and interpersonal conflict. Workers aggressed against were also more likely to quit. In a similar, but single-sample study, Rospenda, Richman, and Shannon (2009) found that generalized workplace harassment (GWH) approximated bullying with one exception. GWH included verbal aggression, disrespectful behavior, isolation or exclusion, threats, and physical aggression (the exception). GWH was more prevalent than sexual harassment (60% vs. 40% for men; 60% vs. 50% for women). Also, GWH negatively impacted the mental health of affected individuals more than sexual harassment. Based on these studies of relative harm and WBI anecdotal cases, we placed sexual harassment to the left of bullying on our continuum. The process of bullying and mobbing begins with perpetrators testing boundaries of potential targets to find those unable to defend themselves. After the target is selected, two properties of the experience then determine the severity of harm inflicted on the target: the frequency of negative incidents and their duration. Mildly or moderately negative incidents cause harm if they are too frequently endured over too long a period of time. Harm derives from prolonged exposure. Leymann (1990) set the stage for the academic operational definition of mobbing and bullying by stipulating that two negative acts per week must be experienced for at least six continuous months. Later, Einarsen and Hoel (2001) developed the 22-item checklist of behaviors to be subjected, which requires both criteria of frequency and duration to score a person as having been bullied. The instrument is the Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ). After sufficient exposure, and depending on individual coping strategies, the bullying becomes abusive. With unremitting exposure and no institutional resolution, the bullying and mobbing drives targets to despair. Slightly less than one-third of targets consider suicide (Namie, 2012c), and 16 percent actually devise a plan to take their lives. Suicide is violence turned inward. And a longitudinal study demonstrated the perseverance of bullying’s destructive effect on targets; five years afterward, having experienced bullying doubled the risk of suicidal ideation (Nielsen, Nielsen, Notelaers, & Einarsen, 2015). Less than one-quarter of targets consider directing violence toward others at work (Namie, 2003). The reader can see how incivility is far removed from suicidal ideation and severe stress-related health consequences associated with bullying. The small number of workers who consider changing jobs because of incivility pales in

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comparison to the 77 percent of bullied targets who lose their jobs from bullying in order to make it stop (Namie, 2012a). In summary, the ability to eradicate bullying depends on the clarity of defining the problem and applying the correct interventions. Emphases on communication, conflict, diversity, incivility, or disrespect mislead both the consultant and client organization. Chances of success are greatly diminished using these approaches.

A REQUISITE POLICY Consultants can agree, regardless of their academic and organizational experiences, that employers wishing to reduce or eliminate bullying and mobbing have to create a set of behavioral standards. Those standards act as the “line in the sand” across which employees must not cross. After the standards are communicated as expectations for employees, no one has the right to feign ignorance of the new rules. To convey commitment to stop bullying, employers should create a policy that obligates them to protect employees from abusive conduct on the job. Of course, for some employers, the obligation is unappealing when neither state nor federal laws force or encourage them to do anything. Employers who voluntarily create workplace bullying policies are early adopters, the pioneers. One of the first decisions is whether to write a stand-alone bullying-specific policy or to meld it with existing policies. The two that could incorporate bullying and mobbing are the nondiscrimination and antiviolence policies. All nondiscrimination policies describe categories of protected status group members as defined by state laws. State laws supplement the federal civil rights statutes. For instance, sexual orientation or marital status may be protected in a particular state, whereas federal law does not cover either. To be sure, discrimination is illegal. Employers minimize their exposure to liability by automatically launching investigations following complaints of discrimination or harassment. This happens even when the employee does not want the reprisal for filing a complaint. The process moves forward without the complainant’s approval. No state currently has a legal standard against bullying that poses the risk of vicarious liability for employers. Therefore, employers may treat bullying differently than discrimination or harassment. They may state that they treat bullying as seriously as they do illegal misconduct, but they need not do so. Bullying complaints can be handled with more flexibility. By flexibility, we do not mean that complaints should be treated with indifference. Rather, innovative ways can be devised to protect individuals from retaliation by perpetrators for merely seeking help. Confusion is inherent when combining nondiscrimination with bullying in a single policy. Bullying crosses intergroup boundaries that define protected classes of workers. Also, the mix of illegality and legality sends a

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mixed message to employees. It is perceived that bullying is not as serious as harassment because of its legality. In 2014, California passed AB 2053, legislation that blended bullying (abusive conduct) with sexual harassment. All employers with 50 or more employees are required to biannually provide training for their supervisors on harassment and abusive conduct. No other mandate applies. Violence prevention policies can be amended to include language specific to bullying and mobbing. It is a natural fit, given that bullying is a nonphysical form of workplace violence. Many current policies address verbal abuse and threatening behavior (without requiring specific utterances). To be thorough, employers should add ostracism and social exclusion, interference with work processes, and humiliation in private or public settings. The risk posed by merging bullying with violence policies is that employers typically include a “zero tolerance.” In practice, few offenders are terminated after the first violation. Employees do not believe there is no tolerance for violence. For bullying incidents, the consultant would guide employers to allow confirmed violators to change their workplace behavior and not repeat the misconduct. Bullying has historically been reinforced. It takes time for individuals and, thus, the organization to learn new ways to interact with one another. And people deserve the chance to demonstrate changed behavior. One of the fads from yesteryear was the “learning organization.” The concept applies to bullying. Much relearning must be done. Zero tolerance has no place. Neither does an overindulgence by allowing five or more confirmed violations by a single perpetrator to occur without termination. In unionized workplaces operating with collective bargaining agreements, progressive disciplinary steps can allow for the retention of bullies, which sustains the harm they cause. We prefer to collaboratively create a stand-alone policy with client organizations. Employers show a stronger commitment when bullying is not rolled into other policies. Do not use a boilerplate tear sheet. One nonspecific document does not fit all organizations. Here are key features of ideal policies to adequately address bullying and mobbing: • Designate a writing group that includes all ranks and disciplines in the organization. The added benefit of the group process is the in-depth discussions over values that emerge when the group invents corrective procedures. The task is too important to trust to HR acting alone. • Include legal and any department that must approve policies before implementation. Have those individuals at the table so there is little to no postwriting review required. • Prepare for the real-time writing task by having terms and language from other known policies.

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• Choose what “it” is: abusive conduct, psychological violence, or workplace bullying. Decide while considering the impact of the term on the future use and credibility of the policy. The label is less important than the details and enforcement procedures you create. • Declare a level of organizational commitment—aspirational? a guarantee? • Clearly define it. Abusive conduct is definable. Those who say it is impossible are defenders of the abuse. • Provide organization-specific illustrations. • Distinguish it from conduct described in other policies and cite those policies. • State what it is not. For instance, it is not a credible use of the new policy for an employee unhappy with a performance evaluation to claim “bullying.” • Determine adverse consequences to the complainant required for formal complaint filing. • Protect the integrity of the policy. What constitutes its abuse? • Specify new managerial responsibilities for when bullying is seen or reported. • Ensure that all employees at all levels are held accountable to the standards. • Make retaliation a separable offense. • Invent a response system to reports of bullying. What was the time line? Who is involved? • Devise a system of informal solutions (no mediation) that is perhaps mandated before formal complaints can be filed. • Engage union stewards and representatives in solution processes, if a union is present. • Assign greater weight to repeat offenders. Have a tiered system of consequences. • Choose a maximum number of confirmed violations for one person before termination. • Design innovative remedies. Focus more on restorative justice (healing for individuals and the affected team; see chapter 12) than punishment. • How will abused employees be made safe during investigations? • Who and how many should investigate? • How will uncooperative witnesses be incentivized to participate in investigations (not by mandating it in the policy)? • Consider revisions to notifications about outcomes and remedies to increase employee trust in the adjudication system. What is the benefit and the cost of secrecy? • Which individuals or group will be ambassadors of the policy and the larger antibullying initiative?

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After the policy and procedures are crafted, all employees need to be educated. Topics include the rationale for, and purpose of, the policy, key features, protections for abused workers, and help available for all affected individuals (including policy violators). Separate supplemental education for supervisors and managers can identify and overcome skill deficiencies that may have led to the bullying. Also, supervisors and managers learn of their new responsibilities and are given tutorials (best coupled with mentoring) on how to recognize the early signs of bullying and how to intervene in internecine team bullying situations. Employees will perceive the policy as credible and fair only if it is consistently enforced. There must be an end to case-by-case solutions. Though flexibility sounds positive, it is the route to favoritism. Perpetrators made powerful by protection from executive sponsors are rarely held accountable in traditional HR-run complaint systems. Frankly, HR staff lack the authority to enforce above their organizational rank. In the new policy, everyone, regardless of rank or relationships, needs to be subject to scrutiny. The policy is not owned by HR, nor was it produced by HR. Senior-level administrators were part of the writing group. No one should be immune from adherence to the behavioral standards. If exceptions to the policy become habit, employees will learn about it, and the policy will be effectively undermined. The authors are often asked to review newly written policies. Few are complete. There are always loopholes through which accused offenders may escape. It would be best to treat every policy as a draft subject to revision after some months of use. Policies that do a poor job of making bullied targets safe are typically biased in favor of protecting the organization. Pending revisions, institutions can exert leverage over offenders by using the same vague language. For example, there is an explicit or implied threat to the organization’s “legitimate business interests” that is prohibited. This justifies the organization’s investigation of claims of bullying. Perpetrators serve their own personal interest, often in opposition to the needs of the organization. A weak policy can be used to protect the organization from sabotage and secondarily make the bullied target whole again and safe. Though a policy and its faithful enforcement are necessary for any antibullying consultation, they are not sufficient alone. Bullying is systemic in its origins and effects. Solutions need to be systemic also.

GOAL: A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO WORKPLACE BULLYING SOLUTIONS This section is a goal, a hypothetical or an ideal intervention. For all of the reasons described in this chapter that lead employers to prefer misdirected or partial solutions, the comprehensive solution is rare.

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It is assumed that someone believes that the organization needs to address bullying and mobbing. With luck, other like-minded individuals meet regularly to plot and plan a campaign to introduce an intervention. During this preliminary stage, the internal champions and advocates need to educate themselves. The authors have written a book just for this purpose as a guide to obstacles ahead (Namie & Namie, 2011). Here are the components of a comprehensive approach for what the authors call the WBI Blueprint. The sequence is important, not invariant, but critical. For example, training delivered before organizational readiness can undermine trust and credibility.   1. Prevalence assessment. This is the true starting point. Metrics replace worst-case fears about how common bullying is within the organization. Grant anonymity, but do drill down to unit levels to discover troubled areas.   2. Briefings for executives. As described in this chapter, their support is imperative.  3. Brief union officers. As with executives, complete cooperation is imperative. Assurances to not supersede bargaining agreement terms must be made.  4. Create policy and procedures. Details are found elsewhere in this chapter about the collaborative process. There will be both informal and formal complaint procedures.   5. Identify and screen a team of employee volunteers. These volunteers are willing to serve colleagues with clarification about bullying experiences, interpretations of the policy, referrals to mental health providers, information about other internal policies and laws, and education for all staff and management, and they serve as ambassadors for the antibullying initiative.   6. Train the expert peer team in all aspects of the workplace bullying phenomenon. WBI provides this training through their program: Workplace Bullying University.   7. Schedule the program rollout: managers first, then all staff. In large organizations, consider pilot rollout in a single division or department before system-wide dissemination.   8. Prepare an educational blitz. Use an intranet Web site for remote education. Tape online courses. Tape senior leaders’ commitment to the program, pledging to enforce the policy.  9. Deliver standard, but needed, supervisory training modules before engaging them with antibullying training. Thereafter, integrate methods of nonabusive management practices with all management development programs.

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10. Integrate behavioral standards from the policy with performance evaluation instruments. Now that abusive conduct is unacceptable, hold individuals at all levels accountable. 11. Revise hiring criteria based on recommendations from an expert team of peers, your organization’s experts in bullying and mobbing. Stop hiring brilliant but cruel individuals. Find brilliant and respectful employees. Build bullying into orientation for new hires. 12. Now introduce the policy and bullying to the organization. Teach early recognition. Encourage coworker intervention. Make the workplace safe from retaliation. 13. In six months, reassess prevalence and trouble spots. 14. In one year, revisit the efficacy of the policy. Has enforcement been consistent and applied at all levels of the organization? Revise as necessary.

THE REALITY OF INCOMPLETE INITIATIVES Earlier in this chapter, we described the problem of mislabeling the problem of bullying and mobbing that can lead to inappropriate programs that do not reverse the problem. Now we will review some of the appropriate, but incomplete, activities undertaken by consultants. They can move organizations forward in their quest to eliminate the problem. First, organizations must choose whether to attack people or the system of reinforcement that sustains bullying. We have learned from our 19 years of specialized consulting in workplace bullying (and the 32 years of consulting in total) to ask more questions of clients than to dictate rigid programs or approaches. One of the first questions to clients seeking to reduce bullying and mobbing in their organizations is whether they want to focus on individual perpetrators or the toxic work environment that spawned the bullying. The obsession with personality as the principal causal factor comes naturally to Americans. We have an individualistic culture. We cannot ignore celebrities, regardless of the source of their fame. So, we are prone to what social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error (Jones, 1979). External observers of events, such as bullying, tend to explain events as the sole responsibility of the actors observed. We cannot see past the personalities. Bullies are cruel, and targets are weak. This is rarely true, but it is the preferred, automatic perception. From the targets’ perspective, it is the work environment that is responsible for their misery. The perpetrators or team are part of that external world, as is the failure of the institution to respond as expected, to provide safety and requested relief. Observers—investigators, bullies, supporters of the bullies—fault internal

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dispositional factors of targets. Actors—targets themselves—rightly see the social system as responsible. This divergence in attributional explanations for bullying helps the consultant see why employers, led by HR recommendations, historically rely on anger management education for accused bullies. The high failure rate for these costly interventions stems from the relative permanence of adult human personalities. People rarely change their life philosophies and belief structures honed over a lifetime. Hoping anger classes will convince bullies to change their interpersonal style is a fool’s errand. To paraphrase a former president’s election slogan, it’s the environment, stupid! It is managers and leaders who contract for consulting services. It is their perception of needs that dictates solutions. The management group is part of the harmful environment targets perceive so readily. The management group rarely tells consultants to change how they react to bullying, perpetrators, and targets. The responsibility to lead decision makers to insights about their role in the problem is the task of an ethical consultant. Of course, one has to be willing to offend a potential client and lose the prospects of a contract. But managers need convincing that personality-driven solutions to bullying will be expensive and fail. In the business, we call them “Band-aid” short-term fixes. Another common error made by well-intentioned consultants is to “raise awareness” about bullying and mobbing in organizations that lack any system to address it. If the consultant is an articulate and inspirational trainer, the targets in the audience of employees will hear the validating message that the abusive conduct they face is not their fault. They will learn the statistical prevalence showing they are not alone in suffering. At the session’s conclusion, targets will approach the managerial or HR hosts and question what their organization is doing to stop the bullying. To whom do targets complain? What will happen to those complaints? Have managers been told to banish the bullies? What does senior leadership think about the information shared? As we outlined in the WBI Blueprint, sequencing is important. Policy and procedures should precede education to avoid the above questions. The concern is not simply that unanswerable questions will be asked, but that the organization appears feckless and unprepared. The ostensible generosity of management to start the discussion about bullying with staff backfires. It appears more cruel when services are implied but not delivered. As always, it is the consultant’s responsibility to not schedule such sessions in organizations before the organizations are ready for the messages. We have refused contracts over the years to avoid the quandary of “raising awareness.” We advise other consultants to do the same. A third type of incomplete initiative is to focus solely on managerial perpetrators. Employers who prefer the dispositional view of bullying and who

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believe that by fixing perpetrators the bullying problems will be solved may prefer this partial solution. Crawshaw (2007), author of the book Taming the Abrasive Manager, is a proponent of an approach that mainly focuses on working with managers. Essentially, this is a repackaging of the “difficult person” training approach to change management. However, abrasive managers are different from abusive managers. They are uncivil. They are rational and can be reasoned with. We agree that abrasive managers deserve coaching. The key point remains that abrasive managers and perpetrators of workplace abusiveness are not the same. Employers are not as threatened by accusations of abrasiveness as they are by perpetrators on the payroll who are abusing other employees. Finally, kudos to our colleague Loraleigh Keashly (see chapter 2 and chapter 22) who applies her expertise as a social psychologist to mobilizing teams of coworkers to actively intervene in workplace bullying and mobbing incidents. Ever since pioneering research demonstrated the reluctance of witnesses to get involved in attacks on others, the bystander effect has explained the inactivity of coworkers in bullying situations. In fact, inactivity, the apparent act of doing nothing, provides perpetrators with tacit support and encouragement. Doing nothing is taking sides. WBI research on the perceptions of bullied targets about what their witnessing coworkers do (Namie, 2008) supported the stereotype that coworkers hurt more than they help. In less than 1 percent of bullying cases, coworkers banded together with targets to confront the bully together and stop the bullying. Over one-third (35.5%) offered either specific advice or moral support to targets. Sixteen percent did nothing. Sadly, nearly half took actions against targets (45.6%), up to and including aggressing against the target on behalf of the bully. Any early intervention at the source of the bullying that reverses coworker hostility could preclude the need for employer policies.

FRAGILITY OF THE COMMITMENT TO CHANGE The authors have watched and waited as internal champions of antibullying initiatives in organizations took months or years to win support for their pleas to take action. Most champions in American organizations are denied. This likely will not change until state laws force reluctant employers to pay attention. It is hard work to employ one or more of the arguments described in an earlier section to convince C-suite dwellers that most bullying is costly and preventable. Killing existing programs is quicker and easier. We have seen good programs die. We external consultants have been witnesses powerless to stop it. An extreme illustration of failure is our engagement with a large government agency whose sole purpose was to support low-income families through

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the prevention of familial abuse. The client’s mission was antiabuse. The marriage of an internal antiabuse program for staff with their mission seemed ideal. The new policy was written. A team of 30 internal experts were assembled for their training. Most members were mental health professionals experienced in the principles of abusive conduct and traumatization of victims. They readily translated the facets of adult abuse tactics to their lived experiences as employees. The team devised an elaborate system to provide emotional support to bullied peers as well as to educate them about how workplace bullying interfered with delivery of their critical services to families. At the end of the team training, on day three, at the end of the day just prior to adjourning, the HR director stopped by. The team was eager to brief her on all they had accomplished and what lay ahead in the agency’s bright future. When she heard the first few details, she exploded with rage. She screamed that they had no right to do all that they had done. Of course, we had facilitated that progress. We explained that the terms of the contract had been honored. The agency got what it signed up for. To the chagrin of everyone in the room, the HR director disbanded the group on the spot. In one emotional moment, she undid the hopes of the entire team. We have never seen such a swift ending to good work and good intentions to help abused workers. Another example of disappearing an initiative comes from a university teaching hospital client. Prior to the beginning of our contract to deliver the full WBI Blueprint set of services, it had taken internal advocates three years to gain approval to “do something.” The appointment of a new chief nursing officer broke resistance. We were invited in. We targeted one department as the pilot program site. They wrote a policy, with a commitment to disseminate system-wide after the pilot. A team of 35 experts were trained. Services for targeted colleagues were devised. New innovative remedies put healing ahead of punishment for offenders. Overall, the program was health-oriented. We spent several months on-site to oversee every step of implementation. They videotaped us delivering the first education sessions for nurses, technical staff, support staff, and physicians. We briefed all administrators. In an unrelated activity in the same city, one of the authors was deposed as an expert witness for a lawsuit brought against a prominent cardiovascular surgeon. The surgeon did not work for or practice medicine at our client hospital system. He was questioned about any relationships with any health care providers in the region. The client was named. Within two weeks, all work ceased. Scheduled trips were canceled. The client broke our contract by halting the initiative. Representatives with whom we had grown close stipulated that they would deny that prior contracts existed or that the work (including videotaped sessions) ever occurred. For some reason, out of some misguided sense of loyalty to a surgeon who did not work for them, thousands of workers,

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hundreds of whom were abused, were denied the services we and the internal team had created for them. This was a most irrational decision, proving how irrational defending abuse can be. Another demonstration of the fragility of antibullying initiatives is the death of programs that accompany executive transitions. It takes years to convince CEOs of the benefits from directly addressing bullying and mobbing. Once they are convinced, they can be effective advocates for the program. We have had two top executives sit on the policy-writing group and see the process from the beginning. They then assisted the launch of the initiatives’ education phase by appearing in-person, when possible, or by video. They were truly champions. True culture change had begun as they began to purge offenders from the ranks of senior executives. However, at one of the client companies, all the good work was erased with the hiring of a new CEO. Though a cadre of executive team members was part of the antibullying program, they chose to not assert themselves to save the program. The new CEO, as king, felt entitled to make a unilateral decision. And decide he did. The program disappeared overnight. We have two suggestions to make a successful antibullying initiative sustainable. First, the signature component of the WBI Blueprint system is the training of a team of internal experts. That team needs to have its own succession plan. They need to train future generations of involved team members. A generation should last no more than two or three years. Swift turnover protects members from burnout. It also brings in several new members quickly. The rotation makes it more likely that any single employee will be no more removed from the antibullying initiative than one or two friends. Over time, the message that abusive conduct is unacceptable is not a remote pronouncement. Instead, it becomes the lived experience of an increasing number of employees. Critical mass is attainable so that perpetrators and their allies become the shunned minority, with numbers dwindling to extinction. Then, short of a radical CEO reversing years of work, the workplace culture has a sufficient number of champions to sustain practices across changes in leadership. We take a second route to sustainability when we implore client organizations to form the expert peer team. The team itself extends engagement beyond HR. Companies and agencies with which we have never worked frequently vest all power to deal with bullying and mobbing in the HR department. Those organizations see bullying as an HR-level concern. It is not. Only executive leadership sets the tone for workplace culture, not HR. Because bullying is so pervasive and many perpetrators outrank HR, we turn to leadership to deal with bullying. Only they can authorize the changes necessary to prevent and correct bullying. Our deployment of the team of experts wrests control from HR. Representatives from HR may participate in policy writing, but not be its sole source.

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HR can be on the expert team, but not be the majority (or chair, director, or administrator). HR has roles. They include record keeping, dealing with the tracking of formal complaints, and meting out justice after investigations. We distribute power over the spirit and labor of the antibullying initiative to members of the expert team. The decisions we share as consultants with the expert team are intended to dilute the management support bias that HR brings to all endeavors. Antiabuse champions cannot be uncritical supporters of the group that provides the majority of perpetrators. Breaking, or weakening, the HR-management link may allow the expert team greater independence. With respect to sustainability, the greater the autonomy of the expert team, the longer the program may endure, despite changes in the C-suite.

EMERGENT UNION INTEREST Unions are organizations, just like employers. They have an executive team (the E-Board), but it is elected by membership. They have middle managers and business agents. Union counterparts to first-line supervisors are stewards, with the exception that they are volunteers, with the principal job of assisting union members in disputes with nonunion members, typically managers. In some unions, members are also managers and supervisors. Union officers often rise to the top thanks to the reputations they built as effective fighters for justice for members. It is noble work. It can toughen leaders to the point they either cannot or will not recognize that some members are not as rock hard as they. Tough union leaders can be as reluctant as stubborn corporate executives or government agency administrators to believe bullying and mobbing are real problems within their organizations. The dwindling American unionization rate is the result of 40 years of relentless attacks on public sector unions by antiunion political factions. Those attacks push unions into survival mode. When crises are existential, asking to help members being bullied is not a top priority. Another stumbling block for American unions was the mantra that when the bullies were union members, the union had to defend them. Member-onmember bullying paralyzes unions. We learned from the best union leaders familiar with bullying, Carol Fehner of AFGE (see chapter 10) and Greg Sorozan of NAGE/SEIU (see chapter 23), that the proper union role is to represent members. Stewards and representatives are required to ensure that employers adhere to contract provisions with respect to all members. Yes, bullies must be represented. Defending them is the job of attorneys. It is a false equivalence for unions to treat abusive and abused members equally. Each class of members needs help, but the assistance is very different. When target-members see the union supporting their abuser, they feel betrayed by the union.

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When the abuser is a union member, the union has the opportunity to discover the hidden motives behind the mistreatment. As a friend, the designated union representative can dig into the person’s past and present life stressors to be able to offer help to alleviate the strain. This is not possible when it is a supervisor nonmember. The abused target-member also needs help, but that is more obvious. In the early years of the movement (begun in 1997), there was little interest in antibullying services for American unions for the reasons mentioned. The union of federal workers, AFGE, was the exception. However, Canadian unions were not resistant. They frequently sought our training services. Canadian unions mirrored the pioneering work of U.K. unions that assumed leadership of the antibullying movement with the passing of pioneer Andrea Adams in the mid-1990s. Now with the U.S. movement in its 20th year, and employer interest in stopping workplace bullying and mobbing still rare, unions are awakening to the need to care for their abused target-members. In the early part of this chapter, we described the work of MAPE, the union of Minnesota state workers. Their commitment to a workplace bullying internal initiative was driven by the discovery that several of their members were suffering ill effects. One special business agent was the catalyst. She surrounded herself with supportive members on a task force. In turn, the task force identified more champions, called regional leads. The leads receive education and a compliance toolkit to ensure that the state, as the employer, honored the new policy that MAPE compelled them to write. When this chapter was written, the state was inconsistently applying the policy and refusing to educate the workforce. MAPE, on behalf of all state employees—members and nonmembers alike— is a relentless advocate for workers bullied and mobbed at work. They are a model of what union action can do when employers do not care.

WHEN COURTS ARE THE CLIENT We end the chapter with a brief description of a much different type of consulting—expert witness services that educate state and federal courts about bullying and mobbing. At least three authors of various chapters in this volume have delivered these services. There is no legal standard regarding bullying or mobbing in the United States. Therefore, the cases with which a bullying expert can be involved necessarily have an oblique relationship to bullying, at best. Of the nearly 40 cases for the authors, most have involved charges of discrimination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED; see chapter 18) often plays a part because of the adverse health consequences of bullying. Targets develop stress-related diseases. Licensed clinical psychologists (PhD), psychiatrists

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(MD), and other licensed mental health practitioners can testify either as providers of treatment to target-plaintiffs or in a more general way describing those effects. Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, Article VII, states a witness is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education. Experts may give an opinion if the specialized knowledge helps the court understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; and the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; and the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case. One of the author’s proudly testified at what was dubbed the “first bullying trial” in the United States, in Indiana state court in 2005. The relevant charge was emotional distress of the plaintiff, but the charge was dropped after testimony. The jury award for the plaintiff was based on an assault charge for which my testimony was irrelevant. Nevertheless, the defendant was successful in appellate court. The Indiana Supreme Court reversed the appeal and affirmed the trial court verdict in 2008. Testimony of the so-called workplace bullying expert Gary Namie figured prominently in arguments in both the appellate and Supreme Court. When the defendant’s counsel challenged the existence of workplace bullying, Chief Justice Sullivan countered with the question, “Counsel, haven’t we all been in third grade?” This is from the court’s written decision: The phrase “workplace bullying,” like other general terms used to characterize a person’s behavior, is an entirely appropriate consideration in determining the issues before the jury. As evidenced by the trial court’s questions to counsel during pre-trial proceedings, workplace bullying could “be considered a form of intentional infliction of emotional distress.” (Raess v. Doescher, 2008, p. 10) Bullied targets, in an infinitesimally small number of cases, become plaintiffs seeking redress against their employer in civil court. It is they who request help in explaining to courts (either juries or judges in bench trials) the sometimes baffling behavioral choices targets make when they are under assault from perpetrators. The unhelpful actions of coworkers are also counterintuitive and need to be understood. In a recent case, the expert used his experience as a former professor of management to comment on best practices that the employer did not employ. With his expertise in bullying, he described to the jury the harm from the deprivation of the plaintiff’s “psychological safety.” The jurors awarded the target-plaintiff $1.1 million (Smith, 2016). Defense attorneys also call for expert witness services. When organizations do the right thing and purge destructive perpetrators, they also require the

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services of the bullying expert. This expert testified at an on-campus committee hearing to remove a 22-year tenured professor. He was terminated. He sued the university, and the expert provided an opinion justifying the termination. The university prevailed in court. In another case, a state department of corrections required help defending its termination of three officers. The officers had tormented a fellow officer who had transferred to their facility after 20 years working elsewhere. He was driven to take his life. The expert explained at a reinstatement hearing for the officers how this could happen to an adult. Only one worker returned to work. For a large multinational corporation, the expert provided an opinion for the defense supporting the severing of a relationship with an entrepreneur. It was a complicated merger and acquisitions case replete with contractual issues. However, it was the destructive sabotaging behavior of the seller and his effect on others that warranted elaboration. In the most unique situation, this expert was called upon to educate not a court, but the National Football League. A second-year player rather famously walked away from his team, alleging an abusive locker room. This expert provided a tutorial on how young strong males can experience abusive conduct and lack the ability to thwart the assaults from fellow players. The recipient of the tutorial was the high-profile attorney tasked with investigating the case and preparing a final report for the NFL. The report reflected an understanding that “even the largest, strongest and fleetest person may be driven to despair by bullying, taunting and constant insults” (Wells, 2014, p. 140).

CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have looked at the role of consultants, discussed and critiqued different consulting approaches, offered a suggested template for those doing organizational consulting on bullying and mobbing behaviors, and shared some of our own experiences in doing this work. We described, in some detail, key consulting pitfalls to avoid; namely, problem-solution mismatch, poor sequencing of consulting activities, and focusing only on perpetrators instead of on the organization system-wide. Although it feels like we have been at this for a long time, as we suggested earlier, the world of consulting for bullying and mobbing is in its infancy. We imagine that future commentaries about it will incorporate progress made and insights gained. We hope that this chapter offers a good place from which to start.

REFERENCES Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452–471.

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Crawshaw, L. (2007). Taming the abrasive manager: How to end unnecessary roughness in the workplace. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass. Duhigg, C. (2016, February 25). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com​ /2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect​ -​team.html Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Review, 44(2), 350–383. Einarsen, S., & Hoel, H. (2001, May 16–19). The negative acts questionnaire: Development, validation and revision of a measure of bullying at work. Paper presented at the 10th European Congress on Work and Organisational Psychology, Prague, Czech Republic. Fox, S., & Stallworth, L. E. (2004). Employee perceptions of internal conflict management and ADR processes in preventing and resolving incidents of workplace bullying: Ethical challenges for decision-makers in organizations. Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal of Chicago-Kent College of Law, 8, 375–405. Glambek, M., Skogstad, A., & Einarsen, S. (2015). Take it or leave: A five-year prospective study of workplace bullying and indicators of expulsion in working life. Industrial Health, 53, 160–170. Hershcovis, M. S., & Barling, J. (2010). Comparing victim attributions and outcomes for workplace aggression and sexual harassment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 874–888. Jones, E. E. (1979). The rocky road from acts to dispositions. American Psychologist, 34(2), 107–117. Leymann, H. (1990). Mobbing and psychological terrorization. Violence and Victims, 5(2), 119–126. Morgan, S. (2010, November 7). The office-bully mogul. Bloomberg Businessweek,4202, 75–77. Namie, G. M. (2003). Report on abusive workplaces. Retrieved from http://www.work​ placebullying.org/multi/pdf/N-N-2003C.pdf Namie, G. M. (2007). WBI 2007 U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http:// workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBIsurvey2007.pdf Namie, G. M. (2008). How coworkers respond to workplace bullying. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/N-N-2008A.pdf Namie, G. M. (2012a). Effectiveness of bullied target resolution strategies. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2012-StrategiesEff.pdf Namie, G. M. (2012b). Employers’ attitudes toward responsibility for solving the workplace bullying problem. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi​ /pdf/WBI-2012-IP-E.pdf Namie, G. M. (2012c). Impact of workplace bullying on individuals’ health. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2012-IP-D.pdf Namie, G. M. (2012d). U.S. employers stopping workplace bullying: When and why? Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2012-IP-G.pdf Namie, G. M. (2013). Workplace bullying from the perspective of U.S. business leaders. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/2013-WBI-Z-BL.pdf

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Namie, G. M. (2014). 2014 WBI U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf Namie, G. M., & Namie, R. (2009). U.S. workplace bullying consulting: Some basic considerations and consultation interventions. Consulting Psychology Journal, 61(3), 22–219. Namie, G. M., & Namie, R. (2011). The bully-free workplace: Stop jerks, weasels and snakes from killing your organization. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Nielsen, M. B., Nielsen, G. H., Notelaers, G., & Einarsen, S. (2015). Workplace bullying and suicidal ideation: A 3-wave longitudinal Norwegian study. American Journal of Public Health, 105(11), e23–e28. Raess v. Doescher, 883 NE 2d 790 (Ind. 2008). Rospenda, K. M., Richman, J. A., & Shannon, C. A. (2009). Prevalence and mental health correlates of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(5), 819–843. Saam, N. J. (2009). Interventions in workplace bullying: A multilevel approach. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 19(1), 51–75. doi:10.1080​ /​13594320802651403 Smith, D. (2016, July 28). Former Folsom prison dental assistant awarded $1 million. Sacramento Bee. Retrieved from http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime​/article​ 92490217.html Wells, T. V. (2014). Report to the National Football League concerning issues of workplace conduct at the Miami Dolphins. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi​ /pdf/PaulWeissReport.pdf

17

The Role of the Ombuds in Addressing Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Tony Belak

When a person is troubled or upset because of some workplace incident or decision, where should he or she turn for help, instruction, guidance, or answers? Perhaps a grievance officer, perhaps a human resource manager, sometimes a coworker, but most often there is no one in apparent authority who can render assistance or insight in an informal, meaningful, and nonaligned manner. An independent ombuds who is well integrated into an organization is positioned to identify conflict in these early stages and serve as an important resource to prevent seemingly minor conflict from becoming problematic or perilous. The cost to address or resolve difficult situations or assist people in distress is far less if done early, and an ombuds’s engagement is less expensive than an executive’s or administrator’s. Leaders who do not proactively develop competence to deal with conflicts such as bullying while developing their own emotional intelligence and establishing a collaborative culture are damaging the organizations they represent. Due diligence requires that appropriate steps to improve organizational leadership and culture be taken to lead a company down the better business path. Concerns about workplace bullying have grown in industrialized nations (Rayner, 1997). Workplace bullying can be classified in three general areas: (1) related precursors (e.g., power discrepancies between the parties, frustration, and disillusionment); (2) motivational circumstances supporting bullying behavior (e.g., an ethic of competition within the organization, potential rewards systems, and perceived beneficial outcomes); and (3) precipitating processes or triggering circumstances (e.g., layoffs, consolidation and restructuring, reassignment, workgroup reconfiguration; Salin, 2003). These areas are the purview of the organizational ombuds: the independent and neutral resource for those dealing with all forms of conflict within the organization. Accordingly, this chapter will examine potential involvement by ombuds in reported workplace bullying and mobbing situations.

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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE OMBUDS Ombudsman is a Swedish word meaning “agent” or “representative,” specifically the words om meaning “about” and bud meaning “message.” The usual translation is “representative”; it literally means “a person with a message about something” (Chaney & Hurst, 1980). This chapter will use the gender-neutral term ombuds to refer to a person who receives complaints and questions from individuals concerning the functioning of an entity, such as an organization or workplace, who works for the resolution of particular issues and who can make recommendations for the improvement of the general administration of the entity served. An ombuds’s scope of duties and authority must be defined, but it is imperative that there be independence, impartiality, and confidentiality in the operation of the office. The first ombuds, appointed by King Charles XII of Sweden in 1713, was responsible for curbing the power of agencies of the state by serving as a watchdog for government abuses (Stamatakos & Isachsen, 1970). The king’s decision was based on an Ottoman tradition mentioned in the Qur’an (Coonrod, 2015). The role expanded in 1809 to include the investigation of citizens’ complaints and grievances against the government. Although the Swedish version of an ombuds came from the king’s desire to remedy mishandled governance, its purpose evolved to protecting individuals when it transferred to the United States. During the 20th century in the United States, federal regulations followed social activism and publicity to raise awareness of the need for employee grievance procedures. In 1955, only 13 percent of workplaces had any grievance procedures, but by 1985, that had increased to 51 percent (Harrison, 2004). While most companies now have grievance and compliance programs, a 1997 survey by Cornell University and Pepperdine University School of Law found that just 10 percent of Fortune 1000 companies had an ombuds program (Bogoslaw, 2015). Employees who witness a serious workplace incident will inform someone if assured of confidentiality without fear of retaliation. Often, an employee does not know how to take a concern forward. An ombuds program is designed to be neutral and independent within an organization and reports to top leadership when required. The ombuds became popular in the United States in the late 1960s, especially in public entities and governmental offices. It is now being recognized as an effective and efficient means of dealing with conflict in a broad range of workplace settings. The organizational ombuds has evolved from the classical ombudsman to an internal, neutral conflict resolver, often created by people who had never heard of the classical model. This role is perceived as a hallmark of an ethical and compassionate organization and an important component of an integrated conflict management system. An ombuds can be an effective presence prepared to address bullying behavior within the workplace.

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THE DISTINCTIVE ROLE OF THE OMBUDS IN ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION An ombuds is not a substitute for a legal or personal representative and may be more instrumental and appropriate in the first stages of conflict. An ombuds can be the eyes, ears, and intellect of an enlightened organization that recognizes the value and importance of alert and proactive intervention with common and ordinary complaints. The importance of effective conflict resolution is to respond immediately to those hazy signals of negativity that frequently lead to serious conflict. The informal, confidential, and independent actions of the ombuds to address and deal with a complaint, assess its merit, and close the inquiry or investigation without formal action can be extremely beneficial to all involved. Small incidents that are ineffectively addressed may turn into major lawsuits or controversies of massive proportions. As such, this model of early-intervention conflict recognition and resolution can be seen as a form of risk management, with the added benefit of allowing people with a problem to work it out early and in a simple way before it can get out of control or become more difficult to manage. The ombuds’s involvement can be viewed as part psychologist, part anthropologist, part sociologist, and part coach in that the interconnectedness between the organizational and the individual perspective are not easy to delineate given the symbiotic relationship between organizations and individuals (O’Leary-Kelly, Griffin, & Glew, 1996). The organization requires the energy, creativity, time, and skills of the employees, who need monetary compensation, career pathways, and personal and professional development. People expect to be kept secure when at work, and governmental agencies monitor for occupational safety and health; it should be the same for emotional health (Jain and Sinha, 2005), and an ombuds can fulfill that role. Many employees yearn for an off-the-record discussion with a respectful professional who will listen and seek options and choices, formal or otherwise, to identify, address, and serve their needs. Ombuds do not represent the employer nor accept formal notice for their organizations, and people come to them without triggering an on-the-record process (Rowe, 2012). Independence and informality create reasons to trust the ombuds. To be credible and effective, the ombuds office must be independent in its structure, function, and appearance. Independence means that the ombuds must be free from interference in the legitimate performance of duties. The office should conduct inquiries and investigations in an impartial manner, but the ombuds may become an advocate for change where the process demonstrates a need for it. An ombuds must not disclose and must not be required to disclose any information provided in confidence. Any records pertaining to a complaint, inquiry, or investigation must be confidential and not subject to disclosure outside the ombuds office. The ombuds should be able to

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develop, evaluate, and discuss options available to affected individuals and be capable of negotiating, facilitating, or mediating while conducting an inquiry. Finally, another important role is identifying complaint patterns and trends and making recommendations for the resolution of an individual complaint or a systemic problem to those persons who have the authority to act upon them (International Ombudsman Association, n.d.). The ombuds must meet specific requirements to ensure ethical behavior, credibility, and effectiveness. These requirements are summarized in table 17.1. Conflict is a natural phenomenon and should be expected when two or more people interact in any enterprise or endeavor. Because it occurs

Table 17.1  Ombuds Programs: Complement to Formal Channels

Roles and Responsibilities in Issue Management

Formal

Hotline

Ombuds

Reports to formal management channels Partners with management on strategy Sets and enforces policy Performs formal investigation Is a notice channel to the company Keeps records Provides official reporting on behalf of company Provides anonymity Provides unfiltered data to the board and senior executives Acts as proactive change catalyst to prevent issues from recurring Provides complete confidentiality; privilege supported by Federal Rule of Evidence 501 and implied contract Allows employees to maintain control and determine resolution option (except when there is an imminent threat of serious harm) Provides off-the-record guidance and coaching to get issue to most appropriate channel Maintains official neutrality Remains independent of company management structure and operates as an informal entity Reports to the CEO and audit committee of the board

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Limited Yes

Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

No No No No No No No Yes Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

No No

No No

Yes Yes

No

No

Yes

Note: Reprinted with permission from “Ethics, HR and the Importance of Ombuds Programs,” by R. Williams and A. Redmond, 2005, Human Capital Strategies, 288, p. 5. Copyright (2005) by Human Resource Institute. Used by permission of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).

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naturally and cannot be completely avoided, an enlightened organization will focus on how best to deal with conflict rather than to pretend it does not exist. An ombuds in a workplace setting can be a valuable resource for conflict resolution. The ombuds is the lightning rod to not only attract people in conflict but also to seek out those individuals who appear involved in disputes or disagreements that negatively impact the workplace. One key is to interact early, before an interpersonal conflict spreads among other members of the group. Early stages of conflict often cannot be seen; rather, they are felt in the form of anxiety, stress, discomfort, suspicion, mistrust, low morale, disharmony, and an emotional malaise in the workplace. If left unresolved, this latent conflict can emerge as overt hostility, and the risk and cost to the organization is then amplified unless appropriate and decisive action is taken. Boorish or uncivil behavior in workplace relationships often precedes bullying when continued with an identified target.

THE OMBUDS AS A TRUST LEADER Workplace bullying is toxic to organizations and traumatizes individuals (Einarsen & Mikkelsen, 2003; Hoel & Salin, 2003). It has received scholarly attention in recent years as more knowledge and information are compiled from research studies, brain science, and incident reports (Aquino, 2000; Einarsen, 1999; Hoel, Einarsen, & Cooper, 2003; Hoel & Salin, 2003; Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002; Skogstad, Matthiesen, & Einarsen, 2007). The destructive behaviors of workplace bullying and mobbing devastate people and disrupt workplaces (Moayed, Daraiseh, Shell, & Salem, 2006; Pearson, Andersson, & Wegner, 2001). There are many terms to explain this destructive workplace behavior, including incivility (Pearson, Andersson, & Porath, 2000); bullying (Einarsen, 1999; Namie & Namie, 2003); mobbing (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 2002); workplace aggression (Neuman & Baron, 1998); and emotional abuse (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2003). Whatever the name, the effects are very detrimental for both the organization and the individual. If people do not have trust in the ombuds office, its operations and effectiveness are compromised because an ombuds should “enjoy a superlative moral authority engendered through her or his actions and reputation for integrity and fairness” (Coonrod, 2015, p. 379). Neutrality is essential for trust; without it, the ombuds office is likely to be perceived as part of management and as an advocate for the interests of the organization only. As many workplace bullying situations do not necessarily violate existing employment laws (unlike discrimination claims, which are formally investigated and addressed), the ombuds can have an instrumental role in their investigation. The ombuds can also affect a positive outcome by informal means in matters

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of concern, such as sexual harassment, that occur at levels not meeting legal definitions but that are nonetheless disruptive, inappropriate, and in need of correction. In one case concerning an ombuds, a manager—who was aware of the function and role of an ombuds after attending a workshop—requested assistance with an issue involving two people on his team. The supervisor had noticed that this man and woman, who had previously had a good work relationship, were now expressing disdain for one another. Together, the pair came to visit the ombuds, following the supervisor’s request. They explained that they had recently ended their romantic relationship, and the awkwardness and uncertainty of working together was causing stress, thus jeopardizing their ability to work together. The woman reported that their manager was not aware of their previous personal involvement. She complained that she felt harassed after the breakup. Both were respected and talented members of the team, and they wanted to continue to work together as well as to preserve their marriages. The ombuds, who can function as a coach when people who are suffering request guidance and direction, listened to their story and asked what they each wanted to achieve from this visit. Shared interests were identified, and an agreement to a positive course of action was determined, even though previous attempts at civility had been unsuccessful. The parties were asked to again implement boundaries and limitations for the next two weeks and then confer together to decide which one would return first for a private session with the ombuds. When the man returned alone to the second meeting with the ombuds, he expressed relief that the working relationship with his colleague had improved. Restrictions and disparaging treatment of his colleague had been discontinued, and he attributed the change to the first session with the ombuds. When the woman came to visit the ombuds later that week, she also expressed relief and gratitude for the improvement in the relationship with her colleague. The ombuds created the safe conditions under which the parties were free to express themselves in each other’s presence, to fashion a self-determined course of action for their careers, and to preserve their individual dignity and self-respect. The unhealthy expressions of power they had expressed toward each other had been replaced with healthy power— a result of the informality, confidentiality, and guidance provided by the ombuds. As trust leaders, ombuds must have professional conflict management skills and the emotional intelligence to be the change agents of the workplace and to act as neutrals and intermediaries when called on. To be able to harness the benefits of intervention by a knowledgeable, competent, and nonaligned person is invaluable. Due to the informal, neutral, confidential,

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and independent work of the ombuds, they typically do not engage in formal investigations, serve in any post that might compromise the neutrality of the office, receive legal notice to the organization, make binding decisions or mandate policies, or create or maintain records or reports for the organization. Formal training in mediation and other conflict resolution processes is vital for the ombuds role, and membership in the International Ombudsman Association is important to stay on the cutting edge of critical ombuds issues and to maintain skills. Aristotle is credited with saying anybody can be angry, but to be angry with the right person, at the right time, in the right manner, and for the right reasons is not so easy. An ombuds can reduce the threat level and encourage realistic and practical approaches to sensible conflict management in a manner concordant with organizational culture, policies, and the interests of the disputing parties. These workers or clients are often referred to as “visitors” by the ombuds. Engagement of the ombuds should serve the needs of the entire organization, individually, collectively, and systemically.

ENHANCING WORKPLACE CULTURE Organizations of all types are faced with the challenge of continuously improving efficiency to remain competitive. This means strict oversight and tight controls on those elements that affect an organization’s cost structure. Traditionally, these efforts have focused on tangible costs that are easily identifiable and can be quantitatively measured. However, to continue down the path of increased efficiency, many organizations are focusing on costs that do not appear on the financial statements and that may not be easily analyzed with traditional metrics. Effective leaders in the workplace recognize that the workplace culture is a community of individuals who collectively are the organization and who individually are people with real human needs and concerns. Although an ombuds is not a therapist, the interaction with an ombuds can be therapeutic and allow the visitor the necessary behavioral transition to understand, accept, reject, or choose self-determination as a way to cope. The value an organization places on its people is a measure of leadership’s concern for a healthy and profitable workplace. In a more culturally complex and age-diverse workplace, managers must appreciate and better understand differences in communication and listening styles and develop the requisite emotional intelligence to be effective leaders. In the face of stressful interpersonal relationships, including the presence of bullying, individuals can and often do walk out the door. In 1999, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety reported that stressful working conditions led to higher levels of absenteeism and turnover with a lowering of motivation and morale.

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Bullying and mobbing are among the most stressful experiences employees face in the workplace (Salin, 2003). Sometimes the best employees leave the organization and its culture, and the cost of replacing that talent is staggering compared with the cost of listening to their needs. To preserve and grow human capital that an employer has developed over time, an ombuds can foster teamwork and communication within the workplace community and thereby encourage social learning, a key skill in reducing bullying and mobbing (Sheehan, 1999). A skill set that includes active listening, productive communication, and building trusting relationships as a coach should be in every ombuds’s capability.

BUILDING TRUST IN THE WORKPLACE Employees’ trust and commitment to their organizations are in decline (Glaude, 2012); yet, trust and commitment are essential for every organization’s functioning and sustainability. Trust in the workplace is essential for durable, satisfying, and rewarding relationships. It is achieved through productive communication, understanding, and respect. Distrust breeds conflict, and conflict can consume time and energy, diverting management attention from more profitable activities and outcomes. Trust is one’s assessment that another will not deliberately, accidentally, consciously, or unconsciously take unfair advantage (Belak, 2016). It is a person’s hope and belief that the trustee will protect and preserve one’s self-esteem, status, relationship, career, and even life. We must behave consistently over time to build trust and follow through on promises made. Trust is fragile and can disintegrate if not attended, just as a vintner must attend to his vines. To achieve sufficient levels of trust, workplace expectations must be explained, followed by agreements related to the necessary steps to complete expectations, sanctions for not meeting expectations, and procedures to measure outcomes. Trust contains a strong emotional component, and parties should be able to share their expectations for one another, negotiate for expected behaviors, and openly acknowledge mutual distrust. Expectations are created with or without collaboration, and unilateral expectations, when broken, often bring the most harm. A recent Gallup Poll confirmed that the most often cited reason employees leave their organization is because of their boss (Weber, 2015). Bad bosses contribute to a corrosive corporate culture through incivility, interpersonal mistreatment, psychological harassment, or abusive conduct via antisocial behavior and aggression. Nearly half of American workers would fire their boss if allowed, and 30 percent would refer their boss to a psychologist (Jayson, 2012). Corporate values that offer rewards for performance must include

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more than mere monetary exchange for time in place; recognition, communication, and trust must also be offered. Simple training programs are not enough, and high commitment businesses must work hard to sustain their healthy cultures. Businesses should establish policies and encourage practices that reflect the values of compassion, authenticity in relationships, fairness, and trust. For example, bullying has been associated with high turnover, absenteeism, presenteeism, disengagement, and loss of productivity (Glaude, 2012). It is a drain on the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization, and employers should act proactively to establish practices and policies to prevent and appropriately address it. Susan Duncan, dean of the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville, believes the current legal framework for addressing workplace bullying is inadequate to alleviate the suffering it brings. Even in combination with any proposed healthy workplace law or within existing legal frameworks or regulatory response, solutions to workplace bullying should also include restorative justice principles and practices (Duncan, 2011). A multipronged approach should also include labor-management discussions on self-regulation for both management and labor, beyond statutes or regulations to include restorative practices. Restorative practice is a term derived from criminal justice tenets that transfers focus from the actions of the antagonist to the effects of the harm caused by those actions. It looks to bring individuals or group representatives involved in seeking redress for harms done to discuss those harms and seek ways to make amends or repair relationships. Emphasis is not on punishment, but rather on providing opportunities for offenders to acknowledge and appreciate the negative impact their actions have had on targets or victims, to accept responsibility, and to offer means of restoring or amending ongoing interactions (Duncan, 2011). An organizational ombuds trained in mediation and restorative practices can serve as the catalyst to bring this type of remedy to workplace bullying when a policy, regulation, or statute requires some action. A proposed statutory solution by David Yamada, a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, is the Healthy Workplace Bill. If passed, the bill would make the practice of workplace abuse (including bullying and mobbing) illegal. The proposed legislation defines vicarious liability to the employer, damages, retaliation, and affirmative defenses and is receiving attention in state legislatures (Yamada, 2013). Yamada recognizes the challenges inherent in insisting that the workplace make proactive changes through fiat, but he believes a modest yet meaningful improvement to the status quo would be a starting point (Yamada, 2013). Another starting point for improvement of workplace well-being is in understanding, as Rynes, Bartunek, Dutton, & Margolis (2012) point out,

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the interconnections between reason, emotions, and compassion. They state that there is a positive symbiotic relationship between emotions and reason, compassion and justice, and altruism and self-interest. There has been an emerging understanding by neuroscientists that emotions are not separate from reason and that emotions often enhance reasoning abilities rather than detract from them. . . . Social scientists have found we are born to interrelate and humans enjoy a dedicated neurobiological system that is responsive to social bonds and fosters other-interested feelings and behaviors. . . . Theoretical models that put care and concern for others at the center in order to explain behaviors, personal and professional development, and even organizational effectiveness have long been recognized in education and nursing, where relationships are fundamental to the work of the profession. Care and compassion are not separate from being professional or doing the work of the organization but are a natural and living representation of people’s humanity in the workplace. (p. 507) It is vitally important we have theories that reflect the accumulating evidence that other-centeredness and interconnectedness are central aspects of humanity and, therefore, also apply to the workplace.

CHALLENGES TO ESTABLISHING AN OFFICE OF THE OMBUDS For those who understand and appreciate the impact and value an ombuds office can bring to an organization, establishing the position seems reasonable. But there are many challenges in educating leaders to the need for the continuing presence of an ombuds. A vast gap between what an ombuds contributes to the organization and what the organization values is common. Although the ombuds’s contributions benefit the organization, both directly and indirectly, they are often characterized as something other than a value-added activity and, therefore, may not be appreciated (Schenck & Zinsser, 2014). Another challenge to creating an ombuds presence is the response from authority figures such as middle managers or human resource professionals (Waxman, 2011), who are often among those most threatened. Bullying allegations or complaints are routinely referred to human resource departments, where policies regarding employee interactions are created, maintained, and enforced. Some researchers claim human resource departments and the ombuds office are both needed in an organization to provide a complete conflict management system (Williams & Redmond, 2005). However, if they compete or are threatened by each other, stakeholders may be dissuaded from accessing either one (Coonrod, 2015).

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Leadership may feel some ambivalence toward an ombuds office, knowing that information that could put the organization at risk and given in confidence may not be shared. Nevertheless, if those who may be threatened know that the ombuds intends to utilize confidential information to create systemic change, it may be viewed as a service (Joyce, 2014). Ombuds should work on cooperative relationships with individuals or those who feel threatened or invalidated; it is only through open communication that their concerns can be understood and addressed (Tompkins-Byer, 2015). When we believe others view us negatively or in a false light, we may struggle, as though trying to breathe in oxygen from a deprived atmosphere. The implications are significant, as the more we feel devalued the more energy and effort we expend in defending and restoring our value. The result is less energy to create that personal contribution. Empathetic communication— which the ombuds promotes during private meetings, along with mediations and training sessions—links people and performance while forming the basis for common action, generating power to leverage communication to targeted goals, and giving relationships their foundation to create rewarding and positive exchanges. When we express feelings about ourselves, others, the situation we currently face, and related topics, a new level of dialogue is opened. From there, we can exchange and share authentic relationship data that could strengthen bonds and build trust. Because the ombuds office advocates for fairness and equity, it should complement but not compete with the functions of employee relations or human resources, although there is a difference in levels of formality and control asserted by the offices. Because human resources professionals must protect the interests of the organization, there are no guarantees of confidentiality, informality, or impartiality, as are expected from the ombuds. The multitude of options any member of the organization has to seek redress often begins with the ombuds office. Legal and compliance officers do not typically interface with the ombuds function, but, acting as a coach outside the corporate hierarchy, the ombuds may refer individuals to their services. This is attractive to employees who initially wish to vent informally before considering alternative actions. The ombuds should assist and not interfere with the operations of organizational departments (Isaac, 2014).

STRATEGIES FOR OMBUDS FOR ADDRESSING AND REDUCING WORKPLACE BULLYING Rayner and Hoel (1997) derived five categories that characterize workplace bullying behaviors: threat to professional standing, threat to personal standing, isolation, overwork, and destabilizing the target. Threat to one’s professional standing occurs when a coworker belittles or humiliates that

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person or includes public professional humiliation. Threat to one’s personal standing includes behaviors by the bully, such as name-calling, insults, and otherwise devaluing the other. Isolation, which is another bullying behavior, refers to preventing access or withholding information. Overwork happens when a coworker applies undue pressure for deadlines or disrupts the flow of business repeatedly. And, finally, destabilization occurs when there is failure to give proper credit when earned, the use of meaningless tasks, or setting someone up to fail on purpose (Rayner & Hoel, 1997). These behaviors transpire at all levels in the workplace. They are also applied in multiple directions: from manager to employee, employee to employee, manager to manager, and employee to manager. Bullying behavior, by definition, is repeated over time and, frequently, is totally unexpected by the target. Psychological violence such as bullying consists of repeated, unwelcome, unreciprocated, and imposed actions that often result in devastating effects for the victim. There is little distinction between mobbing (primarily viewed as collective harassment) and bullying (primarily seen as individual harassment); a conceptual assimilation of the two terms is acceptable. Workplace bullying falls under traditional considerations of health and safety, including dignity at work, human rights, and freedom from discrimination. This behavior is toxic to both organizations and individuals. There are many reasons people believe workplace bullying occurs. Research indicates bullying negatively impacts the health of 64.8 percent of employees (targets, witnesses, and those not directly exposed) in American workplaces (Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2007), and it is roughly four times more prevalent than illegal harassment (Namie, 2007). As 15–17 percent of society suffers from personality disorders, and bullies have enduring patterns of dysfunctional behavior, one clinician has speculated that many of them have personality disorders (Eddy, n.d.). Eddy (n.d.) notes that the growth of workplace bullying appears to parallel the increase in personality disorders in modern society, and bullies cannot seem to stop themselves. This is aggravated by those organizations that tolerate them. With the societal trend toward increased self-centeredness and decreased empathy, can we expect to see the dysfunctional behavior of workplace bullying increase? While reacting to reports of bullying behavior is vital, an effective organizational program will focus resources on active and passive strategies to prevent workplace bullying and to modify behaviors that might lead to bullying. Active prevention includes developing and disseminating policies, creating internal response structures, and early intervention by management when necessary. Passive prevention encompasses education and training, public awareness, and documentation, which can be accomplished through the ombuds’s involvement.

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Education and Training Education and training of all workers is critical in the effort to eliminate or substantially reduce workplace bullying. It takes a concerted effort: management, unions, and professional and other representative bodies must take responsibility to provide training both in the workplace and as part of general vocational and professional training. Management training should include raising awareness, instruction on codes of practice, and recommending approaches to deal with allegations of workplace bullying. All members within an organization have a responsibility to raise awareness of both the issue of workplace bullying and its unacceptability in their workplace. Bystanders to bullying behavior must be informed of their responsibility to report incidents. The perception of a safe reporting system is vital to bystander engagement. Bullying can be misunderstood, and all training should clearly define what is and what is not considered workplace bullying. Bystanders have a responsibility to avoid enabling or supporting bullying behavior through their indifference or toleration—especially when remedies are available to assist the target and the bully (who is often unaware or feigns ignorance). Training should also identify self-management of stress, anger, or frustration (emotional intelligence); a management approach that proactively promotes workplace health rather than one that reacts with judgment or punishment; an appreciation of diversity (cultural intelligence); effective early conflict management and relationship detoxification with emphasis on restoration; and the ability to act with compassion and wisdom regardless of circumstances (social intelligence).

Early Intervention and Conflict Resolution Closure is difficult to achieve for many targets of workplace bullying, and there should be an emphasis on early resolution actions and timeliness. The further into the process the parties proceed, the more adversarial it may become; and while an adversarial approach might succeed in apportioning blame, it rarely succeeds in restoring a harmonious workplace. As such, a polarization of positions might divide the workplace and make it even more difficult for the target to return to productive work. Creative and inventive approaches are best implemented at the early stage, when victims of bullying may not yet be in a traumatized state and psychologically incapable of participating in the resolution process. It is very important that the ombuds’s intervention be implemented in a timely yet efficient manner. A case in point is an example of perceived bullying when two members of a 12-member work unit approached the ombuds with complaints that their female supervisor was a bully and was unduly harsh in her assessment of their

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work. When the ombuds asked whether others in the unit would be willing to come forward, three more corroborated the harsh treatment by their supervisor. This volume of information seemed compelling, and the ombuds asked to meet with the supervisor, who came to his office with her understanding and reasoning with respect to the situation. To the ombuds’s surprise, what appeared to be a workplace bully situation may have been mobbing by the employees against their supervisor. Either way, the toxic environment had percolated into the beliefs of those who worked together. The ombuds recommended a training session with all members of the unit, which resulted in better understanding of the nature of bullying behavior and of a manager with high work product and accountability standards. Subsequently, one person in the unit decided to transfer to another job, and the hostility within the particular workplace calmed. With minimal time and energy, the unhealthy situation was healed through early intervention.

Teaching Collaboration An ombuds educates and trains employees in collaborative arts and advocacy skills for recognition and early intervention of conflict resolution. The preservation of workplace relationships, resolution of disputes, advocacy in conciliation and early intervention, and a focus on the interests of the parties (rather than their fixed positions)—particularly shared interests—are attainable through training, education, and coaching. To inspire changes in behavior and the corporate culture, leadership must model and exemplify healthy behaviors in their conduct and management style. These healthy management behaviors include productive human resource practices and policies and the philosophy of caring and compassion that reflects human values of love, responsibility, and authenticity in relationships built on fairness and trust. Nevertheless, when interpersonal conflict becomes abusive and the target seeks assistance from the ombuds, the seriousness of the conflict is reflected in the stories of the suffering endured. In the case of workplace bullying, giving the abusive behavior a name can be an initial step to acceptance or understanding by the target, and reading and researching the topic can bring some solace. Knowing that many others have similar stories is not as comforting as actually making the bullying stop. The ombuds can also be helpful in coaching the target on how to respond to the bullying behaviors. Approaching workplace aggressors to suggest that their actions and behaviors are inappropriate or disturbing brings with it the possibility of retaliation, but bullies may have little or no appreciation of the damage their actions are producing. The conundrum is that a bully’s actions may be motivated by the best interest of the organization without regard for collateral damage to

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individuals, even though the bullying can bring about the opposite of the desired outcome. Targets often fear reprisal for alerting someone about the bully’s actions. The bully may claim good purpose and reason, such as holding subordinates accountable or other managerial discretion. The neutrality of the ombuds can work very well when all parties recognize the opportunity to inform and educate through a facilitated conversation or some other conciliation process. If the organization has a policy addressing workplace bullying, it may allow the first accusation to be a teaching opportunity. Coaching through the ombuds may be effective in modifying behaviors, reestablishing relationships, and resolving the abusive behavior at the lowest level possible.

Responding to Destructive Conflict Many everyday types of workplace conflict are constructive if the participants interpret and choose to deal with the conflict appropriately. Outcomes in workplace conflicts can be positive or negative. There are disputes that grow out of prejudice, ignorance, cultural traditions, or misplaced aggression, and these are disruptive as well as destructive. Conflict management training provides employees with tools to deal effectively with a broad range of conflict situations. Much like preventative medicine, raising awareness about conflict minimizes its harmful effects. Training becomes proactive and serves a preventative role by eliminating the discomfort of nonproductive communication or destructive conflict. Self-aware managers and workplace leaders are more likely to attend to issues early in the conflict cycle, thereby encouraging healthy relationships and productive communication. Appropriate communication and listening skills are essential to any preventative approach to dealing with conflict. Productive communication within the workplace can mean the difference between high performance and mediocrity. Nevertheless, ombuds training alone will not produce a strong purpose and values-focused high commitment and high performance culture. A healthy corporate culture can be undermined by a few poor decisions or reactions by management or by the presence of an active bully. The ombuds should serve as the early warning system to alert others when matters or situations are leading in a destructive direction. Bullying spawns a spiral of abuse where targets become anxious and vulnerable to further harassment. One researcher suggests employers should crack down on bullies and assist targets to gain skills to cope with difficult situations (Williams, 2015). Education and information are powerful tools at the disposal of the ombuds to combat workplace bullying. The ability to separate from the bullying and to competently ask for assistance goes to the heart of conflict resolution efforts. Learning about and using principled negotiation skills raise the probability of understanding and attending to expressed needs. Behavioral scientists have conducted research

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over the past several decades to learn how people can influence others’ attitudes and actions. The way we communicate often has a direct influence on how we perceive and evaluate each other, and a vital element in productive communication is listening. We think we are better listeners than we are, and this shows when we listen to respond and not to understand. The Chinese character for the complex verb “to listen” is composed of the characters for the words eyes, ears, heart, and undivided attention. A primary skill for any ombuds is the ability to listen deeply.

EMERGING ADVANCED SKILLS FOR THE OMBUDS The exercise of compassionate action can help the ombuds to more effectively serve those suffering from bullying. Compassion is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. Compassionate action is taking personal responsibility for alleviating and preventing the suffering of others (Cowan, 2016).

The Integrative Conflict Management Model A new and compassionate approach—the integrative conflict management model (ICM2)—treats unhealthy conflict as a thought-borne pathogen, a destructive neurological transaction arising from an experience of power deprivation (Cowan, 2016). Built on a public health foundation, this new approach examines the nature of healthy, benign, and unhealthy power— ways to replace unhealthy expressions (demeaning others, taking a victim role, resorting to accusation, etc.) and replacing those with healthy expressions (value as part of the organization and workplace, belonging, respectful listening to concerns, etc.). This emerging model of human dynamics informs the ombuds to better appreciate compassion and is not technique but a real transformation of self to better evaluate, educate, and relate to those in a bullying relationship. If bullying is the expression of unhealthy power, the ombuds may assist the bully to exchange it or swap for an infusion of healthy power and the requisite behaviors that reflect it. The model portrays each individual as a person living in a unique construct of reality—a way of seeing themselves, their role within the organization, and their place in the world. This identity is formed by their experiences, beliefs, genetics, social circumstances, personal relationships, and environment. Everyone’s construct is influenced by the economics, religion, media, education, peers, family, and other life elements to which they are exposed. By respecting and understanding every unique reality, the ombuds can better

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provide alternatives, choices, and guidance to assist in meeting the challenges that brought the person to the ombuds (Cowan, 2016). There are a number of ICM2 techniques that the ombuds can employ, including decreasing or eliminating the objectification of others and identifying key power deprivation issues. One of the most effective ways resides in how the ombuds responds; the ICM2 includes a simple protocol that can be of value. This protocol is often referred to as the Five P’s: 1. Pause—See if and how you (the ombuds) are affected by the conflict issue. 2. Presentation—Frame those involved as presenting with symptoms, rather than viewing them through a moral (right/wrong) lens. This is at the compassionate heart of the approach. 3. Power issue—Unhealthy conflict emerges from an experience of loss of power. Identify the power issue. 4. Power swap—Support replacing unhealthy conflict (unhealthy power) with healthy power by mirroring positive power that the visitor possesses but has discounted or failed to see. 5. Power infusion—Assist the visitor to create a continuing experience of power (by listening, caring, acknowledging, reframing, illustrating by example, etc.). Effective application of the ICM2 can increase the level of loyalty of those visiting the ombuds. Implementation of the model provides a powerful confirmation that the organization’s leadership is committed to the well-being of its people and its people’s productivity, creativity, and innovation. Power dynamics are a central concept to consider when analyzing issues of bullying and mobbing. In workplace bullying transactions, one party works to dominate another using a variety of strategies to get power and control. If bullying emerges from a perceived need to get and maintain power, strategies to disempower the bullying party are counterproductive. Among the effective strategies for shifting power are the “power swap” and “mirroring”— responding to harmful behaviors with healthy manifestations of power. The challenge is to assist all parties to operate from wholesome, effective, and productive power positions, replacing unhealthy manifestations of power with healthy counterparts. This is where power swapping is most effective (Cowan, 2016). Power swapping is a means to directly address the problem of unhealthy power. Mirroring is simply responding to displays of unhealthy power by replying using potent responses that embody healthy power. Bad versus good power struggles will test strength of conviction or offer morality-based solutions but not a change of behavior.

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To successfully apply either of these approaches, an understanding of healthy and unhealthy power is necessary. For the purposes of this discussion, power in interpersonal transactions is expressed, rather than just felt. The distinction between the expression and the feeling of healthy or unhealthy power is important because the expression of power is a significant component of interpersonal relationships, where an unexpressed feeling is not. This is especially true in bullying transactions. Bullying incorporates the application of unhealthy power. Historically, characteristics such as wrath, inflexibility, harshness, rigidity, and intimidation were acceptable elements of command and control forms of management, a style thought to be effective due to the belief that without these tactics employees would fail to adequately perform. Recent studies indicate bullies are motivated by ideals of entitlement, self-righteousness, integrity, and justification (Castle, 2014). Castle determined bullies act with intention and reason, consider themselves to be within their rights to employ these tactics, and are consciously aware and deliberate in the use of negative behaviors to stimulate performance. She found that perpetrators felt morally responsible for their behavior, but there was no indication they experienced feelings of guilt or remorse (except on rare occasions). Participants in her study reported that an apology was all that was needed to justify their behaviors and ease any guilt. Bullies seek validation through approval from their supervisor when the job at hand has been completed, as if it is justification for their behavior and actions.

Keeping the Focus on Healthy Power A well-respected surgeon had directed a surgery department at a local hospital. When the hospital’s surgery department closed for financial reasons, he sought out employment with the university group. Within six months of beginning work, he asked the university ombuds for a meeting to discuss his concerns. He felt targeted by his administrator and described the poor communication and interpersonal treatment within his workplace that was evident but ignored by others. The discomfort and unease he experienced caused him to leave following a series of conversations with the ombuds, whose offer to intervene was rejected as a wasted exercise by the administrator. This employee’s pain was evident, and each time he met with the ombuds, he expressed disdain for the dysfunctional conflict climate he longed to leave. One of the key tasks of the ombuds is to work with leaders to drop bullying approaches and to adopt an inclusive style that incorporates healthy power. By educating those engaged in bullying, swapping unhealthy power with healthy power, mirroring healthy behaviors, and demonstrating effective leadership, the ombuds can guide those in the workplace toward behaviors that produce

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positive, tangible, and measurable results. Working with employees in this way is preventative: it can reduce the number of bullying incidents that might occur in the future. The ombuds’s function can work simultaneously on the individual level by assisting visitors with personal choices and on the systemic level through recognition of trends and patterns and offering recommendations. Of course, the when and the how must be considered for maximum impact. Castle’s (2014) study found that while the bully is engaging in negative acts, there is often a moral undertone in the actions that might lead an ombuds to help redirect the behavior by drawing from the ethical thinking of such a perpetrator and applying restorative justice tactics (Curtin, 2016).

CONCLUSION Organizational leaders set the tone for attitudes and perceptions by those they lead (Olson, Nelson, & Parayitam, 2006), and they have a powerful influence on the culture (Maxwell, 1993; Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & SchurerLambert, 2006; Van Fleet & Griffin, 2006). Leadership behavior is a primary factor in workplace bullying, and autocratic leadership styles contribute to the problem. An organization’s culture develops over time, and those that tolerate these actions through promotions, accolades, sanitization, or denial encourage, support, or legitimize a bullying culture (Wilkin, 2010). In one case, the ombuds office at a large public Midwestern university was established in response to the outcry of the faculty senate following several years of bullying by a dean. While the dean was being investigated for misappropriation of grant monies, allegations surfaced during interviews with staff and faculty, who stated the dean had humiliated professors in front of peers, retaliated when challenged, and took credit for others’ work product. Although faculty had complained to the provost, their claims were dismissed, and they were labeled whiners who were resistant to change and functioning below standards. When the local newspaper reported the abusive treatment of the dean toward faculty, the provost and president issued apologies to people hurt by the dean and to those who lost trust in the university. Many faculty left the university because of the bullying and the administration’s reluctance to listen to their pleas for help (Wilkin, 2010). The faculty senate determined some protection against this occurring again was needed and established an ombuds office, hiring a highly qualified and experienced external candidate. Aware of the climate at the university and the prevailing mood of the leadership, including legal counsel, the ombuds worked to repair strained relations for several years and encouraged a workplace bullying policy be written. A subcommittee of two standing committees set about to write and propose a particular policy to address bullying, which was roundly rejected by the director of human resources, who claimed

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the university’s existing policies covered such behavior. Ironically, that person was unceremoniously dismissed from employment following allegations of bullying. The ombuds’s annual report to the faculty senate consistently spoke to the need for a comprehensive approach to bullying and a policy to enforce it. The ombuds was aware of units within the university where bullying was common, and people were leaving because of it, but he felt unsupported by the administration to intervene. Currently, no industry standard exists to dictate what percentage of an organization should utilize ombuds services to make it a good investment. Each ombuds office must determine how much utilization is enough based on its context and has to be able to prove its worth and justify its existence to the leadership. Conversely, it is difficult for ombuds to demonstrate worth because benefits to visitors are protected by confidentiality and therefore not shared. This is the conundrum exemplified by paying insurance premiums or risking catastrophic loss. Ombudsry is finding the delicate balance between maintaining relationships and independence; between keeping records and protecting confidentiality; between neutrality and advocacy; between informality and an effort at systemic organizational change; between allowing people to continue their suffering or help them grow; and between compassionate action or selfish inaction (Tompkins-Byer, 2015). When leaders better understand these balances, they may appreciate what the ombuds does and what the capacity for the university can be. Organizational policies undermined by unmanaged conflict are not fulfilling their purpose of guiding and directing. Managing conflict effectively can result in low-cost solutions that save time, resources, and relationships. These benefits also directly relate to increased productivity, satisfaction, and retention. Managers and employees alike can benefit from participating with the ombuds. Some of the benefits are listed here: • Fosters equal opportunity in the workplace and treats people respectfully. • Maximizes cost effectiveness and improves productivity. • Is a very good method to address discrimination, harassment, and bullying complaints. • Helps to diffuse hostile feelings and emotions that could lead to inappropriate solutions, such as theft or violence. • Facilitates a direct contact and collaboration between managers and employees, something conducive to a more harmonious workplace. • Allows managers and employees to have an active role in the resolution process. • Is confidential and encourages dignity in the workplace. • Moves parties from debate to dialogue for more authentic professional relationships.

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Most conflict within and involving people revolves around unfulfilled needs, primarily the psychological needs for control, recognition, affection, and respect. These needs are natural and quite human in that we all crave them, but when unacceptable or problematic behavior has been rewarded in the past in fulfillment of these needs, difficult behavior motivates the individual. We should try not to reward difficult behavior or reinforce actions or inactions that manifest it. There is no magic pill, but there are specific ways of thinking and acting described in this chapter that can facilitate positive change in oneself and in others. It takes time and patience to transform negative behavior into acceptable behavior. It does not help to ignore problem behaviors or respond likewise or criticize rather than cure or just brand someone as a problem and be the psychiatrist to their craziness. An ombuds’s presence and engagement can prevent unproductive and negative behavior that leads to bullying. American workers across the spectrum should not be exposed to an unhealthy workplace, and there are laws to protect their safety, compensate for injury, and prevent discrimination within the workforce. It seems unnecessary to have a law against workplace bullying when the devastation it brings is self-evident. Theft in the workplace commonly involves a taking of property, time, or information that rightfully belongs to the employer. However, an expanded view might include the taking of creative energies or productivity from talented employees or the destruction of their engagement or intentional sabotage of their work product. Theft of employees’ abilities and competencies by inadequate leadership has a direct negative causal impact on productivity and profits. If the culture of the workplace encourages or, at the least, does not address the basic emotional need of feelings of belonging, the theft of disengagement may fall upon the manager whose responsibility it is to provide guidance, feedback, and recognition. An enlightened workplace recognizes its people, communicates in a respectful fashion, and encourages trust. Bullied, stressed, overworked, or unhappy people are less likely to be creative or productive. An organizational ombuds, either internal or external, is necessary so long as our society fails to recognize the power of compassion.

REFERENCES Aquino, K. (2000). Structural and individual determinants of workplace victimization: The effects of hierarchical status and conflict management styles. Journal of Management, 26(7), 171–193. Belak, A. (2016, January–March). Should businesses have souls? Corporate Disputes. Retrieved from http://www.corporatedisputesmagazine.com Bogoslaw, D. (2015, June 17). Ombuds programs: Creating a culture of trust rather than compliance. Retrieved from https://www.corporatesecretary.com

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Castle, K. (2014). The workplace bully: A grounded theory study exploring motivational influences of bullying behavior at work (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Sullivan University, Louisville, Kentucky. Chaney, A. C., & Hurst, J. C. (1980). The applicability and benefits of a community mental health outreach model for campus ombudsman programs. Journal of College Students Personnel, 21(3), 215–222. Coonrod, C. K. (2015). The role and function of the organizational ombudsperson. In R. R. Sims & W. I. Sauser (Eds.), Legal and regulatory issues in human resources management (pp. 375–402). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Cowan, A. (2016). International Center for Compassionate Organizations. Retrieved from http://www.compassionate.center Curtin, J.-R., Jr. (2016). An exploratory study of existing state anti-bullying statutes. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.18297​/etd/2459 Davenport, N., Schwartz, R. D., & Elliot, G. P. (2002). Mobbing: Emotional abuse in the American workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing. Duncan, S. (2011). Workplace bullying and the role restorative practices can play in preventing and addressing the problem. Industrial Law Journal, 32, 2331–2366. Eddy, B. (n.d.). Bullies at work. Retrieved from http://www.mediate.com/articles​ /eddyb1.cfm Einarsen, S. (1999). The nature and causes of bullying at work. International Journal of Manpower, 20(1/2), 16–27. Einarsen, S., & Mikkelsen, E. (2003). Individual effects of exposure to bullying at work. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and emotional abuse in the workplace: International perspectives in research and practice (pp. 127–142). New York: Taylor & Francis. Glaude, P. (2012, November 23). Engagement at work. Retrieved from http:// ezinearticles.com/?Bringing-Back--Engagement-at-Work&id=7393291 Harrison, T. R. (2004). What is success in ombuds processes? Evaluation of a University Ombudsman. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 21(3), 313–335. Hoel, H., Einarsen, S., & Cooper, C. L. (2003). Organizational effects of bullying. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and emotional abuse in the workplace: International perspectives in research and practice (pp. 145–161). London: Taylor & Francis. Hoel, H., & Salin, D. (2003). Organizational antecedents of workplace bullying. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and emotional abuse in the workplace: International perspectives in research and practice (pp. 145–162). New York: Taylor & Francis. International Ombudsman Association (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ombuds​ association.org Isaac, K. D. (2014). The organizational ombudsman’s quest for privileged communications. Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal, 32(1), 31–47. Jain, A. K., & Sinha, A. K. (2005). General health in organizations: Relative relevance of emotional intelligence, trust, and organizational support. International Journal of Stress Management, 12(3), 257–273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1072-5245.12.3.257 Jayson, S. (2012, August 5). Bad bosses can be bad for your health. USA Today. Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-08-05/apa​ -mean-bosses/56813062/1

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Joyce, C. M. (2014). Courage in ombuds work. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association 7(1), 13–22. Lutgen-Sandvik, P. (2003). The communicative cycle of employee abuse: Generation and regeneration of workplace mistreatment. Management Communication Quarterly, 16(4), 471–501. Lutgen-Sandvik, P., Tracy, S., & Alberts, J. (2007). Burned by bullying in the American workplace: Prevalence, perception, degree and impact. Journal of Management Studies, 44(6), 837–862. Maxwell, J. C. (1993). Developing the leader within you. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc. Mikkelsen, E. G., & Einarsen, S. (2002). Relationships between exposure to bullying at work and psychological and psychosomatic health complaints: The role of state negative affectivity and generalized self-efficacy. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 43(5), 397–405. Moayed, F. A., Daraiseh, N., Shell, R., S. & Salem, S. (2006). Workplace bullying: A systemic review of risk factors and outcomes. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 7(3), 311–327. Namie, G. (2007, September). U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http:// workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBIsurvey2007.pdf Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2003). The bully at work. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. Neuman, J. H., & Baron, R. A. (1998). Workplace violence and workplace aggression: Evidence concerning specific forms, potential causes, and preferred targets. Journal of Management, 24, 391–419. O’Leary-Kelly, A., Griffin, R., & Glew, D. (1996). Organization-motivated aggression: A research framework. Academy of Management Review, 21(1), 225–253. Olson, B. J., Nelson, D. L., & Parayitam, S. (2006). Managing aggression in organizations: What leaders must know? Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27, 384–398. Pearson, C. M., Andersson, L. M., & Porath, C. L. (2000). Assessing and attacking workplace incivility. Organizational Dynamics, 29(2), 123–137. Pearson, C. M., Andersson, L. M., & Wegner, J. W. (2001). When workers flout convention: A study of workplace incivility. Human Relations, 54(11), 1387–1419. Rayner, C. (1997). The incidence of workplace bullying. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 7(3), 199–208. Rayner, C., & Hoel, H. (1997). A summary of literature relating to workplace bullying. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 7(3), 181–191. Rowe, M. (2012). Informality the fourth standard of practice. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 5(1), 8–17. Rynes, S. L., Bartunek, J. M., Dutton, J. E., & Margolis, J. D. (2012). Care and compassion through an organizational lens: Opening up new possibilities. Academy of Management Review, 37(4), 503–523. Salin, D. (2003). Ways of explaining workplace bullying: A review of enabling, motivating and precipitating structures and processes in the work environment. Human Relations, 56(10), 1213–1232. Schenck, A., & Zinsser, J. W. (2014). Prepared to be valuable: Positioning ombuds programs to assure their worth. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 7(1), 23–44.

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Sheehan, M. (1999). Workplace bullying: Responding with some emotional intelligence. International Journal of Manpower, 20(1/2), 57–69. Skogstad, A., Matthiesen, S., & Einarsen, S. (2007). Organizational changes: A precursor of bullying at work. International Journal of Organizational Theory and Behavior, 10(1), 58–94. Stamatakos, L. C., & Isachsen, O. (1970). Towards Making the University Ombudsman a More Effective Force in Higher Education: A Comparative Study. NASPA, 7(4). Tepper, B. J., Duffy, M. K., Henle, C. A., Schurer-Lambert, L. (2006). Procedural injustice, victim precipitation and abusive supervision. Personnel Psychology, 59, 101-123. Tompkins-Byer, T. (2015). University ombuds offices: Their perspectives and impact on campus conflict (Unpublished master’s thesis). Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. Van Fleet, D. D., & Griffin, R. W. (2006). Dysfunctional Organization Culture: The Role of Leadership in Motivating Dysfunctional Work Behaviors. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21, 698-708. Waxman, J. A. (2011). The conflict competent organization: Assessing the perceived economic value of the corporate ombuds office. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 4(2), 60–73. Weber, L. (2015, April 2). What do workers want from the boss? Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2015/04/02/what-do-workers-want-from​ -the-boss Wilkin, L. (2010). Workplace bullying in academe: A grounded theory study exploring how faculty cope with the experience of being bullied (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Williams, R. (2015, February 21). How workplace bullying destroys well-being and productivity. Psychology Today [blog]. Retrieved from https://www.psychology​ today.com/blog/wired-success/201502/how-workplace-bullying-destroys-well​ -being-and-productivity Williams, R., & Redmond, A. (2005). Ethics, HR and the importance of ombuds programs. Human Capital Strategies, 288, 1–8. Yamada, D. (2013). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–332.

PART V

The Legal Landscape in the United States for Workplace Bullying and Mobbing

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The American Legal Landscape: Potential Redress and Liability for Workplace Bullying and Mobbing David C. Yamada*

As other chapters in these volumes document, workplace bullying and mobbing are entering into the mainstream of discussions in fields such as employee relations, human resources, industrial and organizational psychology, and clinical psychology and counseling. Responses from the American legal system, by contrast, have emerged more slowly. In fact, until recently, the idea of American legislatures enacting laws concerning workplace bullying and mobbing had largely been discussed in speculative and aspirational terms. During the past five years, however, various state and local legislative bodies have enacted laws and ordinances related to bullying at work. In addition, significant advocacy efforts have been underway in many states on behalf of proposed workplace antibullying laws. A possibility once regarded somewhat dismissively is now becoming a reality. This chapter offers an overview of the U.S. legal landscape in regard to workplace bullying and mobbing. It begins by taking a somewhat chronological perspective, starting with the importation of the terms bullying and mobbing into the American employment relations vocabulary, followed by early efforts to research and identify potential legal protections and liabilities relevant to this form of workplace mistreatment. It will then examine attempts to create direct legal protections against workplace bullying, centering on new and proposed “Healthy Workplace” legislation. It will also discuss existing legal protections and publicbenefit programs that potentially apply to bullying and mobbing situations. Next, it will discuss the practical considerations emerging from these developments *

Work on this chapter was supported by a summer research stipend and sabbatical semester provided by Suffolk University Law School. Correspondence may be directed to: Professor David Yamada, Suffolk University Law School, 120 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02108; [email protected].

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for employee relations stakeholders, especially employers and labor organizations, as well as for the mental health community. Finally, it will consider some of the broader societal implications related to harnessing the American legal system to respond to workplace bullying and mobbing behaviors. This chapter builds upon some 17 years of legal scholarship, legislative drafting, and public education work on the topic. As discussed below, I have been closely involved with efforts to research and create legal protections against workplace bullying and mobbing, including the drafting of model legislation known as the Healthy Workplace Bill, which has served as the main template for law reform efforts in the United States. I hope that the deep familiarity I bring to this topic will offset my lack of distant objectivity, at least in terms of contributing some contextual understanding to this examination. Readers who would like to explore this subject in greater detail are invited to review my ongoing body of law review scholarship (Yamada, 2000, 2004, 2010, 2013a, 2015).

EARLY RESEARCH FORAYS The 1997 launch of the Campaign Against Workplace Bullying, a public education initiative led by Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie, is probably the signature event in introducing the term workplace bullying into the vocabulary of American employee relations. The Namies imported this term from Great Britain, where it had gained a foothold thanks to media coverage and public education initiatives. The Namies’ first book, BullyProof Yourself at Work (Namie & Namie, 1999), furthered efforts to bring workplace bullying to the attention of an American audience. Workplace mobbing would enter the picture, too, marked by the publication of Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 1999). However, during this time, neither workplace bullying nor workplace mobbing was popularly understood or used in the United States. It was against this backdrop, and spurred by discussions with the Namies, that I began investigating potential legal protections for targets of severe workplace bullying. This work was shaped by a cluster of policy objectives that should inform potential legal interventions concerning bullying at work (Yamada, 2000), the three most important being prevention, self-help, and compensation: • Prevention: Prevention of abusive behaviors benefits everyone. Workers enjoy better health and morale, and employers benefit from greater productivity. Accordingly, the law should provide liability-reducing legal incentives for employers who engage in preventive measures. • Self-help: The law should protect employees who report abusive work behaviors and encourage employers to resolve potential bullying and mobbing situations earlier rather than later. Furthermore, all things

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being equal, prompt, fair, and responsible in-house resolution is better than protracted litigation. • Compensation: When bullying and mobbing do occur, targets should be compensated for the harm done to them. This should include, among other things, appropriate monetary damages and preservation or restoration of employment status. My check into secondary sources indicated that workplace bullying was largely unexplored in American legal scholarship, and so I resolved to research and analyze this topic closely. I began my legal research with a hypothesis that the tort law claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) would emerge as the primary legal protection against workplace bullying. I looked at hundreds of state court decisions on IIED claims brought against employers and coworkers for bullying-type behaviors. This analysis revealed that courts were frequently dismissing these claims before trial, usually holding that the bullying behaviors were not sufficiently severe and outrageous to meet the requirements of IIED, even when the complainants had experienced considerable psychological and physical impairment (Yamada, 2000). After considering other potential legal protections, such as employment discrimination statutes, collective bargaining laws, and occupational safety and health laws, I concluded that many targets of severe workplace bullying were without sufficient legal protections (Yamada, 2000). I put these findings in a law review article that concluded with a proposal outlining the parameters for a new statute providing a civil claim for severe workplace bullying (Yamada, 2000).

THE HEALTHY WORKPLACE BILL Building on the policy objectives and recommendations set out in my 2000 article, I drafted a prototypical workplace antibullying statute. The first version was completed in 2002, and it would soon become dubbed the “Healthy Workplace Bill” (HWB; Yamada, 2004). Since then, the template version of the HWB has undergone a number of changes and edits while retaining its original core structure. The following discussion summarizes and explains the main features of the current version of the bill, which is provided in full in the article “Emerging American Legal Responses to Workplace Bullying” (Yamada, 2013a).

Primary Cause of Action The Healthy Workplace Bill defines its primary cause of action as follows: “It shall be an unlawful employment practice under this Chapter to subject an employee to an abusive work environment as defined by this Chapter”

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(Yamada, 2013a, p. 352). Many definitions and provisions further shape and limit this cause of action. The critical definition is “abusive work environment,” which “exists when an employer or one or more of its employees, acting with intent to cause pain or distress to an employee, subjects that employee to abusive conduct that causes physical harm, psychological harm, or both” (Yamada, 2013a, p. 351). “Abusive conduct” is defined as acts, omissions, or both, that a reasonable person would find abusive, based on the severity, nature, and frequency of the conduct. Abusive conduct may include, but is not limited to: repeated verbal abuse such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets; verbal, non-verbal, or physical conduct of a threatening, intimidating, or humiliating nature; or the sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance. It shall be considered an aggravating factor that the conduct exploited an employee’s known psychological or physical illness or disability. A single act normally will not constitute abusive conduct, but an especially severe and egregious act may meet this standard. (Yamada, 2013a, p. 351) The definition of abusive conduct is significantly influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s definition of a hostile work environment for purposes of determining legally actionable sexual harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 1993). As explained below, this includes a totality of the circumstances approach that takes into account the frequency and severity of the conduct, viewed through the eyes of the “reasonable person.”

Liability A worker subjected to an abusive work environment may bring a civil claim, filed in state court, against an employer and individual coworkers. The HWB imposes strict liability on employers for actionable behavior by its employees. However, it also provides employers with an affirmative defense when 1. the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any actionable behavior; and, 2. the complainant employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of appropriate preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer. (Yamada, 2013a, p. 352) This defense, designed to provide a legal “carrot” incentive for employers to prevent and respond to abusive behaviors, is drawn directly from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1998 ruling concerning employer liability for harassment on the basis of protected class status under the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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(Burlington Industries v. Ellerth, 1998). The “stick” is that the defense is not available when the abusive behavior culminates in an adverse employment decision, such as a demotion, suspension, or termination.

Damages The Healthy Workplace Bill provides for standard forms of compensatory and injunctive relief, such as lost wages, medical expenses, and reinstatement, as well as for punitive damages and attorney’s fees. These allowable damages largely mirror those commonly awarded in successful tort and employment discrimination claims, the two doctrinal areas of law that have most informed the HWB’s drafting. In addition, the bill limits emotional distress and punitive damages imposed on an employer when bullying behaviors did not involve an adverse employment action, a provision designed to have the effect of encouraging employers to address potential bullying situations before they become acute.

Antiretaliation Protection The Healthy Workplace Bill provides antiretaliation protection: It shall be an unlawful employment practice under this Chapter to retaliate in any manner against an employee because she has opposed any unlawful employment practice under this Chapter, or because she has made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation or proceeding under this Chapter, including, but not limited to, internal complaints and proceedings, arbitration and mediation proceedings, and legal actions. (Yamada, 2013a, p. 352) This is antiretaliation language is drawn from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2016) and other federal employment discrimination statutes. It is necessary to preserve the policy goals of the legislation, for if potential complainants and witnesses are not protected against retaliation, then the preventive and remedial objectives of the bill are severely compromised.

Additional Employer Defenses The Healthy Workplace Bill provides three other affirmative defenses that are designed to protect employer prerogatives: It shall be an affirmative defense that: a. The complaint is based on an adverse employment decision reasonably made for poor performance, misconduct, or economic necessity; or

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b. The complaint is based on a reasonable performance evaluation; or c. The complaint is based on an employer’s reasonable investigation about potentially illegal or unethical activity. (Yamada, 2013a, pp. 352–353)

HEALTHY WORKPLACE LEGISLATION, STATUTES, AND ORDINANCES In 2003, the original version of the full Healthy Workplace Bill was formally introduced for the first time in an American legislature by a California Assembly member (Yamada, 2004). Since then, versions of the bill have been introduced in some 30 state legislatures, with most of this activity occurring during the past 10 years. Although the full version of the bill has not yet been enacted, in recent years, several states and municipalities have enacted workplace bullying legislation and ordinances that draw heavily upon the template language. The following sections provide a summary of major developments.

California In 2014, the State of California enacted a limited workplace bullying provision as an amendment to the state’s discrimination law (Cal. Govt. Code, 2014). California requires “(a)n employer having 50 or more employees” to “provide at least two hours of classroom or other effective interactive training and education regarding sexual harassment to all supervisory employees in California within six months of their assumption of a supervisory position” (Cal. Govt. Code, 2014, Subsect. a). Now, thanks to the 2014 amendment, covered employers must include “prevention of abusive conduct” in these training and education programs (Cal. Govt. Code, 2014, Subsect. b). “Abusive conduct” is defined as “conduct of an employer or employee in the workplace, with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests” (Cal. Govt. Code, 2014, Subsect. g(2)). This definition is a verbatim adoption of language contained in an earlier version of the Healthy Workplace Bill. The California amendment constitutes the first enacted workplace bullying legislation to cover both public and private employers. However, it does not create an independent legal claim for abusive conduct. Accordingly, the existing provisions of the state’s discrimination law that create legal claims are inapplicable to bullying situations not implicating protected class status.

Tennessee In 2014, Tennessee enacted a law directing a state commission to develop a model workplace antibullying policy for potential adoption by state,

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county, and local governmental entities (Healthy Workplace Act, Tenn. Code, 2014): (a) No later than March 1, 2015, the Tennessee advisory commission on intergovernmental relations (TACIR) shall create a model policy for employers to prevent abusive conduct in the workplace. The model policy shall be developed in consultation with the department of human resources and interested municipal and county organizations including, but not limited to, the Tennessee municipal league, the Tennessee county services association, the municipal technical advisory service (MTAS), and the county technical assistance service (CTAS). (b) The model policy created pursuant to subsection (a) shall: (1) Assist employers in recognizing and responding to abusive conduct in the workplace; and (2) Prevent retaliation against any employee who has reported abusive conduct in the workplace. (c) Each employer may adopt the policy created pursuant to subsection (a) as a policy to address abusive conduct in the workplace. (Tenn. Code, 2014, Subsect. 503) The statute’s definition of “abusive conduct” adopts elements of the Healthy Workplace Bill’s definition, but the new law does not create a legal cause of action for bullied workers. Rather, adoption of the state’s model policy or one that comports with its essential features will insulate a public entity from liability (Tenn. Code, 2014): If an employer adopts the model policy . . . or adopts a policy that conforms to the requirements set out in [the statute], then the employer shall be immune from suit for any employee’s abusive conduct that results in negligent or intentional infliction of mental anguish. Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the personal liability of an employee for any abusive conduct in the workplace. (Tenn. Code, 2014, Subsect. 504) The immunity provision potentially transforms the Tennessee statute into an employer safeguard measure rather than an employee protection law. Under the statutory language, adoption of the model policy (or one like it) is sufficient to insulate a covered employer for liability for bullying-type behaviors. There is no obligation under the law for an employer to actually follow and enforce its own policy.

Utah In 2015, Utah enacted a law requiring state executive agencies to train its supervisors and employees about how to prevent abusive conduct (Utah State

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Personnel Management Act, 2015). The new law requires biennial training covering the definition of “abusive conduct” (drawn heavily from the Healthy Workplace Bill); its ramifications, “resources available to employees who are subject to abusive conduct”; and the employer’s grievance process (Utah State Personnel Management Act, 2015, Subsect. 3(b)). In addition, professional development training must cover ethical conduct and “organizational leadership practices based in principles of integrity” (Utah State Personnel Management Act, 2015, Subsect. 4(a)). The law expressly does not create a private legal claim for bullying-related conduct. However, in recognizing the presence of a grievance process, it anticipates complaints grounded in allegations of abusive conduct. This gives the Utah law slightly stronger teeth than the California amendment, which requires only training and education.

Fulton County, Georgia In 2012, the commissioners of Fulton County, Georgia, adopted a workplace antibullying policy that covers county employees (Fulton County, 2012): Employees will treat all other employees with dignity and respect. Management will provide a working environment as safe as possible by having preventative measures in place and by dealing immediately with threatening or potentially violent situations. No employee will engage in threatening, violent, intimidating or other abusive conduct or behaviors. (Fulton County, 2012, p. 3) To a degree unusual for a workplace policy, Fulton County places direct obligations on its employees to implement its provisions: All County employees and officials covered by this policy and procedure shall immediately remove themselves from any threat as soon as possible. Employees shall immediately report any threats, physical or verbal, and/or any abusive, disruptive or intimidating behavior of any individual to their immediate supervisor or Appointing Authority. Employees shall cooperate with any subsequent investigation of their complaints. No attempt to engage or antagonize a person threatening violence shall be made. (Fulton County, 2012, pp. 3–4) The Fulton County policy uses the Healthy Workplace Bill’s definition of abusive conduct. Under the policy, suspension and termination are possible sanctions for those who engage in prohibited behaviors. It does not, however, provide compensation to those who are mistreated in ways that violate the policy.

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Support for and Opposition to Healthy Workplace Legislation Public support for workplace bullying legislation appears to be strong. For example, in a scientific 2014 national public opinion survey on workplace bullying sponsored by the Workplace Bullying Institute and conducted by Zogby Analytics, 63 percent of respondents “strongly” supported and 30 percent of respondents “somewhat” supported the enactment of workplace bullying legislation (Namie, 2014). Respondents to this question were those who reported on the survey that they were “aware” of workplace bullying (Namie, 2014). Central organizing support for the Healthy Workplace Bill has come from grassroots Healthy Workplace Advocates groups operating in many states (Yamada, 2013a). Labor unions (especially those representing public sector workers) and other worker advocacy groups have provided significant support as well. Among these supporters, social media outlets have proven useful for sharing information and planning activities. Opposition to workplace bullying legislation has typically come from the employer and corporate side, raising concerns about unwanted litigation and the challenges of distinguishing between bullying and the ordinary strains of workplace interactions (Yamada, 2013a). Occasionally, the criticism takes on a deeper, philosophical tone. In a 2007 article, two management-side employment lawyers claimed that enacting legal protections against workplace bullying will undermine high performance expectations for workers and healthy competition (Van Dyck & Mullen, 2007). They posited that “tension created by competition” fuels productivity at work, and that antibullying laws “would not only inhibit productivity and employers’ freedom to hire and fire at-will employees but moreover, it would chill critical workplace communication” (Van Dyck & Mullen, 2007, p. 3). The future of Healthy Workplace legislation likely will continue to be shaped by these constituencies. Although opponents to workplace bullying legislation are strong and powerful, public support for legal protections appears to be significant. The recent adoption of workplace bullying laws and ordinances in several states, however limited in coverage and scope, does indicate that receptivity to antibullying legislation has crossed from mere deliberation into actual enactment.

ADDITIONAL POTENTIAL LEGAL PROTECTIONS, LIABILITY RISKS, AND EMPLOYEE BENEFIT PROVISIONS Apart from legislative drafting, advocacy, and deliberations discussed above, there exists a body of employment and labor law that may, in some instances, be applicable to workplace bullying and mobbing situations (Yamada, 2000;

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Yamada, 2004; Yamada, 2010, Yamada, 2013a). While the scope of this chapter precludes an in-depth examination of all potential legal issues, the following summary and discussion covers the basics. I refer readers to my published law review articles for more details.

Tort Law Claims Tort law creates civil liability exposure for injuries to person and property. As noted above, my initial forays into researching potential legal protections for targets of workplace bullying began with the hypothesis that the tort claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress would serve as an effective legal claim. I proceeded to research state court decisions where workers had used IIED to sue employers and coworkers for severe bullying-type behaviors. After conducting a qualitative analysis of hundreds of IIED cases, I made the following overall conclusion (Yamada, 2000): An analysis of case law reveals that typical workplace bullying, especially conduct unrelated to sexual harassment or other forms of statusbased discrimination, seldom results in liability for IIED. This is because the courts have tended to find workplace bullying cases lack two of the required elements for IIED liability—either that the complained-of conduct was not severe or outrageous, or that the employee did not suffer severe emotional distress. (Yamada, 2000, p. 494) In fact, many workplace-related IIED claims did not even survive pretrial dismissal motions. A prime exemplar was a 1996 Arkansas Supreme Court decision, Hollomon v. Keadle (1996), which involved a female employee, Hollomon, who worked for a male physician, Keadle, for two years before she voluntarily left the job. Hollomon claimed that during this period of employment, “Keadle repeatedly cursed her and referred to her with offensive terms, such as ‘white nigger,’ ‘slut,’ ‘whore,’ and ‘the ignorance of Glenwood, Arkansas’” (Hollomon v. Keadle, 1996, p. 413). Keadle frequently used profanity in front of his employees and patients and often remarked that women working outside of the home were “whores and prostitutes” (Hollomon v. Keadle, 1996, p. 413). According to Hollomon, Keadle “told her that he had connections with the mob” and mentioned “that he carried a gun,” allegedly to “intimidate her and to suggest that he would have her killed if she quit or caused trouble” (Hollomon v. Keadle, 1996, p. 413). Hollomon claimed that, as a result of this conduct, she suffered from “stomach problems, loss of sleep, loss of self-esteem, anxiety attacks, and embarrassment” (Hollomon v. Keadle, 1996, p. 413). On these allegations, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s pretrial dismissal of Hollomon’s claim, reasoning that Keadle’s

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conduct was not sufficiently outrageous to meet the legal requirements of IIED (Hollomon v. Keadle, 1996, p. 413). A second major impediment to using IIED claims in response to bullying and mobbing behaviors is that, in some states, workers’ compensation laws prohibit tort claims brought directly against an employer (Yamada, 2000). These statutory bars are grounded in the policy rationale that workers’ compensation is designed as the exclusive remedy for work-related injuries. Since the publication of my 2000 article, I have continued to monitor IIED claims brought for bullying-type behaviors. Unfortunately, for severely bullied workers, the general state of this body of law has not markedly changed. Of course, tort law may also come into play in the less frequent instances when bullying behaviors include physically aggressive or violent behavior, thus raising claims such as battery for harmful or offensive touching. For example, a 1993 Ohio Court of Appeals decision, Snyder v. Turk, involved a surgeon, Turk, who was performing a gallbladder operation (Snyder v. Turk, 1993). The nurse plaintiff, Snyder, was allegedly making mistakes and complicating a difficult procedure. Turk became so angered that when Snyder handed him the supposedly wrong instrument, he grabbed her shoulder, pulled her face down toward the surgical opening, and said, “Can’t you see where I’m working? I’m working in a hole. I need long instruments” (Snyder v. Turk, 1993, p. 1055). After the trial court held against the nurse plaintiff on all counts, the court of appeals reinstated the claim for battery, finding a jury could have found the physical contact to be offensive physical contact.

Employment Discrimination Law Bullying and mobbing motivated by a target’s membership in a legally protected class established by employment discrimination laws may offer legal relief for some individuals. At the federal level, three major statutes come into play. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 establishes race, color, religion, national origin, and sex as protected classes (Civil Rights Act of 1964, 2016). The Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers individuals age 40 or over (Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 2016). And the Americans with Disabilities Act covers employees on the basis of recognized disabilities (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 2016). Most states also have their own discrimination statutes, including some that add sexual orientation as a protected class. For bullying and mobbing behaviors, the most likely type of discrimination claim is harassment on the basis of a legally protected class, most commonly in the form of a hostile work environment. The legal standard for determining what constitutes a “hostile work environment” was set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in an aforementioned decision, Harris v. Forklift Systems,

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Inc. (1993), a sexual harassment claim. The court adopted a two-part test to determine whether a hostile work environment is present under the Civil Rights Act. First, the harassing behavior must be objectively hostile, that is, it must create “an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive” (Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 1993, p. 21). In assessing whether an objectively hostile work environment exists, the facts are examined in their totality. The frequency and severity of the discriminatory conduct; whether the conduct was “physically threatening or humiliating, or a mere offensive utterance”; and whether the conduct “unreasonably interfere[d] with an employee’s work performance” are among the factors to be weighed (Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 1993, p. 23). Second, the victim must “subjectively perceive the environment to be abusive” to satisfy the requirement that the conduct “actually altered the conditions of the victim’s employment” (Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 1993, pp. 21–22). The Harris test remains good law. It has been applied to harassment claims for all protected classes established under employment discrimination laws. Furthermore, as noted above, the objective totality of the circumstances part of the test has significantly informed the drafting of the Healthy Workplace Bill. In addition, the Americans with Disabilities Act may provide bullying and mobbing targets with potential relief if they can demonstrate a qualifying disability that entitles them to a reasonable accommodation. Under such scenarios, separation or transfer away from the aggressor may qualify. Workplace harassment that triggers a disability or aggravates an existing disability may also implicate ADA rights, although legal questions of causation can prove challenging.

Antiretaliation and Whistle-Blower Provisions If individuals are bullied or mobbed in retaliation for making complaints about alleged illegalities or unethical behavior committed by their employer or coworkers, then the antiretaliation provisions of specific statutes or whistleblower laws may offer legal protection (Yamada, 2000). Most protective employment statutes, such as discrimination, wage and hour, and workplace safety and health laws, include antiretaliation provisions. Whistle-blower laws may be more general in nature or apply to specific areas, such as environmental standards or securities fraud.

Collective Bargaining Laws Federal and state collective bargaining laws potentially create contractual protections and obligations concerning bullying behaviors. For example,

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if a course of bullying or mobbing culminates in a dismissal, then the just cause termination provisions of a collective bargaining agreement may make it a viable grievance. Furthermore, as discussed below and in chapter 23, labor unions can introduce concerns about bullying behaviors in contract negotiations. In addition, the National Labor Relations Act grants most nonsupervisory and nonmanagerial employees the right to engage in concerted activity for “mutual aid or protection” (National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 2016). Although this provision is most frequently invoked in union organizing and advocacy contexts, it applies to all workers covered under the statute, regardless of whether they are union members. The provision may protect rankand-file workers who join together to raise concerns about workplace bullying from employer retaliation. However, the requirement of concerted activity means that a worker raising concerns about bullying or mobbing behaviors as a “lone wolf” is not protected under the statute.

Employee Handbooks In states where employee handbooks have potential contractual effect, those containing provisions that cover bullying, mobbing, and generic harassment may create legal obligations for an employer. For example, a policy stating that workplace bullying will not be tolerated and providing a procedure for lodging a complaint about bullying behaviors may be contractually enforceable. An employer’s failure to enforce and follow that policy could offer potential relief to a targeted worker.

Occupational Safety and Health Laws As discussed in chapter 19 and analyzed by Harthill (2011), other nations have harnessed their occupational safety and health laws to cover workplace bullying behaviors. This is not the case in the United States. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the primary workplace safety law covering private sector employees, mandates that every covered employer “shall furnish to each of [its] employees employment and a place of employment which are from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to [its] employees (Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 2016). Despite a plausible need for intervention by occupational health and safety agencies in workplace bullying and mobbing situations (Harthill, 2011), the overwhelming focus of these agencies remains on purely physical workplace hazards. It is unclear at this juncture whether there will be any movement on this in the near future.

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Public Benefit Programs Targets of workplace bullying and mobbing may be able to access a variety of public benefit programs to provide them with leave time and income replacement. These benefit programs vary in terms of eligibility standards and are hardly generous in terms of monetary benefits and coverage. Also, to date, they have not been sufficiently researched in terms of specific applications to bullying and mobbing targets. Nonetheless, here are four potential options for bullied workers: workers’ compensation, family and medical leave, unemployment benefits, and Social Security disability benefits.

Workers’ compensation State workers’ compensation programs “provide cash benefits, medical care, and rehabilitation services” to workers who have suffered injuries that “arise out of employment” and in “the course of employment” (Burton, 2011, p. 1). Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system designed to replace tort lawsuits for workplace accidents. Its original and continuing focus has been on physical injuries and impairments, which places claims for injuries suffered by nonphysical bullying behaviors in a legal gray area. Workers’ compensation authority John Burton has noted that “mentalmental” claims, that is, “those that involve both a mental cause and a mental consequence,” are the most problematic cases for workers’ compensation, especially given strong trends toward limiting claims for psychological stress (Burton, 2011, p. 2). He has further reported that “over a dozen states . . . never compensate ‘mental-mental’ cases,” instead requiring “some physical component to the injury” (Burton, 2011, p. 3). There is a significant need for more comprehensive research on claimant success rates for obtaining workers’ compensation for workplace bullying and mobbing.

Family and medical leave The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 entitles eligible employees to up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during a 12-month period in several circumstances, including “a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the functions of the position of such employee” (Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, 2016). Presumably someone suffering from an abusive work environment could present health conditions sufficient to meet this eligibility standard. Of course, the FMLA is hardly a panacea to the many individuals who cannot easily afford to leave paid employment for an extended period of time. Although some employers and a few states have adopted some form of paid family leave, most workers are left with FMLA benefits when

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employer-provided paid sick days and vacation time are used up, if they are offered at all. However, if removal from a toxic workplace can help a targeted worker assess his or her options and stabilize his or her health, then FMLA benefits at least open the door to that possibility.

Unemployment benefits For bullied workers who lose or leave their jobs, unemployment insurance benefits may provide some income replacement. However, most states hold that workers who voluntarily resign without good cause are presumptively ineligible to receive unemployment benefits. This frequently leaves targets of workplace bullying in a bind when it comes to qualifying for unemployment benefits, for all too often, leaving a job is the best way to escape further abuse. Here, too, there is a significant need for research, in this case examining unemployment eligibility for targets of bullying and mobbing across the states. However, to illustrate relevant developments in one state, New York potentially allows those who leave their jobs due to toxic work environments to retain eligibility (Yamada, 2013b). Recent decisions by the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board have held that being subjected to workplace behaviors that “exceed the bounds of propriety” may constitute good cause to voluntarily leave a job and thus preserve a claimant’s eligibility (Yamada, 2013b). Here is an excerpt of a New York administrative law judge’s 2013 ruling for a claimant, building on those decisions: I credit the claimant’s credible sworn testimony that his supervisor’s repeated criticism and scolding of him in a raised voice made him feel bullied and harassed, especially in the presence of other employees. I further credit the claimant’s credible sworn testimony that the supervisor’s actions including pointing and reprimanding him, consisted of the word “stupid,” and other language which embarrassed the claimant and that the claimant believed he was being ridiculed by the supervisor. . . . I conclude that the claimant had good cause within the meaning of the unemployment insurance Law to quit when he did. (Yamada, 2013b)

Social Security disability At times, targets of workplace bullying and mobbing may develop conditions so serious that they cannot return to work for an extended period of time. In these circumstances, they may be eligible to receive federal Social Security disability benefits (Social Security Disability Benefits, 2015). To qualify for federal disability benefits, claimants must be able to establish that they cannot work due to a medical condition “expected to last at least one

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year or result in death” (Social Security Disability Benefits, 2015, p. 4). Those who are experiencing conditions frequently associated with bullying and mobbing, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and severe clinical depression, may qualify.

IMPLICATIONS FOR EMPLOYEE RELATIONS STAKEHOLDERS AND MENTAL HEALTH PROVIDERS Even in the current absence of direct, statutorily imposed lines of liability for workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States, employee relations stakeholders and mental health providers may find themselves addressing the legal ramifications of these behaviors.

Lawyers for Employees The current paucity of workplace bullying laws calls upon plaintiffs’ employment lawyers to assess whether existing legal protections may provide potential relief to individuals alleging such mistreatment. This leads to consideration of whether workplace bullying and mobbing events can be “shoehorned” into existing laws. It should come as no surprise that targets are often told by lawyers that their legal options are limited, especially if their situations do not implicate protected class status covered by employment discrimination laws. However, as the foregoing discussion indicates, viable legal and benefits options may exist. The impacts of bullying and mobbing behaviors on career and employment prospects, psychological and physical health, and overall well-being are such that helping a client get time away from an abusive work setting or cope with a resulting job loss may be a very desirable goal, regardless of whether prospects for legal relief look promising. Thus, in addition to considering litigation options, lawyers can help clients sort out and apply for potential benefits that may provide leave time and income replacement. Chief among these options are family and medical leave, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and disability payment, which have been previously discussed.

Labor Unions Unions can play, and some are playing, at least four roles where workplace bullying and mobbing behaviors cross with potential legal protections (Yamada, 2009b). First, in collective bargaining, they can propose provisions designed to protect union members against abusive supervision. Second,

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even in the absence of specific provisions against abusive supervision, they can raise general substantive and procedural contract rights on behalf of bullied or mobbed union members who have been subjected to discipline or termination. Third, they can train union shop stewards to identify and resolve bullying situations, including those between union members. Fourth, and finally, unions can actively support the passage of antibullying legislation such as the Healthy Workplace Bill. (Further commentary about how labor unions can respond to bullying and mobbing may be found in chapter 23).

Employers and Their Lawyers Although many instances of generic workplace bullying and mobbing fall between the cracks of current employment protections, employers may face liability when such behaviors overlap with existing wrongful discharge claims and employment discrimination laws. Also, the organizational costs of bullying and mobbing behaviors (such as lower productivity and higher employee turnover) may cause wiser employers to consider proactive preventive and responsive measures. These are among the questions that lawyers for employers may want to discuss with clients and their human resources personnel: • Even without a direct line of legal liability for workplace bullying and mobbing behaviors, what existing legal protections are implicated by these behaviors in the client’s legal jurisdiction(s) of business and operations? • Should the employer adopt a policy on workplace bullying for its employee handbook, keeping in mind that following such policy may be deemed a contractual obligation? • Should the employer have a protocol for handling complaints about workplace bullying, keeping in mind that it will be expected to follow any such protocol? • Should the employer include workplace bullying in its in-house employee training programs? The client counseling role of an employer’s lawyer comes into play here. An attorney who understands the organizational costs of bullying and mobbing behaviors may want to engage the client in a conversation about the potential benefits of addressing these behaviors more affirmatively. This includes, however, acknowledging the trade-offs and potential liability exposure created by adopting policies, procedures, and training programs that are not necessarily required by law.

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Mental Health Providers As chapters 5 and 13 examine in detail, targets of workplace bullying may experience clinical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other conditions. Mental health providers obviously play the primary role in providing therapy, counseling, and treatment to patients in this context. In addition, they may be involved in providing diagnoses and insights associated with legal and benefits matters, such as • Helping clients to understand the potential stressors of engaging in employment litigation and referring them to legal assistance and relevant enforcement agencies when appropriate; • Providing diagnoses that potentially inform eligibility for family and medical leave, workers’ compensation, disability benefits, and unemployment benefits; and, • Providing expert support and testimony in employment litigation. In these settings, mental health providers are not asked nor expected to make legal conclusions or to engage in legal analyses. However, those who possess a basic familiarity with how mental health conditions and diagnoses intersect with relevant eligibility standards and legal frameworks will be more effective in assisting their clients.

LARGER PERSPECTIVES This chapter has provided an overview of the current American legal state of the art concerning workplace bullying and mobbing. Some 15 years ago, the prospects of American legislatures seriously considering and adopting workplace bullying laws were quite slim. After all, workplace bullying and workplace mobbing were just starting to enter into the vocabulary of American employee relations. Today, as U.S. employee relations stakeholders increasingly recognize the harmful impact of these behaviors, the intervening roles of law and public policy are becoming more pronounced. Gradually, at least, it appears that the law is catching up to our understanding of the human and organizational damage wrought by abusive work environments. Beyond some of the early legislative successes, other indicators suggest that the American legal infrastructure is becoming more hospitable to legal interventions for workplace bullying and mobbing: During the last decade, workplace bullying has gained the attention of the legal profession. Workplace bullying has been the topic of major articles in bar association journals, legal newspapers, and legal newsletters. . . . It has been a featured topic at national programs sponsored by legal

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groups such as the American Bar Association, Association of American Law Schools, National Employment Lawyers Association, and International Academy of Law and Mental Health. . . . The American legal academy has been slower to recognize workplace bullying as a topic of scholarship and teaching than its counterparts in fields such as organizational psychology, organizational behavior, and labor relations, but that is changing. . . . More recently, articles discussing and critiquing the Healthy Workplace Bill and related developments have appeared in the legal literature. (Yamada, 2013a, pp. 347–348)

Diversity and Dignity: Competing or Complementary Frameworks? Nevertheless, as chapter 19 illustrates, many other nations have enacted laws and regulations to protect workers against bullying and mobbing on the job. One may accurately claim that the United States is now significantly behind the curve in this regard. To understand this state of affairs, one must grasp that in the United States, “protected class status remains the dominant paradigm of how we frame legal issues of worker harassment and mistreatment” (Yamada, 2004, p. 507). Perhaps this makes sense in view of recent history, in that America played a lead role in diversifying its workforce, especially in terms of race and sex. Because these difficult societal transitions have been far from seamless, the law has intervened when discrimination and harassment entered the picture. Nations with more homogeneous demographics and patriarchal attitudes toward employment managed to sidestep these conflicts and the accompanying need for legal protections, at least until later. It follows, in any event, that America’s approach to addressing psychological abuse at work has been grounded in a diversity framework, whereas other nations have looked at these behaviors through a more status-blind dignity lens. A question remains as to whether the United States can embrace the latter while preserving the former. America’s affinity for identity-based legal interventions suggests difficulty in achieving this kind of paradigmatic coexistence, but plenty of bullied and mobbed workers who have found themselves without legal recourse would urge us to make it work.

Therapeutic Jurisprudence A dignity-informed approach for American employment law would do well to embrace therapeutic jurisprudence, a school of legal philosophy and practice that examines the therapeutic and antitherapeutic properties of our laws and legal systems and favors psychologically healthy legal outcomes (Yamada, 2009a). From the standpoint of protecting workers from significant, health-harming dignity violations and supporting individual well-being, a

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therapeutic jurisprudence perspective on workplace bullying and mobbing easily favors legal interventions to fill the current gaps in our laws and regulations as well as a stronger safety net of employee benefits to help targeted workers cope with and, when appropriate, transition out of abusive work situations. Taking these concepts of dignity and therapeutic jurisprudence into account, it could be fairly argued that efforts to enact Healthy Workplace legislation reflect a broader attempt to advance the underlying values of American employment law in two significant ways. First, our laws should protect everyone from disabling abuse on the job. Second, our laws should embrace psychologically healthy workplaces as a worthy public policy goal. Higher levels of employee morale, organizational productivity, and public health will surely follow.

REFERENCES Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621–634 (2016). Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 (2016). Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742 (U.S. 1998). Burton, J. F. (2011, January 8). Workers’ compensation benefits for workplace stress. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, Denver, Colorado. Cal. Gov’t Code § 12950.1 (2014). Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. (2016). Davenport, N., Schwartz., R. D., & Elliott, G. P. (1999). Mobbing: Emotional abuse in the American workplace. Ames, IA: Civil Society Publishing. Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, 29 U.S.C. §§ 2601–2654 (2016). Fulton County. (2012). Resolution to establish a Fulton County policy prohibiting bullying in the workplace. Retrieved from http://mm1.co.fulton.ga.us/cache/00010/272/2012​ -0998.pdf Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 (U.S. 1993). Harthill, S. (2011). Workplace bullying as an occupational safety and health matter: A comparative analysis. Hastings International & Comparative Law Review, 34(2) 253–302. Healthy Workplace Act, Tenn. Code, § 50-1-501 et seq. (2014). Hollomon v. Keadle, 931 S.W.2d 413 (Ark. 1996). Namie, G. (2014). 2014 WBI U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http:// workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf Namie, G., & Namie, R. (1999). Bullyproof yourself at work. Benicia, CA: DoubleDoc Press. National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151–169 (2016). Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 29 U.S.C. §§ 651 et seq. (2016). Snyder v. Turk, 627 N.E.2d 1053 (Ohio App. 2 Dist. 1993). Social Security Disability Benefits. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.ssa.gov/pubs​ /EN-05-10029.pdf

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Utah State Personnel Management Act, Abusive Conduct, Utah Code 67-19-44 (2015). Van Dyck, T. P., & Mullen, P. M. (2007). Picking the wrong fight: Legislation that needs bullying. Mealey’s Litigation Report, 3(11), 1–4. Yamada, D. C. (2000). The phenomenon of “workplace bullying” and the need for status-blind hostile work environment protection. Georgetown Law Journal, 88(3), 475–536. Yamada, D. C. (2004). Crafting a legislative response to workplace bullying. Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, 8(2), 475–521. Yamada, D. C. (2009a). Human dignity and American employment law. University of Richmond Law Review, 43(2), 523–570. Yamada, D. C. (2009b, November 17). The role of unions and collective bargaining in combating workplace bullying [Blog post]. Retrieved from https:// newworkplace.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-role-of-unions-and-collective​ -bargaining-in-combating-workplace-bullying Yamada, D. C. (2010). Workplace bullying and American employment law: A tenyear progress report and assessment. Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 32(1), 251–284. Yamada, D. C. (2013a). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–354. Yamada, D. C. (2013b, August 13). Workplace bullying targets winning unemployment benefits appeals in New York State [Blog post]. Retrieved from https:// newworkplace.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/workplace-bullying-targets-winning​ -unemployment-benefits-appeals-in-new-york-state Yamada, D. C. (2015). Workplace bullying and the law: U.S. legislative developments 2013–15. Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, 19(1), 49–60.

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Comparing and Contrasting Workplace Bullying and Mobbing Lawsin Other Countries with the American Legal Landscape Ellen Pinkos Cobb

In terms of legal protections and liability, workplace bullying and mobbing have entered into the law of the workplace. As chapter 18 indicates, in the United States, this process is still in its infancy. However, in other nations, employment laws that expressly cover bullying and mobbing behaviors— sometimes using different terminology—have firmly entered that landscape. Accordingly, this chapter will compare and contrast workplace bullying and mobbing laws in Europe and a number of European countries, Australia and Australian States, Canada and Canadian Provinces, and Japan with the United States’ legal landscape. Legal provisions will be examined to inform employment lawyers, labor relations personnel, and human resources professionals how other parts of the world approach and manage abusive workplace conduct. The relevance of these laws for multinational employers and the varying cultural contexts of regions and countries in regard to the awareness and treatment of workplace bullying and mobbing will also be discussed.

INTERNATIONAL OVERVIEW OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND THE LAW A variety of terms are used around the world for workplace bullying and mobbing. The term workplace bullying is commonly used in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and Australia. French-speaking jurisdictions tend to use either the term harcèlement moral (“moral harassment”), as in Belgium and France, or the term harcèlement psychologique (“psychological harassment”), as in Quebec. The term mobbing is used in

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Scandinavia and Germany, while Japan refers to workplace bullying as power harassment. No single definition of bullying has been agreed on internationally (Milczarek, 2010). Some countries use the term harassment to address abusive workplace behavior that is based on a protected class (status-based harassment). Others define harassment without the mention of protected grounds (status-blind harassment). Only status-blind harassment provisions will be discussed in this chapter. Generally speaking, occupational health and safety laws protect workers from risks that pose a physical threat to their health and safety in the workplace. In many regions, countries, states, and territories around the world, there is a developing realization that psychosocial risks at the workplace can also pose a threat to workers’ health and safety. In response, laws have been enacted requiring an employer to provide a safe work environment for employees, with a duty to prevent both physical and psychological risks. Along these lines, workplace bullying is often addressed in occupational health and safety legislation as arising out of this concept that an employer’s duty of care encompasses protecting against abusive work environments. The requirement to ensure persons in the workplace are both psychologically and physically safe has been interpreted to require a workplace free from bullying and mobbing, as will be discussed below.

EUROPEAN REGION AT THE FOREFRONT Europe has played a lead role in the enactment of legal and policy measures responding to bullying and mobbing. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000), Article 31(1), states, “Every worker has the right to working conditions which respect his or her health, safety and dignity” (p. 15). Although there is no European-wide law addressing and prohibiting workplace bullying and mobbing, this concept of bullying and mobbing as a violation of a worker’s dignity has influenced a broad interpretation of European workplace legislation and the creation of nonlegislative instruments. Moreover, European countries were the first to enact laws to measure, regulate, prevent, and punish workplace bullying and mobbing. In Europe, bullying at work is frequently considered to fall implicitly within the scope of the primary directive on health and safety at work, EU Occupational Health and Safety Directive 89/391/EEC, also known as the Framework Directive, dating back to 1989 (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, n.d.; European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), 2010). Under the Framework Directive, employers “have a duty to ensure the safety and health of workers in every aspect related to the work” (Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989, n.d.) on the basis of prescribed general principles of prevention. The

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European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), the European Union’s information agency for occupational safety and health, has interpreted this language to mean that European employers are legally required to assess occupational safety and health risks in the workplace, including psychosocial risks (EU-OSHA, 2014). Psychosocial risks include bullying and mobbing. In the United States, however, occupational health and safety laws only address matters related to physical safety. Although harassment in the workplace based on protected characteristics is addressed through federal and state antidiscrimination laws, there typically is little protection for abusive conduct in the workplace when it is not based on a protected trait. Employee relations, human resources, and health and safety professionals involved with multinational companies should be aware of these distinctions. Global companies should also be aware of the strength and prominence of the European social partners. The European social partners represent the two sides of industry: employers and employees. In this role, they consult with the European Commission, support negotiation of collective bargaining agreements, and sit with the European Economic and Social Committee alongside other organizations representing civil society. In the words of Leka and Jain (2014), the social partners “play a vital role in the European decision-making process in the field of safety and health at work, as they have to be consulted at various stages” (p. 238). There is not a comparable organization with such strength and recognition in the United States. The social partners state, “Employers are legally obliged through the EU Framework Directive on health and safety at work to protect their workers regarding all elements of occupational health and safety. This is a general obligation, which also covers harassment and violence at work to the extent that they have an impact on workers’ health and safety” (European Social Partners, 2011, p. 26). Social partners may negotiate Framework Agreements that have contractual force on signatories and their members. In 2007, the social partners signed the Framework Agreement on Harassment and Violence at Work (Commission of the European Communities, 2007; European Social Partners, 2007). The aim of this agreement is to build awareness of workplace violence and harassment among employee relations stakeholders and to provide them with tangible guidance for preventing and managing these behaviors: “The text commits the members of the signatory parties to combat all unacceptable behavior that can lead to harassment and violence at the workplace” (European Social Partners, 2007, para. 1). The agreement “condemns all forms of harassment and violence and confirms the duty of the employer to protect workers against them. Companies in Europe are requested to adopt a policy of zero tolerance of such behavior and to specify procedures to deal with cases

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of harassment and violence where they occur” (Commission of the European Communities, 2007, para. 4). In the words of Cobb (2012, p. 18), “Employers are required to publish a statement that: [(1)] Makes it clear that violence and harassment in the workplace will not be accepted; [(2)] specifies procedures to be followed where cases arise; and [(3)] ensures procedures are underpinned by a short checklist of simple principles included in the social partners agreement” (Commission of the European Communities, 2007). According to Cobb (2012, p. 17), the “Agreement does not address bullying by name [but] defines harassment and violence as unacceptable behavior by one or more individuals that can take many different forms,” stating “harassment occurs when someone is repeatedly and deliberately abused, threatened and/or humiliated in circumstances relating to work” (European Social Partners, 2007, p. 3). As outlined in Sweeney et al. (2009)., harassment may be carried out by one or more manager[s], worker[s], service user[s], or member[s] of the public with the purpose or effect of violating a manager’s or worker’s dignity, affecting his/her health, and/or creating a hostile work environment. The . . . Agreement recognizes that harassment and violence can: • Be physical, psychological, and/or sexual; • Be one off incidents or more systematic patterns of behaviour; • Be amongst colleagues, between superiors and subordinates or by third parties such as clients, customers, patients, pupils, etc.; • Range from minor cases of disrespect to more serious acts, including criminal offences, which require the intervention of public authorities. (Sweeney et al., 2009, p. 6) Subsequently, 16 countries have implemented the agreement through national cross-industry social partner agreements, while in other countries, laws implement the agreement. For example, the Danish Working Environment Act is the legal means by which the Framework Agreement has been implemented in Denmark (European Social Partners, 2011).

WORKPLACE BULLYING AND MOBBING LAWS IN INDIVIDUAL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES Individual European countries have introduced workplace bullying and mobbing legislation or incorporated provisions addressing it into existing occupational health and safety laws. In addition, or alternatively, government agencies have issued guidance on workplace bullying. While not legally binding, the guidance offers instructive information. Through these regulations

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and publications, employers and employees become aware of the existence of workplace bullying and mobbing, what behavior constitutes it, the prohibition against it, as well as measures to address and prevent it. France and Sweden were among the first nations to enact workplace bullying and mobbing laws, with Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands following suit. This reflects, in particular, a Northern European recognition that the psychological risks inherent in the workplace must be prevented and protected, just as physical ones have been for years. The Swedish Work Environment Authority, in issuing new provisions on the organizational and social work environment in March 2016, noted, “Our mental and social work environment is just as important as the physical.” (Swedish Work Environment Authority, 2015). This statement is fitting and consistent, as Sweden became the first country to combat workplace bullying through legislation in the early 1990s. Some European nations, including those in Scandinavia, have “coordinated, established policies on preventing and tackling violence and harassment” (Eurofound, 2015a, p. 91). Public awareness, coverage in legislation, and involvement of the social partners are all contributing factors toward the effectiveness of these policies. By contrast, in other nations, health and safety laws, employment laws, and criminal laws may lack these types of specified directives for preventing and responding to harassment and violence at work.

RELEVANT PROVISIONS OF INDIVIDUAL EUROPEAN COUNTRIES’ LAWS Overall, Europe has played a lead role in adopting legal and policy measures that cover workplace mobbing and bullying. In addition to the aforementioned EU policy initiatives, many individual European nations have enacted laws and regulations or extended existing legal protections that address these behaviors. The following discussion reviews a representative sampling of these developments.

Nations Adopting a Workplace Health and Safety Regulatory Approach In Sweden, workplace bullying falls under the Ordinance of the Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health, adopted September 21, 1993, designed to guard against victimization in the workplace through a series of provisions. Victimization, according to this ordinance, is “recurrent reprehensible or distinctly negative actions which are directed against individual employees in an offensive manner and can result in those employees being placed outside the workplace community” (Swedish National Board

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of Occupational Safety and Health, 1993, p. 3). Victimization includes “adult bullying, mental violence, social rejection, and harassment” (Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health, 1993, p. 7). The Ordinance requires employers to prevent victimization of workers by appropriately managing the workplace and to instruct employees not to engage in victimization. The employer’s duties include catching the early warning signs of workplace victimization and enacting swift countermeasures against it as well as providing support for victimized employees (Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health, 1993). Denmark has also proclaimed that the physical and psychological work environment are equivalent, amending its Working Environment Act in 2013 to clarify that the law covers both the physical and psychological working environment (Arbeidstilsynet, 2016). Laws on workplace bullying often include requirements for the employer concerning the organization of work. Norway’s Working Environment Act, No. 62/2005, amended by the Act of 14 December 2012, No. 80, and most recently on July 1, 2015 (Arbeidstilsynet, 2016), addresses bullying in organizations as follows, per the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority (2009): Efforts to combat bullying are to be part of the systematic health, safety and environment work in the undertaking. It is important to develop routines that provide a basis for an inclusive working environment and that foster a corporate culture that discourages bullying. This work must be carried out on three levels: • Prevention, in order to reduce the likelihood of the problem arising; • Handling, in order to stop any bullying that occurs; and • Follow-up, in order to learn from the situation and implement corrective measures so as to prevent recurrence. (Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority, 2009, p. 3) Requirements for the psychosocial work environment in the act include the following: • Managing work to safeguard workers’ integrity and dignity, • Ensuring that employees are not exposed to harassment or other improper conduct, and • Protecting workers from threats, violence, and other forms of mistreatment (Arbeidstilsynet, 2016). The act covers all aspects of employment, including training, working conditions, and termination (Arbeidstilsynet, 2016).

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In Belgium, the law requires the employer to conduct a risk analysis, inform and train workers, and appoint a prevention adviser and confidential counselor, a person trusted by management and the workforce. According to Eurofound (2015a), new legislation came into force in Belgium in September 2014 that placed harassment in the more general framework of psychosocial risks and stated that employers [must recognize harassment] like any other risk to employees’ health. The legislative framework introduces a counselor for psychosocial risks, mandates compulsory training for confidential counselors, and extends the definition of “moral harassment.” Workers reporting any abusive attack benefit from shorter response times by the prevention counselor, who has to carry out an inspection unless the employer takes suitable measures, offers better protection against retaliation, and sets the right to compensation. (p. 40) Slovenia requires that the employer “adopt measures to prevent, eliminate, and manage cases of violence, mobbing, harassment and other forms of psychosocial risks at the workplace which can pose a threat to workers’ health” (Health and Safety at Work Act, 2011, Art. 24). The aforementioned act imposed a fine between €2,000 and €40,000 on employers who do not “adopt measures to prevent, eliminate and manage cases of violence, mobbing, harassment and other forms of psychosocial risks at the workplace that can pose a threat to workers’ health” (Health and Safety at Work Act, 2011, Art. 76). Additionally, a 2013 amendment to the Employment Relationships Act prohibits bullying at work (Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs, and Equal Opportunities, 2002). The aforementioned laws reveal that a number of European countries have enacted similar provisions for management of bullying and mobbing in the workplace. The underpinning of these laws is that health and safety encompasses psychological risks as well as physical risks. Accordingly, an employer’s obligation is to conduct work in a manner such that a risk of bullying and mobbing is minimized. Measures to ensure this obligation include defining bullying and mobbing and making it clear that such behavior is not acceptable in the workplace. Requirements concerning the organization of work or a risk analysis may be specified, with the employer assessing psychological risks and implementing measures to prevent them or reduce their occurrence. Further supportive preventive measures include a written antibullying policy, posting and distribution of the policy, and training. The appointment of a confidential counselor or a similar type person for an employee to speak with, as Belgium has implemented, may also be a component of ensuring

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protection against bullying. A complaint filing and investigation process that respects principles of confidentiality, impartiality, and fair treatment are an essential part of the process, as is protection from retaliation. Appropriate measures to be taken against a perpetrator, and follow-up, including implementation of corrective measures, are often included.

France: Health and Safety and Criminal Law Address Bullying France’s Social Modernization law of 2002 authorized criminal and civil liability as punishment for moral harassment in the Criminal Code (Criminal Code of the French Republic, 2016) and Labor Code (Code du Travail, 2016). The Labour Code (in French, Code du travail) imposes an obligation on employers to prevent moral harassment (harcèlement moral). Bullying and other behaviors that result in the violation of individuals’ dignity in the workplace are all included under the designation of “moral harassment,” which is defined in the code as a prohibition: “No employee shall suffer repeated acts of moral harassment that are aimed at, or may result in, a degradation of his or her working condition and are likely to harm his/her individual rights and dignity, or affect his/her health or career” (Cobb, 2015, p. 79). Employers must take “all necessary measures to prevent bullying in the workplace” (Code du Travail, 2016, Art. L. 1152-4). The code specifies that “formal obligations include (1) establishing internal policies prohibiting bullying in the workplace; and (2) displaying in the workplace a copy of article 222-33-2 of the Criminal Code concerning the criminal offense of bullying, with the criminal sanctions attached thereto” (Code du Travail, 2016, Art. L.1152-4). French criminal law also prohibits bullying: “Harassing another person by repeated conduct which is designed to or which leads to a deterioration of his conditions of work liable to harm his rights and his dignity, to damage his physical or mental health or compromise his career prospects is punished by a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 EUR” (Criminal Code of the French Republic, 2016, Art. 222-33-2). French Supreme Court (Court of Cassation) rulings have recognized “that moral harassment can occur even without malicious intent on the part of the perpetrator and considered that certain management methods constituted moral harassment when they consisted of repeated actions against an employee” (Numhauser-Henning & Laulom, 2011). A 2012 ruling by the Criminal Chamber of the French Supreme Court found that an employee may be convicted of harassment even in cases where the perpetrator is the subordinate of the victim. Here, an employee had harassed his superior for years by portraying the victim as professionally incompetent and spreading false rumors, which had led the victim to eventually commit suicide (Court of Cassation, Criminal Division, 2011).

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In July 2016, the Paris public prosecutor recommended that France Telecom’s former executive and other key figures be put on trial for moral harassment for a wave of suicides at the multinational telecommunications corporation in 2008 and 2009. The prosecutor’s investigation found that managers had been trained to demoralize their teams in order to encourage employees to leave, with work inspectors reinforcing the “brutality” of such management methods, which had an adverse effect on employees’ physical and mental well-being, and management failed to take into account the “alarms and warnings” over the impact of its actions and the “psychological risks” to staff. The next step is for an examining judge to decide whether or not to order a trial. (BBC News, 2016).

Ireland: Code of Practice as Guidance and Evidence in Court The employer in Ireland must also take reasonable steps to prevent bullying in the workplace. Ireland’s Health and Safety Authority states, Bullying is a workplace issue and a human relations issue. Therefore it comes under the authority of various agencies and is on the agenda of many interested parties. It is a health and safety issue in so far as bullying has been identified as hazardous or dangerous as it can lead to both safety problems and health problems. It is also an IR issue, a HR issue, often a legal issue and a personal and public health issue. So many agencies and interested parties are stakeholders in this difficult area. (Health and Safety Authority, 2016, para. 4) Ireland approaches the management of bullying through guidance set forth in a comprehensive, though not legally binding, Code of Practice. The Irish Health and Safety Authority Code of Practice for Employers and Employees on the Prevention and Resolution of Bullying at Work states, Provides practical guidance for employers on identifying and preventing bullying at work arising from their duties under section 8 (2) (b) of the 2005 Act as regards “managing and conducting work activities in such a way as to prevent, so far as is reasonably practicable, any improper conduct or behaviour likely to put the safety, health and welfare at work of his or her employees at risk”. It also applies to employees in relation to their duties under section 13 (1) (e) of the 2005 Act to “not engage in improper conduct or behaviour that is likely to endanger his or her own safety, health and welfare at work or that of any other person”. (Health and Safety Authority, 2007, p. 2) The Code of Practice instructs parties on developing and communicating antibullying policies, staff training, naming of a contact person for complaints

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about bullying at work, informal and formal processes for resolving bullying at work, investigation, action, appeals, and closure. Though the Codes of Practices are not laws, but only guidance, a court may refer to a Code of Practice as evidence in a bullying case. Irish courts have used the definition of bullying and other provisions from the Code of Practice as guidance in determining whether bullying has occurred (Health and Safety Authority, 2007).

More of Europe and the United Kingdom Not all European countries have enacted laws expressly prohibiting workplace bullying and mobbing. Germany does not have a specific workplace bullying law. However, the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs states, “Employers are obliged to protect their employees’ right of privacy and health. They must therefore prevent mobbing, act against employees who mob others and take all possible measures to prevent mobbing in their companies” (Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, 2011, para. 4). The laws of the United Kingdom do not directly prohibit workplace bullying that is unrelated to a protected characteristic, with the U.K. government stating, “Bullying and harassment is behaviour that makes someone feel intimidated or offended. Harassment is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. . . . Bullying itself isn’t against the law, but harassment is” (GOV.UK, 2016, para. 1–4). However, claims may be brought under the following laws: • The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act of 1974 (Legislation.gov.uk, 2015) imposes a statutory duty on “every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees”; • The Equality Act 2010 prohibits harassment on the basis of protected categories (Equality Act 2010, Chapter 10, 2016); and, • The Protection from Harassment Act (1997) creates a statutory tort for interpersonal harassment. The Protection from Harassment Act has infrequently been applied in an employment context. However, in 2005, an employer was held civilly vicariously liable for harassment committed by an employee in the course of employment (Majrowski v. Guy’s and St. Thomas’s NHS Trust, 2005).

Australia: Antibullying Orders In Australia, workplace bullying is covered by national antibullying laws as well as state and territory laws and health and safety bodies. The Fair Work

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Ombudsman (n.d.) states, “Bullying happens when someone in the workplace repeatedly behaves unreasonably towards another person or group of people and causes a risk to health and safety in the workplace. This behavior doesn’t have to be related to the person or group’s characteristics and adverse action does not have to have happened” (para. 12). Australia’s federal government passed the Fair Work Amendment Bill, effective January 1, 2014, giving the Fair Work Commission the power to handle antibullying complaints. Any worker who “reasonably believes he/she is, or has been, the victim of workplace bullying will be able to apply to the Commission to have an investigation conducted into the matter and have their grievances heard” (Fair Work Amendment Act, 2013, Part 6-4B). A worker is bullied at work as follows: While the worker is at work in a constitutionally covered business: an individual; or a group of individuals; repeatedly behaves unreasonably towards the worker, or a group of workers of which the worker is a member; and that behaviour creates a risk to health and safety. It does not include “reasonable management practices” related to performance management or disciplinary action. (Fair Work Amendment Act, 2013, Part 6-4B) For particular behaviors to be considered actionable bullying, they must be repeated, unreasonable, and pose a risk to workplace safety and health. Procedurally, the act empowers the commission to engage in investigations, hold conferences and hearings, and issue remedial orders Australia has also enacted protections at the state level. For example, in the state of Victoria, workplace antibullying legislation came about largely in response to a bullying-related suicide. In September 2006, a 19-yearold woman named Brodie Panlock committed suicide after being subjected to a horrific course of bullying at her workplace. This tragedy served as the major impetus behind “Brodie’s Law,” which makes serious workplace bullying a criminal offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Brodie’s Law “extend[ed] the application of the stalking provisions in the Crimes Act 1958 to include behavior” typical of serious workplace bullying (Department of Justice and Regulation, 2015, para. 3). The law applies to all serious bullying, regardless of form—physical, psychological, verbal, and cyberbullying are all covered—and is directed at employees engaged in bullying rather than employers (Crimes Amendment (Bullying) Act 2011, No. 20 of 2011, n.d.; Department of Justice and Regulation, 2015). In Victoria, the Fair Work Commission’s jurisdiction is parallel to and operates separately from its Occupational Health and Safety Act and workers’ compensation laws.

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Canada: Protection from Psychological Harassment, Province by Province There is much the United States can learn from its neighbor to the north on measures to address and prevent workplace bullying, as a number of Canadian jurisdictions have specific legislation on workplace bullying and psychological harassment or include bullying under a definition of workplace violence. According to Cobb (2015, p. 14), “Quebec was the first North American governmental entity to pass anti-bullying legislation, defining psychological harassment” and requiring employers to “take reasonable action to prevent [it] and, whenever they become aware of such behavior, . . . put a stop to it” (Act Respecting Labour Standards, 2016, § 81.19). Provinces, including Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, have subsequently enacted laws to protect workers from psychological harassment. Further, in jurisdictions “where there is no legislation which specifically addressed bullying, the general duty clause establishes the duty of employers to protect employees from risks at work. These risks can include harm from both physical and mental health aspects” (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, 2014, para. 6). Here, the general duty clause refers to an employer’s general duties under Occupational Health and Safety Laws. Under Canadian Federal Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, workplace violence is defined as “any action, conduct, threat, or gesture of a person towards an employee in their workplace that can reasonably be expected to cause harm, injury, or illness to that employee” (Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, 2016, §20.2). Covered employers must generate workplace prevention policies, which should be posted in accessible locations. Canadian provinces have also enacted antiharassment laws and regulations. For example, Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA; Ontario Ministry of Labour, 2016) further protects employees from psychological harassment. An employer is “required to (a) prepare policies with respect to workplace harassment, (b) develop and maintain programs to implement their policies, and (c) provide information and instruction to workers on the contents of policies and programs” (Lee & Lovell, 2014, p. 36). In addition, amendments to the Ontario statute require every employer, “in consultation with the committee or a health and safety representative, if any, [to] develop and maintain a written program to implement the policy with respect to workplace harassment” (Occupational Health and Safety Act, 2016, Clause 32.0.6), as well as to conduct appropriate investigations concerning reported workplace harassment and inform the relevant parties of any findings and corrective action. Manitoba’s Workplace Safety and Health Act and Regulations, effective in 2011, introduced “requirements to protect workers from psychological

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harassment in the workplace, such as intimidation, bullying and humiliation” (Cobb, 2012, p.15). An employer must develop and implement a written policy to prevent harassment in the workplace and ensure that workers comply with it (Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health Act and Regulations, 2014). As with Ontario, the harassment prevention policy must be developed in consultation with the committee at the workplace; the representative at the workplace; or when there is no committee or representative, the workers at the workplace (Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health Act and Regulations, 2014). British Columbia’s WorkSafe BC approved three workplace bullying and harassment policies, effective November 2013. The policies arise from the provisions of the Workers Compensation Act requiring “an employer to take all reasonable steps in the circumstances to ensure the health and safety of its workers . . . [and] to inform, instruct, train, and supervise workers to ensure their safety and that of other workers” (WorkSafeBC, 2013, Item D3-1152, Note 2). The policies clarify the obligations of employers, workers, and supervisors by defining bullying and harassment and setting forth steps that “WorkSafeBC considers to be reasonable for an employer to take to address the hazards of workplace bullying and harassment” (WorkSafeBC, 2013, Item D3-115-2, Note 2).

Japan: Workplace Bullying Tied to Stress and Overwork In Japan, workplace bullying is referred to as power harassment; this term refers to any behavior toward a person in the same workplace that, taking advantage of one’s superior position and going beyond the appropriate scope of duties, inflicts physical or psychological pain on that person or negatively impacts the working environment. There is not a requirement that the behavior be intentional. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare released the first definition of power harassment through issuance of a report titled the “Working Group Roundtable Regarding Workplace Bullying and Harassment,” published on January 30, 2012. The report defines six categories of power harassment: • Committing acts of physical abuse or assault, such as punching, kicking, and throwing items; • Committing mental or psychological attacks, including intimidation, defamation, and slander; • Isolation or ostracism; • Forcing an employee to perform clearly unnecessary tasks; • Not assigning an employee any work, or assigning menial tasks that require far less ability or experience than the employee has; and • Invasion of privacy. (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, 2012)

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The report recommends that a company have a clear message from top management about eliminating power harassment from the workplace, including internal agreement as to which actions constitute power harassment; that it determine company rules on the subject and announce the company’s policy to all employees; and that it provide internal and external consultation areas and conduct training to prevent reoccurrence of incidents of which it has become aware (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, 2012). Although power harassment is not a cause of action in itself, an employee who has been power harassed may potentially bring a civil claim against the employer for failing in its duties to supervise and create a safe working environment. Under Japan’s November 2014 law, Promoting Measures to Prevent Death from Karoushi (death due to overwork), two types of karoushi are identified: related health problems causing death and stress-related suicide (Cobb, 2015). In November 2014, Tokyo’s District Court awarded JPY 58 million ($472,164) to the aggrieved family members of a 24-year-old shop manager of a fast-food chain who committed suicide. The court found that the employee had committed suicide as a result of overwork and power harassment by his supervisor (Kinder, 2014). An amendment to Japan’s Industrial Safety and Health Act, effective December 2015, requires an employer regularly employing 50 or more workers to offer an annual stress check to employees, with the results to be kept confidential (Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, 2015). This measure demonstrates a realization of stress as a measure of a harmful working environment. As the Tokyo District Court decision above recognized in its ruling, bullying causes stress.

CULTURAL INFLUENCES International laws on workplace bullying and their applications must be considered in a cultural context, as the experience of abusive behaviors at work often differs depending on cultural norms. Consideration of various economic climates is also important. Cultural norms and stereotypes inform perceptions of what constitutes workplace harassment and can both mitigate and aggravate harassment. What is perceived as bullying in one culture may not be construed as bullying in a different culture. Various cultural expectations play into what is appropriate behavior. Perceptions and interpretations vary from region to region. According to Eurofound (2015a), “Awareness of the causes and consequences of harassment at work varies greatly among [European countries]. Awareness is generally low in southern and eastern European countries and tends to increase in Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and the UK” (p. 52). Procedures designed to deal with workplace bullying and harassment

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are “most common in companies in the Scandinavian countries and Belgium, and less observed in the southern and eastern countries, as well as in some continental countries, such as Austria and Germany” (Eurofound, 2015b, p. 47). The Eurofound report titled “Violence and Harassment in European Workplaces,” a survey of 28 EU nations and Norway, sorted the countries into groups based on prevalence rates of applicable behaviors, workplace procedures and policies, and overall public awareness (Eurofound, 2015b). The report found distinct regional differences between the Northern European countries and the Southern and Eastern European countries. Scandinavian and Northern European countries have the most awareness and laws, leading the way in regard to the societies and public authorities in these countries acknowledging workplace bullying as a serious issue. Accordingly, policies aimed at counteracting workplace bullying have been enacted by stakeholders in these countries, including governments, businesses, and social partners, and there is a higher level of awareness and reporting by workers. In contrast, most Eastern European countries demonstrated very little awareness of the issue, despite higher prevalence rates than in Europe as a whole. In the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, awareness levels were low, and employers were slow in development policies and procedures. According to the Eurofound report, “In general, a high share of workers in Scandinavian countries report experiencing violence and harassment, followed by other countries in Northern and Central Europe. Overall, violence and harassment is less reported in southern countries” (2015b, p. 57). The results of this report indicate the importance of giving a name and an avenue for reporting and regulating workplace bullying. Identification leads to awareness, an essential starting point for countries, organizations, and workers. In another study, Professor Nikos Bozionelos and 19 international scholars examined the extent to which white collar workers will tolerate office bullies, ultimately finding that national cultures make a difference (Bozionelos, 2013). In nations with high performance orientation cultures “that value accomplishments, a sense of urgency and explicit communication,” such as the United States, England, and Australia, bullying was found to be more acceptable. The study found that in these cultures, there is an extremely low power distance, which leads to a large and strong degree of suffering as workers’ experience bullying as unfair and unnatural. In contrast, a high rate of acceptance of bullying was found in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, where there is the cultural characteristic of high performance orientation combined with a link to strong power distance. The study determined this combination made workplace bullying more acceptable in Confucian Asian countries. The power distance feature results in a high acceptance of the actions of those in power.

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The study found that Latin American cultures are less accepting of bullying in the workplace. Bozionelos speculated that some of these countries place greater value on humane working conditions than on economic performance. However, few Latin American countries have enacted workplace bullying laws.

LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES AND MULTINATIONAL EMPLOYERS Much may be learned by the United States, and should be, from the international legal landscape, as the workplace becomes increasingly globalized and more areas of the world regulate bullying and mobbing in the workplace. A key starting point should be the realization that many countries regard health and safety in the workplace as encompassing both physical and psychological risks to workers’ health and safety. Denmark’s law expressly states this premise, and much of the EU and Canada have enacted legislation for the workplace with this as an underpinning. The United States lags much of the world in realizing that bullying and mobbing signify a risk to the health and safety of employees and need to be managed in the work environment. Based on the legislation and guidance discussed in this chapter, indicating the growing global realization of addressing psychological risks such as bullying and mobbing, the United States’ lack of regulation is a particularly glaring omission from the legal landscape. Further, multinational corporations must navigate the legal landscape of bullying and mobbing laws in some of the countries in which they conduct business. In an increasingly globalized workplace, a comprehension of international laws regulating bullying and mobbing is a necessity for these companies and their employee relations and human resource professionals. Additionally, liability for workplace bullying may and has been imposed by courts, civilly and criminally, through fines and imprisonment. This requires multinational employers to be aware of varying legal strictures to engage in employee education and training, prevention, and response concerning bullying and mobbing behaviors. In some countries, these obligations may differ between individual states and provinces. Not so long ago, voices within the United States argued sexual harassment was too difficult to regulate. But regulation and laws would follow, and the workplace has become better for it. Companies and government agencies in the United States would do well to keep this in mind and to learn from what many other countries have come to know and provide for through their laws and policies: that acknowledging and regulating bullying is part of creating today’s safe and healthy workplace.

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Kinder, T. (2014, November 5). Japanese restaurant manager commits suicide after doing 190 hours overtime in a month. International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/japanese-restaurant-chain-must-pay-320000-damages​ -after-manager-commits-suicide-1473346 Lee, R. T., & Lovell, B. L. (2014). Workplace bullying: A Canadian perspective. In R. Csiernik (Ed.), Workplace wellness: Issues and responses (pp. 33–50). Toronto, Canada: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Legislation.gov.uk. (2015). Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, Chapter 37 Retrieved from http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37 Leka, S., & Jain, A. (2014). Policy approaches to occupational and organizational health. In G. F. Bauer & O. Hämmig (Eds.), Bridging occupational, organizational, and public health: A transdisciplinary approach (pp. 231–249). New York: Springer. Majrowski v. Guy’s and St. Thomas’s NHS Trust, EWCA Civ. 251 (2005). Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health Act and Regulations. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.gov.mb.ca/labour/safety/pdf/2014_whs_act_regs.pdf Milczarek, J. (2010). European risk observatory report: Workplace violence and harassment: A European picture. Retrieved from https://osha.europa.eu/en/tools-and-publications /publications/reports/violence-harassment-TERO09010ENC Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. (2012). Syokuba no ijime iyagarase-mondai ni kansuru entakukaigi working group houkoku [Roundtable Working Group report on workplace bullying, harassment problem]. Retrieved from http://www.mhlw.go.jp​ /stf/shingi/2r98520000021hkd.html Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. (2015). Sutoresu chekku tou no syokuba ni okeru mentaru herusu taisaku kajyuu-roudou taisaku tou [Stress checks and other overwork prevention and mental health measures for the workplace]. Retrieved from 2015 http://www.mhlw.go.jp/bunya/roudoukijun/anzeneisei12 Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs, and Equal Opportunities. (2002). Employment Relationships Act. Retrieved from http://www.mddsz.gov.si/en/legislation​ /veljavni_predpisi/zdr_1 Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority. (2009). The bully-free workplace: Working together to stop bullying at the workplace. http://www.arbeidstilsynet.no/binfil/download2​ .php?tid=97306 Numhauser-Henning, A., & Laulom, S. (2011). Harassment related to sex and sexual harassment law in 33 European countries. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/justice​ /gender-equality/files/your_rights/final_harassement_en.pdf Occupational Health and Safety Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. O.1 (2016). Retrieved from https:// www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90o01?_ga=1.211205525.1498100697.1462979171 Ontario Ministry of Labour. (2016). Workplace violence. Retrieved from https://www​ .labour.gov.on.ca/english/hs/pubs/wpvh/violence.php Protection from Harassment Act. (1997). Retrieved from http://www.legislation.gov​ .uk/ukpga/1997/40/contents Swedish National Board of Occupational Safety and Health. (1993). Victimization at work (Ordinance AFS 1993:17). Retrieved from https://www.av.se/globalassets​/filer​ /publikationer/foreskrifter/engelska/victimization-at-work-provisions-1993-17.pdf Swedish Work Environment Authority. (2015). Mental ill health, stress, threats and violence. https://www.av.se/en/health-and-safety/mental-ill-health-stress-threats-and​ -violence

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Sweeney, E., Lambert, R., Fleetwood, I., Young, A., Hackitt, J., & Barber, B. (2009). Preventing workplace harassment and violence: A joint guidance implementing a European social partner agreement. Retrieved from http://www.hse.gov.uk/violence/preventing​ -workplace-harassment.pdf WorkSafeBC. (2013). BOD decision: 2013/03/20-03: Employer duties: Workplace bullying and harassment. Retrieved from https://www.worksafebc.com/en/resources​ /law-policy/board-of-directors-decisions/bod-2013-03-20-occupational-health-and​ -safety-workplace-bullying-and-harassment-policies?lang=en

PART VI

Workplace Bullying and Mobbing within Specific Employment Sectors

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Health Care Sector Susan Johnson

One of the risks of being a nurse is that you can be exposed to deadly diseases and deadly co-workers.—Nursing unit manager for 15 years The health care sector, both internationally and in the United States, has been identified as an occupational sector with a high prevalence of workplace bullying and mobbing (Asfaw, Chang, & Ray, 2013; Zapf, Escartin, Einarsen, Hoel, & Vartia, 2011). Workplace bullying in this sector is concerning, as the negative consequences of bullying affect not just the targets of bullying but society as a whole. There is evidence that workplace bullying in clinical settings takes energy away from patient care (Purpora, 2012; Rosenstein & O’Daniel, 2008; Vogelpohl, Rice, Edwards, & Bork, 2013) and can lead to miscommunication and medical errors (Shannon, 2015; Wright & Khatri, 2015). As medical errors are thought to be the third major cause of death in the United States (Makary & Daniel, 2016), workplace bullying in the health sector can be thought of as a public health issue. Workplace bullying also negatively impacts health care organizations’ bottom line. As workplace bullying is associated with poor health outcomes among those who experience bullying (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012), it is not surprising that it is also associated with increased sick leave use among both targets and witnesses of bullying (Asfaw et al., 2013; Nielsen, Indregard, & Øverland, 2016). Costs associated with sick leave use include loss of productivity and paying for a replacement worker. In health care, covering the shift of a worker who is on sick leave is particularly expensive because these shifts are covered either by coworkers who are working overtime or agency staff whose hourly rate is higher than regular staff. Additional costs associated with workplace bullying are related to the turnover of employees. Workers who are being bullied often find the only

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way to end the bullying is to leave the organization (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2006). Nurses who have experienced workplace bullying are more likely to look for another job or to think about leaving the profession (Johnson & Rea, 2009; Simons, 2008). Given ongoing and recurrent shortages of nurses, nurse turnover can be particularly costly to health care organizations who need to hire costly temporary staff as they struggle to fill vacancies (Johnson, Butler, Harootunian, Wilson, & Linan, 2016). While the effects of workplace bullying in the health sector may ripple out into society as a whole, the individuals who are targets of, and witnesses to, this behavior are the ones who incur the most harm. As workplace bullying has been associated with a multitude of poor health outcomes (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012), it is first and foremost an occupational health hazard. This chapter will provide an overview of the current research on workplace bullying in medicine, nursing, and allied health professions in the United States. We will begin this discussion with an exploration of the various terms that researchers have used to describe workplace bullying and an examination of what is known about the prevalence of workplace bullying in the health care sector. The root causes of the workplace bullying, especially those that may explain the high prevalence rate of workplace bullying in this sector, will then be explored. With these root causes in mind, current practices to deal with workplace bullying will be critically examined. Where current practices fall short, alternative solutions will be suggested. To date, most of the research that has been done on workplace bullying in the U.S. health sector is based on samples of nurses who work in hospitals. Therefore, the discussion in this chapter will primarily be about workplace bullying among nurses.

LABELS USED TO DESCRIBE BULLYING-TYPE BEHAVIORS Within the general academic literature, there has been a proliferation of different terms used to describe the phenomenon of workplace bullying (Crawshaw, 2009; Keashly & Jagatic, 2011, see also chapter 1), and the health care literature is no different (Johnson, Boutain, Tsai, & de Castro, 2015a; Stanley, 2010; Vessey, Demarco, & DiFazio, 2010). Within the health care literature, the most common terms that are used interchangeably with workplace bullying are lateral or horizontal violence and disruptive behavior (Longo, 2010). The term mobbing is used less often to describe abusive workplace behavior in nursing in the United States. The terms lateral, horizontal, or vertical violence are primarily used within the nursing literature, and some authors use these terms interchangeably with workplace bullying within the same article (e.g., Ceravolo, Schwartz, FoltzRamos, & Castner, 2012; Purpora, 2012; Sellers, Millenbach, Kovach, & Yingling, 2009; Stanley, Martin, Michel, Welton, & Nemeth, 2007; Waschgler,

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Ruiz-Hernández, Llor-Esteban, & Jiménez-Barbero, 2013). Lateral violence and horizontal violence are used to describe bullying among coworkers, and vertical violence is used to describe bullying by supervisors toward those with less hierarchical status (Waschgler et al., 2013). A representative definition of lateral violence is “injurious behavior aimed by one worker toward another who is of equal status within a hierarchy that seeks to control the person by disregarding and diminishing his or her value as a human being” (Purpora, Blegen, & Stotts, 2012, p. 306). Examples of behaviors that are classified as lateral violence are “making faces or raising eyebrows in response to a colleague, making rude or demeaning comment[s], acting in ways that undermine the ability to help others, sabotaging another by withholding information, group infighting, scapegoating, passive aggressive communication, gossiping and failure to respect privacy or breaking confidences” (Roberts, 2015, p. 36). Because these behaviors are all included in most definitions of workplace bullying, it is generally acknowledged that lateral and horizontal violence are essentially the same concept as workplace bullying (Vessey et al., 2010). What differentiates the concept of lateral violence from workplace bullying is that the former originated from the belief that nurses are an oppressed group who, instead of confronting those with power in the organization, turn their anger and aggression toward their peers (Purpora & Blegen, 2012; Roberts, 1983). The concept of workplace bullying was first used in Europe in research that included all occupational sectors and is not characterized by a unified theoretical explanation (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2011). Nursing researchers base their choice of terminology on their theoretical understandings of the concept or to align their research with a wider body of literature (Purpora & Blegen, 2012; Simons, 2008; Vessey et al., 2010). Another label for bullying-type behaviors that is used in the nursing and medical literature is disruptive behaviors. This term is often used without a formal definition (e.g., Rosenstein & O’Daniel, 2005; Small, Porterfield, & Gordon, 2015), but where it is defined, it too shares many similarities with the concept of workplace bullying. Longo (2010) describes disruptive behavior as follows: Overt and covert actions that are displayed by any healthcare worker and that threaten the performance of the healthcare team. . . . [Disruptive behavior] includes emotional-verbal abuse[;] . . . threatening or abusive language; making demeaning or degrading comments; humiliating someone in front of others, including staff and patients; rolling eyes in disgust; sending nasty emails; refusing to mentor; refusing to help others; ignoring attempts at conversations; throwing items; physically assaulting team members; and intimidating others. (p. 2)

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Notably, the definition of disruptive behavior includes the idea that these behaviors “threaten the performance of the healthcare team” (Longo, 2010, p. 2), and, by extension, they have the potential to negatively impact patient safety. Although workplace bullying may have the same effect (Wright & Khatri, 2015), not all workplace bullying will necessarily disrupt patient care. Furthermore, workplace bullying is by definition repeated and prolonged behavior directed toward one or more coworkers, whereas disruptive behaviors can be occasional and may not have a specific target. Nevertheless, the terms disruptive behaviors and workplace bullying are often used interchangeably (Johnson et al., 2015a; Longo, 2010). There are several unfortunate consequences of the proliferation of different terms for similar behaviors. Within organizations, the use of different labels can mean that policies cannot be located or are not seen as applicable to a given situation (Johnson, Boutain, Tsai, & de Castro, 2015b). One study reported that managers who were familiar with the concept of workplace bullying were not familiar with the term disruptive behavior (Johnson et al., 2015b). As a result, they were unaware of the existence of a policy within their organization that was labeled “Management of Disruptive Behavior” but also addressed workplace bullying. Lack of uniform terminology also inhibits targets’ and witnesses’ ability to communicate their experiences with managers and human resource personnel (Lutgen-Sandvik & Tracy, 2012). Research indicates that instead of focusing on getting the behaviors to stop and repairing the damage caused by the behaviors, unit managers and human resource directors often spend time trying to decide how to label bullying-type behaviors and whether their label fits with terminology found within organizational policies (Cowan, 2012; Johnson, Boutain, Tsai, Beaton, & de Castro, 2015). Finally, lack of common language can hinder research efforts because researchers who use one term for these behaviors may not be aware of similar research that has been done by others who use a different term.

PREVALENCE RATES: CURRENT ESTIMATES AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES Due to methodological issues in the current research, reports of the prevalence of workplace bullying among the health care sector in the United States can best be described as estimates, and comparisons across studies can be difficult. Current issues with the research include inconsistencies in the way workplace bullying is defined and measured, use of localized or nonrandom samples, and the small sample size of many studies. Use of a common measurement tool, such as the Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ; Einarsen, Hoel, & Notelaers, 2009), and a common measurement window (such

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as bullying in the past six months) would resolve some of the definitional and measurement issues. The second issue is less easily resolved. Researchers who are studying workplace bullying have tended to utilize local samples because this is their accessible population. Health care providers are certified at a statewide level; therefore, national databases of health care workers do not exist. To access participants, researchers have obtained mailing lists from professional organizations (e.g., Johnson & Rea, 2009; Varekojis et al., 2014) or from state certification boards (e.g., Purpora et al., 2012; Simons, 2008). However, taken as a whole, the research is identifying consistent trends in the data. Therefore, despite the limitations of individual studies, reports of the prevalence of workplace bullying in this sector should not be dismissed. In one of the only nationwide studies of a random sample of workers in the United States, Alterman, Luckhaupt, Dahlhamer, Ward, and Calvert (2013) reported that 8.5 percent of health professionals and 11.1 percent of health care support workers said they had experienced some form of bullying, harassing, or threatening behaviors in the previous 12 months. By comparison, the same study reported that 7.8 percent of the general population of workers said they had been bullied or harassed (N.B.: this figure includes workers in the health care industry; Alterman et al., 2013). This data does suggest that health care workers are more at risk for experiencing workplace bullying than the general population of workers. However, because of the way the question on the survey was phrased (i.e., “during the past 12 months [sic] were you threatened, bullied, or harassed by anyone while you were on the job?”; Alterman et al., 2013, p. 662), this data also may reflect exposure to negative behaviors from the general public and exposure to behavior that is conceptually slightly different from workplace bullying. When broken down by profession, most of the research on the prevalence of workplace bullying in health care has been among nurses (e.g., Berry, Gillespie, Gates, & Schafer, 2012; Johnson & Rea, 2009; Purpora et al., 2012; Simons, 2008; Small et al., 2015; Stanley et al., 2007; Vessey, DeMarco, Gaffney, & Budin, 2009). The prevalence rates reported by these studies range from 21 percent to 70 percent. Comparison across these studies is difficult due to use of different sampling methods, different terms or definitions, and different measurement tools. However, if one only compares studies with similar sampling methods that used the same instrument to measure workplace bullying (the NAQ) and that defined bullying as experiencing one or more negative acts on a weekly basis, it would appear that the prevalence of workplace bullying among nurses is in the 21–31 percent range (Johnson & Rea, 2009; Purpora et al., 2012; Simons, 2008). While the received wisdom in nursing is that “nurses eat their young” and that newer nurses are more likely to be bullied than experienced nurses (Egues & Leinung, 2013), research findings

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have not supported this belief. Studies have found no difference in workplace bullying rates among new nurses when compared with more experienced nurses (Chipps, Stelmaschuk, Albert, & Bernhard, 2013; Johnson & Rea, 2009; Simons, 2008). There is scant research on the prevalence of workplace bullying in the allied health professions. Johnson and Trad (2014) reported that, based on a survey of radiation therapists (N = 308) across the United States, 71 percent of respondents were bullied at some time in their career, 68 percent said bullying was present in their current workplace, and 94 percent said they had witnessed workplace bullying. Only 1 percent of respondents said their organizations did not tolerate workplace bullying, and only 10 percent said it was not accepted as normal behavior by employees (Johnson & Trad, 2014). A study of respiratory therapy managers and supervisors in Ohio (N = 750) reported that 25 percent of respondents had been bullied (Varekojis et al., 2014). In this study, respondents who worked in a teaching hospital and had less than 15 years of experience were more likely to report they were targets of workplace bullying (Varekojis et al., 2014). A study of perioperative nurses, surgical techs, and unlicensed perioperative personnel (N = 167) reported that 34 percent of the sample had experienced workplace bullying and 59 percent had witnessed it (Chipps et al., 2013). Clearly, more research into the prevalence and correlates of workplace bullying among allied health care workers is needed, particularly among those professions that do not appear to have been studied to date (e.g., occupational and physical therapists, emergency medical technicians, and lab technicians). Research on workplace bullying in the medical profession is also limited, and most of the research has explored the experiences of residents, interns, and fellows, a population that occupies a middle ground between being a student and being an employee (Kesselheim & Austad, 2011). This status places them at the bottom of the medical hierarchy and makes them particularly vulnerable to workplace bullying (Chadaga, Villines, & Krikorian, 2015). Chadaga et al. (2015) reported that 48 percent of surveyed residents and fellows said they had been bullied in the past 12 months. Mullan, Shapiro, and McMahon (2013) reported that 54 percent of interns reported experiencing disruptive behaviors at least once a month, while only 15 percent of faculty reported experiencing similar levels of disruptive behaviors. Another study, which asked family physicians whether they had “ever been bullied at work” (Rouse, Gallagher-Garza, Gebhard, Harrison, & Wallace, 2016, p. 3), reported that 28.9 percent of respondents answered affirmatively. At first glance, the prevalence rates of bullying and disruptive behavior reported in these studies are higher than those reported for nurses and allied health workers, but that is probably because the researchers

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defined and measured the concepts differently. For example, Mullan et al. (2013) reported the prevalence of behaviors that occurred monthly, Chagada et al. (2015) did not specify how often participants had been bullied, and Rouse et al. (2016) measured lifetime experiences of workplace bullying. All three of these measurement methods would yield higher prevalence rates than those reported by studies with stricter parameters for defining workplace bullying. Interns, residents, and fellows have reported that nurses were the most frequent perpetrators of bullying and disruptive behaviors (Chadaga et al., 2015; Mullan et al., 2013). In contrast, physicians reported that other physicians were the most common perpetrators of disruptive behaviors (Mullan et al., 2013). However, 15 percent of physicians indicated they had been bullied by nursing staff (Mullan et al., 2013). Female (Chadaga et al., 2015; Rouse et al., 2016) and nonwhite (Chadaga et al., 2015) physicians, interns, residents, and fellows are more likely to indicate they have been bullied. In the study by Rouse et al. (2016), which also asked respondents whether they had “ever displayed bullying behaviors toward someone at work” (p. 2), male respondents were more likely than female respondents to report having perpetrated bullying behaviors. While the data is limited, it indicates that all members of the health care profession may be exposed to workplace bullying, and at rates that are higher than the general sector of U.S. workers. Future studies, especially those that are conducted within a specific organization, should include all professionals and, where possible, should report findings by profession. In addition, larger studies that utilize random sampling methods are needed. In the meantime, the lack of robust data should not deter organizations and regulatory agencies from tackling workplace bullying.

FACTORS WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO WORKPLACE BULLYING IN HEALTHCARE While a casual observer of workplace bullying might conclude that it is a localized issue between one or more perpetrators and one or more targets, research actually suggests that workplace bullying is a systemic issue that is the result of cultural norms and organizational structures and practices (Fevre, Lewis, Robinson, & Jones, 2013; Neuman & Baron, 2011; Salin & Hoel, 2011). In this section, some of the systemic and organizational antecedents for workplace bullying in the health care sector will be explored. This examination will set the stage for a critical evaluation of current efforts to address workplace bullying in the health care sector, which will be the focus of the next section.

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Organizational Structures and Workplace Bullying The hierarchical nature of health care appears to be one of the primary organizational antecedents of workplace bullying in the health care sector (Hutchinson, Wilkes, Jackson, & Vickers, 2010; Purpora & Blegen, 2012; Wright & Khatri, 2015). Hierarchy, by definition, creates power differentials between different classes of employees. Power, be it formal or informal, is an element that can allow bullying to occur, and which can make it difficult for targets to bring about an end to the bullying (Einarsen et al., 2011; Saunders, Huynh, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2007). Managers and supervisors (e.g., charge nurses and attending physicians) all wield this type of power, and several studies have indicated that members of these groups are more likely to be identified as the perpetrators of bullying (Chadaga et al., 2015; Johnson & Trad, 2014; Johnson & Rea, 2009). Physicians have traditionally been viewed as the profession that is at the top of the health care hierarchy. However, the current trend is to view medicine, nursing, and allied health professions as collaborative practices, each of which bring a different, but equally important, perspective and skill set to patient care (Siedlecki & Hixson, 2015). As a possible reflection of these changing dynamics, several studies have reported that physician-on-nurse bullying occurs less frequently than nurse-on-nurse bullying (Berry et al., 2012; Johnson & Rea, 2009). However, Vogelpohl et al. (2013) reported that new nurses reported similar rates of being bullied by physicians (59.8%) as by their peers (63.9%). As Berry et al. (2012) also utilized a sample of new nurses, and both studies were done in similar regions of the United States and used the same measurement tool (the NAQ), one cannot merely attribute the differences in their findings to their research methods. The differences in findings between these studies may be a product of the organizations in which the respondents worked and the presence or absence of a nurses’ union. Hospital nursing unit managers have indicated that physician-on-nurse bullying can be easier to deal with than bullying between staff nurses, in part because the presence of a nurses’ union complicates disciplinary actions when nurses of equal rank are involved (Johnson, 2013). This is clearly an area of research where more studies are needed. The power differential between the perpetrator and the target may also be based on informal or nonstructural power differences—such as differences in social power in the workplace (i.e., how much social capital each of the involved parties possesses), differences in knowledge about how to get resources, and differences in understanding the unwritten rules of the workplace (Zapf & Einarsen, 2011). This type of power differential would most likely manifest between employees on the same organizational level and may explain some of the bullying of newer nurses by more experienced nurses.

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Informal power differences may also explain some of the bullying that occurs between nurses and medical interns and residents. Nurses, who have longer tenure within an institution and more clinical experience, have more informal power than interns and residents (Schlitzkus, Vogt, Sullivan, & Schenarts, 2014).

Working Conditions and Workplace Bullying Working conditions and organizational practices within organizations also seem to be major risk factors for workplace bullying (Fevre et al., 2013; Hodson, Roscigno, & Lopez, 2006). Based on a national survey of a representative sample of working adults in the United Kingdom, Fevre et al. (2013) concluded that employees who work in organizations where they do not feel valued as individuals, where they feel they have to compromise their principles, and where violence is present are at the greatest risk of experiencing workplace bullying. There is evidence that all three of these conditions may be found in health care organizations in the United States. Violence is a major occupational hazard for health care workers. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, 2015), “Workers in hospitals, nursing homes, and other healthcare settings face significant risks of workplace violence. . . . Violence is a more common source of injury in healthcare than in other industries” (p. 1). When health care providers experience violence on the job, these experiences may contribute to an overall feeling that the organization cannot keep them safe and that it does not value them as individuals. The failure to provide a safe environment can be seen as a breach in the social contract between organizations and workers. The violation of this social contract has been hypothesized to create an environment in which workplace bullying thrives (Parzefall & Salin, 2010). Additionally, health care providers are expected to respond to violence with equanimity, a process that involves emotional labor (the state in which internal emotions are incongruent with expressed or external emotions; Smith & Cowie, 2010). This emotional labor may manifest as incivility toward, and eventually bullying of, coworkers (Branch, Ramsay, & Barker, 2013). Violence, caring for traumatic injuries, critically ill and dying patients, and dealing with worried patients and families are all chronic and acute stressors that health care professionals deal with on a regular basis. Neurological research has demonstrated that acute stressors, such as might be experienced by health care providers who are trying to resuscitate a dying person, cause a shift from cognitive (rational) to affective (emotional) thinking processes (Oei et al., 2011; Sandi, 2013). This shift can result in reduced social inhibitions, which may be expressed as incivility and bullying (Bowen,

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Privitera, & Bowie, 2011). Chronic stress can lead to increased aggression, which will also increase the likelihood that workplace bullying will occur (Bartholomew, 2014; Neuman & Baron, 2011). Fevre et al. (2013) also reported that workplace bullying was more likely to be found in organizations where employees said they did not feel valued as individuals. In one survey, the majority of nurses reported that they did not feel their organization valued them as individuals, and this lack of respect manifested in lower wages and diminished ability to bargain for better working conditions (McHugh, Kutney-Lee, Cimiotti, Sloane, & Aiken, 2011). Lack of respect for health care providers as individuals is also exemplified by trends within many health care organizations to adopt management techniques (e.g., Taylorism and the Toyota Lean process) that were originally developed to manage interchangeable factory workers (Hartzband & Groopman, 2016). In the Fevre et al. (2013) study, organizations with high rates of bullying also had more employees who said they had to compromise their values to continue to work within the organization. Nurses have stated that they have to compromise their values of patient safety and quality of care because of high patient-to-nurse ratios that exist in most organizations (Aiken, Clarke, Sloane, Sochalski, & Silber, 2002). Physicians have also expressed the need to compromise their principles as they reconcile the competing interests of practicing medicine as they were taught while negotiating the reimbursement limitations imposed on them by hospitals and insurance companies (O’Hare & Kudrle, 2007; Whitlock & Stark, 2014). Fatigue is another factor that can contribute to workplace bullying. Health care providers who work nonday shifts, who work overtime, or who work shifts longer than eight hours experience chronic fatigue (Chen, Davis, Daraiseh, Pan, & Davis, 2014; Lockley et al., 2007). In many parts of the health sector, the work can be fast-paced, with little opportunity for workers to consistently take adequate rest and meal breaks (Rogers, 2008). Shift work, mandatory overtime, and the challenges of balancing work and family issues are all additional factors that contribute to chronic fatigue among nurses (Chen et al., 2014; Rogers, 2008). Physicians, especially residents and interns, are also prone to fatigue. Most physicians work more than 40 hours per week, and while on call, they may experience interrupted sleep (Eddy, 2005; Lockley et al., 2007). Fatigue can cause increase irritability, anger, or aggression (Kamphuis, Meerlo, Koolhaas, & Lancel, 2012), which can be expressed as incivility and bullying (Meier & Gross, 2015). Finally, employees who work in organizations that are undergoing change are especially vulnerable to workplace bullying (Agervold, 2009; Hutchinson, Vickers, Jackson, & Wilkes, 2005). This may be because managerial focus is on the change, rather than employee behavior, or that during the time when

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change is occurring managers are not consistently and fairly enforcing standards (Hodson et al., 2006). Employees may also use bullying tactics during change processes as a way of marginalizing or ousting other employees or to consolidate their own organizational power (Hutchinson et al., 2005). In recent years, change in organizational structures and practices seems to be a constant occurrence in health care organizations (Hader, 2013). To minimize the chaos and potential increase in workplace bullying during times of reorganization or change in practice, organizational leaders should consciously manage the process while attending to the emotional needs of employees (Braungardt & Fought, 2008).

Educational Systems and Workplace Bullying Workplace bullying, like any professional behavior, can be thought of as a learned behavior. Students and new nurses report that instructors and clinical preceptors often use bullying behaviors, instead of constructive criticism, when pointing out deficiencies in their performance (Altmiller, 2012; Del Prato, 2013). Students also report that bullying is used to weed out those whom instructors do not think will be good nurses, or who do not fit the traditional image of a nurse, and it can be used to intimidate minority and nontraditional nursing students (Del Prato, 2013; Moceri, 2010). The practice of weeding out nurses has been traced to Florence Nightingale, one of the founders of modern nursing practice, and is a self-perpetuating practice (Lim & Bernstein, 2014). Nursing students who are targets of, or witnesses to, bullying by staff nurses and professors report they begin to emulate these behaviors themselves to survive (Farrell, 2001; Randle, 2003; Stevenson, Randle, & Grayling, 2006), and nurses who learn that bullying is an acceptable method of professional socialization often adopt this behavior when orienting new nurses in clinical settings. This behavior is so pervasive that the phrase “nurses eat their young” was coined to describe it (Lim & Bernstein, 2014). While new nurses are targets of workplace bullying, older and more experienced nurses also experience workplace bullying (Johnson & Rea, 2009; Longo, 2013). There is evidence that some of this bullying is perpetrated toward nurses who are viewed as less clinically competent (Johnson, 2013; Lindy & Schaefer, 2010). When this type of workplace bullying occurs, it may also be a legacy of an educational system that demonstrated that the easiest way of correcting mistakes is by using bullying-type behaviors rather than constructive feedback. The medical profession has also used bullying behaviors to socialize and teach medical students, residents, and interns (Fnais et al., 2014; Mavis, Sousa, Lipscomb, & Rappley, 2014). Public humiliation of students by professors, of residents by interns, and of interns by attending physicians is the form

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of mistreatment most frequently reported by medical students, residents, and interns (Chadaga et al., 2015; Mavis et al., 2014). This hierarchical humiliation often occurs in the context of what the medical profession calls “pimping” (McCarthy & McEvoy, 2015; Reifler, 2015). Pimping is described as a method of teaching based on the Socratic method of questioning, where the instructor asks a student a series of questions, often in rapid succession. The alleged goal of this instructional method is to teach medical students and residents to think quickly and “on their feet,” and some endorse the use of pimping as a legitimate educational tool (Detsky, 2009). However, students have reported feeling humiliated by this practice because it is used as an expression of power to reinforce hierarchical differences, and it can be used to silence genuine questions regarding practice (McCarthy & McEvoy, 2015; Reifler, 2015). Regardless of intent, the negative consequences of this behavior are that physicians learn early in their program that bullying-type behaviors are an acceptable way of teaching, and there is anecdotal evidence that pimping as a form of instruction may also be used by physicians in interactions with patients (Whetzel, 2015).

CURRENT RESPONSES TO WORKPLACE BULLYING In this section, the current responses to workplace bullying by regulatory agencies, professional organizations, educational programs, and health care organizations will be examined. Where data is available, evidence of the effectiveness of these efforts will be presented. Additionally, suggestions for improving current practice will be offered.

Regulatory Agencies Currently, there are no regulations on the national level that require organizations to address workplace bullying. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the entity responsible for regulating the health and safety of employees on a national level, briefly acknowledges that workplace bullying is a form of violence, but it does not offer guidance to organizations on this topic. The publication Preventing Workplace Violence: A Road Map for Healthcare Facilities (OSHA, 2015) contains the following advice for health care organizations: St. John’s leaders have recognized that a nonviolent workplace also requires action against bullying. Because bullying sometimes stems from clinical hierarchies—for example, a physician behaving dismissively toward a nurse—it is particularly important to engage physicians when designing and implementing anti-bullying policies. At St. John,

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this engagement starts at the top, where the head of the medical staff has stated unequivocally that bullying will not be tolerated. St. John’s electronic incident reporting system allows staff to report bullying and to route this report around their supervisor if he or she is the perpetrator. Nurses have become confident enough to report occasional bullying events by physicians, thanks to a “no fear” environment. (OSHA, 2015, pp. 9–10) This passage suggests that workplace bullying is mainly perpetuated by physicians and supervisors and that all organizations need to do to address the issue is to draft antibullying policies and create reporting mechanisms. As has been discussed previously in this chapter, evidence suggests that physicians are not major perpetrators of bullying toward nurses. Furthermore, current research indicates that to address workplace bullying, organizations need to adopt a comprehensive approach that addresses the workplace culture and environment (Vartia & Leka, 2011). While the reasons that OSHA has not comprehensively addressed workplace bullying are complex, and beyond the scope of this chapter, analyses of some of their earlier documents on violence in the health care sector suggest that OSHA has historically viewed workplace bullying as a patient safety issue, rather than an occupational safety issue (Johnson et al., 2015a). The General Duty Clause, Section 5(a)1, of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (the directive under which OSHA was granted authority to regulate workplaces) says that employers are required to provide workplaces that are “free from recognizable hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious harm to employees.” Some authors have suggested that OSHA can use this clause to regulate workplace bullying (Harthill, 2010). However, as OSHA currently frames workplace bullying as a patient safety issue, it is unlikely that they will issue stronger directives regarding workplace bullying in the near future. Guidelines for health care organizations also come from the Joint Commission, an independent nonprofit organization that provides accreditation for health care organizations. While voluntary, Joint Commission accreditation is tied to Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurance reimbursement. The Joint Commission is primarily concerned with patient safety; however, under their Environment of Care Standard, they do require health care organizations to monitor, report, and investigate occupational illnesses and injury (Joint Commission, 2016). The Joint Commission (2008, 2016) has several documents that address disruptive behavior, which they describe as follows: Overt actions such as verbal outbursts and physical threats, as well as passive activities such as refusing to perform assigned tasks or quietly exhibiting uncooperative attitudes during routine activities. Intimidating and

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disruptive behaviors are often manifested by health care professionals in positions of power. Such behaviors include reluctance or refusal to answer questions, return phone calls or pages; condescending language or voice intonation; and impatience with questions. Overt and passive behaviors undermine team effectiveness and can compromise the safety of patients. All intimidating and disruptive behaviors are unprofessional and should not be tolerated. (Joint Commission, 2008, p. 1). While the Joint Commission does not use the term “workplace bullying” in any of their documents, their description of disruptive behavior closely matches most definitions of workplace bullying, and these documents are commonly viewed as directives that require health care organizations to address workplace bullying (Castronovo, Pullizzi, & Evans, 2016; Johnson et al., 2015a; Johnston, Phanhtharath, & Jackson, 2009). In the Sentinel Event Alert, Issue 40: Behaviors That Undermine a Culture of Safety (Joint Commission, 2008), the Joint Commission outlines a list of actions that organizations can take to address disruptive behaviors. This list includes education on appropriate behaviors, conflict resolution training, creation of policies and procedures that address violations of behavioral standards, and the establishment of a surveillance system to monitor the progress of these initiatives. However, like OSHA, the Joint Commission’s discussion of disruptive behaviors primarily focuses on how these behaviors affect patient safety (Johnson et al., 2015a). The only passage that acknowledges the effect these behaviors can have on coworkers is the following: “Conduct all interventions within the context of an organizational commitment to the health and well-being of all staff, with adequate resources to support individuals whose behavior is caused or influenced by physical or mental health pathologies” (Joint Commission, 2008, p. 2). While this passage pays lip service to the needs of targets and witnesses of bullying, it primarily calls on organizations to consider the needs of perpetrators.

Health Care Organizations There is no nationwide data on the number of health care organizations that have initiatives to deal with workplace bullying, but the Joint Commission’s (2016) report indicates that disruptive behavior continues to be a problem that health care organizations have not effectively addressed. In response to the Joint Commission’s directives, some health care organizations have adopted policies that address disruptive behavior and workplace bullying (Johnson et al., 2015a; Sellers, Millenbach, Ward, & Scribani, 2012). When backed by top-level leadership and continual education and enforcement, policies and codes of conduct may be effective tools to change organizational

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culture (Capitulo, 2009). However, evidence suggests that in many organizations, these policies are not consistently enforced and that members of the organizations, including managers, may be unaware of their existence (Johnson et al., 2015b; Sellers et al., 2012). Some of the other strategies that have been utilized by organizations, or tested by researchers within an organizational setting, include educating employees about workplace bullying, giving classes on effective communication, and training employees to respond to incidents of bullying, incivility, and aggression (e.g., Ceravolo et al., 2012; Chipps & McRury, 2012; Keller, Budin, & Allie, 2016; Stagg, Sheridan, Jones, & Speroni, 2011). While research on the effectiveness of educational interventions has been limited by small sample sizes, the lack of a control group, and the lack of long-term assessment, the evidence suggests that education alone does not address the issue of workplace bullying. In one study, Chipps and McRury (2012) reported that four months after attending an education program, which included creating a common vision for effective communication and the development of a zero-tolerance policy on workplace bullying, nurses’ (N = 16) scores on the NAQ actually increased. The authors attributed this increase to a greater awareness of workplace bullying. This program was based in two nursing units in one organization and was not accompanied by systemic changes. Another study, which tested a team-building exercise on four nursing units, reported that lateral violence only decreased in the unit where the manager was committed to sustaining change (Barrett, Korber, Padula, & Piatek, 2009). A third program, which consisted of a 60- to 90-minute workshop designed to teach nurses (N = 4,000) about lateral violence and to train them to use assertive communication techniques, reported a decrease in nurse turnover and an increase in reported self-esteem, but little change in reports of verbal abuse after three years of ongoing workshops (Ceravolo et al., 2012). Ceravolo et al. (2012) caution that improvements in retention might not have been due to the workshops, as this was also a time when the U.S. economy was contracting and jobs for nurses were not readily available. By far the most widely discussed educational intervention in the nursing literature involves a method called cognitive rehearsal. In this educational program, nurses are trained to respond to specific incidents of bullying using prerehearsed responses, which may be written on cue cards that the nurses carry with them (Griffin, 2004; Griffin & Clark, 2014; Stagg & Sheridan, 2010; Stagg et al., 2011; Stagg, Sheridan, Jones, & Speroni, 2013). The seminal study that tested this intervention reported that cognitive rehearsal helped new nurses (N = 26) confront lateral violence and that as a result of this confrontation, the lateral violence ended (Griffin, 2004). However, the author also noted that four nurses stated that despite responding to incidents

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of lateral violence as they had been taught, they felt they were “walking on eggshells” (Griffin, 2004, p. 262); were afraid to ask questions; and had to be transferred to another unit within the department. It is possible that the nurses who were able to use cognitive rehearsal to end what was described as lateral violence were merely experiencing conflict or incivility, whereas the nurses who had to be transferred experienced actual workplace bullying. A recent study that was designed to replicate Griffin’s (2004) study reported that after attending an educational program that included cognitive rehearsal (N = 15), only one nurse felt comfortable confronting workplace bullying (Stagg et al., 2013). However, there may be some benefit to this training, as seven of the attendees said they were more aware of when their own behaviors could be construed as bullying, and they had made an effort to change their behavior as a result of the workshop (Stagg et al., 2013). A few studies have detailed systemic efforts to address workplace bullying. These studies are also limited in that they did not provide robust assessments of their effectiveness and lack a control group. Hickson, Pichert, Webb, and Gabbe (2007) described a comprehensive program to address disruptive behavior and unprofessional behaviors at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; however, they did not include data on the effectiveness of the program. Keller et al. (2016) discussed a comprehensive initiative that included periodic evaluations of the extent of bullying in the organization, education on conflict resolution, empowering bystanders to intervene, instituting a mechanism for reporting bullying, and holding managers accountable for addressing reports of bullying. Data on the effect of this program on the prevalence of workplace bullying was not presented; however, Keller et al. (2016) stated that, based on surveys, the organization is continuing its commitment to the program and is making efforts to improve it. While these initiatives were both organization-wide, they did not include efforts to change any of the working conditions that may give rise to workplace bullying and can therefore best be classified as individual-level initiatives.

Professional Organizations and Educational Institutions Professional health care organizations have also begun to address the topic of workplace bullying and related behaviors. Within nursing, national professional organizations (e.g., American Nurses Association, National League for Nursing) and state professional organizations (e.g., Washington State Nurses Association, New York State Nurses Association, South Carolina Nurses Association) have issued position statements and educational tools on the topic of workplace bullying and disruptive behavior. The American Medical Association also offers resources that address physician disruptive behavior and medical student mistreatment.

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Schools of nursing and medicine have traditionally included education about professional behavior and interprofessional collaboration in the curriculum. In many institutions, this education now explicitly includes discussions of workplace bullying and related concepts (Reifler, 2015; Vogelpohl et al., 2013). Formal residency programs, which support and train new nurses in the clinical setting, are also addressing workplace bullying in an effort to end the practice of “nurses eating their young” (Vogelpohl et al., 2013). Despite these efforts, only 22 percent of new nurses reported learning about workplace bullying in school, and only 36 percent reported learning about it in new employee orientation (Vogelpohl et al., 2013).

GOING FORWARD: MOVING FROM INDIVIDUAL LEVEL TO SYSTEMIC INITIATIVES Despite the research on workplace bullying that indicates that, for the most part, workplace bullying is a behavior that is shaped by the environment in which workers find themselves, rather than the result of individual attributes of the target and the perpetrator (Neuman & Baron, 2011; Salin & Hoel, 2011; Zapf & Einarsen, 2011), current interventions within the health care sector predominantly focus on the individual rather than the system. While it is laudatory that this sector is addressing workplace bullying, if any real progress is to be made in reducing the prevalence of the phenomenon, systemic changes will need to occur. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss these changes at length; however, they need to include addressing the violence inflicted on health care workers by clients and visitors, creating fair and equitable work practices, and treating all employees as individuals who are worthy of respect. At the same time, organizations need to establish comprehensive programs that specifically address workplace bullying. These programs should include recurring training about workplace bullying, policies and procedures for dealing with incidents of bullying and caring for targets and witnesses, and periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of these interventions.

CONCLUSION Health care is one of the occupational sectors in the United States with the highest prevalence of workplace bullying, but it is also leading the way in addressing the issue. Health care organizations, regulatory bodies, educational institutions, professional associations, and academic researchers have begun to address the phenomenon of workplace bullying. To date, most of the effort has been focused on workplace bullying experienced by nurses. Future research and organizational interventions need to include physicians

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and allied health professions. Finally, comprehensive approaches that address both individual and systemic issues need to be deployed and tested.

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Salin, D., & Hoel, H. (2011). Organizational causes of workplace bullying. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Ed.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice (2nd ed., pp. 227–243). New York: CRC Press. Sandi, C. (2013). Stress and cognition. Cognitive Science, 4(3), 245–261. Saunders, P., Huynh, A., & Goodman-Delahunty, J. (2007). Defining workplace bullying behaviour professional lay definitions of workplace bullying. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 30(4–5), 340–354. Schlitzkus, L. L., Vogt, K. N., Sullivan, M. E., & Schenarts, K. D. (2014). Workplace bullying of general surgery residents by nurses. Journal of Surgical Education, 71(6), e149–e154. Sellers, K., Millenbach, L., Kovach, N., & Yingling, J. K. (2009). The prevalence of horizontal violence in New York State registered nurses. Journal of the New York State Nurses Association, 40(2), 20–25. Sellers, K., Millenbach, L., Ward, K., & Scribani, M. (2012). Horizontal violence among hospital staff RNs and the quality and safety of patient care. Journal of Nursing Administration, 42(10), 483–487. Shannon, S. E. (2015). Ebola, team communication, and shame: But shame on whom? American Journal of Bioethics, 15(4), 20–25. Siedlecki, S., & Hixson, E. (2015). Relationships between nurses and physicians matter. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 20(3). doi:10.3912/OJIN.Vol20No03PPT03 Simons, S. (2008). Workplace bullying experienced by Massachusetts registered nurses and the relationship to intention to leave the organization. Advances in Nursing Science, 31(2), e48–e59. Small, C. R., Porterfield, S., & Gordon, G. (2015). Disruptive behavior within the workplace. Applied Nursing Research, 28(2), 67–71. Smith, P., & Cowie, H. (2010). Perspectives on emotional labour and bullying: Reviewing the role of emotions in nursing and healthcare. International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 3(3), 227–236. Stagg, S. J., & Sheridan, D. (2010). Effectiveness of bullying and violence prevention programs. Journal of the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, 58(10), 419–424. Stagg, S. J., Sheridan, D., Jones, R. A., & Speroni, K. G. (2011). Evaluation of a workplace bullying cognitive rehearsal program in a hospital setting. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 42(9), 395–401. Stagg, S. J., Sheridan, D., Jones, R. A., & Speroni, K. G. (2013). Workplace bullying: The effectiveness of a workplace program. Workplace Health and Safety, 61(8), 333–338. Stanley, K. M. (2010). Why so many names for bad behavior? South Carolina Nurse, 17(1), 2. Stanley, K. M., Martin, M., Michel, Y., Welton, J., & Nemeth, L. (2007). Examining lateral violence in the nursing workforce. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 28(11), 1247–1265. Stevenson, K., Randle, J., & Grayling, I. (2006). Inter-group conflict in health care: UK students’ experiences of bullying and the need for organisational solutions. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 11(2). doi:10.3912/OJIN.Vol11No02Man05

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Varekojis, S. M., Chen, E., Kaiser, K., Monks, E., Washington, T., & Wolpert, T. (2014). Workplace bullying among respiratory therapy managers and supervisors in Ohio. Respiratory Care, 59(10), OF32. Vartia, M., & Leka, S. (2011). Interventions for the prevention and management of bullying at work. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice (2nd ed., pp. 359–379). New York: CRC Press. Vessey, J. A., Demarco, R., & DiFazio, R. (2010). Bullying, harassment, and horizontal violence in the nursing workforce: The state of the science. Annual Review of Nursing Research, 28(1), 133–157. Vessey, J. A., DeMarco, R. F., Gaffney, D. A., & Budin, W. C. (2009). Bullying of staff registered nurses in the workplace: A preliminary study for developing personal and organizational strategies for the transformation of hostile to healthy workplace environments. Journal of Professional Nursing, 25(5), 299–306. Vogelpohl, D. A., Rice, S. K., Edwards, M. E., & Bork, C. E. (2013). New graduate nurses’ perception of the workplace: Have they experienced bullying? Journal of Professional Nursing, 29(6), 414–422. Waschgler, K., Ruiz-Hernández, J. A., Llor-Esteban, B., & Jiménez-Barbero, J. A. (2013). Vertical and lateral workplace bullying in nursing: Development of the Hospital Aggressive Behaviour Scale. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 28(12), 2389–2412. Whetzel, A. (2015, May 29). Pimped. Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. Retrieved from http://pulsemagazine.org/index.php/archive/stories/491-pimped Whitlock, D. J., & Stark, R. (2014). Understanding physician engagement and how to increase it. Physician Leadership Journal, 1(1), 8–12. Wright, W., & Khatri, N. (2015). Bullying among nursing staff: Relationship with psychological/behavioral responses of nurses and medical errors. Health Care Management Review, 40(2), 139–147. Zapf, D., & Einarsen, S. (2011). Individual antecedents of bullying: Victims and perpetrators. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice (2nd ed., pp. 177–200). New York: CRC Press. Zapf, D., Escartin, J., Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., & Vartia, M. (2011). Empirical findings on the prevalence and risk groups of bullying in the workplace. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf, & C. L. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice (2nd ed., pp. 75–106). New York: CRC Press.

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in K–12 Settings: School Principal Mistreatment and Abuse of Teachers Jo Blase and Joseph Blase

His abuse made me physically sick. It made me emotionally unable to handle my daughter and my husband in a sane and stable way. I couldn’t leave it at school. It affected my self-concept, because, after 28 years of teaching, somebody was discrediting me. Physically, it tore me apart. I lost weight, got sick, spent my days and nights crying. I didn’t have time for my family. . . . Every time I am with my husband, I am complaining about school. My husband is to the point where he really wants to slug the guy. He is really upset. He doesn’t even like to come in the building. The abuse has affected every aspect of my life. (Blase & Blase, 2003a, p. 135) It was a very depressing, stifling atmosphere. We were all paranoid, insecure, with low self-esteem. I felt mainly anxiety with occasional panic attacks. Can you imagine all of us eating lunch in silence? It was the same group of people who were laughing their heads off, joking and talking, the year before. My integrity and professionalism were under attack and that threatened me. I always felt I would lose my job. I was always afraid. I always felt a lot of distrust. (Blase & Blase, 2003a, p. 119)

THE PERVASIVENESS OF WORKPLACE MISTREATMENT AND ABUSE Two decades ago, Hornstein et al. (1995) constructed a model of supervisory abusive disrespect, drawing on theories such as symbolic interaction and organizational justice and the related psychology and stress literature. In essence, Hornstein et al. (1995) argued that one’s self-worth and security are affected

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by the respect or disrespect conveyed by others, which, in turn, affects one’s mental and physical well-being. From his longitudinal study of 1,000 participants over eight years, Hornstein (1996) concluded that over 90 percent of American workers have been abused by their superiors during their careers, and 20 percent of employees report to abusive bosses on any given day. Other scholars who have specifically focused on administrative mistreatment and abuse in the workplace include Ashforth (1994; petty tyranny); Tepper (2000; abusive supervision); and Blase, Blase, and Du (2008; administrative mistreatment and abuse). Throughout this chapter, the term mistreatment and abuse is used, except when particular researchers have used the term bullying. Since Hornstein’s (1996) study was published, empirical work on workplace mistreatment and abuse in general has consistently demonstrated its significance as a worldwide problem. In the United States, for example, Keashly and Jagatic (2000; N = 700) found that 27 percent of American workers were subjected to mistreatment and abuse in the workplace. Cortina, Magley, Williams, and Langhout (2001) reported that 71 percent of study participants experienced workplace bullying during the previous five years. LutgenSandvik, Tracy, and Alberts (2007) found that 46.8 percent of American workers were bullied (e.g., in business administration, health and social services, education, and professional and scientific fields; N = 403). A national survey of 1,000 adult Americans conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI; http://www.workplacebullying.org) in collaboration with Zogby International (WBI & Zogby International, 2014) found that 27 percent of the respondents experienced abusive behavior at work.

Mistreatment and Abuse by Administrators Empirical work on abuse by administrators has confirmed the following: 1. Mistreatment and abuse is defined as “pervasive;” that is, a patterned or persistent use of harmful behavior, such as unwarranted reprimands, unfair evaluations, and termination. Further, mistreatment and abuse occurs often or very often and results in personal (e.g., psychological, physical) and professional harm (e.g., Blase & Blase, 2002, 2003a, 2003b; Blase et al., 2008; Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2003; Fox & Stallworth, 2010; Rayner & Keashly, 2005). 2. Abuse of power and the potential for abuse of power by administrators is well established in the social sciences (e.g., Adams & Balfour, 1998; Baumeister, 1996; Kets de Vries, 1989; Kipnis, 1972; Lee-Chai & Bargh, 2001). 3. Administrators (vs. coworkers) are the most frequent workplace abusers (e.g., Australian Council of Trade Unions, 2001; Björkvist,

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Österman, & Hjelt-Bäck, 1994; Canada Safety Council, 2006; Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996; Hoel & Cooper, 2000; Hornstein, 1996; Keashly, Trott, & MacLean, 1994; Namie & Namie, 2000; Northwestern National Life Insurance Company, 1993; WBI & Zogby International, 2014). For instance, the Employment Law Alliance’s (2007) poll found that 44 percent of American workers reported having abusive administrators. 4. Mistreatment and abuse is frequently linked to administrative cultures that directly or indirectly permit or reward abuse by administrators (e.g., Ashforth, 1994; Blase & Blase, 2002, 2003a, 2003b; Grubb, Roberts, Grosch, & Brightwell, 2004; Jennifer, Cowie, & Ananiadou, 2003; Leymann, 1990). 5. Rates of abuse in the United States by administrators exceed those reported for European countries. This is possibly due to power inequalities that render subordinates unable to adequately defend themselves. In fact, in “high power distance” countries such as the United States, superiors are rarely challenged (Hofstede, 1980; Keashly, 2002). In other words, subordinates in the United States accept that power is distributed unequally (i.e., principals have significant formal and informal power over teachers, and teachers tend to comply and seldom challenge principals). This unequal distribution of power and acceptance of it is characteristic of U.S. culture in general. In contrast, Australia is a “low power distance” country, where superiors and subordinates often consult and share problem-solving work. 6. Little scholarly attention has been given to the dark side of organizational life in either the general management literature (Ashforth, 1994; Yukl, 2001) or the educational administration literature (Blase & Blase, 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2010; Hodgkinson, 1991; Kimbrough, 1985; Starratt, 1991). In fact, “something approaching a ‘scholarly taboo’ may explain the neglect of workplace bullying” (Coleman, 2004, p. 310).

School Principal Mistreatment and Abuse of Teachers Several large-scale, cross-occupational studies in Norway (Matthiesen, Raknes, & Rokkum, 1989); Sweden (Leymann, 1990); Ireland (Irish Taskforce on the Prevention of Workplace Bullying, 2001); Great Britain (Hoel & Cooper, 2000); and Australia (Queensland Government Workplace Bullying Taskforce, 2002) suggest that teaching in primary and secondary schools (i.e., kindergarten through 12th grade, typically for children aged 5–18) is one of the highest risk occupations for administrator mistreatment and abuse. Further, prominent Web sites devoted to workplace mistreatment and abuse have reported that teachers are among the largest group of abused workers (www.bullybusters.org) and the largest group of inquirers (www.bullyonline

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.org). Over a decade ago, the National Association for Prevention of Teacher Abuse created a Web site (www.endteacherabuse.org) to address the problem of teacher mistreatment and abuse in the United States. Despite such provocative findings and developments, only a handful of published studies produced in the United States, South Africa, and Australia address school principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers. Two studies focused on principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers in the United States, one study described principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers in South Africa, one study examined all-personnel mistreatment and abuse of other adults in one U.S. school district, one study investigated all-personnel mistreatment and abuse of other adults in all Australian schools, and two studies addressed allpersonnel mistreatment and abuse of other adults in one U.S. state. As described below, studies in education demonstrate that school principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers is consistent with the findings of numerous studies of abuse by administrators nationally and internationally and across occupations and organizations in describing a range of similar abusive behaviors and significant negative psychological, physical, professional, and personal-life effects (e.g., Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007; Samnani & Singh, 2012; WBI & Zogby International, 2014).

School principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers in the United States Reviews of extant streams of research on teacher stress (Adams, 1988; Barnette, 1990; Black, 2003; Blase, 1984; Diehl, 1993; Dunham, 1984; Dworkin, Haney, Dworkin, & Telschow, 1990; Guglielmi & Tatrow, 1998) and on the micropolitics of schools (Ball, 1987; Blase, 1990, 1991a, 1991b; Blase & Anderson, 1995) provided early but limited findings about school principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers and its harmful effects on teachers, teaching, and learning. Therefore, Blase and Blase (2002, 2003a, 2003b) conducted the first study of principals’ mistreatment and abuse of public school teachers in the United States. They used an intensive and qualitative grounded theory research method (e.g., Glaser, 1978; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to study 50 U.S. teachers who were victims of long-term (six months to nine years), repeated mistreatment and abuse by principals throughout the United States. It should be mentioned that study participants were exceptionally successful teachers with histories of outstanding professional evaluations and achievements. Study participants described (a) the types of behavior that teachers defined as mistreatment and abuse by principals and (b) its harmful effects. All teachers who participated in this study had been subjected to multiple principal mistreatment and abusive behaviors over extended periods of time. Blase and Blase’s (2002, 2003a, 2003b) model of principal mistreatment and abuse consists of three levels of aggression (Level 1—indirect, moderate aggression; Level 2—direct, escalating aggression; and Level 3—direct, severe aggression; see table 21.1).

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Blase and Blase (2002, 2003a, 2003b) also found that mistreatment and abuse by principals had serious, long-term devastating effects on teachers, including significant initial and chronic psychological and emotional harm, physical and physiological harm, and damage to the quality of teaching and student learning as well as leaving one’s job and harm to one’s personal and family life (see table 21.2).

Table 21.1  Principal Mistreatment and Abuse Behaviors toward Teachers Level 1 Principal Mistreatment and Abuse Behaviors (indirect, moderately aggressive) Discounting teachers’ thoughts, needs, feelings Ignoring Personal insensitivity Stonewalling Isolating and abandoning teachers Controlling teacher-teacher interaction Failing to support teachers in difficult interactions with students and parents Withholding resources and denying approval, opportunities, and credit Withholding resources and denying approval Obstructing opportunities for professional development Withholding or taking credit Favoring “select” teachers Offensive personal conduct Level 2 Principal Mistreatment and Abuse Behaviors (direct, escalating aggression) Spying Sabotaging Stealing Destroying teacher instructional aids Making unreasonable demands Nitpicking Overloading Criticism: The ubiquitous form of level 2 mistreatment and abuse Private criticism Stigmatizing and pejorative labeling Intentionally vague criticism Gossiping Unfounded third-party criticism Soliciting others Public criticism Location: Front office, faculty meetings, classroom, intercom, lunchroom, hallway, parking lot (Continued)

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Table 21.1  Continued Level 3 Principal Mistreatment and Abuse Behaviors (direct, severely aggressive) Lying Explosive behavior Threats Unwarranted reprimands Unfair evaluations Mistreating students Forcing teachers out of their jobs (reassign, transfer unilaterally, terminate) Preventing teachers from leaving or advancing Sexual harassment Racism Blase, J., & Blase, J. (2002). The dark side of leadership: Teacher perspectives of principal mistreatment. Education Administration Quarterly, 38(5), 686. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted with permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

Table 21.2  Effects of Principal Mistreatment and Abuse of Teachers Initial psychological and emotional harm Shock and disorientation Humiliation Loneliness Injured self-confidence and self-esteem Feeling corrupted and guilty Chronic (long-term) psychological and emotional harm Fear and anxiety Anger Depression Feeling isolated Feeling trapped Feeling unmotivated Physical and physiological problems Chronic sleep disorders (e.g., insomnia, nightmares, obsessive thinking) Chronic fatigue Stomachaches, nausea, vomiting, weight gain or loss Neck or back pain Headaches, migraines Lowered immunity Heart problems Other Damaged schools Damaged relationships Damaged classrooms Impaired decision making (Continued)

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Table 21.2  (Continued) Leaving one’s job Effects on a teacher’s personal and family life Inability to compartmentalize mistreatment and abuse experiences Conflict with family, dysfunctional communication Distance from family Blase, J., & Blase, J. (2002). The dark side of leadership: Teacher perspectives of principal mistreatment. Education Administration Quarterly, 38(5), 701. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted with permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

In addition, • Mistreated and abused teachers felt intentionally threatened, vulnerable, and unjustifiably wronged. Indeed, the chronic fear and anger experienced by abused teachers are primary, toxic, even primitive human emotions (Izard & Youngstrom, 1996; Tomkins, 1962). • Social support by colleagues was often offset by other colleagues’ fear of being mistreated and abused themselves. Consequently, mistreated and abused teachers frequently experienced isolation and alienation at work. • Family members were seldom able to provide adequate support to mistreated and abused teachers because of persistent crying or conflictive, negative behavior by victimized teachers. This exacerbated teachers’ experience of isolation and alienation. Blase and Blase (2002, 2003a, 2003b) also identified gender differences of abusive principals: • Male principals tended to use explosive verbal (e.g., yelling) and nonverbal behaviors (e.g., pounding their fists on tables) more than female principals. • Male principals engaged in sexual harassment. • Male principals engaged in offensive personal conduct (e.g., repulsive personal habits, having affairs with teacher-colleagues). Gender differences were also apparent among teachers who were the victims of mistreatment and abuse: • Female teachers experienced severe self-doubt and self-blame early in their mistreatment and abuse experience more than males. • Females reported crying frequently during their mistreatment and abuse experience and, in fact, often cried during the interviews conducted for the study, in effect reexperiencing the trauma of their experiences.

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In a second study, Blase et al. (2008) used an online, quantitative survey to investigate school principal mistreatment and abuse of 172 public school teachers throughout the United States. This study confirmed and extended findings produced by the first study with respect to principal mistreatment and abusive behaviors and their effects. Teachers’ coping strategies were also directly examined. Statistical tests determined demographic differences in frequencies of various mistreatment and abusive behaviors, most frequently reported effects of mistreatment and abuse, and the use of coping strategies (see Blase et al., 2008, for details). Differences were also evident for the total intensity of the mistreatment and abuse experience: female teachers, teachers with union contracts, and divorced teachers experienced higher total intensity of harm from mistreatment and abuse. The 10 most harmful (i.e., using quantitative measures of intensity) principal mistreatment and abusive behaviors were reported as follows: (1) tried to intimidate me (66% of the participants); (2) failed to recognize or praise me for work-related achievements (64%); (3) failed to support me in difficult interactions with students or parents (64%); (4) gave me unwarranted reprimands (62%); (5) made unreasonable demands on me (62%); (6) favored other teachers (62%); (7) lied to me or about me (58%); (8) nitpicked about time or micromanaged me (58%); (9) used pejorative terms to label me and my behavior (58%); and (10) unjustly criticized me (58%). Twenty-one additional principal mistreatment and abusive behaviors were rated at least moderately harmful by over 40 percent of the study participants. Eighty percent of teachers who participated in the study indicated that principal mistreatment and abuse substantially damaged or undermined their classroom instruction; specifically, one-third of these teachers reported such effects as decreased motivation, creativity, innovativeness, and risk taking. Teachers indicated that principals forced them to use authoritarian, rigid, dated, and ineffective instructional methods. Teachers also discussed feeling significant stress, paranoia, insecurity, fear, dread, and self-doubt about teaching. Relationships with students also suffered significantly; teachers reported being less caring, patient, and tolerant toward students. Blase et al. (2008) also noted that principal mistreatment and abuse persisted for at least three years for 73 percent of teachers and for more than three years for 27 percent of teachers. During and after their mistreatment and abusive experiences, 51 percent of teachers required medical or psychological treatment for physical and psychological harm caused by principal mistreatment and abuse. Fully 77 percent of mistreated and abused teachers indicated a desire to leave their teaching jobs, and nearly half wanted to leave the teaching profession altogether. Blase et al. (2008) also found that mistreated and abused teachers were typically unable to directly confront abusive principals; rather, they employed passive and palliative coping strategies

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to cope with mistreatment and abuse, such as avoiding, talking, enduring, rationalizing, reading, listening to music, watching television, and receiving support from others. Finally, teachers described factors that contributed to their mistreatment and abuse, including school-level politics (61%; e.g., expressing disagreement with the principal, advocating on behalf of students, and being a threat because of their superior skills and knowledge or popularity) and factors that included the teacher’s age (35%); gender (24%); race (14%); religion (13%); union or association affiliation (13%); political beliefs (12%); health, illness, or disability (11%); ethnicity (10%); and sexual orientation (3%).

Principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers in South Africa De Wet (2010) conducted a small interview-based study of 10 exceptional and dedicated public school teachers (i.e., male and female, primary and secondary, urban and rural) in South Africa. The study focused on reasons for and effects of principal bullying. Major reasons for bullying included problematic grievance procedures, lack of communication between teachers and the trade union, and poor principal leadership (e.g., authoritarian leadership style; incompetence; lack of passion for teaching; and personal characteristics such as envy, destructive narcissism, hypocrisy, and evil (i.e., dishonesty, manipulation, lack of empathy and compassion, lack of remorse, and enjoyment of the fear and pain one inflicts)). De Wet (2010) described harmful effects on teachers’ personal lives (e.g., psychological distress, depression, preoccupation, sadness, and shame) and professional lives (e.g., apathy, mediocrity, lack of enthusiasm, self-doubt, passivity, sense of isolation, damaged collegiality, and interest in leaving teaching).

All-personnel mistreatment and abuse of teachers in one U.S. school district Fox and Stallworth (2010) investigated public school teachers’ responses to violence, bullying, and other work stressors. The study was grounded in transactional stress theory, which emphasizes the moderating role of control and support. Bullies were administrators or principals, coworkers, parents, and students. This study included 779 teachers (all union members) working in a U.S. urban school district who had completed a workplace bullying checklist of scales for satisfaction (Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins, & Klesh, 1979); physical symptoms (Spector & Jex, 1998); burnout (Halbesleben & Demerouti, 2005); job-related emotions (Van Katwyk, Fox, Spector, & Kelloway, 2000); and bullying (Fox & Stallworth, 2005). The checklist used six conceptual domains: threatening or intimidating behavior (nonverbal and verbal acts and threats of physical violence); demeaning behavior (e.g., insults and put-downs); isolation (e.g., the silent treatment, exclusion from

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work meetings, and failing to return phone calls and e-mails); work sabotage (e.g., attacking or failing to support teachers’ plans to others and intentionally destroying, stealing, or sabotaging teachers’ work materials); harm to reputation (e.g., spreading rumors and taking credit for teachers’ work); and abusive supervision (e.g., threatening job loss or demotion, excessively harsh criticism of job performance, applying rules and punishments inconsistently, and making unreasonable work demands). Fox and Stallworth (2010) found that 45.6 percent of teachers were repeatedly bullied by their principals. Compared to teachers who were not bullied, abused teachers reported more negative emotions, burnout, physical symptoms, and lower job attachment and satisfaction. Specifically, bullying included 18 effects (e.g., anxiety, depression, headaches, insomnia, fatigue, and upset stomach) and job-related emotions (e.g., feeling isolated, anxious, unmotivated, and furious as well as intending to quit). Interestingly, Fox and Stallworth (2010) reported that social support by fellow teachers failed to mitigate harmful effects of bullying; to the contrary, social support had a reverse buffering effect (i.e., greater social support yielded greater stress from bullying), a finding consistent with Powell, Powell, and Petrosko’s (2015) research but inconsistent with findings discussed by Wiley (2000). The authors speculate that the reverse buffering effect may be related to victims’ reluctance to involve colleagues or to allow colleagues to witness their mistreatment and abuse and the inappropriateness of the colleagues’ support, colleagues’ tendency to minimize bullying experiences, and the exacerbating effects of complaining.

All-personnel mistreatment and abuse of others in all Australian schools The Riley, Duncan, and Edwards (2012) study was the first national online survey of school personnel bullying in all Australian schools, including public, Catholic, and independent schools. The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of several studies of 2,500 employees’ experiences of bullying, which identified risk factors, behaviors, and effects by position within school bureaucracies. They examined three types of bullying: top-down bullying (e.g., principal to support staff); horizontal and peer bullying (e.g., teacher to teacher); and bottom-up bullying (e.g., parent to teacher). Riley et al. (2012) reported that all reference groups engaged in bullying at schools; however, principals were most frequently identified as bullies. This is consistent with Fox and Stallworth (2010) and J. Powell (2012). Workplace conditions determined one’s risk of being bullied (i.e., who controls time and tasks, uncertainties about work, and exposure to job-related changes) as well as one’s work role (i.e., all personnel, including executives, principals, teacher-colleagues, students, parents, and support staff were identified as both bullies and victims of bullying).

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Bullying behaviors included personal confrontation (e.g., threats to personal and professional status) and professional destabilization (e.g., isolation, overwork, changing work conditions, assignment of meaningless tasks, and withholding information and recognition). Major effects of bullying included psychological illnesses, psychosomatic illnesses, cardiovascular disease, chronic diseases, stress, absenteeism, and lower job satisfaction. These effects are consistent with those reported by Blase and Blase (2002, 2003a, 2003b); Blase et al. (2008); De Wet (2010); and Fox and Stallworth (2010). Major contributors to bullying were poor lines of communication, unclear roles and responsibilities, and lack of clarity about objectives—all administrative responsibilities.

All-personnel mistreatment and abuse of others related to school culture in one U.S. state J. Powell (2012) examined workplace incivility and bullying and school culture or climate for 380 public school educators, including administrators or principals and teachers, in 52 public elementary, middle, and high schools in Kentucky. Research participants completed the Workplace Incivility Scale, the Workplace Bullying Checklist, and the School Culture Triage Survey. School culture or climate referred to situational factors, environmental factors, work conditions, and the quality of the work environment. J. Powell (2012) reported that administrators or principals, and coworkers initiated incivility and bullying 48 percent and 38 percent of the time, respectively. He also found that workplace incivility and bullying were inversely related to school culture; in fact, school culture ratings predicted incivility and bullying among educators. In addition, J. Powell (2012) reported that marital status predicted total incivility scores, age predicted incivility among coworkers, and gender predicted frequency of bullying (i.e., males reported being bullied more frequently than females).

All-personnel mistreatment and abuse of others related to school (student) achievement in one U.S. state A. Powell (2012) examined workplace incivility, bullying, and culture related to student achievement. Her study consisted of 228 teachers from 28 public elementary, middle, and high schools in Kentucky, a selected subset of participants from J. Powell’s (2012) study. Participants completed the Workplace Incivility Scale, the Workplace Bullying Checklist, and the School Culture Triage Survey. Culture was defined as the prevailing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in a school; positive school culture consisted of traditions that reflect a family or community with agreement on overall goals. A. Powell (2012), like J. Powell (2012), found that individual perceptions of school culture predicted workplace incivility and bullying; that is,

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higher culture ratings were related to lower incivility and bullying ratings. A. Powell (2012) also found that student achievement was a significant predictor of workplace bullying only when the alpha was increased to 0.06; she noted that this may have occurred because achievement was obscured by climate (e.g., a higher climate rating intervenes in the prediction of lower achievement with more bullying and higher achievement with less bullying). In essence, A. Powell (2012) suggested that schools low in climate or student achievement may produce bullying. Relevant research in education has also concluded that school climate is predictive of student achievement (e.g., Clifford, Menon, Gangi, Condon, & Hornung, 2012).

Multilevel analysis of climate as a predictor of incivility and bullying Based on earlier research (J. Powell, 2012, and A. Powell, 2012), Powell et al. (2015) produced a multilevel (individual and school-level) analysis of school climate (defined by a subset of variables from the School Culture Triage instrument) as a predictor of incivility and bullying among public school employees. They found that school climate (including mutual support among teachers) had an inverse relationship with stress experienced from bullying, a finding consistent with Fox and Stallworth (2010). Gender and years of experience (a correlate of age) were not predictors of bullying.

PRINCIPAL MISTREATMENT AND ABUSE STUDIES RELATED TO STUDIES OF OTHER ORGANIZATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS Taken together, studies of principal mistreatment and abuse in education are generally consistent with research on abusive administration or supervision across organizations (e.g., Ashforth, 1997; Tepper, 2000) and occupations (e.g., Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007; WBI & Zogby International, 2014). For example, • Researchers’ definitions of mistreatment and abuse in education (despite variation in terminology) were consistent with those used in studies across occupations and organizations and codified in the Healthy Workplace Bill (Yamada, 2013), the leading legislative effort in the United States to address workplace abuse. • Principals’ abusive behaviors and adverse effects on teachers’ personal and professional lives (e.g., psychological, physical, medical) and on school culture and school climate were consistent with studies across occupations and organizations (e.g., Baron & Neuman, 1996; Björkvist et al., 1994; Hoel & Cooper, 2000; Irish Taskforce on the Prevention of Workplace Bullying, 2001; Keashly & Jagatic, 2000; Price-Spratlen, 1995; Queensland Government Workplace Bullying Taskforce, 2002;

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WBI & Zogby International, 2014; Westhues, 2004). Behaviors such as failure to praise or recognize, ignoring or snubbing, and nitpicking or micromanaging appear in the top 10 most frequently used mistreatment and abusive behaviors in education (e.g., Blase et al., 2008) and other organizations and occupations (e.g., Glomb, 2002; Salin, 2001). • A host of factors contributed to principals’ mistreatment and abuse of teachers, including authoritarian or autocratic leadership, anger disorder, self-aggrandizement, vindictiveness, sexism, politics, gender, race, religion, union affiliation, and political beliefs (Blase & Blase, 2002, 2003a, 2003b; Blase et al., 2008). Problematic grievance procedures, poor communication between teachers and unions, destructive narcissism, hypocrisy, and evil dispositions also contributed to principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers (De Wet, 2010). Workplace conditions, work roles, lack of clarity about objectives, and climate predicted one’s risk of being bullied (Powell et al., 2015; Riley et al., 2012). A synthesis of the causes of teacher stress from being bullied included poor lines of communication, unclear roles and responsibilities, and lack of clarity about objectives (Riley et al., 2012; Wiley, 2000). Findings described above are consistent with studies conducted outside of education; for example, Samnani & Singh (2012) found that organizational culture and climate are antecedents to workplace mistreatment and abuse. • Abusive principals typically relied on active and direct verbal or nonverbal behaviors (Blase & Blase, 2003a), a finding consistent with some studies of other occupations (e.g., Keashly, 1998) and inconsistent with other studies that report an emphasis on the use of indirect and passive verbal and nonverbal behaviors (e.g., Neuman & Baron, 1997). To reiterate, this may be due in part to the significant power imbalance (Hofstede, 1980; Keashly, 2002; Salin, 2003) between principals and teachers and the inflexibility of educational bureaucracies or because victims are likely to have their mistreatment and abuse experiences minimized and labeled by others as minor personality conflicts or their own fault (Ferris, 2004). Mistreated educators also required longer terms of counseling than victims working in other types of organizations. Apart from mistreatment and abuse studies in other organizations and occupations, research on mistreatment and abuse in education, specifically between principals and teachers, has demonstrated the following: • Principals accounted for much of the mistreatment and abuse that occurred among adults in education. Fox and Stallworth (2010) and J. Powell (2012) reported that principals were responsible for 45.6 percent and 48 percent of all bullying, respectively. Meta-analyses of

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several studies by Riley et al. (2012) indicated that principals were most frequently identified as bullies in schools. • Mistreated and abused teachers tended to employ passive forms of coping with principal mistreatment and abuse and had few avenues of personal support. Specifically, Blase et al. (2008) described the limited efficacy of teachers’ coping strategies. Further, Blase and Blase (2002, 2003a, 2003b) noted that teacher-colleagues frequently withheld social support from mistreated and abused teachers for fear of retribution from principals. Fox and Stallworth (2010) reported that social support had a reverse buffering effect on the stress and job attachment of bullied teachers. Powell et al. (2015) found that school climate, including mutual support, led to greater stress from bullying. As a result, social isolation and alienation frequently compounded a teacher’s mistreatment and abuse. • In educational studies, relationships between gender and age (i.e., more years of experience) and mistreatment and abuse are unclear; however, some studies—inside and outside of education—have shown that females and males were equally subjected to workplace mistreatment and abuse (e.g., Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996; Powell et al., 2015). Other studies have found that the incidence and intensity of mistreatment and abuse tends to be higher for females (e.g., Björkvist et al., 1994; Blase et al., 2008; Price-Spratlen, 1995; Salin, 2001, 2003; Samnani & Singh, 2012). In educational studies, female teachers experienced severe self-doubt and self-blame and cried more than males, and female teachers, teachers with union contracts, and divorced teachers experienced higher total intensity of harm (total intensity of harm was the degree of severity of harm as perceived by the victim; it was determined by pooling each participant’s rankings of the severity of harm experienced—five levels, from not harmful to very highly harmful—for each of 38 principal mistreatment behaviors) from mistreatment and abuse (Blase & Blase, 2002; Blase et al., 2008). Older teachers (Blase et al., 2008) and older workers outside of education were more likely to be targets of mistreatment and abuse (Einarsen & Skogstad, 1996; Samnani & Singh, 2012). However, Powell at al. (2015) reported that age did not predict bullying in education. It should be mentioned that discrimination violates educators’ codified commitment to gender equity and age nondiscrimination (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2008). • The significant power imbalance between principals and teachers may exacerbate perpetrator-victim interactions (e.g., Blase & Blase, 2004b; Lamertz & Aquino, 2004.) In effect, the nature of educational bureaucracies (i.e., schools are typically rule-bound) and the legal authority of principals give them substantial power over teachers, a condition

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that may increase the probability of abuse (Kipnis, 1972). In fact, Salin (2003) argued that bullying is enabled by certain organizational processes and structures, including “a perceived power imbalance between the possible victim(s) and perpetrators, low perceived costs for the perpetrator, and dissatisfaction and frustration in the work environment” (p. 1219). Overall, the study of mistreatment and abuse inside and outside of education relies on similar definitions of abusive behaviors and describes similar harmful effects. However, in education, school principal abusive behavior tends to be more active and direct as compared to those used by administrators in other occupations. Also, teachers use passive coping mechanisms in response to principal mistreatment and abuse as compared to employees in other occupations. The demographics of teacher-victims as related to principals’ mistreatment and abuse are mixed.

A note about research on mobbing among adults in education To be sure, much research has been done on student-on-student bullying in education, and many school districts have implemented antibullying policies for students based on this research (Orpinas & Horne, 2006). However, research on mobbing of teachers (i.e., harassment of a teacher by other teachers or coworkers designed to secure their removal; Duffy & Sperry, 2007) is limited. Riley et al. (2012), for example, reported that although bullying exists between and among all personnel (with principals most frequently bullies and teachers most frequently targets), research on mobbing of victimized teachers by other teachers as well as other adults (e.g., parents, staff) is notably lacking. Not surprisingly, policies prohibiting mistreatment and abuse of adults—which include by definition the phenomenon of mobbing—are nearly nonexistent in education in the United States.

COMPARISON OF FINDINGS PRODUCED BY THE U.S. WORKPLACE BULLYING SURVEY WITH FINDINGS OF RESEARCH ON MISTREATMENT AND ABUSE IN U.S. EDUCATION Gary Namie, a social psychologist and expert on workplace bullying, directs the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI; see http://www.workplace​bullying​ .org), the only educational and research organization that focuses on bullying in the U.S. workplace. Namie and Zogby Analytics collaborated to create and administer the Workplace Bullying Survey (WBS), the largest (N = 1000) scientific survey of bullying in the U.S. workplace to date (WBI & Zogby International, 2014). This survey used the definition of workplace bullying codified in the Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB; Yamada, 2013).

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The following is a comparison of research findings produced by the Workplace Bullying Survey (WBI & Zogby International, 2014) with findings in education in the United States (i.e., Blase & Blase, 2002, 2003a, 2003b; Blase et al., 2008; Fox & Stallworth, 2010; A. Powell, 2012; J. Powell, 2012; Powell et al., 2015). (Note: Survey data were not disaggregated by occupation.) WBS researchers found that 56 percent of perpetrators were likely to be administrators who held higher rank than the victims. The WBS also demonstrated that bullies typically abused others with impunity; in fact, employers typically condoned bullying or did nothing in response (38%); to wit, for every four targets of bullying, one perpetrator was punished or received negative consequences. This is consistent with research on mistreatment and abuse in education in the United States. Moreover, 61 percent of victims who participated in the survey lost their jobs; they voluntarily quit or they were terminated. However, in education, mistreatment and abuse victims were persistently threatened with probation or dismissal, but they were seldom terminated. Even when teacher-victims wanted to leave their jobs, they were typically less likely to do so because of financial pressures (Blase & Blase, 2003a; Blase et al., 2008). According to WBS findings, targets and perpetrators of bullying frequently exhibited work-related skill deficiencies or personality flaws; for example, targets were described as compassionate, kind, cooperative, and agreeable as well as aggressive and abusive. Similarly, in education studies of mistreatment and abuse, principals’ leadership and personality deficiencies were underscored; however, mistreated and abused teachers were consistently among the best and most effective professionals (Blase & Blase, 2003a; Blase et al., 2008). Furthermore, findings produced by the Workplace Bullying Survey and education studies revealed that workplace conditions contributed to the likelihood of being bullied or mistreated and abused, and both survey victims and mistreated and abused teachers were ostracized by coworkers. Finally, unlike abused individuals in general, mistreated and abused teachers tended to use passive coping strategies.

Implications Despite the significant stream of national and international research on workplace mistreatment and abuse and its incredibly damaging effects on employees across organizations and occupations, little has been accomplished at any level of the educational establishment to ameliorate the specific problem of principal mistreatment and abuse of public school teachers. Therefore, we suggest the following measures.

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Local, state, and national efforts Teachers and principals should work together at the local, state, and national levels to vigorously confront the mistreatment and abuse problem. For example, educators should • Learn to identify and analyze abusive administrative behavior and its effects on teachers, teaching, and student learning; relationships with colleagues; school culture and climate; and teachers’ personal lives. • Develop effective teacher coping skills (e.g., how to establish boundaries and solicit help) and avenues to address administrative mistreatment and abuse (e.g., make formal complaints). • Provide effective support to abused teachers (e.g., listening, empathizing, suggesting possible approaches, such as positively confronting the bully, filing a grievance, talking with a union representative, soliciting support from family and friends, and consulting a therapist). • Propose and actively participate in relevant professional development programs at the school and district levels. Such programs teach educators about legal precedents, ethical standards, school context factors, and research related to mistreatment and abuse. • Promote awareness of administrative mistreatment and abuse through professional associations for educators and education researchers (e.g., AERA, ASCD, ATE, NASSP, NAESP, NCPEA, UCEA). • Actively encourage and lobby educational stakeholders who play educational policy and advocacy roles. This includes teachers, principals, central office administrators, parents, students, alumni, school board members, community members, academics, legislators, and union representatives. In the latter case, union representatives can educate teachers about their rights, mistreatment and abuse, bargaining efforts for antiharassment and antibullying policies, and endorsement of related legislation. For example, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Boston Teachers Union have endorsed the Healthy Workplace Bill (see below), thus encouraging related legislation (see http://www​ .mahealthyworkplace.com/bill/endorsement.html). • Advocate for the development and implementation of effective, statusblind antiharassment and antibullying policies and related procedures in all school districts. With some exceptions (e.g., the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the De Pere, Wisconsin, and Springfield, Massachusetts, school districts), few U.S. public employers have policies prohibiting general mistreatment and abuse.

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However, even the aforementioned existing policies are based on protected status (e.g., sex, age, religion, race) and afford no protection to employees based on mistreatment and abuse (i.e., bullying, harassment) alone. Thus, every school district must develop a status-blind antiharassment and antibullying policy in which workplace bullying of adult employees is specifically defined and prohibited. Sioux City Community Schools in Iowa is one U.S. school district that has a status-blind antibullying policy that protects employees, although it is silent on procedural matters. In addition, in 2008, the Florida legislature passed the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act, a law requiring all schools to adopt policies prohibiting bullying and harassment of any student or employee of a public K–12 institution; these policies must include a definition and description of bullying and harassment, training, procedures, consequences, and a statement of immunity from retaliation for reporting bullying and harassment. In fact, all 50 states now have either a school antibullying law or policy. A number of systems have written their policies to include all school employees as well as the students. As such, the Sioux City Community Schools and the state of Florida schools are helping to lead the way among public school districts in having concrete, status-blind workplace antibullying policies. Such policies are designed to ensure a work environment free of harassment and abuse of authority; they also require employees to treat each other with respect and dignity regardless of rank. Nevertheless, unless teachers and administrators have an adequate understanding of such policies, they may be ineffective.

Active support of the Healthy Workplace Bill Riley et al. (2012) noted that the only way to eliminate bullying in schools is to enact legislation. As noted, in the United States, only complaints about mistreatment and abuse that are based in allegations related to a victim’s protected status (e.g., sex, age, religion, race) have access to legal protection (Yamada, 2013). Professor David Yamada has concluded that existing statutory and common law are woefully inadequate legal responses to workplace mistreatment and abuse. Although the federal government has not passed comprehensive workplace bullying legislation, Yamada’s Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB) has emerged as the template legislative proposal to create antibullying laws in the United States. The HWB provides a legal claim for damages to severely bullied workers and creates liability-reducing incentives for employers to proactively address bullying behaviors (Yamada, 2013). It defines an abusive work environment as, “when an employer or one or more of its employees, acting with intent to cause pain or distress to an employee, subjects that employee to abusive conduct that causes physical harm, psychological harm, or both” (Yamada,

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2013, p. 351). The HWB has been introduced in over 30 state legislatures and has recently gained traction as several states and municipalities have enacted workplace bullying laws drawing upon the bill’s language. (These developments are explained in chapter 18, as well as in Yamada, 2013, 2015, and www.healthyworkplacebill.org.)

Academic programs in education In general, academic programs in administrator and teacher education must respond to an overwhelming range of programmatic issues, and they tend to emphasize the positive aspects of school life. Consequently, prospective (and practicing) administrators and teachers are not prepared to develop a deeply reflective approach to school leadership or teaching. This is unfortunate, as social learning theory and theories of self-regulation indicate that people often derive their most profound learning from a reflective understanding of social and linguistic experiences (Bandura, 1973; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). It follows that such an understanding is necessary for confronting the mistreatment and abuse problem in schools. Thus, academic programs should help educators to • Develop professional reflection skills designed to understand interpersonal, group, and organizational interactions and experiences. • Identify administrators’ abusive behaviors and the effects of such behavior. • Develop effective strategies to inform, confront, coach, or discipline abusive administrators. • Identify and address contextual factors that contribute to the problem of abuse (e.g., abusive administrative cultures, conflicting and excessive role expectations, lack of effective antimistreatment policies and procedures). • Promote awareness of administrative mistreatment and abuse through professional associations for educators (e.g., principals, teachers, personnel directors, and human resource specialists) and education researchers, as noted above. • Enact transformational and instructional leadership approaches for all educational leaders as discussed in the best contemporaneous studies of school improvement (e.g., administrator and teacher professional development, student academic performance) and the latest Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015). Such leadership approaches emphasize professional norms, ethics, clarity of vision, openness, communication, shared values, trust and team building, use of data to enhance teaching and learning, a range of development opportunities, and problem-solving

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skills (e.g., Blase, Blase, & Phillips, 2010; Day, Gu, & Sammons, 2016; Hallinger, 2011). • Support the development of status-blind district-level mistreatment and abuse policies. • Support the Healthy Workplace Bill legislation. All educators share an important mission, core values, and support for students. Now they must unite to codify district-level policies and state and federal legislation to ensure that all teachers subject to the vagaries of mistreatment and abuse have opportunities for legal redress.

CONCLUSION During the past 25 years, a considerable amount of research has been published nationally and internationally on the serious problem of workplace mistreatment and bullying. However, to date, there are only a handful of published studies focused on the problem of school principal mistreatment and abuse of public school teachers (see Blase & Blase, 2002, 2003a, 2003b, and Blase et al., 2008, for discussions of needed research on this topic). In addition, preservice and in-service administrator and teacher preparation and training seldom deal with this important problem, school districts in the United States have not developed antimistreatment and abuse policies for adult employees, and there are no laws providing viable opportunities to address mistreatment and abuse incidents. This state of affairs is particularly disturbing with regard to teaching not only because victimized teachers incur substantial personal and professional harm as a result of mistreatment and abuse but also because quality teaching is critically important for student achievement and school improvement. This means addressing and replacing destructive approaches to school leadership (through policy, law, and professional growth) with constructive approaches. In other words, it is absolutely essential that school administrators follow the best empirical research in education, which demands that they become transformational, instructional leaders who create collaborative, open, trusting, respectful, honest, and supportive relationships with teachers (Blase & Blase, 2004a; Blase et al., 2010; Day et al., 2016; DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Hattie, 2012; NPBEA, 2015). In his foreword to Breaking the Silence: Overcoming the Problem of Principal Mistreatment of Teachers (Blase & Blase, 2003a), AASA American Superintendent of the Year, Don Saul, wrote, Leaders who attempt to work with teachers and principals to promote systemic change . . . realize district efforts to create a positive atmosphere and common purpose leading to improved student achievement and

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well-being are hindered by behaviors which create a loss of trust among school professionals. Funding difficulties, curricular narrowing, highstakes testing of debatable utility, special interest advocacy, and other factors already conspire to evoke a feeling of powerlessness and frustration among staff. When these elements are combined with a teacher’s perception that “I will probably never truly trust an administrator again,” it’s hard to imagine how the organizational gestalt essential for reform and improvement can be generated and sustained in a district or school. The challenges implicit in [Blase and Blase’s] findings reflect issues affecting the gamut of school performance and the success of related initiatives to guide and improve teaching and learning: abuse and denigration of staff members is seldom dealt with easily or without creative, dedicated effort and courage. The . . . findings . . . must not be brushed aside as a natural outcome of human interaction in the form of so-called personality conflicts or as grousing from poorly performing staff members. On the contrary, the complexity and depth of change required to ensure consistent progress in education demands that the problem of mistreatment of teachers be taken very seriously and that appropriate preventative and corrective action serve as one of the keystones of growth and productivity in district and school cultures. (p. ix)

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Keashly, L., Trott, V., & MacLean, L. M. (1994). Abusive behavior in the workplace: A preliminary investigation. Violence and Victims, 9(4), 341–357. Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (1989). Prisoners of leadership. New York: Wiley. Kimbrough, R. B. (1985). Ethics: A course of study for educational leaders. Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators. Kipnis, D. (1972). Does power corrupt? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24(1), 33–41. Lamertz, K., & Aquino, K. (2004). Social power, social status and perceptual similarity of workplace victimization: A social network analysis of stratification. Human Relations, 57(7), 795–822. Lee-Chai, A. Y., & Bargh, J. A. (2001). The use and abuse of power: Multiple perspectives on the causes of corruption. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press. Leymann, H. (1990). Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces. Violence and Victims, 5(2), 119–126. Lutgen-Sandvik, P., Tracy, S. J., & Alberts, J. K. (2007). Burned by bullying in the American workplace: Prevalence, perception, degree, and impact. Journal of Management Studies, 44, 837–862. Matthiesen, S. B., Raknes, B. I. & Rokkum, O. (1989). Mobbing på arbeidsplassen [Bullying in the workplace]. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening, 26(11), 761–774. Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2000). The bully at work: What you can do to stop the hurt and reclaim your dignity on the job. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA). (2015). Professional Standards for Educational Leaders 2015. Reston, VA: Author. Neuman, J. H., & Baron, R. A. (1997). Aggression in the workplace. In R. Giacalone & J. Greenberg (Eds.), Anti-social behavior in organizations (pp. 37–57). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Northwestern National Life Insurance Company. (1993). Fear and violence in the workplace. Minneapolis, MN: Author. Orpinas, P., & Horne, A. M. (2006). Bullying prevention: Creating a positive school climate and developing social competence. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Powell, A. (2012). The effects of workplace incivility, workplace bullying, and school culture on student achievement (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. Powell, J. (2012). Workplace incivility in public education (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. Powell, J. E., Powell, A. L., & Petrosko, J. M. (2015). School climate as a predictor of incivility and bullying among public school employees: A multilevel analysis. Journal of School Violence, 14(2), 217–244. Price-Spratlen, L. (1995). Interpersonal conflict which includes mistreatment in a university workplace. Violence and Victims, 10(4), 285–297. Queensland Government Workplace Bullying Taskforce. (2002). Report of the Queens­ land Government Workplace Bullying Taskforce. Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Government Department of Industrial Relations.

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Rayner, C., & Keashly, L. L. (2005). Bullying at work: A perspective from Britain and North America. In S. Fox & P.E. Spector (Eds.), Counterproductive work behavior: Investigations of actors and targets (pp. 271–296). Washington, D.C.: APA Press. Riley, D., Duncan, J., & Edwards, J. (2012). Bullying of staff in schools. Camberwell, Victoria, Australia: ACER Press. Salin, D. (2001). Prevalence and forms of bullying among business professionals: A comparison of two different strategies for measuring bullying. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 10(4), 425–441. Salin, D. (2003). Ways of explaining workplace bullying: A review of enabling, motivating, and precipitating structures and processes in the work environment. Human Relations, 56(10), 1213–1232. Samnani, A-K., & Singh, P. (2012). 20 years of workplace bullying research: A review of the antecedents and consequences of bullying in the workplace. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 17(6), 581–589. Spector, P. E., & Jex, S. M. (1998). Development of four self-report measures of job stressors and strain: Interpersonal conflict at work scale, organizational constraints scale, quantitative workload inventory, and physical symptoms inventory. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 3(4), 356–367. Starratt, R. J. (1991). Building an ethical school: A theory for practice in educational leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 27(2), 185–202. Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 178–190. Tharp, R. G., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tomkins, S. S. (1962). Affect, imagery, consciousness: The negative effects. New York: Springer. Van Katwyk, P. T., Fox, S., Spector, P. E., & Kelloway, E. K. (2000). Using the Jobrelated Affective Well-being Scale (JAWS) to investigate affective responses to work stressors. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(2), 219–230. Westhues, K. W. (2004). Workplace mobbing in academe: Reports from twenty universities. Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press. Wiley, C. (2000). A synthesis of research on the causes, effects, and reduction strategies of teacher stress. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 27(2), 80–87. Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI) & Zogby International. (2014). 2014 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org Yamada, D. C. (2013). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–354. Yamada, D. C. (2015). Slowly but surely, workplace bullying laws are becoming a reality in the U.S. Retrieved from https://newworkplace.wordpress.com/2015/05/15​ /slowly-but-surely-workplace-bullying-laws-are-becoming-a-reality-in-the-U-S Yukl, G. A. (2001). Leadership in organizations (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

22

Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in U.S. Higher Education Loraleigh Keashly and Joel H. Neuman

As evidenced in the preceding chapters, researchers have learned a great deal about the nature, prevalence, causes, and consequences of workplace bullying and mobbing over the past four decades. This work has led (and continues to lead) to the development and implementation of interventions designed to prevent the occurrence and escalation of interpersonal aggression and ameliorate its impact on individuals and organizations. Interestingly, over this significant time span, academic researchers (ourselves included) had paid little attention to the occurrence of bullying and mobbing in our own “backyard.” While diligently exploring aggression by “other people” in “other settings” and publishing our findings in academic journals, we failed to explore these issues in our own academic work settings. In recent years, we have begun to address this shortcoming through systematic research and the publication of our findings in traditional academic venues. At the same time, academic trade journals have increasingly focused stories on these issues. For example, articles have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Fogg, 2008; Gravois, 2006); Inside Higher Education (Flaherty, 2014); and Academe (Wajngurt, 2014), a publication of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). In a blog post for Academe, Petry (2011) identified harassment by colleagues and bullying by administrators as among the top 10 workplace issues for faculty. In addition, there are special issues of academic journals (Misawa & Rowland, 2015; Petrina & Ross, 2014); recent books (Hollis, 2012; Twale & De Luca, 2008); and numerous blogs (e.g., http://bulliedacademics.blogspot.com, http://www.mobbingportal .com, http://www.historiann.com, and Hiatt, 2008). These sources provide evidence of increasing attention being paid to academic bullying and mobbing and provide opportunities for detailed discussion and analysis of what has been described as a “bully culture” in academe.

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Extending on the work cited above, as well as building on our own work (Keashly & Neuman, 2010, 2013) and that of our colleagues, the focus of this chapter is on workplace bullying and mobbing in institutions of higher education. We believe that this focus is important for the following reasons. First, if the study of psychology has taught us anything, it is that human behavior is multimotivated or overdetermined. Specifically, human actions are motivated and shaped by social, situational, environmental, and personal factors (Maslow, 1954; Pinder, 2008). Put simply, context strongly impacts and shapes behavior and the way specific behaviors are motivated, perceived, interpreted, understood, and acted upon (e.g., Johns, 2006). Considering that relatively little attention has been paid to the higher education context, we believe that such work will add to our growing knowledge base on workplace bullying and mobbing and help us test hypotheses derived from extant theory, developed across a number of workplace domains. Second, workplace bullying and mobbing (manifestations of human aggression) are fundamentally relational in nature, and different types of relationships tend to facilitate or inhibit interpersonal aggression. As we will demonstrate, academic environments are unique in many ways, and some of these distinctive aspects may contribute to workplace bullying and mobbing as well as the mechanism by which behaviors are perceived and acted upon. In the following section, we will address important definitional, conceptual, and methodological issues associated with our focus of attention. Our overall intent is to cover the landscape of what is known about bullying and mobbing in the academy, highlight known gaps in our knowledge, and discuss what is needed to fill those gaps. We conclude with a discussion about what we have learned about effective interventions.

DEFINITIONAL, CONCEPTUAL, AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES In this section, we will briefly restate some definitional and conceptual issues that have been discussed in earlier chapters and highlight some methodological issues that impede our ability to capture accurate prevalence data.

Definition of Workplace Bullying and Mobbing A common observation in the literature on workplace bullying and workplace mobbing is the lack of a single consensus definition (Einarsen, Hoel, & Notelaers, 2009). This is further complicated by a proliferation of constructs that are, from our perspective, often used interchangeably in the literature on workplace bullying and mobbing, such as generalized workplace harassment

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(Brodsky, 1976; Richman et al., 1999); emotional abuse (Keashly & Harvey, 2005); social undermining (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002); and incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Though each of these other constructs covers important and related phenomena, their overlapping usage in the research literature is often misleading. For a thorough discussion of construct issues, we refer the reader to several excellent reviews (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2011; Hershcovis, 2011; Keashly, 1998). What is distinctive about workplace bullying, as compared with other forms of workplace mistreatment, is the persistent and enduring nature of the experience—statistically characterized as occurring at least weekly for six months or longer in duration (Leymann, 1996). Additionally, bullying involves power imbalance (either real or imagined) between actors (bullies) and targets. Mobbing is a form of bullying characterized by the involvement of more than one actor, with the particular quality of “ganging up” on others (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 1999). Thus, workplace bullying and mobbing are more accurately captured as ongoing, dynamic relational phenomena rather than as discrete events (Aquino & Lamertz, 2004; Keashly & Jagatic, 2003). In our research with academics, and thus for this chapter, we utilize Einarsen’s (1999) definition: “All those 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 that cause humiliation, offense, and distress, and that may interfere with job performance and/or creates an unpleasant working environment” (p. 17). While this provides a good operational definition of bullying, it seems somewhat sterile, as it was not designed to capture the intensity and depth of impact and despair that are part and parcel of the experience. To provide a flavor of how this is depicted, we share the following three examples of descriptions employed in the literature: Bullying is a profound attack on one’s viability as a social and professional being in the context of work. (Zabrodska, Linnell, Laws, & Davies, 2011, p. 709) Mobbing can be understood as the stressor to beat all stressors. It is an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker. (Westhues, 2002, p. 32) Academic mobbing is a non-violent, sophisticated, “ganging up” behaviour adopted by academicians to “wear and tear” a colleague down emotionally through unjustified accusation, humiliation, general harassment and emotional abuse. These are directed at the target under a veil of lies and justifications so that they are “hidden” to others and difficult to prove. (Khoo, 2010, p. 61)

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Conceptual and Methodological Issues The central questions to ask when exploring instances of workplace bullying and mobbing are, who is being targeted and who is doing the targeting? Just as we would expect differences in the nature and consequences of bullying by (or toward) superiors, peers, subordinates, and customers and clients in nonacademic work settings, academic work settings primarily consist of students, staff, faculty, and administrators. While all members of an institution may be involved in bullying as targets, bullies, or bystanders, faculty members are uniquely situated among these groups because of their centrality in fulfilling the primary mission of the institution, as relates to conducting the curricular and research missions of colleges and universities. As such, the health and well-being of faculty at large has profound implications for the character and success of the institutions. For this reason, initial research (and the current chapter) tends to focus on the experiences of faculty with bullying and mobbing as targets, actors, and observers.

Quantitative vs. qualitative measures The research on bullying and mobbing falls into two types: (1) quantitatively focused surveys, often cross-sectional in nature, and (2) qualitative research, which includes ethnographies, interviews, case studies, and personal accounts, capturing the “lived experience” of targets, responders, and, to a more limited extent, actors. The cross-sectional survey research permits a discernment of the nature and prevalence of bullying and mobbing within and across work units in a particular organization (in which the same research methods and tools are employed). This can prove useful in identifying problem areas within an organization, work unit, or demographic group (e.g., department, faculty, staff, administration, junior or senior faculty, gender, etc.). Qualitative research allows an in-depth look into the dynamics of the experience and the intersectionality of a number of antecedents in the conditioning or shaping of experiences from the perspective of the target(s). This research provides the thick description and meaning behind the numbers, which is critically important in both designing and evaluating intervention programs. In table 22.1, we summarize key findings from survey studies (published, dissertations, and theses). As with all research, the nature and interpretation of these findings are conditioned by the methodologies employed. Prevalence and incident rates associated with all forms of bullying and mobbing are influenced by the way dependent measures are operationalized and the time frame over which they are measured. With respect to the operational issues, there are two primary methods of measuring workplace bullying behavior: (1) the self-labeling approach and (2) behavioral checklists. The self-labeling

Table 22.1  Studies of Bullying and Mobbing in Academic Settings

Study Price-Spratlen, 1995 (USA)

Richman et al., 1999 (USA)

Keashly & Neuman, 2008 (USA)

Sample

Method

Employees at one Mail questionnaire university; N = 805; – single item re 208 faculty; 92 mistreatment professional staff; 506 classified staff (51% response rate)

Employees at one Mail questionnaire university; N = 2,492; – behavioral checklist 765 faculty; 295 service; 557 clerical; 875 student workers (51.6% response rate)

Time Frame

Rates

Prior 18 months Experienced (yes/no) 23% overall; 11% faculty; 38% professional staff; 25% classified staff 26% female; 19% male

Actors Overall Superior 49% Peer 30% Subordinate 9% Other 12%

Faculty: Witnessed 27%; 19% faculty; Superior 52% 27% professional staff; 31% Peer 36% classified staff Subordinate 4% Other 8% including students Prior 12 months Experienced (at least one Not asked behavior more than once) 55% overall; 50% faculty; 57% service; 63% clerical, 53% student workers

Overall: 56% female; 54% male; faculty 68% female; 52% male Employees at one Online questionnaire Prior 12 months Experienced 32% self-label university; N = 1,185 – respond to definition overall; 39% faculty; 43% (34.3% response rate) + behavioral checklist staff; 53% directors and dept. chairs; 9% student workers.

Superior 43% (20% faculty) Peer 42.2% (63% faculty) Subordinate 4% Customer/student 2% 1 actor 43% 2 actors 30% (Continued)

Table 22.1  Continued

Study

McKay et al., 2008 (Canada)

512

Fox, 2009 (USA)

Sample

Teaching staff and librarians at one university; N = 100 (12% response rate) Faculty; convenience sample N = 228

Neuman, 2009 (USA) Faculty at one university; N = 241 (55% response rate)

Method

Time Frame

Online questionnaire Prior 5 years – define bullying in own words + behavioral checklist Online questionnaire Prior 5 years – behavioral checklist

Rates

Actors

Researcher defined (≥ 1 ≥ 3 actors 27% event at least weekly) 23% Superior 44% overall. Peer 40% 33% women; 27% men Subordinate 6% Customer/student 2% Witnessed 41% Experienced 52% self-label *Superior 34% (32% “seriously”) Peers 61% Students 32% Experienced 36% pervasive/ frequent bullying

Females > Males Online questionnaire Prior 12 months Experienced 26% (self-label) – respond to definition Witnessed 50.5% + behavioral checklist

Superior 22% Peer 24% Superior 24% Colleague 66% – Senior colleague 37% – Equal status 21% – Junior colleague 8% 1 actor 43% 2 actor 21% ≥ 3 actors 36% Superior 28% Colleague 71% – Senior colleague 49% – Equal status 15% – Junior colleague 7%

Hollis, 2012

175 colleges and Respond to definition universities—all employee groups; N = 401 (15.5% response rate)

Prior 18 months Experienced 31% self-label Females > Males African American > White LGTBQ > straight

Dellifraine et al., 2014 National sample health Online questionnaire Prior 5 years administration – define bullying in own faculty N = 134 (53% words + behavioral response rate) checklist

513

Williams & Ruiz, 2012 Employees at one Respond to definition institution; N = (28% response rate)

Prior 2 years

Landes, 2013

Employees at one institution; N = 304 (8.2% response rate)

Prior 2 years

Raineri et al., 2011

Business and economics Online questionnaire faculty, multiple – behavioral checklist; institutions; N = 60 respond whether (2.7% response rate) “observed” each behavior by faculty, by administrator

Respond to definition

Not asked.

Witness 32% Experienced 64% self-label (55% “seriously”) Witness in career 78%

Experienced 28% Females > Males

Prior 6 months

Dean 18% Full professor 43% Associate professor 25% Assistant professor 12% 1 actor 66% 2 actors 20% ≥ 3 actors 14% *Supervisor 38% Coworker 32% Faculty 23%

Witness 48% Experienced 38%

*Supervisor 37% Someone of higher rank 31% Females > Males Coworker 33% Faculty 30% Witness 50% Witness (at least one behavior Senior faculty 52% occurring at least monthly) Junior faculty 8% 48% for faculty actor; 30% Administration 36% administrator actor Staff 4%

(Continued)

Table 22.1    Continued

Study

Sample

Mourssi-Alfash, 2014

Employees at one institution; N = 786; 163 faculty (16% response rate) Beckmann et al., 2013 Nursing faculty in three NE states; N = 473 (42% response rate) Cassidy et al., 2014 Faculty at one institution; N = 121 Lampman, 2012

Faculty at 100 institutions; N = 524 (66% response rate)

Method

Time Frame

Online questionnaire Prior 6 months – respond to definition + behavioral checklist Online questionnaire – behavioral checklist

Rates Experienced 38% self-label; 82% at least one behavior in six months

Actors Not asked

Prior 6 months

Experienced 36% (at least one Administration 20% behavior) Senior faculty 60% Junior faculty 11% Online questionnaire Prior 12 months Experienced cyberbullying 17% Students 12% – definition of Colleague 9% Female > Male cyberbullying People of color > Whites Online questionnaire Prior 12 months Experienced 91% at least one Students as actors – behavioral checklist re behavior; 10%–15% several student behaviors behaviors

Females > Males re degree of upset Lampman et al., 2009 Faculty at one Mail questionnaire Prior 12 months Experienced 98% at least one Students as actors institution; N = 399 – behavioral checklist re behavior (61% response rate) student behaviors Females > Males re degree of upset Taylor, 2012 Faculty at one Online questionnaire Prior 6 months Experienced 12% (self-label) Not asked institution; N = 1,060 – respond to definition Female > Male (43% response rate) + behavioral checklist LGBT > Heterosexual Witness 22% Peters, 2014. *More than one actor could be identified. N.B.: Percentages are rounded to closest number.

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method involves providing respondents with a definition of workplace bullying and asking whether they have personally experienced this within a specified period of time (e.g., the preceding day, week, month, six months, year, etc.). For those indicating they believe they have been bullied, they are often asked to describe the situation: who were the actors, how long did it go on, and what was the impact on them. Using this method, mobbing is identified when more than one actor is involved. The behavioral checklist method provides the respondent with a list of behaviors that researchers believe fit within the domain of bullying and mobbing. Respondents respond within a specific time frame, typically using Likert scales of increasing frequency defined in terms of never, rarely, monthly, weekly, and daily (Einarsen et al., 2009; Neuman & Keashly, 2004). In some measures, these items are endorsed with respect to specific actors (Keashly & Neuman, 2008; Neuman, 2009) to discern downward or hierarchical bullying, horizontal or peer bullying, and subordinate or contrapower bullying (Lampman, Phelps, Bancroft, & Beneke, 2009). In the case of faculty as victims, these types of actors are equivalent to a chair, dean, or administrator and more senior faculty, faculty of equal rank, and students, respectively. People are identified as bullied based on the researchers’ application of criteria. For example, some studies define a respondent as bullied if they have had at least one behavior in the specified time frame (e.g., Beckmann, Cannella, & Wantland, 2013; Lampman, 2012; Lampman et al., 2009; Mourssi-Alfash, 2014), while others look at the number of behaviors occurring at least weekly and then create categories or degrees of bullying (Keashly & Neuman, 2008; Lampman, 2012; Lampman et al., 2009; Neuman, 2009). Obviously, these different methods of measurement yield somewhat different findings. To complicate matters further, bullying and mobbing are considered to be an escalatory process (Matthiesen, Aasen, Holst, Wie, & Einarsen, 2003), and so even single behavior experiences provide important signals of potential problems. The preceding section was meant to sensitize readers to some of the enormous challenges confronted by researchers trying to establish the nature, prevalence, and consequences of bullying and mobbing. It is also meant to suggest caution in interpreting the data we present in this chapter—as well as data from other sources that one may consider. As might be suspected, the self-labeling and behavioral checklist methods provide different estimates of prevalence, with more people being identified as “bullied” from checklists than from self-labeling approaches (Salin, 2001). This may be due to a reluctance on the part of individuals to view themselves as victims or this may be a reflection of different aspects of bullying, that is, exposure to bullying behaviors and the experience of victimization, respectively.

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THE PREVALENCE, NATURE, AND EXPERIENCE OF ACADEMIC BULLYING AND MOBBING Consistent with our discussion in the preceding section, the prevalence rates associated with self-labeling range from 12 percent (Taylor, 2012) to as high as 64 percent (Dellifraine, McClelland, Erwin, & Wang, 2014), with several in the 25–36 percent range. Digging into these rates, there is evidence of multiple experiences with being bullied (Dellifraine et al., 2014; McKay, Arnold, Fratzl, & Thomas, 2008; Williams & Ruiz, 2012), with upward of one-third to one-half of those self-identifying as being bullied reporting 4 or more experiences. Rates based on behavioral checklists suggest that, by far, the majority of respondents (82%–98% range) have been exposed, particularly when the minimal definition of at least one behavior during the time frame is used. When the element of several behaviors within the time frame is utilized, the rates range from 10 percent to 36 percent. For comparison, a recent survey of a representative sample of the U.S. working population reported 7 percent of respondents self-identified as being bullied in the prior 12 months (Namie, Christensen, & Philips, 2014). Thus, rates in academic environments are higher on average. The prevalence of mobbing in these studies is particularly notable. Defining mobbing as two or more actors, one-third to one-half of faculty respondents are affected (Dellifraine et al., 2014; Keashly & Neuman, 2008; Neuman, 2009). In our 2008 study of university employees (Keashly & Neuman, 2008), faculty were twice as likely as staff to report multiple actors, and staff were 1.5 times more likely to report a single actor. Thus, the experience of faculty is often one characterized by a number of actors (and perhaps targets). Variability within each of these methods appears to be tied to the nature of the sample and the context it reflects. Specifically, rates vary across different institutions. For example, controlling for the same measure and time frame, Keashly and Neuman (2008) report a rate of 39 percent for faculty, while Neuman (2009) reports a rate of 26 percent. Using the University of Massachusetts Amherst survey, Williams and Ruiz (2012) report a rate of 28 percent, and the rate reported by Landes (2013) is 38 percent. Using the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R) global item, Taylor (2012) reports a rate of 12 percent of faculty and Mourssi-Alfash (2014) reports 21 percent of the faculty experienced bullying. Further, discipline-specific studies (health administration faculty, Dellifraine et al., 2014; nursing faculty, Beckmann et al., 2013) show differences in rates may also be influenced by disciplinary context (64% vs. 36%, respectively). Taylor (2012) reports higher rates of bullying in the college of arts and humanities than in other colleges on campus. These sample differences echo our earlier discussion about the importance of considering the context within which these experiences occur.

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What is clear in examining these studies is that bullying and mobbing often occur in the presence, and with the knowledge, of other faculty. Rates of witnessing ranged from 32 percent to 78 percent, with most in the 40–50 percent range. Witnessing is important for a number of reasons. First, it is an indicator of the overall climate of the unit. Second, witnesses to bullying and mobbing show similar negative effects as targets, spreading the impact net more broadly (Hansen et al., 2006; Vartia, 2001). Third, witnesses are rarely uninvolved, and that involvement can be constructive (e.g., intervening, defusing the situation, bringing in help) or destructive (e.g., instigating the encounter, joining in, remaining silent; Namie & Lutgen-Sandvik, 2010). The challenge will be to leverage these others to engage productively in managing and addressing these situations early on. We will discuss strategies for building faculty bystander efficacy in the section on approaches for addressing bullying and mobbing,

Relationship between Actors and Targets The relationship between actors and targets appears to vary by an individual’s location within the institutional structure. Peer-to-peer bullying (colleague-to-colleague) appears to characterize the majority of faculty experiences more so than instances of bullying by administrators (e.g., Beckmann et al., 2013; Dellifraine et al., 2014; Keashly & Neuman, 2008; McKay et al., 2008; Neuman, 2009; Williams & Ruiz, 2012). Hierarchy is still involved in peer-to-peer bullying, as evidenced by the higher rates of actors being senior faculty versus those of lower or junior rank. Contrapower (student) bullying also shows up in studies focused on faculty experience (Cassidy, Faucher, & Jackson, 2014; Lampman, 2012; Lampman et al., 2009; McKay et al., 2008). Thus, faculty “get it from all sides,” most notably from their colleagues. Staff appear to have a different experience. In our own research, staff was more likely to report a higher up as an actor and faculty more likely to report colleagues (53% vs. 63%, respectively; Keashly & Neuman, 2013). Thus, an individual’s location within the institutional structure as defined by occupational group and hierarchal or professional status may leave targets vulnerable to abuse from particular actors or agents. The issue of who the actor is vis-à-vis the target is not simply demographic. Evidence from other workplace contexts indicates that this relationship affects both the expression and experience of bullying (Hershcovis & Reich, 2013; Lamertz & Aquino, 2004; Neuman & Keashly, 2010). The key relational feature is the power difference and what it permits an actor to do and whether or how a target and others may be able (or willing) to respond. This power can be defined organizationally (e.g., tenured faculty to untenured faculty, dean to faculty) or in terms of social bases of power as captured

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by in-group membership, such as gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class. The survey studies reviewed here provide evidence that women, African Americans, and LGTBQ faculty are at greater risk for bullying and mobbing. The selective use of bullying and mobbing broadly based on identity group membership in society is troubling, and it is particularly troubling to find this in academe. Thus, we want to take the time to dig into this here.

Social identity group membership Academe generally, and the professoriate in particular, are often described as white, male, upper middle class, and heteronormative, a far from diverse group (Lee & Leonard, 2001). To the extent this is true, any faculty member who “deviates” from that becomes “noticeable” (Dentith, Wright, & Coryell, 2015), at risk for being viewed as counternormative, and, thus, a threat to the status quo (Berdahl, 2007), even if he or she has not engaged in actual provocative behavior. By virtue of this positionality (Misawa, 2015), these faculty are in a power-down position vis-à-vis other faculty and, thus, have less resources at their disposal to defend themselves. Even one’s status as a tenured and full professor does not counter the impact of these identity-related differences (Johnson-Bailey, 2015). Ethnographic and interview studies detailing the experiences of women faculty (e.g., Dentith et al., 2015; Lester, 2009; Sedivy-Benton, Strohschen, Cavazos, & Boden-McGill, 2015); faculty of color (e.g., Frazier, 2011; Johnson-Bailey, 2015); and LGBTQ faculty (e.g., Misawa, 2015) are remarkably and sadly similar in their experiences of being targeted and bullied. All report behaviors that silence (e.g., being excluded from decision making, not being asked for input despite relevant expertise, continually being interrupted); question their legitimacy (e.g., diminishing the rigor and value of their work and strength of their scholarly record); and seek to undermine their competency and credibility in the eyes of others (e.g., actively searching for issues and problems, soliciting student comments regarding problems). By highlighting the “otherness” of the faculty member and subsequent devaluing of this quality, these behaviors effectively “recontextualize targeted victims’ ambient circumstances to suggest their inadequacy” (Kennison, Dzurec, Cary, & Dzurec, 2015, p. 28), making them vulnerable to “efforts” to get them to conform or leave (Westhues, 2006). Another common experience is that when faculty resist these “attacks,” or insist that their perspectives and experiences be heard, they are framed as “difficult” and “uncollegial” (Johnson-Bailey, 2015; Westhues, 2002). Thus, the “problem” is the “target,” and bullying and mobbing are framed as justified responses to provocation. These studies and experiences highlight that bullying and mobbing may reflect identity-related biases.

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Being a high performer and critic as a risk factor A theme in the personal accounts, interviews, and ethnographies is that the faculty members, regardless of identity group membership or professional status, were “successful” as academics in terms of their scholarship, teaching, and service. Being a “high performer,” whose accomplishments and achievements challenge and threaten their colleagues (i.e., “rate busting”) has been proposed as a difference that can make a faculty member “noticeable” and vulnerable (e.g., Kotleras, 2007; Friedenberg, 2008; Kim & Glomb, 2014; Westhues, 2006). Friedenberg’s (2008) profile of the “classic” academic mobbing victim depicts a faculty member who is notable for his or her success. Junior faculty may be particularly vulnerable here. On the one hand, given the increasing requirements for gaining tenure, junior faculty will be among the high performers and, thus, should anticipate institutional support and protection as their work helps the university achieve its mission. However, the lack of job security on the tenure track, and the reliance on tenured faculty support to achieve tenure, restricts their abilities to defend themselves, particularly when the actors are senior tenured faculty. However, as Westhues’s (2004) extensive research of academic mobbing cases reveals, many victims are senior tenured faculty who are also high performers. Being high performers, though, could also be a predictor for becoming a bully—by using their status and power to fend off attempts to manage their behavior. Williams, Campbell, and Denton’s (2013) study of department chairs’ efforts to manage high-performing instigators (HPI), who engage in unprofessional and destructive behavior, is a vivid depiction of how faculty as actors can mobilize their status and frame their actions to resist any attempts to moderate or manage their behaviors. This perception of ineffective administrative action may lay the groundwork for other faculty to take action against the HPI, resulting in a mobbing situation. Indeed, Westhues (2006) has suggested that mobbing is often seen as the only way to get rid of a “troublesome” tenured faculty member; Zapf and Warth (1997) have referred to this as “personnel work by other means” (as cited in Salin, 2003). Being vocal and persistent in one’s criticism is another vulnerability factor for faculty (Friedenberg, 2008; Westhues, 2006; Nelson & Lambert, 2001). Based on his extensive analysis of hundreds of mobbing cases, Westhues (2006) observes that these targets were often not “innocent” in that they engaged in behavior that would be considered provocative and were often highly critical of established practices or “ways of doing things” and the people associated with them. Like being a high performer, being persistently critical is particularly interesting as a vulnerability because such behavior could be framed as appropriate within the principles of academic freedom, and an actor may use this to resist any attempts to moderate his or her behavior (see

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Nelson & Lambert, 2001). While there is not disagreement in the literature or in academe that these are difficult and challenging interactions to have, the concern is that mobbing as a response is out of proportion to the “offense.” As Friedenberg (2008) notes, “the contrast between the routine annoyances that targets of mobbing are seen as visiting upon their colleagues and superiors and the extremity of the latter’s response is one of the enduring psychological puzzles in mobbing” (p. 11). These differences as vulnerabilities highlight the importance of the nature and structure of academe in providing frames and accounts for what is considered acceptable and unacceptable faculty conduct and, thus, responses to them. We will discuss this in the section on the culture and structure of academe.

Duration and Process of Exposure The experience of being bullied or mobbed is enduring. For example, McKay et al. (2008) report that 21 percent of faculty who self-identified as being bullied indicated it had lasted more than five years. In our own research with two institutions (Keashly & Neuman, 2008; Neuman, 2009), almost half of faculty report bullying that has lasted more than three years. Duration is a concern not only for the accumulation and intensification of negative effects but also for the possibility of pulling others into the experience, with faculty ganging up or choosing sides, creating spirals or cascades of hostility throughout a unit (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). This may also be an artifact of being tenured, as these are long-standing relationships, and the longer the relationship, the more opportunity for conflict (Neuman & Keashly, 2010) and for aggression (Jawahar, 2002). Indeed, tenure may actually make some faculty vulnerable to bullying and mobbing (Taylor, 2012; Westhues, 2006). Thus, being tenured could be considered a risk factor for both bullying and being bullied. We will return to the issue of tenure in our discussion of the context of academe. What is clear from both the survey and qualitative studies is that bullying and mobbing involve a number of different behaviors. From the survey studies, the most frequently identified behaviors are work-related as opposed to person-related (Taylor, 2012), yet the impact is very much felt as a personal attack. Specific categories of behavior included threats to professional status (e.g., gossip and malicious rumors, belittling remarks, demeaning comments about research or teaching, harsh public critique); isolation and exclusion (e.g., ignoring or dismissing contributions, excluding from work-related activities, not seeking input); flaunting status (reminders of rank, condescending tones); and physical intimidation or aggression (e.g., threatening gestures,

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temper tantrums; hostile eye contact). The use of technology and electronic communication, which knows no time or work or life boundaries and permits anonymity, is showing up as a powerful means to target others in the form of cyberbullying, (e.g., Cassidy et al., 2014). What the survey studies as snapshots do not reveal are the dynamics of the process. Qualitative research (e.g., Buitenhuis, 2015; Goldberg, Beitz, Wieland, & Levine, 2013; Johnson, 2014) reveals escalatory patterns of intimidation and silencing, questioning of legitimacy of scholarship and person, abuse of power, implied threats to tenure and promotion, and magnification of a mistake to become a fatal flaw. These behaviors, particularly taken together, communicate devaluation and diminution of the target (JohnsonBailey, 2015; Young, Anderson, & Stewart, 2015). The depiction of the process across these different settings and with different faculty is strikingly similar, demonstrating a progressive and increasingly hostile process, which, over time, moves from informal mechanisms of engagement and management to more formal processes of review and evaluation (Lester, 2009). For a detailed description of this process, we refer to Westhues (1998), as his model of mobbing, based on his experience and hundreds of case studies, captures the experiences depicted in the qualitative literature reviewed here. This process is remarkably similar to what is described in other workplaces. Although specific behaviors and tactics may vary based on the context and the resources and mechanisms available, the overall dynamics and progression of being bullied or mobbed are universal, as are its outcomes (e.g., Einarsen et al., 2011; Leymann, 1996). In sum, bullying and mobbing are familiar and unfortunately frequent experiences for faculty and others in the academy. It also appears that working in an academic environment, particularly as a faculty member, has a greater risk for experience with and prolonged exposure to bullying and mobbing than many other working environments. Faculty who are noticeable in some way are at particular risk of being targeted. Most of the examples of bullying and mobbing presented in this section occurred within institutions of higher education, but even the casual reader will probably recognize that these examples could have be drawn from nonacademic organizations as well. In the section that follows, we focus more explicitly on contextual variables that are fairly unique to the academy.

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT We now provide specific detail on two important aspects of context (both social and structural) as they relate to the instigation and perception of bullying and mobbing in higher education.

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The Culture of Academe According to Robert J. Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell University and the former president of the University of Wyoming, “When you choose a career in academe, you need to be prepared not only for rough-andtumble politics, but also for the verbal abuse that goes with it” (italics added, Sternberg, 2015, p. A26). In normative terms, this quote suggests that faculty should expect to deal with verbal abuse from an assortment of sources and the dark side of organizational politics. While there are many people who would disagree with that assessment, it does capture the distinctive discursive environment of the university workplace, the unique place that faculty occupy in this environment, and what this suggests about what is considered “appropriate” faculty conduct. In traditional organizational settings, leadership—often in the form of a single individual or leadership team—assumes the responsibility for building the culture and climate of the organization. This “dominant coalition” defines expected role-related behaviors (norms) of organizational members and sets expectations for appropriate conduct (Bennett, Aquino, Reed, & Thau, 2005). In the case of academe, faculty members do not occupy those traditional leadership roles, but they are leaders in the sense that they occupy a central role in developing and executing the research and education missions of the university. Their leadership is recognized in university structure through shared governance, which, in its ideal form, includes the faculty as full partners with administrators and boards of trustees and governors. Thus, major institutional decisions involve faculty members in meaningful and substantive ways, with respect to their voice, expertise, and associated resources. In this structure, faculty members are expected to engage with their administrative colleagues in vibrant discussion and problem-solving, which is needed when addressing institutional planning and its inherent challenges. This position privileges, and indeed requires, faculty to engage in vigorous debate and critique of administrative decisions. While employee groups in other organizational settings, including the university, may engage in critique, they do so at a greater risk than faculty. By virtue of academic freedom, faculty are “officially” afforded protection from institutional retaliation for being involved in crafting, countering, and challenging the discourse and decision making of the institution. Tenure provides additional protection from certain forms of institutional retaliation, but this does not mean that the faculty is immune from bullying or mobbing, as the research we have presented indicates. More broadly, the culture of academe is one of debate, critique, and argumentation. Thus, faculty will, and indeed are expected to, engage in dissent, disagreement, argumentation, and refutation; these are necessary for the development and refinement of ideas and truths (Nelson & Lambert,

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2001; Tannen, 2002). In essence, we are an argument culture, with all of its fire and thrill resulting in “a professional obligation to enter into disputes with . . . colleagues” (Heiser, 2003, p. 3). Further, failing to do so is framed as hugely problematic. As Friedenberg (2008) notes, “the greatest problem in the (academic) workplace is actually the lack of workers willing to swim against the current, question, challenge, change and argue” (p. 26). Taken together, shared governance, academic freedom, tenure, and the culture of debate and critique scaffold or frame the faculty role and, thus, what is considered appropriate and, indeed, expected faculty conduct. While disputation and argumentation are defining features of the broader academic culture, we recognize that the tolerance for and support of such engagement may vary considerably from institution to institution, depending on the institutional mission and environmental pressures. We will return to this in our discussion of structural influences in academe. These conduct expectations are reflected in the positions of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in the United States and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) in Canada. Both have written extensively on the management of faculty conduct, often in response to calls for increased civility and the invocation of collegiality. For example, the AAUP (1999) has argued that collegiality, often interpreted as working constructively (and positively, whatever that means) with others, and its discursive partner, civility, should not be the fourth criterion for tenure and promotion. The concern is that collegiality and civility may be used to silence or remove those whose approach is challenging to current doctrine within the discipline, status quo in the department, and, more broadly, contrary to the views of administration. Both organizations do affirm that faculty are expected to respect their colleagues and their ideas and opinions and to work to ensure all voices are heard, that is, ensuring each other’s academic freedom. However, they argue that management of faculty conduct is best handled through the community of peers via suasion (vs. coercion) and collaboration (vs. regulation) (Campbell, 2014). One challenge is that these rules of engagement are somewhat different from what other institutional members may be expected to follow. For example, staff roles have been characterized as supportive and involving cooperation and collaboration, which requires different norms for interacting, such as seeking common ground to facilitate the job getting done (Christy, 2010; Fratzl & McKay, 2013). Thus, if and when faculty take these conduct expectations into their interactions with other institutional members, on other than “academic” issues, it is not surprising that people within and outside the institution may find engagement with faculty “disconcerting and unpleasant” (“is everything an argument?”), affecting their subsequent interactions with, and experiences of, faculty. Recognizing these expectation differences and

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the resultant challenges, Christy (2010) produced a guide for higher education staff and managers on how to work effectively with faculty. This discussion of expectations is important because people’s assessment of what is problematic or unfair is based on their sense of norm violation (Skarlicki & Kulik, 2004). Thus, what a faculty member may view as appropriate and reasonable conduct, others may perceive as unjust, inappropriate, and harmful. As we discussed earlier, being defined as different is frequently framed as a “norm violation.” Perceptions of norm violations are often met with challenge and, sometimes, aggression (Neuman, 2004; Salin, 2003). Normative differences also have interesting implications for the accounts that faculty can make to justify or excuse behavior that may be perceived as a norm violation by others. In their analysis of three cases of “ivory tower bullying,” Nelson and Lambert (2001) illustrate how faculty accused of bullying drew on academic rhetoric to frame their behavior in terms of the higher principles of academic freedom and “speaking truth to power,” thus making their behavior seem normal and, in some cases, noble. This framing also (re) positioned the “others” as the ones who were bullying and mobbing, that is, the other is violating the norms. This points out a unique feature of faculty vis-à-vis other workers. Faculty are verbally adept and skilled in the art of framing and narrative construction. Indeed, faculty bullying and mobbing accounts have been characterized as “framing contests” in which parties on each side discursively position themselves as the innocent victim(s) of unwarranted and unprovoked attack by the other(s) (Friedenberg, Schneider, & Westhues, 2009; Nelson & Lambert, 2001), thus creating a justification for past, current, and future actions. For observers and others asked to manage the situation, this is a very confusing because everyone is accusing everyone else of bad behavior, making attributions for responsibility difficult. As a result, these third parties often feel at a loss of what to do. Whoever has made the more compelling case will likely gain the support of others, expanding the situation and subsequent disruption further.

The Structure of Academe Workplace bullying and mobbing have been described as systemic in nature, stimulated and supported (and ultimately can be challenged) by features of the organizational structure and environment. This is true in academe. Drawing on Salin’s (2003) discussion of enabling, motivating, and precipitating organizational practices and policies, Twale and De Luca (2008) examined how the academic institution and its surrounding environment can “set the stage” for and promote bullying and mobbing. We will briefly describe these features here, while pointing to Twale and De Luca’s (2008) work for more detailed discussion.

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• Enabling features affect whether bullying and mobbing are even possible. • Rigid hierarchy, low perceived costs or risks; lack of enforceable policies; qualities of work environment, such as perceived injustice and role state stressors; negative conflict climate. • Motivating features frame bullying and mobbing as a “rational response” to those viewed as threats or burdens. • Internally competitive environment; perceived norm violation. • Precipitating features trigger bullying and mobbing, assuming enabling and motivating features are in place. • Organizational change in the form of budget cuts, restructuring, changing or unstable leadership. The current higher education environment and academic institutions have a number of these features. In terms of enabling factors, despite the equalitarian philosophy inherent in the notion of academic freedom, there is a hierarchy of rank among faculty and associated privilege (Barsky, 2002). Tenure protection contributes to the perception of little risk in engaging in behaviors and also reduced mobility out of difficult situations. Subjective performance processes such as tenure, promotion, and merit lay the groundwork for the undue influence, for example, “lack of collegiality” as a reason for denial. The increased emphasis on scholarly and creative productivity and shifting funding priorities privileges certain faculty over others and challenges faculty with different career trajectories. Increased faculty job responsibilities and associated time demands threaten career progress (Berryman-Fink, 1998). Thus, faculty can feel diminished and threatened by others’ accomplishments. Shrinking budgets facilitate interdepartmental competition. Changes in leadership in terms of orientation (corporatization, neoliberalism; Zabrodska et al., 2011) and increasing influence of administration and boards in the management of the institution pose threats to faculty voice and shared governance. In such scarce resource and competitive environments, faculty status is threatened. In such a context, bullying and mobbing may become a strategy for maintaining or gaining power and influence. Bullying and mobbing may also be viewed as a survival strategy, as faculty attempt to position themselves as productive and central to institutional missions and, thus, entitled to increasingly scarce resources and protection from job loss.

APPROACHES FOR ADDRESSING ACADEMIC BULLYING AND MOBBING Our discussion of the context of faculty bullying and mobbing has focused on the nature of academe as shaped by academic freedom, shared governance,

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and, to some extent, tenure—as well as the current higher education environment and university structure and practices. We have discussed how this context shapes the conduct that occurs and how it can be framed and perceived. We have also argued that the current higher education environment creates a context in which bullying and mobbing can be framed as a rational means for power and, in some cases, survival. Just as these aspects shape the nature and impact of bullying and mobbing, these aspects need to be considered in the focus and development of actions, which address these situations. We are impressed by the variety of efforts and tools that have been developed to address bullying and mobbing in the academy. Due to space, we will discuss three that recognize the multicausal nature of these issues and illustrate the range of possibilities.

Policies and Procedures Policies and their associated procedures are codifications of desired conduct and practices, as reflected in a university’s mission, vision, and values specifically, and academe more broadly. Policies provide the framework for solving problematic situations and managing risk (Meacham & Gaff, 2006). A frequent concern noted in the literature is that many of the situations described occurred in a context that lacked or had ineffective policies (Westhues, 2007). This resulted in situations in which responses to issues of bullying and mobbing were either nonexistent or inconsistently applied, often strongly dependent on the relationship of administrators to the parties involved (Friedenberg et al., 2009). In recent years, there has been great interest in the development of policies regarding civility and respect at universities (Keashly & Wajngurt, 2016). This interest has been accompanied by deep and necessary concern for protected speech and academic freedom. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) provide thoughtful and passionate critiques of the structure and content of policies focused on influencing conduct and speech. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has also weighed in on policies in other workplaces that seek to restrict certain expressions of speech and conduct as they pertain to concerted activity (Kaiser, 2014). Clearly, there are many rights, voices, and interests that need to be considered in the development of such policies. Given shared governance, policies affecting academic members require the central involvement of faculty in discerning the nature of the issues, and the policies and practices to address them. The nature of faculty involvement in policy development has implications for whether the policy will be grounded in a deep understanding of academic freedom and, thus, accepted and implemented appropriately and effectively. We encourage those who are interested in pursuing such policies

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to read Ken Westhues’s (2007) article on the process of policy development. A good example of a policy that reflects these considerations is the University of South Carolina policy on workplace bullying (University of South Carolina (USC), 2014). The impetus for the policy came from faculty who, over a number of years, had expressed concern about problematic behaviors and confrontations among faculty and the need to establish standards of conduct (Jim Augustine, University Ombudsman, personal communication, October 28, 2013). The Faculty Welfare Committee of the Faculty Senate developed the policy, consulting with faculty and administrators in the process. The policy was approved by the Faculty Senate in late 2013 and became university policy in February 2014. While a detailed discussion of this policy is beyond the scope of this chapter, we would like to highlight several features that we believe reflect the deep consideration of the needs and rights of faculty as well as the institution. First, the policy was positioned as an expression of the Carolinian Creed, which is a statement of the ideals for conduct for the community of scholars. Bullying was positioned as antithetical to these ideals. Second, recognizing that distinguishing bullying from conflict and other forms of challenging engagement that one would expect in academe was critical, they crafted a definition of bullying that required a “high standard for misconduct,” specifically that it had to be severe and pervasive behavior. Workplace bullying is repeated, unwelcome severe and pervasive behavior that intentionally threatens, intimidates, humiliates, or isolates the targeted individual or undermines his or her reputation or job performance (USC, p. 1). Third, the policy provides for informal and formal processes for resolution, recognizing that a range of concerns may be brought forward, some of which may be resolved informally. Fourth, peer review is enshrined as a core process in the formal complaint process. Given our discussion of the unique normative expectations for faculty conduct, it is important that fellow faculty be involved in this discernment. Peer review manifests in two ways: (1) the role of faculty civility advocate and (2) an investigative committee of tenured faculty. The faculty civility advocate (FCA) is a tenured faculty member appointed by the provost in consultation with the chair of the Faculty Senate. The FCA is the first step in the formal complaint process. This individual is trained in recognition and investigation of workplace bullying and strategies for resolving conflicts. They serve as an independent party in resolving complaints. They are empowered to work with parties and relevant administrators to resolve valid complaints. If complaints are not resolved at this level or if the complaints are repeated or egregious, they move further in the process, which is the Office of Provost. It is at this point that the second peer review process comes into play. The provost will appoint an ad hoc investigative

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committee of five tenured members of the faculty (full professors) and the tenured librarians. Three members are to come from the Faculty Committee on Professional Conduct (a committee of the Faculty Senate). The purpose of the investigative committee is to determine whether bullying has occurred as defined by policy and to suggest remedies. The committee report is then sent to the provost, who directs final action. Thus, this policy is notable as one developed by and for faculty and reflective of faculty needs and rights.

The Power of Community Involvement The next two initiatives are grounded in the idea of the power and responsibility of institutional members as a community for the manifestation of the climate and culture of the institution through their actions.

Facilitating conversations: Toxic Friday The development and implementation of the USC policy illustrates the importance of engaging faculty and other institutional members in many, many conversations about what the issues are and how best to address them. A very interesting approach for establishing these conversations is illustrated by an initiative called “Toxic Friday,” which was developed by the Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence at the University of Alaska Anchorage (Roderick, 2016). This book and its accompanying video were developed to be a resource for faculty, administrators, and other academic leaders to raise awareness of, and facilitate conversations about, problematic and toxic behaviors that occur in academic departments with an eye to jointly developing strategies that would lead to substantive climate and cultural change in the way faculty and others engaged one another, particularly in conflict. For several years, the UAA Difficult Dialogues Initiative has focused on helping faculty learn to introduce and manage difficult dialogues in their classrooms. Throughout these discussions, Roderick and her colleagues at the center were often asked for advice on how to address difficult situations with colleagues. In its first incarnation, Toxic Friday was an interactive theater presentation depicting a variety of toxic faculty behaviors. The screenplay was based on interviews with faculty across campus about difficult situations they had encountered and found themselves at a loss as to how to respond. This presentation and subsequent facilitated discussion provided the opportunity for the audience to engage in conversation with the actors and with each other regarding what they had seen, what was problematic and why, and what opportunities were there to “change the scene.” Based on this success, Roderick and her colleagues have recorded the play and developed the book as a resource for the academic community writ large.

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What is particularly appealing about this initiative is that it embraces faculty experiences and harnesses their desire to be more constructively engaged in addressing these issues. As Roderick (2016) notes, “faculty-driven problems are best addressed by faculty-driven solutions” (p. 1).

Building peer efficacy through bystander training This next initiative focuses on the fact that bullying and mobbing often occurs in the presence or with the knowledge of others, that is, other faculty. As we know from the research on academic mobbing, other faculty can become drawn in as the dynamics progress (Westhues, 2006). Others may remain uninvolved, sometimes because they are uncertain what to do and whether it will make a positive difference (Keashly & Neuman, 2013). Thus, another focus of action is leveraging colleague influence to address extant bullying and mobbing situations by developing faculty skills and confidence in intervention to help faculty become active and constructive bystanders. Bystander training has been utilized on university campuses, most often focused on students engaging their peers around high-risk behavior such as drinking and sexual violence (e.g., Banyard, Plante, & Moynihan, 2004) and responding to prejudiced and discriminatory behavior (e.g., Ashburn-Nardo, Morris, & Goodwin, 2008) These trainings are grounded in the five-step bystander decision-making model developed by Latané and Darley (1970). That is, a bystander must (1) notice a behavior; (2) assess whether it is problematic and thus requires action; (3) discern whether it is their responsibility to take action; (4) choose action(s); and (5) implement those actions. We were inspired by this work and its success in leveraging peer pressure in constructive ways. This “power of peers” was made visible to us in our 2008 study (Keashly & Neuman, 2008), when we found that many witnesses actually tried multiple actions to ameliorate hostile situations, indicating that peers were in fact willing to help. Thus, we believe that there is tremendous opportunity to constructively address bullying and mobbing by engaging faculty in deliberate constructive peer influence, or suasion (AAUP, 1999). As a result, I (Loraleigh) have developed bystander training for faculty. Briefly, the research on the nature and effects of faculty bullying and mobbing is shared with participants. This helps highlight when behaviors become problematic (Notice) and when harm is likely, and thus action is needed (Assess). This is a critical part of the workshop because, as we have indicated earlier, many behaviors can be framed as part of the cut and thrust of academic debate and, thus, “normal” faculty behavior. Discussion among participants about when a behavior or interaction moves from being challenging to destructive surfaces the discussion of normative expectations and the principle of academic freedom. This leads into

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the discussion of colleagues’ responsibility for taking action. In this segment, we focus on building the case for faculty ability; peer responses as communications of norms of conduct; the costs of not responding for themselves (guilt, strained relationships with targets, toxic work environments); and, most importantly, their responsibility as a peer in a self-managing professional community to respond (Responsibility). Assuming accepted responsibility, the focus is then on identifying goals for action (e.g., disrupting situation, preventing damage, enforcing professional norms, changing the environment; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004; White & Malkowski, 2014) and the consideration of possible actions ranging from low involvement to high involvement and from immediate to later action (Bowes-Sperry & O’Leary-Kelly, 2005) to achieve those goals (Choose action). It is in this section that discussion of mobbing is raised. Real-life scenarios are utilized for applying and practicing these steps (Taking action). To date, these trainings have been piloted at four institutions and are continuing to evolve. Preliminary responses indicate that faculty participants find the training useful and feel more confident that they can take an action that will influence the course of problematic interactions in more constructive directions.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have attempted to provide the best current research and thinking related to workplace bullying and mobbing in institutions of higher education. We have highlighted the importance of considering the context in which all forms of human behavior occur and discussed many contextual factors that are unique to the academy. These factors include, but are not limited to, the unique role of faculty, the culture of academe, and the structural features and pressures of universities, and higher education in particular. Throughout our presentation, we have included a substantial number of references to current and seminal peer-reviewed empirical and conceptual literature and citations for trade publications and Web-based material. Should the muse strike, readers will have ample opportunity to satisfy their desires for more detail than we have room for in this chapter. We have also provided our own context for interpreting and assessing statistical data related to the nature, prevalence, and consequences of bullying and mobbing—not just in higher education but across the range of workplaces in which these behaviors occur. Specifically, we highlighted the challenges of capturing accurate data given the variety of measures and methodologies that have been, and continue to be, employed in this stream of research. Many of us pursuing research in this field have been calling for consensus definitions and valid measures for the past 20 years. While some progress has been made,

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more has to be done before we can feel confident in the statistical conclusions that we draw about bullying and mobbing across organizational settings. Having said this, we do believe that the evidence clearly demonstrates that aggressive behaviors generally and bullying and mobbing in particular are unfortunate and damaging aspects of our daily experience in academe in need of effective action. We concluded our chapter by providing exemplars of policies, practices, and intervention techniques. These are meant to serve as examples rather than as prescriptive. Over the past 20 years, we have engaged in a number of research and consulting activities, and we are confident of one thing. One size does not fit all. Effective interventions are not administered; rather, they are designed, executed, and assessed by the very people they are meant to help. But being mindful of the types of behaviors subsumed under the headings of bullying and mobbing and understanding the underlying acts that motivate or inhibit such behavior are critically important. To that end, we believe that the present volumes, and hopefully our own contribution, will provide some guidance in thinking about, and dealing with, these pernicious phenomena.

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Public Service Sector and the Role of Unions Gregory Sorozan

Public sector workplaces are those federal, state, municipal, county, city, or town agencies, departments, commissions, or boards whose purpose and intent is defined by statute or regulation. They are typically funded by taxes and other forms of public revenue. Public sector workplaces are also more likely than their private sector counterparts to have unions and collective bargaining agreements. This mix renders public sector workplaces uniquely different from their private and nonprofit counterparts. Unfortunately, bullying and mobbing behaviors are hardly strangers to the public sector workplace. In fact, they can be every bit as destructive as in the other employment sectors. Accordingly, this chapter will explore bullying and mobbing in public sector employment and the potential role of labor unions to be part of the solution. I will be drawing significantly upon my experience in public sector employment and public sector labor relations, informed by graduate training and professional experience in mental health counseling. I have also been building a record of dealing with bullying and mobbing situations in my role as a senior union official. I have served since May 2000 as the president of a local union for the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) with representation of approximately 4,000 bargaining unit members. What was first intended as an opportunity to fashion contract language designed to address bullying in the workplace has turned into a second career representing Massachusetts state employees in all manner of contract disputes and labor activities, including bullying complaints.

SETTING THE STAGE As of this writing, there is currently no direct legal liability for workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States. Public sector employment

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systems, however, may address some of these behaviors through employer policies, collective bargaining, and the inclusion of antibullying language in union contract provisions. Although impacted by public laws, public policies, public procedures, and public funding, work practices that are hostile, humiliating, and intimidating continue to exist in federal, state, and municipal government workplaces. Numerous factors contribute to workplaces that may be abusive to the public servant, some of which are shared with for-profit workplaces. However, perhaps more overtly than in the private sector, politics and political will are inherently significant contributors to the day-to-day workings of public sector workplaces. Public agencies often undergo changes in their missions and cultures as a result of the election of new public officials. The political will of the people is translated down by the elected official, agency head, or commissioner to the public servant, who must act in compliance with changes in policy, procedures, rules, and relationships. Between the victorious candidate and the public servant are layers of career administrators and managers who continue to be charged with the management of the agency. Their actions are not so easily observed, but they control the information to and from the public servant and back to the top administrator of the agency. They influence the relationships between different strata of employees within their agency. Unions can play a key role in ensuring that the intended mission and goals of the agency are carried out in an efficient, transparent, and fair manner. In representation of their members, unions serve as a check and balance to unbridled ambitions of individuals that run contrary to contract, to labor laws, and to state and federal laws. Unions, by collective bargaining agreements, collectively bargain over the terms and conditions of employment through a negotiation process. The union is empowered by its members to represent their interests in the workplace. Bullying in the workplace can be understood to exist on the abusive end of the spectrum for power and control in the work environment. One fundamental interest of all working people is that of working in a healthy workplace.

OBLIGATIONS OF UNIONS The National Labor Relations Act (2016) empowers unions to organize employees and negotiate for them with their employer. In its opening paragraph, the NLRA states, “Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy” (para. 1).

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Individual states have borrowed from the NLRA and forged their own collective bargaining laws. In Massachusetts, this appears in the form of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 150E (2016): Employees shall have the right of self-organization and the right to form, join, or assist any employee organization for the purpose of bargaining collectively through representatives of their own choosing on questions of wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment, and to engage in lawful, concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, free from interference, restraint, or coercion. (para. 1) Behaviors and practices at work that are hostile, humiliating, or intimidating and that adversely impact the job performance of the employee are exactly those practices that collective bargaining laws were meant to address. Unions may negotiate changes to the terms and conditions of employment that negatively impact their members. When such terms and conditions adversely impact the functioning of the agency in completing its stated mission and goals, there is even greater reason to intervene and to effect changes that are beneficial for both sides. In 2009, NAGE, representing some 12,000 state employees in Massachusetts, successfully negotiated a “mutual respect” provision for its contract bargaining agreement (CBA) with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The author drafted and negotiated the provision, drawing upon the work of Suffolk University law professor David Yamada and working with NAGE’s principle negotiator, Kevin Preston. Article 6A states, The Commonwealth and the Union agree that mutual respect between and among managers, employees, co-workers and supervisors is integral to the efficient conduct of the Commonwealth’s business. Behaviors that contribute to a hostile, humiliating or intimidating work environment, including abusive language or behavior, are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Employees who believe they are subject to such behavior, and who want to pursue the matter, shall raise their concerns with an appropriate manager or supervisor as soon as possible, but no later than ninety (90) days from the occurrence of the most recent incident(s). In the event the employee(s) concerns have been formally raised at the agency level and are not addressed within a reasonable period of time, the employee or the Union may file a grievance at step III of the grievance procedure as set forth in Article 23 (notice shall be sent concurrently to the Agency Head or designee). If an employee, or

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the Union, requests a hearing at step III, such hearing shall be granted. Grievances filed under this section shall not be subject to the arbitration provisions set forth in Article 23. No employee shall be subject to discrimination for filing a complaint, giving a statement, or otherwise participating in the administration of this process. (National Association of Government Employees, 2014, p. 17) Since adopting Article 6A, union intervention in instances of bullying in the workplace has proven to be a resounding success. The terms of the article caused the labor relations arm of state government to take seriously egregious and abusive behaviors and to follow through with investigations of complaints filed by bargaining unit members. A complaint that factually explains the claimed hostility, humiliation, or intimidation is a key factor toward a successful investigation. Teasing out the specific behaviors, however, can often be complicated by the trauma experienced by the target. To some degree, discussing the behaviors opens up fresh wounds currently held in check to varying degrees, an experience clinically known as retraumatization (see chapter 13 for more information). When abusive behaviors are carefully enacted by a perpetrator, the target often lacks sufficient perspective or language to identify and describe the unexpected, often shocking, and uncalled-for mistreatment. Targets’ responses to abusive behaviors vary from case to case. One very common and maladaptive response to bullying in public sector employment is to go over the head of an abusive supervisor. This has sometimes proven to be a big mistake. Without specific recognition of abusive supervisory actions by management, and without policies, procedures, and practices to investigate those actions built into the day-to-day functioning of the agency, supervisors and managers quickly close ranks against the complainant. The target is often driven out of employment.

PUBLIC SECTOR WORKPLACES AND THEIR SYSTEMS Public sector work encompasses federal, state, municipal, and county governmental entities. At each of these levels of government, there is a separation of power and an inherent system of checks and balances on the use of powers and authority, ideally for the benefit of citizens. The executive, whether it be the president in the federal structure, a governor in the state structure, or a mayor in the city or town structure, oversees the executive branch agencies and has a direct line of authority to the administrator of the agency or department. In the federal government, the extension of authority can most easily be seen by the reporting nature of the cabinet secretaries to the president.

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Such a grouping of agencies or functions under a direct appointee of the chief administrator may also be evidenced at the state level, as with the secretariat structure within state government. An example of this from Massachusetts is the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), headed by the secretary of the EOHHS and overseeing 14 state agencies. As of 2014, the number of public employees (public servants) employed within Massachusetts, and overseen by the governor, was approximately 63,000 (Governing, 2016). (To put this in some perspective, in 2014, the president of the United States oversaw approximately 2.66 million federal employees, exclusive of uniformed military personnel (Office of Personnel Management, n.d.).) The legislature maintains oversight of the agency through the budget process and committee hearings. Ideally, each public agency is scrutinized to ensure its compliance with the enabling legislation, other applicable laws, and the demands of the public. Logic dictates that they all do their jobs as described, while communicating their actions up and down the chains of authority, contributing to an agency that functions smoothly, efficiently, and consistently with directives from the top. Of course, it does not necessarily work that way. When necessary, the judicial branch interprets the pertinent laws. Because of this balance of power between the three branches of government, the theory holds that the will of the people will be more fairly carried out and that the power to control and influence the public will be more fairly distributed and used for the public good and not for individual glory or personal gain. Public sector unions operate against this backdrop. Unions, enabled by collective bargaining laws, provide for the collective rights of individual working people to be brought to the attention of their management or administrators to bargain for fair and humane treatment while carrying out their work. Unions offer another balance to the power that may be misapplied by an individual supervisor who does not take into consideration the very real and human needs of those actually doing the work of the people. The checks and balances enacted through the process of negotiating a union collective bargaining agreement are intended to put labor and management on the same page within the four corners of the contract. The CBA codifies how employees are to be treated and how they may not be treated. The line between labor and management is more finely drawn when both sides of the labor and management equation are held to account for abuse.

GRIEVANCE PROCESSES When labor and management disagree over the interpretation of contract language and its application to specific infractions, a grievance process is

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the normal practice for resolving the dispute. Most CBAs provide for informal resolution of grievances at the early stages. At this juncture, labor and management sit down together with the grievant to apply relevant contract language to the matter being grieved. Management may decide that the facts of the matter fall correctly within the agreed upon terms of the contract and change its decision, thereby finding in favor of the grievant. Potentially, facts brought out in a meeting between labor and management, applied to relevant provisions of the CBA, can lead to a changed workplace labor decision. When dealing with public employers, the individual worker is often exposed to an ever-changing landscape of new people with differing degrees of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Political, social, and cultural changes should influence what the agency does and how it achieves its ends. Again, in theory, in a democracy, those changes should be more quickly integrated due to the involvement of its citizens up and down the public service chain. Theory and reality do not always coincide.

CHALLENGES IN UNION REPRESENTATION OF BULLYING AND MOBBING TARGETS As stated above, unions should be behaviorally specific when describing bullying for reporting purposes. Recognizing and teasing out the specific behaviors in such a way as to paint a moving picture with words, while staying away from jargonistic expressions that are conclusive and not behaviorally descriptive, is of primary importance to uncovering abusive supervisory behaviors. To develop this narrative, targets of bullying and mobbing quite often need a patient and accepting listener to discern the details through the pain, frustration, opinions, and other feelings engendered by the abuse they may have suffered. Such a quality of presence demands clarity of thinking and perceptual awareness on the part of the intervener. Skills in interviewing are tested by interviewees who are usually experiencing some degree of trauma. Trust immediately becomes an issue upon engaging and interviewing a target. A common phenomenon after trust is established is for the target to begin spilling volumes of information in the form of a running dialogue: He said, she said, then that person said and I reacted this way, and the next day, and my husband told me, and so forth. It is usually during this stage that I find it most helpful to attend to the behavioral and factual details reported and to name a cluster or pattern of harmful behaviors for the reference of the interviewee. This helps to focus on the main factual points requiring investigation for the problem to be more thoroughly understood and ultimately remedied.

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In one case involving six members of a personnel unit of a hospital, I heard story after story alleging how their manager of nine months had been mistreating them, micromanaging them, withholding sick and vacation leave benefits from employees, issuing orders contrary to established policies, and adding additional work to their already busy daily schedule by creating a daily checklist and accounting of work for the day. The manager expounded in staff meetings how she was going to rewrite the policy book for the hospital and that it would become a model for the state. This was not part of her job responsibilities. Despite the presence in the group of six experienced human service professionals who had won awards for their outstanding work performances, the new manager wanted to fix a work unit that was not really broken to prove that she was a really great manager. In fact, this was the first time she was managing or supervising others in her 20 plus years of work experience. It was also a new assignment after having worked in a specialty position with another state agency for most of her career. Her management style included • Micromanaging generally; • Not completing her actual responsibilities for signing off on personnel transactions; • Creating duplicative and unnecessary work processes; • Treating her staff harshly and speaking to them as though they were children; • Finding fault in work products where there was none; and • Ignoring longstanding policies of personnel practices and ordering her staff to do things differently. In public sector work, union attempts to gain information about individual managers are often routinely resisted. The walls go up and lines are drawn at the hint of a problem. Despite these challenges, the outcome of the union grievance in this case was that the manager was ordered to go to training and to be tutored by a senior-level manager. Her abusive behaviors toward her staff diminished sufficiently according to reports of her unit members. Sick time usage was greatly reduced by the entire unit, and she was more closely watched by the administration of the agency. She ultimately left the agency approximately one year after the investigation.

BEHAVIORAL PATTERN RECOGNITION Bullying behaviors usually emerge into patterns of control over time. The degree of abusiveness also emerges in relation to the degree to which the subordinate attempts to resist orders and directions that are contrary to past

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expectations and often contrary to the mission of the agency, as with the example above. Orders that are contrary to the goals and objectives of work should be a red flag to people more senior in the organization. In public sector employment, it is not at all uncommon to find a superior making orders that are “busy making” or askew of a more direct approach toward getting the work done. For example, I became familiar with a situation in which one manager ordered an entire department of 60 experienced information technology (IT) professionals to take part in mandatory training in basic personnel topics, such as sexual harassment, violence in the workplace, and employee benefits, in lieu of the planned (and budgeted) “crosstraining” in C++ and other Web and database programming skills needed for the IT staff to support the new Web-based architecture that was central to the new agency Web site. The human resources training was generic, expected to be completed yearly, and could have easily been done at a later time. Meanwhile, the entire IT department was working under a tight time frame with their consultants to tie the old databases into the new Web-based data servers. The risk to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was huge, in terms of both the loss of bond monies to pay for the development of the Web-based data services and the fact that the old system handled a quarterly flow of more than $200 million. This mandated basic training was used as a whip to force staff into scheduling conflicts and thereby further discredit them. This bully knew of his staff’s dedication. They questioned being ordered to go to sexual harassment training when they had been pleading for a correctly developed cross-training schedule to participate in during the conversion crunch. Chaos and resentment were created by this assistant director and with the tacit approval of the director of the group. The harder they worked, the more they fell behind. Two group meetings, numerous individual interviews, and a behavioral survey of union members revealed a truly Machiavellian pattern of authoritarian control. The manager could not have been further from the task at hand. The facts showed that he worked extra hard at creating conflicts and scheduling problems while trying to prove how state workers were not up to the task. The manager was seen giving a tour of the IT operations to a group of individuals and explaining how he knew how to handle state workers. It was later confirmed that the manager was attempting to drive the state workers out of their jobs to hire, in their place, former associates from a consulting group. His actions were oblivious to the threat of losing $11 million of contracted services based on achieving very specific database targets within a predetermined timeline for rolling out the new system. With all of the evidence gathered and presented to the administration of the agency, the manager was walked out of the building under police escort.

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SYSTEMS WITHIN SYSTEMS In my work, I take a systems approach to understanding problems brought to my attention. In public sector work, many differing systems impinge upon the day-to-day work of public employees. The political system is perhaps the largest influence. Politics translate to budget. Budget controls resources, people, technology, oversight, and most everything connected to the daily work of the public employee. In the story shared above, a well-meaning political decision led to a very poorly written contract for Web site development and database conversion. The resulting confusion provided ample opportunity for the selection of an incompetent director, who in turn selected an incompetent and manipulative assistant director who wreaked havoc on an entire IT department. It took a behavioral survey to bring the problems to light and to the attention of the chief administrative staff. The survey, coupled with the threat of loss of $11 million in bond money, caused the assistant director to be literally walked out the front door. Also, the director ultimately left the agency after righting the IT contract and getting his group settled on a more correct course of action.

PUBLIC SYSTEM AND POLITICS In public employment systems, many senior positions become open when the party in power changes. The new appointees, in turn, hire friends, and the friends hire friends. In many federal and state government agencies, civil service systems exist to maintain a competent core of midlevel managers and personnel with a sense of shared agency history and knowledge of fundamental agency practices. Civil service systems can also help to reduce the use of political patronage. Ideally, this core group is sufficiently qualified and experienced to educate new senior administrators and to help the agency avoid mistakes through an understanding of past trials and errors. In Massachusetts, civil service has helped to create a midlevel administrative core serving different state administrations going back to the 1970s. This dual approach to making appointments creates factions in public workplaces and an ever-increasing cadre of higher-salaried managerial jobs. My particularly favorite scenario is when there is one bargaining unit professional being “supervised” by four or five highly paid managers. Yet, when problems in the workplace make it into the newspapers, subordinate bargaining unit members are invariably ridiculed and blamed for driving up the costs of state government. Either political party is complicit in driving up the costs for government through a political spoils system maintained by complicit agreement and exclusive of a more objective measure of competence. Whenever competency-based measures for the selection of managers are used at

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an agency level, the higher paid “rulers” are exempt. This is a perk of power. The default decider for agency efficacy is the election process. Should the malfunctioning of any agency make it to the level where that agency appears on the front page of the newspapers and then into the political debate, we see the lines drawn by the pundits, and political debate begins anew. People presumably come to their work because they are qualified and have passed the scrutiny of their hiring authority. We are products of past experiences and systems. The education system and the family system leave their impact on the individual, whether that person is an administrator or manager or a subordinate employee. The screening done during the hiring process for a subordinate bargaining unit job is more likely to ensure competent performance. By contrast, a less formal process is often used to assess potential competence for a senior administrative or managerial job, especially if the individual has not worked his or her way up the ladder within the agency. In a noteworthy case of rampant bullying of an entire small state agency, the newly appointed commissioner appeared to have convinced the new governor of his skills in managing people. He immediately began a reign of terror toward all 30 or so “do-nothing state employees.” He treated everyone with an equal share of contempt, regardless of their years of service, age, sex, national origin, or sexual orientation. Because of the indiscriminate nature of his abusive behavior, the union was able to obtain corroborated testimony from virtually all of the staff about the horrible working conditions and tirades this man inflicted on them. Racial epithets were among his favorite forms of communication. He was known for saying out loud, “Hey! Send in the &#$%@!” My union attempted to present our detailed findings of numerous complaints to the governor’s staff, but we were rebuffed. It was only when we threatened going to the press with the story that the commissioner was quickly removed from his appointed office. It was this case and another high-profile case that paved the way for contract negotiations over the antibullying Mutual Respect Article (6A) that eventually would be included in the NAGE (2014) CBA.

ENABLING BEHAVIORS THAT FAVOR THE BULLY In public service, the bully does not work in a vacuum. Often the bully has an uncanny ability to read others’ behavioral patterns and exploit those around them in the name of change. It is not at all uncommon for a new manager to quickly identify the most “successful” worker and use that target as a shining example for what is wrong at work. By taking down the best, the message very quickly becomes that the bully wields the power. Splitting off the target from past relationships on the job further isolates the target and plants a message for others to understand. Therefore, the single most

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destructive enabler of a bully in the workplace is the silence of witnesses to grave injustices. One assistant director of an agency with 40 employees was an attorney who had a unique ability to keep herself in the position of arbiter and keeper of knowledge for the agency. Its structure was a hybrid between state agency and commission. A board of commissioners would be appointed by the sitting governor for terms not to exceed three years. This meant that each successive governor would be appointing several commissioners with little or no experience in the workings of this oversight agency. The agency director was appointed coterminus with the governor. This left the assistant director in a powerful position because she knew how to ingratiate herself with each newly appointed director by keeping the operation working without apparent incident. She also knew how to coerce her staff into working long hours without asking for due compensation. One of her newly hired attorneys was ready to prove herself and eagerly worked after hours and on weekends along with her in preparing cases for trial or for presentation to the commission. This agency had no complaints coming from any of our bargaining unit members. There was no union steward in place, and for all intents and purposes, it appeared there was no need to fix what was not broken. Things began to unravel when the new attorney became pregnant and needed time to go for prenatal care. This high-performing attorney was quickly deemed unreliable. Use of leave time was denied. She became torn between her need for medical prenatal care and her demanding assistant director. The act of giving birth was deemed the final act of refusal to be the willing slave she had previously been. This attorney suddenly needed to do motherly things and to work normal hours and take sick time and parental leave as a normal and responsive human being. She was denied the use of time, not paid for time, suspended for not complying with job orders, and reviewed on her performance evaluation as performing below expectations. The assistant director publicly advertised her sudden fall from grace, going from a chosen favorite to an outcast, among the entire office. She was used both as an example to the others of being a good employee when she was newly hired and working extraordinary hours and then easily portrayed as a bad employee for not doing what she was hired to do. Of course, the staff of the agency had little sympathy for the person they saw as being held up as an overly ambitious model for others to emulate. The toll this took on the attorney was evidenced by numerous stressrelated illnesses, the questioning of her own judgment, further isolation from colleagues in the agency, and, ultimately, the decision to quit the agency. By the time I was able to involve myself in her problems at work, I was only able to work out a settlement agreement protecting her credentials as an attorney and her professional reputation. It took her another year and a half and

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some therapy for her to find another job, one that she continues in successfully. The bully would drive three more people out of the agency. She was appointed acting director of the agency when the governor had some difficulty finding a permanent successor. She lasted two years in that position and retired from state service. Unfortunately, personalities and power struggles continue to play out at this agency, while the people who actually do the work cope as best they can. It is a lot easier demonstrating an injustice when evidence abounds through the testimony or reports of colleagues and coworkers than by relying upon the report of the target alone. Isolation is a formidable technique for maintaining power and domination over others. In the example above, the workforce had been dominated and repeatedly threatened for years by a true master. Isolation is further enhanced when the bully misrepresents facts to their superiors, thereby creating a context that places the bully as the hero in a drama about wrongful actions in the workplace. In all fairness to administrators and managers, many bullies are extremely good at their game. They have gotten far in life and worked their way toward the top over the broken backs of many people. They are experts at “kissing up and kicking down,” a phrase invoked often by workplace antibullying advocates. Lack of awareness of these bullying behaviors is easy to maintain when vigilance and transparency of operations are lacking. The values that leaders hold often permit an anything goes atmosphere. In the public sector realm, values emerge through the political campaign.

RESILIENCE The inevitable changes that can be expected over time in public service make resilience a valuable trait to possess. Resilience comes from having more successes in life than failures. If a person is told early in life that they are worthless and will amount to nothing, and if that statement is reinforced and internalized, the stage has been set for a pattern of rigidity at work and a heightened sense of defensiveness. Early patterns of inattentiveness and confused orientation toward social norms may minimize the likelihood of successes in subsequent education, training, or work experiences. All staff and managers, administrators, and leaders are influenced by their early development and subsequent education. We are all affected in different ways, and those internalized messages set the stage for how we respond to injustices perpetrated upon ourselves and others. Because of the inevitability of change in public service work due to the many forces driving the work, normal stress is a part of everyday work life. Most employees learn to cope and perhaps even grow with the challenges by participating in training and even in the design of the work they do. A certain

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amount of perseverance is necessary. Such growth under pressure contributes to a sense of resilience. In my experience as a union president dealing with workplace situations, I have formulated this personal equation: Challenge + Knowledge/Action + Grit = Resilience. People make mistakes. Bullying cuts short an employee’s opportunities for trial and error, and the resultant learning contained therein. Bullying robs the employee of the ability to grow and to contribute to the team effort. It strips the employee of any sense of dignity by focusing on weaknesses or by turning positive attributes into deficits.

EXAMPLES OF INTERVENTIONS Bullying by Proxy Some bullies prefer to use others to do their dirty work while maintaining the illusion that they are fair-minded and ethically correct. Their abilities to tap into the darker side of others and exploit them in their dominance over subordinates can be confusing at first, when trying to get to the root cause of the problem. This leads to the challenge of identifying true aggressor participants in a given situation: • The person who abuses their subordinates? • The person who so readily follows the orders of the director? • The director who appears to be following the mandate of the top administrator? • The director and the bully who abuse all who pose a threat to their intentions? Bullying by proxy requires an understanding of the relationships and enabling behaviors of the bullies. A successful intervention may be measured by reports from subordinates that the bullying has stopped, through measurements of peripheral indicators such as reduced sick leave usage, improved productivity, reduced time for completion of projects, and so on. For example, I became familiar with a situation involving a high-ranking public agency administrator who held a grudge against one of the more competent information technology professionals because he believed that he was not being given enough attention for his IT needs compared to that provided to administrators in the other divisions. He ordered the director of IT, who was subordinate to the administrator, to review the IT professional harshly, refuse him vacation time, and change his job assignments more frequently. The director of IT complied and used the opportunity to attempt to drive the professional out of work to hire someone he knew personally. At no point

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did the director of the IT unit speak up for the professional, who had actually been following orders and attending to the priorities of the director for delivery of service to the five different divisions. An investigation of the complaint brought under the mutual respect provision of the collective bargaining agreement was able to demonstrate that the bargaining unit IT professional was acting in accordance with his instructions. The complainant’s sick time was restored to him, and he was no longer threatened with disciplinary action for doing his job. The administrator retired after about one year, and the director of IT was terminated for other larger reasons in addition to this instant matter. Monitoring ordered change is particularly important when the origin of a bullying problem appears complex. The very process of intervention needs review and adjustment if the system is to change positively and in line with the mission of the agency. Often, the very mission of the agency is adversely affected by the actions of the bully. The twist that a bully’s behaviors are often at odds with the mission of the agency never ceases to amaze. The incongruence between the bully’s actions and “good management” can be startling. For example, consider the case of a target who may have expected understanding and clarity of direction from the director in a child protection agency, but who instead was subjected to intimidation, humiliation, conflicting orders, and threats on a daily basis. This worker was sent the very clear message that abusive and dismissive treatment of staff is permissible, at least by the director.

Peer-to-Peer Bullying According to a 2014 national scientific survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), approximately 10 percent of bullying incidents in the general workplace population involve peer-to-peer abuse (Namie, 2014). In some of these cases, a bully will solicit others to harm and control a colleague, thereby creating a mobbing situation. Public service is not exempt from such dynamics. In a public service and union setting, such behaviors occasionally crop up. It is most unfortunate when the bully has volunteered to be a union shop steward and uses the resulting workplace relationships and positional power to cause harm toward fellow union members. This kind of behavior is and should be contrary to virtually any set of union bylaws and should be deemed antilabor at its core. A great deal of faith is given to anyone who agrees to be of service to their colleagues through stewardship in a union. A union shop steward should be fair and objective to all members and must represent all members through the terms and conditions of the collective bargaining agreement. A steward should not act in a self-serving manner. A steward is expected to consult

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with the union president, national representative, or union executive board in determining how to handle situations involving members. In this way, problematic situations are better understood, and strategies for intervention and correction can be undertaken. Such oversight and guidance are all in the name of teamwork. Final accountability rests with the president of the union local. Hopefully, the president has not permitted a bully to take the role of steward, but it happens. All too often, I have observed a reluctance on the part of certain union administrations to become involved in reports of peer-to-peer bullying, some of which suggest violations of the antibullying mutual respect provision in our CBA. A superficial and feigned confusion by management often accompanies directives to the local president to simply put a stop to the bullying behaviors. On the surface, such an attitude seems somewhat logical; perhaps member-to-member bullying is not something management “should” be concerning itself about. Such an assumption cannot be further from reality. Union members are not employees of the union. In Massachusetts, they are agency employees with contractual protections, and they are obliged to uphold a code of conduct and the agency’s personnel policies. Suppose, then, that one member is seeking dominion over another. That member is creating the hostile, humiliating, or intimidating work environment within that workplace. The complaint begs for proper investigation and resolution, just like other forms of bullying. Accountability for violations of policy and codes of conduct is totally within the agency’s domain as a public employer, to be handled through normal applications of corrective action and progressive discipline. The union is in the position of ensuring that the evidence gathered in the investigatory stage is properly weighted and applied and that the remedy is just and fair.

Subordinate-to-Manager Bullying In rare instances, a subordinate (and union member) may act abusively and in a controlling manner toward his or her boss. In public service, this scenario is potentially more likely due to the political nature of public service. When governors and administrations change, other changes to the workforce trickle down, whereby sometimes positions are made or allocated for campaign “friends” of the administration assuming control. This patronage happens frequently enough to occasionally erupt into workplace issues. Often the patronage comes in with a sense of entitlement due to connections with the new administration, and the new hire proceeds to let people know it. Such attitudes may dissipate after the reality of the job demands sink in to the new arrival.

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One such issue arose through a complaint filed under the mutual respect provision of the CBA by a union member against her manager. The crux of the problem centered on her being asked to comply with the standard start and end times for a workday. The new bargaining unit member alleged that the manager was treating everyone in the unit unfairly and in a hostile and controlling manner. The complaint appeared to be supported with evidence for the complainant’s charges. She was articulate and had certain family obligations that allegedly were not being considered in scheduling her work. However, my investigation and a survey of the entire 13-person work unit revealed that it was the union member who was acting in very hostile and intimidating manner toward all. She apparently could not get along with anyone in the unit. She wanted to come and go as she pleased and to decide what work she performed. The manager, upon being interviewed, could not have been a more accommodating and fair-minded person. He had demonstrated a six-month history of trying to accommodate her changing needs, provided training in topics she had identified, and held group meetings designed to better facilitate the working of the unit. The member resigned after realizing she could not manipulate her employer and her union into being allowed to come and go as she pleased and not be charged for the time taken. Apparently, she had been given her job because a relative was an elected state official and wanted to help her out. A couple of points need to be raised about this misuse of contract provisions by a union member. First, it happens occasionally. A small subset of individuals can be extraordinarily narcissistic, manipulative, and quite capable of framing a situation to their personal advantage. A union can be drawn into disputes very easily. Second, managers in public service are mostly outside of the contract and are usually appointed to their positions after submitting to a cursory background check and resume review. If someone high up in the administration wants to appoint their person to a management position, they can do it. All managers are not equal, however. Third, those who intervene from the union’s perspective must be sharply focused on the facts and not be captive to their individual beliefs and prejudices. Self-awareness does not come to all who work for a union or in an administrative or managerial capacity. In this instance, although a union member had filed a complaint about a manager, the facts did not support the complaint. When confronted with the facts, the member chose to leave, following a tumultuous year on the job. The union was left with a complaint that could only be closed out. There remained nothing for the union to do. As it turned out, another person was hired into the position on the merits of her potential, and she fit in very nicely with the unit, performing her responsibilities reliably and competently while enjoying the safeguards of the CBA.

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IMPACT OF SUCCESS Public Services Measuring success in ameliorating bullying in public service can be achieved with a before, during, and after snapshot assessment of events, behaviors, and work product. Testimony of affected individuals helps to round out an evaluation of an intervention or change. For example, one new assistant commissioner remained unknown to his group of employees for six months. These employees were responsible for giving a double review of protective safety assessments in nursing facilities. During that time, he was charged with making changes to the system that ensured the safety of nursing home residents by streamlining the operations and shortening the review process. The current system had been backed up and overwhelmed with first and second reviews. The unit had lost a supervisor and several reviewers due to illnesses. Within two months of assuming his position, the assistant commissioner issued a memo with a directive changing the review process, dropping it from two reviews to one review. The unit supervisor never implemented the directives of the memo with her staff reviewers. The reviewers remained working feverishly to reduce the growing backlog of first reviews to move on to the second reviews. At six months, the assistant commissioner saw no change in statistics and told his two managers and one supervisor that the unit was to have a meeting in which he would fix the problem. Eight reviewers, one supervisor, and two managers were called to a meeting. Staff members were not told what the meeting was about. The meeting began without introductions. Staff had never met their new top administrator. They were not aware of his memo on changing the reviews. The assistant commissioner and managers chatted amicably as the group assembled. Then the assistant commissioner abruptly began to yell at the staff members for not doing their work. He blamed them for their alleged inefficiencies and shamed them for not earning their salaries. When staff tried to give their side—citing short staffing, lack of a supervisor, working through lunch and evenings without pay, coping with illnesses, and filling in for colleagues taking time off—they were told to shut up, work harder, and not make excuses. The fact that the earlier memo never made it to the people who should have changed their work from two reviews to one review was never discussed in the meeting. Reviewers were in shock at having met the new assistant commissioner for the first time since his appointment. The union was contacted the next day. A meeting was held with the reviewers to clarify the facts, and a group complaint was filed against the assistant commissioner and his managers. The reasoning was simply that the workers did not want to be treated in this manner anymore.

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The resulting investigation involved the testimony of reviewers, the supervisor, the managers, and the assistant commissioner. The investigator found that the complaints were founded, but this was only a single incident. A meeting was called between the assistant commissioner and his union subordinates, with the supposed intent of reviewing the outcome of the investigation and providing a remedy for moving forward, with the workers seeking a simple apology. However, at the meeting, the assistant commissioner offered no acknowledgment of any wrongful behavior. In fact, his apparent purpose in attending the immediate meeting was to impress upon all who attended the significant importance of his job in the agency. He declined to apologize for any of his actions or statements, and he continued to blame the reviewers for not doing their jobs properly. As the union representative, I challenged his accusations, and we ended the meeting. Consequently, the case had to be immediately moved to a grievance hearing, as prescribed by the contract language. Upon receipt of the grievance and discussion of the facts with this union president and the agency investigator, the hearing officer remanded the case back to the agency for remediation of the complaint. The outcomes included the following: (1) the grievants were no longer threatened and intimidated and received an apology of sorts; (2) the bully was spoken with and kept under scrutiny; and (3) the work flow of the agency began to resolve with old reviews completed and a new process in place to expedite the reviews of abuse investigations in nursing facilities for the elderly. Staff had to be “borrowed” from other parts of the agency to help out with all the work.

Creativity and Responsiveness A competent and experienced natural leader in a workplace makes for an ideal target when a new manager or administrator wants to quickly demonstrate power and authority. The choice for the organizational leader is whether past practices will be understood and modified to arrive at new goals or whether the people who are knowledgeable of the work and population will be vilified, punished, and treated as the problems they have been attempting to help resolve. In public employment, I have witnessed how the latter choice triggers a dark, downward spiral. It leads to an ever-increasing defensive workforce that may turn in upon itself in many dysfunctional ways. People are hurt, traumatized, and terminated. Representing members in such dark circumstances is difficult and not without a price. But when a bully is found to be the root cause of such abuses at work, a potentially great opportunity exists for the organization and for the people who work in the organization. Accountability for agency malfunction is often thought of as a one-way street heading toward the lowest common

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denominator, the subordinate public employee. Bullies usually gravitate to positions of power and control over others. When their actions harm others and are reported, and they are held accountable by their own administration, they are left with a choice: change or be changed. The inherent creativeness within the work group may then return after some time and after dealing with the resultant trauma inflicted by the bully.

Finances There is always a cost to an organization abusing its workforce. Collective bargaining laws almost always allow for good faith information requests by the union from the organization. Collecting before and after data about hiring rates, vacancies, and sick time usage in a distressed work unit shows not only some of the systemic impact of bullying in the workplace but also part of the financial cost to the organization. Productivity can usually be measured before and after the insertion of a bully into the workplace. Whenever a new person, be it a subordinate or manager, is added to a work unit, the unit changes in ways to accommodate the new person. My experience of managers who resort to bullying tactics in pursuit of dominance and control of their respective work units is that they are lacking in ability to integrate the mission and goals of the organization into their behaviors for managing others in a humane and respectful manner. The impact of their mismanagement can be measured in medical costs for treating harmed personnel, time lost to sick time or time off the books, plans disrupted, and goals not achieved, as previously described in several examples. The output of the work unit is often severely curtailed by the time that people must take sick time or seriously consider quitting. Finding replacements for individuals who decide to leave the job takes time and the expense of interviewing and training new employees. Workplaces with high turnover, or higher than average turnover, could benefit from an objective exit interview of their personnel only if top administrators are willing to acknowledge the weaknesses in those they may have appointed to positions of authority. I know of very few agencies that solicit this feedback. This makes the role of a union even more crucial in the creation of a healthy workplace.

CONCLUSION People who are allowed to assume power and control over others are often not fit for their responsibilities. In public service, the responsibility for recognizing these mistakes belongs to elected officials and agency heads, with some potential reckoning at the ballot box. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this comes in the form of a gubernatorial election every four years.

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As awareness of bullying in the workplace continues to increase and the impact of bullying is better recognized and understood, the workplace should slowly move toward an environment that does not tolerate abuses. In public employment, this, of course, presumes that agency leaders want an organization that functions with fewer abusive controls. Unions have an inherent role in helping the workplace to see what is actually going on and then to negotiate changes in practice that are more beneficial to both sides. Unions bring a needed balance of power to the table. Contract language that calls for mutual respect and freedom from hostile, humiliating, and intimidating behaviors from anyone at work is a big step. Enacting the antibullying Healthy Workplace Bill (Yamada, 2013), which creates a civil legal claim for severe workplace bullying and offers liabilityreducing incentives for employers to act preventively and responsively toward bullying at work, would actually make it easier for agency heads to promulgate and enforce policies that prevent bullying behaviors. In public sector workplaces, it could help to lessen partisan influence sometimes associated with abusive work situations. The Healthy Workplace Bill would also assist unions in safeguarding their members in the workplace. Even without a negotiated contract provision addressing bullying or mutual respect, a union and the public agency would have to comply with the law, just as they must currently comply with existing sexual harassment and other discrimination laws. Those laws have helped the workplace to be better environments for working as one expects when one begins employment. So too would the law on healthy workplaces (Healthy Workplace Campaign, n.d.) bring the workplace up to a level where mutual respect and informed discourse would serve to guide people toward better achieving the goals determined by leaders. Laws, public policies, rules, codes, and regulations govern public employment. The theory holds that they guide the actual behavior of those individuals hired to conduct the work. Codes of conduct, ethical principles, training, supervision, and management practices are, again theoretically, thought of as further means for guiding behaviors at work toward stated goals. Abusive work practices such as bullying circumvent the expected discourse in the workplace. These behaviors create a cognitive dissonance of sorts, removing a set of learned expectations for more normal behavior at work and replacing them with unexpected, hurtful, and arbitrary demands that frequently undermine the general mission of the agency.

REFERENCES Governing. (2016). States with most government employees: Totals and per capita rates. Retrieved from http://www.governing.com/gov-data/public-workforce-sala ries/states-most-government-workers-public-employees-by-job-type.html

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Healthy Workplace Campaign. (n.d.). Quick facts about the Healthy Workplace Bill. Retrieved from http://healthyworkplacebill.org/bill Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 150 E, §2 (2016). Retrieved from https:// malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXI/Chapter150e/Section2 Namie, G. (2014). 2014 WBI U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http:// workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US-Survey.pdf National Association of Government Employees (NAGE). (2014). Collective bargaining agreement between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the National Association of Government Employees, Unit 6, July 1, 2014–June 30, 2017. Retrieved from http://www.nage.org/login/assets/images/nage%20unit%206.pdf National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151–169 (2016). Office of Personnel Management. (n.d.). Historical federal workforce tables. Retrieved from https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation /federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employ ment-since-1962 Yamada, D. C. (2013). Emerging American legal responses to workplace bullying. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 22(2), 329–354.

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Corporate Sector Kelly H. Kolb and Mary Beth Ricke

Everyone has memories of the grade school bully and the associated dread of encountering the bully during lunch period, on the playground, or on the walk home from school. I [KHK] have memories of a grade school bully who had not materially improved his conduct as of my high school’s 20th reunion. According to a number of studies, many of us are now suffering or seeing bullying in the workplace, and it is affecting employee health and workplace productivity—both issues of concern to employers (Harvey, Heames, Richey, & Leonard, 2006). As a result, bullying has come into increased focus for human resources professionals, particularly as recent surveys indicate that workplace bullying is more prevalent than sexual harassment (Namie, 2007). This chapter will examine the phenomenon of workplace bullying in the U.S. corporate sector, its effects on bullying victims and employers, and its likely causes. Legislative efforts to address workplace bullying will be discussed, along with efforts by various corporate entities and human resource organizations to combat workplace bullying, and the obstacles those efforts are encountering.

WORKPLACE BULLYING GENERALLY Since it was first studied in the 1980s (Leymann, 1990), workplace bullying (or mobbing) has been variously defined (see Appendix A). However it is defined, workplace bullying is generally regarded as deliberate and repeated physical or emotional mistreatment of a person that takes the form of verbal abuse, sabotage of work product, or aggressive conduct that is threatening humiliating, demeaning, or intimidating.

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Typical Bullying Conduct Bullying includes overt aggression (screaming, verbal threats, belittling in front of coworkers, physical contact, use of profanity, etc.) and passiveaggressive conduct (assigning demeaning tasks or undesirable work schedules, isolation, exclusion from critical meetings, denial of necessary resources, and taking credit for the victim’s work; Koonin & Green, 2005; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996).

Frequency of Workplace Bullying Studies suggest that workplace bullying affects a majority of workers in the United States. A recent study suggested that upward of 75 percent of the American workforce suffered from or had witnessed workplace bullying (Fisher-Blando, 2008). A 2014 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), however, found that 27 percent of respondents self-identified as bullying victims and that 21 percent of respondents had witnessed workplace bullying firsthand (Namie, Christensen, & Phillips, 2014). A more recent compilation of studies found, consistent with Namie et al.’s (2014) survey, that 13–36 percent of U.S. employees reported working for a “dysfunctional” supervisor (Rose, Shuck, Twyford, & Bergman, 2015). The Namie, Christensen, and Phillips (2014) and Rose et al. (2015) statistics are consistent with cross-country research conducted in New Zealand (Bentley et al., 2009). However, Bentley and his colleagues also found that the frequency of reported workplace bullying varied significantly from country to country, most likely because of the fluid nature of how workplace bullying is defined and measured. This variation, they concluded, precludes meaningful cross-country comparisons (Bentley et al., 2009).

Geographic and Industry Frequency In the United States, workplace bullying has been found to vary by geographic region. The reported incidence of workplace bullying is highest in the West (41%), followed by the South (38%), the East (35%) and the Central and Great Lakes regions (26%; Namie, 2007). While the Namie (2007) study offers no explanation for these regional differences, it is instructive to note that the Western and Southern regions of the United States generally have the highest per capita number of discrimination charges filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 2014). No U.S. studies have attempted to identify the factors contributing to the geographical variance in reported workplace bullying frequency. However, some researchers have suggested that

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the variation is due to increased awareness of the phenomenon of workplace bullying in certain regions of the country. More detailed data has been generated with respect to the variation in reported frequencies of workplace bullying across industries. Specifically, U.S. studies reveal that the incidence of workplace bullying is highest in the health care (27%), education (23%), and public services (16%) sectors (Namie, 2013). Namie’s findings are consistent with studies from other countries. Australia (which outlawed workplace bullying in 2014) has maintained detailed statistics on bullying complaints submitted to the Australian Fair Work Commission. Australian statistics reveal a remarkably consistent pattern (year over year) of bullying complaints. A majority of the complaints derived from the retail, home care, health care, and educational industries, and almost all complaints concerned managers, groups of managers, coworkers, or groups of coworkers (Australia Fair Work Commission, 2014, 2015).

Employer Size No reliable studies have been conducted in the United States attempting to correlate workplace bullying frequency to the size of the employer. However, data from the Australian Fair Work Commission reveals a remarkably consistent pattern (year over year) of bullying complaints; 44–50 percent of all bullying complaints were lodged against large (more than 100 employees) employers, and 33 percent were lodged against small (1–50 employees) employers. (Australia Fair Work Commission, 2014, 2015). One possible explanation for these findings is that small employers are ill-equipped to recognize and combat workplace bullying, whereas large employers afford bullies organizational cover via diffusion of responsibility.

WORKPLACE BULLYING VICTIMS Studies abound describing the “usual” or “typical” bullying victim. Some have suggested that workplace bullying victims tend to be women (60%), regardless of the gender of the bully (Namie et al., 2014); subordinates whose (perceived) competence poses a threat to superiors (Namie, 2014); or employees who are compassionate, cooperative, and agreeable (Namie et al., 2014). Many victims are simply people pleasers who do not have the desire or skill to defend themselves. For example, former Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Jonathan Martin texted his mother while he was being bullied by teammates: “I figured out a major source of my anxiety. I’m a pushover, a people pleaser. I avoid confrontation whenever I can, I always want everyone to like me. I let people talk about me, say anything to my face, and I just take it, laugh it off, even when I know they are intentionally trying to disrespect me” (Shpigel, 2014).

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Other studies suggest that those at risk for succumbing to workplace bullies are younger or newer workers, workers returning to work from an injury or illness leave, or minorities (Safe Work Australia, 2013). Regardless of how one describes the “typical” victim, anecdotal evidence demonstrates that even employees trained to withstand mental abuse can be negatively affected by bullying. For example, the CIA’s director of Iran operations was removed from his post for bullying his CIA subordinates (Loeb, 2014).

Physical, Emotional, and Employment Effects on Victims A growing body of research suggests that victims of workplace bullying may suffer severe anxiety (76%), PTSD (47%), clinical depression (39%), impaired sleep (71%), impaired concentration (71%), panic attacks (32%), and suicidal thoughts (25%) (Namie, 2003a; Rafferty, Restubog, & Jimmieson, 2010; Safe Work Australia, 2013) and a host of physical ailments, including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, migraines, ulcers, and heart disease (Eisenberger, 2012; Safe Work Australia, 2013). Other victims are paralyzed by shame from being victimized and being unable to do anything about it (Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2007). By way of example, Jonathan Martin’s e-mails to his mother acknowledged he was saddened and ashamed of being bullied: “I used to get verbally bullied every day in middle school and high school, by kids that are half my size. I would never fight back, just get sad & feel like no one wanted to be my friend” (Ley, 2014). Qualitatively, the effect of workplace bulling on a victim has been equated to suddenly losing a loved one (Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002). Victims selfreport that bullying made them feel maimed, beaten, abused, broken, scarred, and eviscerated (Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik, & Alberts, 2006) and that they felt like a slave, a prisoner, or a heartbroken lover (Tracy et al., 2006). As stress is a contributing factor to 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians (Atkinson, 2004), bullying victims are more than likely to seek health or mental health care benefits (driving up health care costs); take more sick leave; file workers’ compensation or short-term or long-term disability claims; or simply quit (Daniel, 2006). Moreover, the effects of prolonged workplace bullying are not limited to the targeted victim. Several studies have found that bullying victims bring their negative feelings, depression, and anxiety home, negatively affecting the victim’s family (Hoobler & Brass, 2006). Thus, bullying has demonstrable negative effects far beyond the workplace, potentially affecting people with no relationship to the bully or his or her workplace. Statistically, bullies have very little to lose by engaging in workplace bullying, as, generally, bullying victims lose their jobs at a much higher rate than bullies (82% vs. 18%) (Namie et al., 2014). Most workplace bullying

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victims (29%) voluntarily quit; others (19%) are forced to quit (i.e., are constructively discharged) because the conditions are intolerable; and still others (13%) are terminated (Namie et al., 2014). For unexplained reasons, women bullies suffer the highest job loss rate (30%; Namie et al., 2014). It is possible that this anomaly is attributable to sexual stereotypes disfavoring such aggressive conduct by women.

Response Mechanisms of Bullying Victims Victims commonly respond to workplace bulling in one of two general ways—avoidance or confrontation. Avoidance can consist of seeking a medical or personal leave of absence or minimizing the situation (Zapf & Gross, 2001). However, in the vast majority of cases (87%), bullying victims simply quit or are fired (Namie, 2003a; Zapf & Gross, 2001). Confrontation typically takes the form of confronting the bully directly or seeking assistance in doing so from supervisors or human resources professionals (Zapf & Gross, 2001). As noted in one study, however, employees usually lack the skills, hierarchical leverage, resources, or support to effectively combat workplace bullying (Vigoda-Gadot, 2006). Whether regarded as avoidance or confrontation, the coping mechanism frequently utilized by victims of workplace bullying is to intentionally withdraw from their commitment to the employer (Rafferty et al., 2010). This reaction can take many forms, including discontinuing attempts to go above and beyond the victim’s usual job duties and adopting the mind-set of “what’s the point?” (Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007). In addition, bullying victims often exhibit aggression toward their own coworkers in what one study described as a “cascading effect of dysfunctional leadership” (Rose et al., 2015, p. 75) under the assumption that workplace bullies imprint their bullying techniques onto their subordinates, who simply repeat the supervisor’s bullying behavior (Rafferty et al., 2010). Other victims may engage in retaliatory conduct directed at the employer (as opposed to the bully), who the victim perceives as an enabler of the bullying, if not the root cause (Bowling & Michel, 2011). Regardless of the particular mechanism utilized by a workplace bullying victim, it is clear that many victims respond to workplace bullying in ways that are broadly destructive to the employer’s efficient functioning.

EFFECT OF WORKPLACE BULLYING ON EMPLOYERS The harmful effects of prolonged, unchecked workplace bullying on an organization’s well-being has been compared to organizational cancer. The litany of costs to employers is well established and is beyond the scope of

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this chapter (see chapter 9). However, in general, employers face a wide spectrum of negative consequences, most of which are easily and objectively quantifiable.

Quantifiable Costs Because of the harmful physiological and emotional effects of workplace bullying, victims frequently seek medical attention through employersponsored health insurance plans, file claims for short- and long-term disability benefits, and file workers’ compensation claims, raising the employer’s premiums and costs for these benefits year over year (Namie et al., 2014).

Decreased Productivity Employers incur less directly quantifiable costs in lost productivity due to a variety of circumstances. First, the physiological and emotional pain with which bullying victims are forced to cope and the mechanisms they utilize to cope with that pain distract them from performing their job duties, thereby reducing their productivity (Lim, Cortina, & Magley, 2008). Indeed, one study concluded that 25 percent of victims wasted time to avoid encountering the perpetrator or withdrew from projects involving the perpetrator, and 30 percent reported reducing their commitment to the employer (Burnes & Pope, 2007). Second, this productivity malaise spills over to the victim’s coworkers who observe the bullying (and, often, the employer’s failure to intervene) and conclude that they could be next, so they become distracted with fear even though they are not the target (Lutgen-Sandvik et al., 2007). In smaller workplaces, this spillover effect is increased where the obviousness and effects of the bullying are magnified. The impact on the victim’s coworkers is further magnified when they feel compelled (through bullying, peer pressure, etc.) to support the bully’s efforts against the victim. Third, victims who are absent on (extended) medical or personal leave, either to obtain treatment or to avoid the effects of workplace bullying, are no longer productive employees. Their absence further reduces productivity and, in the vast majority of cases, causes additional stress on the victim’s coworkers, who are required to cover for the absent victim.

Employee Turnover and Replacement Costs But perhaps the most harmful by-product of workplace bullying is rampant turnover of (usually) talented personnel. As previously discussed, a significant number of bullying victims are those who are actually or perceived

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as highly talented and thus threatening to their immediate superiors (Namie et al., 2014). These are the employees the employer likely spent significant sums recruiting and onboarding, and they are, therefore, the employees the employer can least afford to lose. However, workplace bullying is a principal cause of the loss of these employees (Mehdi, Raju, & Mukherji, 2012). The cost of this turnover is magnified if the bullying victim is a relatively new hire. New hires are less invested in the employer and have less to lose by leaving to avoid bullying (Tepper et al., 2009), and the employer has not been able to recoup any of its recruiting and onboarding costs when a new hire immediately quits. By some estimates, it costs between 90 percent and 200 percent of a departing employee’s annual salary to recruit, train, and onboard that employee’s replacement (Mitchell, Holtom, & Lee, 2001).

Litigation Costs and Risk One must also add to this mix of costs the risk of litigation inherent in the reality that the typical bullying victim is a member of a protected class under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the typical bully is not. For example, the usual bully is a male (69%), the usual victim is female (60%), and 57 percent of all workplace bullying involves a male bully and a female victim (Namie et al., 2014). It does not strain logic to see how 57 percent of all workplace bullying incidents lend themselves to the filing of a sex discrimination claim by the victim. In addition, the physiological and psychological maladies suffered by most bullying victims are all covered disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act, lending those bullying incidents to the filing of a disability discrimination claim. Despite these costs, the majority of employers do nothing to stop workplace bullying. For example, 31 percent of employers defend bullying as a necessary by-product of a competitive marketplace, 25 percent deny it occurs, and 16 percent discount its effects, whereas only 28 percent acknowledge the problem exists and attempt to address it (Namie et al., 2014). Employer inaction explains why (according to studies) bullies are not likely to face repercussion; only 13 percent of bullies were transferred, 11 percent were punished, 10 percent were fired, and 5 percent quit (Namie et al., 2014).

CAUSES OF WORKPLACE BULLYING Significant efforts have been undertaken to identify the root causes of workplace bullying. The suggested causes range from societal norms and competitiveness in a capitalist system to psychiatric disorders such as narcissism. There is no consensus. It should be obvious, however, that the causes of workplace bullying must first be identified before preventative approaches can be

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identified or a remedy suggested. To that end, the leading theories for the root causes of workplace bullying are summarized in this section.

Capitalism Could the basic structure of the corporate organization explain, in whole or in part, the presence of workplace bullying? One theory suggests that bullying is a simple but effective technique used by management to control the “lower classes” of workers. When viewed through this prism, workplace bullying enhances productivity (albeit in the short term) by forcing victims to work harder and more efficiently to save their self-image or their job (Vega & Comer, 2005). While perhaps appealing to the uninitiated, this theory ignores current data (summarized above) that just the opposite occurs in response to workplace bullying—the victim’s attention, commitment, effort, and thus production decreases, usually resulting in termination or resignation—the ultimate loss of efficiency in production. An alternative (and less psychopathic) explanation is that bullies simply lack relevant social and management skills and are unaware of the impropriety of or harm caused by their conduct (Mattice, 2016). A more intuitive explanation derives from the reality that American business culture has always been permeated—to various degrees—by social Darwinism, that is, only the strong survive. Some have suggested that the Darwinian essence of the American business culture, and its associated individual competition among coworkers to either rise up the corporate ladder or be escorted out the door, is the genesis of the workplace bullying phenomenon (Duffy, 2009). For example, several studies posit that victims suffering from anxiety, depression, and the other physiological and emotional harms discussed above are regarded as weak, defective, and “not up to the task” (Baillien, Neyens, De Witte, & De Cuyper, 2009). Other studies conclude that supervisors engaging in alleged bullying behavior are perceived as stronger and thus are routinely promoted and otherwise rewarded by the employer (Hutchinson & Jackson, 2014). It is in this survivalist-based paradigm where supervisors make statements such as “It’s me against them [the employees] and I am going to win or die trying” (Harvey et al., 2006).

Dynamics of Particular Industries Several studies have correlated higher frequencies of workplace bullying with various industries. For example, Namie (2013) suggests that the prevalence of workplace bullying is greatest in high-stress occupations such as commissioned sales and in altruistic industries such as health care, home care, and education. Foreign studies generally support Namie’s conclusions

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(Australia Fair Work Commission, 2014, 2015). While correlation does not establish causation, the correlations found by the foreign studies in several different countries (over varying time periods) are compelling evidence of a possible causative link. The Australian government, in its 24-page Guide for Preventing and Responding to Workplace Bullying, warns that the presence of “workplace stressors” increases the risk (and thus the frequency) of workplace bullying (Safe Work Australia, 2013). The growth of the service sector in the United States means that employees are increasingly required to cooperatively interact with each other and also with clients and customers. This demand for personal interaction on a daily basis makes it difficult to mask the ongoing emotional and physiological trauma suffered by most workplace bullying victims, adding to their stress in a cycle of escalation. In an attempt to explain the relatively higher frequency of workplace bullying in altruistic industries, Namie (2013) posits that victims in these industries are more vulnerable precisely because of their altruistic desire to help others, to see the best in others, and to not create conflict by opposing a workplace bully. Again, as altruistic employees have always existed in the health care sector, their mere presence today would not seem to explain the presence of explosive growth of reported workplace bullying incidents in that sector. With respect to the higher incidence of bullying in the public sector, Namie (2013) suggests that lack of managerial training in interpersonal communication skills is to blame. However, the same could be said of the health care and educational industries. Perhaps an alternative explanation is the insular rigidity of public sector workplaces (relative to the private sector) characterized by formal and inflexible promotional paths (i.e., promotions premised principally on tenure or longevity) and union protectionism, which combine to preclude prompt and efficient discipline or the termination of bullies (Aryee, Sun, Chen & Debrah, 2008). This dynamic, which effectively insulates the bully from any meaningful negative consequences of his or her behavior, is not lost on the bully, who perceives he or she can act out with impunity.

Absence of Corporate Leadership Several studies, both in the United States and abroad, have identified corporate leadership styles as a recurring theme in bullying environments. Bullies reported that their upper-level managers were not outgoing or dynamic (Hepworth & Towler, 2004); they were abusive (Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007) or tyrannical or laissez-faire (Hauge, Skogstad, & Einarsen, 2007). These leadership styles apparently foster a sense of uncontrolled chaos characterized

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by role confusion and conflicts, a lack of clear lines of authority or responsibility, and weak relationships between employees and supervisors. An interesting paradox is presented by the narcissistic manager— someone who is perceived by upper management as outgoing and confident but simultaneously perceived by subordinates as a selfish “kiss-ass” willing to step on anyone he or she must to rise up the corporate ladder. From upper management’s point of view, the narcissist is “management material,” possessing the fundamental management traits of individualism, competitiveness, and unbridled ambition (Burgemeester, 2013). From a subordinate’s point of view, narcissists lack the ability to see the viewpoint of or empathize with others, and they are hypersensitive to criticism (Burgemeester, 2013). “They tend to be bullies” and often exploit subordinates and discard them, regarding them as disposable tools to achieve a personal goal (Burgemeester, 2013, para. 1). It would appear, therefore, that narcissists are initially embraced by upper management as “go getters” who get things done and strive to achieve. Whether that perception changes (and management reins in the narcissist)— with the onset of employee absenteeism, decreased production, and the turnover discussed above—may depend on the level of success the narcissist has achieved, the extent to which that success offsets the quantifiable harm his or her conduct has caused, and the willingness of upper management to recognize that harm and address it.

Workplace Dynamics Rather than identifying a single or principal cause of workplace bullying, intriguing studies point to a combination of causes. Van Heugten (2010), who conducted an admittedly small survey of 17 bullied social workers, found that survey participants identified a spectrum of root causes for the bullying they experienced. The identified causes included the following: (1) lack of job control and thus uncertainty as to the longevity of their continued employment; (2) the desire of supervisors to avoid competition from subordinates they perceived to be higher performing or more capable and thus a threat to the supervisors’ continued employment; (3) increased economic pressures on employers to reduce headcounts and get more done with less; (4) the absence of workplace policies and procedures prohibiting bullying and identifying how victims are to respond to bullying, particularly by supervisors; and (5) a lack of training and ineffective management. This spectrum approach has been validated in part by Namie (2014), who surveyed employees and found that they reported a variety of perceived causes for workplace bullying. The leading cause identified was the defective personality of the bully (41%), followed by the failure of the employer to discipline the bully or otherwise protect the victim (28%), and 20 percent blamed the victims for not defending themselves.

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The takeaway from these studies is that victims and others in the workplace reported that workplace bullying was not caused by a single factor, but by a spectrum of factors over which the victim had no control (Namie, 2014). This spectrum of causes presents a significant challenge to identifying and implementing measures to prevent workplace bullying.

RESPONSES TO WORKPLACE BULLYING Several approaches have been tried in an effort to curb the rising tide of workplace bullying, none of which has met with much success. Those that have achieved success have been based on a corporate commitment at the highest levels of management to foster a corporate culture inimical to workplace bullying.

Legislative Efforts The United States is the last of the Western democracies not to have a law against workplace bullying. Following model legislation drafted by the WBI in 2003 and the Healthy Workplace Campaign, 26 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico have attempted, unsuccessfully, to pass and sign into law anti–workplace bullying legislation. Critics of the WBI model legislation claim it amounts to the sort of “general civility code” that the U.S. Supreme Court warned against (Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 1998). Most state legislatures appear hesitant to enact such a general civility code. There is also a concern that such “be nice” legislation will, because of its subjective definitions, be impossible to enforce, at best, or unconstitutional, at worst. Accordingly, several states have passed significantly watered-down versions of the Healthy Workplace Bill: • Tennessee: The Tennessee Healthy Workplace Act is limited to public sector employers and does not bar workplace bullying or create a cause of action for employees suffering workplace bullying. Rather, the act provides immunity from certain civil lawsuits for public sector employers who implement the state’s model antibullying policy (Tennessee Healthy Workplace Act, 2014). • California: The California bullying statute is limited to employers with 50 or more employees and requires those employers to provide “classroom or other effective interactive training and education” regarding “abusive conduct,” but only to supervisory personnel. The statute does not create a cause of action for workplace bullying or make such conduct actionable under existing nondiscrimination laws. Notably, the statute makes no effort to delineate prohibited bullying conduct and

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normal supervisory practices such as discipline, performance improvement programs, etc. (California Government Code §12950.1). • Utah: Utah’s act is applicable only to state executive branch agencies, does not prohibit bullying, does not create a cause of action for workplace bullying, and only requires state agencies to train state supervisors and employees about how to prevent bullying (Utah Code §67-19-44, 2015). • Minnesota: The Respectful Workplace Policy applies only to state executive branch agencies and state contractors and excepts normal supervisory actions from the definition of prohibited bullying. Thus, legislative efforts to curb workplace bullying have not and (as discussed in the next section) likely will not succeed.

Employer Efforts Rather than wait for the legislatures to address workplace bullying, many employers are establishing procedures for investigating complaints of workplace bullying utilizing their existing hostile work environment policies and procedures. The WBI recommends employers adopt and implement an antibullying policy that (1) mandates zero tolerance; (2) treats bullying as a workplace safety issue (i.e., in the same realm as OSHA safety matters); (3) requires investigation of bullying complaints; (4) imposes prompt remedial action for confirmed complaints; (5) requires intervention and counseling for bullies, victims, and witnesses; and (6) requires training on how to recognize and report bullying (Namie, 2003b). In the author’s experience, the majority of the WBI’s suggestions are appropriate, as discussed below.

Zero-Tolerance Policies Anecdotal evidence and a fair number of studies have demonstrated that zero-tolerance policies, while easy to implement, rarely yield reasonable, sensible, or fair results in practice. Witness the eight-year-old student threatened with expulsion under a zero-tolerance gun policy for drawing a ninja, a soldier, and a Star Wars character with a gun as possible Halloween costumes. (CBS5, 2013). Zero-tolerance policies may be particularly inappropriate in the workplace, where several federal laws (including the Americans with Disabilities Act) require individualized assessment of circumstances (EEOC, 2000). Further, typical zero-tolerance policies require all employees, under threat of termination, to report every other coworker’s violations, regardless of the severity of the violation, history of previous violations, and so on. If these policies accomplish anything, it is to create an Orwellian environment filled with fear and distrust resembling the Soviet bloc’s East Germany.

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More importantly, however, a recent Canadian study (albeit of student cyberbullying) suggests that a zero-tolerance policy may be counterproductive and actually result in fewer reported incidents of bullying (Steeves, 2014). Steeves (2014) found that students were reluctant to follow a zero-tolerance policy because it effectively transferred control of the situation from the student to a school official and because students abhorred the stigma associated with causing the expulsion of a classmate by reporting a violation of the zerotolerance policy. The parallels to the workplace are obvious. Further, zero-tolerance policies preclude utilization of an employer’s single most valuable asset in dealing with workplace conflict—the human resources (HR) professional. In every other aspect of workplace discord and conflict, the HR professional has flexibility in dealing with the perpetrator and the victim and fashioning an appropriate remedial course of action based on the unique circumstances presented, often with input from the victim. Indeed, studies suggest that while many bullying victims experience a harsher work environment after complaining about bullying, employees who reported bullying to an HR professional did not suffer the same negative response (Namie et al., 2014).

Elements of a Proper Bullying Policy According to a 2012 workplace bullying survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 40 percent of employers already have an antibullying policy (Society for Human Resource Management, 2012). Adopting an antibullying policy can be as simple as adding verbiage to existing policies prohibiting sexual harassment. Define the prohibited conduct. Define workplace bullying and include examples of what is and is not bullying. To dissuade employees from using the policy to preemptively head off anticipated discipline, it is critical to state that bullying does not include performance reviews, constructive criticism, being held to reasonable performance parameters, and the like. Declare that bullying is prohibited and why. State in clear terms that workplace bullying is destructive to coworkers and the company and thus is prohibited. Identify the consequences of confirmed instances of bullying— that is, discipline up to and including termination. Provide a complaint mechanism. Encourage victims to report bullying and require employees witnessing bullying to report it. Clearly identify how and to whom complaints should be addressed. Suggest that the complaint and investigation will be kept confidential to the extent practical.

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Promise prompt investigations. The policy should outline the same basic investigation procedures contained in the sexual harassment policy, including documenting the victim’s complaint, interviewing witnesses, reviewing relevant e-mails and performance evaluations, and so on. Do not allow the complaint to be investigated by someone close to or in the direct line of reporting of the victim or bully. Prohibit retaliation. The best policy in the world is useless if employees are afraid to use it. Any complaint mechanism must clearly and unequivocally prohibit retaliation against those filing complaints or participating in investigations. Statement of prompt remedial action. The policy should not promise any action other than that warranted by the factual investigation. Whether remedial action is taken or not, both the bully and the victim should be advised, in general terms, of the results of the investigation and whether discipline will occur. Implement training. It is not enough to create a paper policy. The policy must be communicated to employees and supervisors and reinforced with training, similar to sexual harassment training provided on an annual or biannual basis. Revise job descriptions. Job descriptions should be revised to require acceptable coworker interaction and interpersonal skills. In addition, this performance metric should be included on all annual performance reviews. By clearly defining expectations in this manner, it will be much easier for employers to discipline or terminate toxic employees.

Model Policies Several companies and governmental entities have written their own bullying policies. Care should be taken, however, to craft a policy that is consistent with the employer’s existing policies and reflects the company’s desired culture. A one-size-fits-all approach is not recommended. The following sample polices appear in the appendix: • Tennessee Model Bullying Policy—Appendix B-1 • American Bar Association Model Bullying Policy–Appendix B-2 • Corporate harassment policy incorporating bullying as additional prohibited conduct—Appendix B-3

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OBSTACLES TO ANTIBULLYING EFFORTS Some employers are declining to adopt broad antibullying policies out of fear they will be misused. Just as some employees use existing antidiscrimination, harassment, and retaliation policies to file preemptive claims against legitimate supervisory criticism, employers fear employees will use antibullying policies to do the same. Given the vague definition of bullying, there is a very fine line (in the real world) between legitimate supervisory criticism and bullying (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, 2014). For example, an employee working for a new (more demanding) supervisor and anticipating a reprimand or other discipline for poor performance could file a preemptive complaint against the supervisor asserting that the supervisor’s critical comments are bullying. In a particularly noteworthy case, a special needs assistant (SNA) at a national school in Ireland asserted a claim of bullying and harassing treatment after she was given a final written warning for improperly completing paperwork and for locking a student in a “sensory room” during a test the SNA was administering to the student. Following the school’s (admittedly perfunctory) investigation into both incidents, the school’s board voted to discipline the SNA but provided her a final written warning, which she claimed was inconsistent with the verbal discipline she had received from the school’s principal. The court found that the school had engaged in bullying in that its investigation was inadequate, biased, and premised on falsehoods and that the board effectively denied the SNA a viable appellate remedy because the board would only allow her to appeal to the original decision maker. The court was satisfied with the evidence the employee presented that she suffered anxiety, a depressive disorder, loss of confidence and self-esteem, and an inability to cope with everyday life because of what happened to her at work from September 2009 to September 2010. Thus, the court awarded her €75,000 for psychiatric injury to date, €40,000 for psychiatric injury for the future, and loss of earnings of €140,276 for both past and future earnings, for a total award of €255,276 in damages (Carolan, 2016). The award, however, was reversed on appeal by the Irish Appellate Court, which found that even the “hopelessly flawed” and “botched” disciplinary process did not fit the definition of bullying, for if it did, it would expand the legal definition of bullying “to all kinds of situations it was never intended to cover” (Ruffley v. The Board of Management of St. Anne’s School, 2015). Perhaps the biggest obstacle to antibullying legislation and policies is the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) assault on workplace policies mandating civility. The NLRB enforces the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which principally governs relations between unionized workers and

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management but also governs nonunionized workplaces. However, continuing under the Obama administration, the NLRB has aggressively applied the NLRA to nonunionized workplaces, enforcing NLRA Section 7 rights of nonunionized employees to engage in “protected concerted activity”—that is, discussions of wages, working conditions, and workers’ rights. The NLRB has pursued unfair labor practice charges against nonunionized employers with fairly standard employee handbook policies prohibiting employees from mistreating coworkers, arguing that the mere existence of such policies (even if not enforced) “chills” the Section 7 rights of employees. For example, the NLRB has found the following employee handbook policies chill, and thus violate, NLRA Section 7 rights: • Prohibitions against “making false, vicious, profane or malicious statements towards or concerning the [employer] or any employee.”1 • Prohibitions against “verbal comments or physical gestures directed to others that exceed the bounds of fair criticism and behavior that is counter to promoting teamwork.”2 • Prohibitions of “behavior that is disruptive to maintaining a safe and healing environment or that is counter to promoting teamwork.”3 • Prohibiting “loud, abusive or foul language.”4 • Allowing discipline for “the inability or unwillingness to work harmoniously with other employees.”5 • Prohibiting “negative conversations” about employees or managers.6 A cursory comparison of these policies challenged by the NLRB as violative of the NLRA to those suggested by the WBI or implemented by various employers leads inexorably to the conclusion that many antibullying polices violate the NLRA because they arguably “chill” the Section 7 rights of employees. Thus, an employer wishing to curtail workplace bullying is faced with a Hobson’s choice: adopt an antibullying policy and risk being sued by the NLRB for unfair labor practices, or do not adopt such a policy and suffer the lack of productivity and decreased competitiveness likely to result from workplace bullying. Further, assuming state legislatures ever pass true antibullying legislation, it is doubtful that the legislation will be enforceable in light of the supremacy of federal laws (including the NLRA) over inconsistent state laws. Many of the proposed state antibullying statutes track the WBI’s antibullying legislation, which is modeled after the WBI’s antibullying policies. Because, as discussed above, those policies may run afoul of the NLRA, the statutes modeled after those policies may also violate Section 7 of the NLRA. While there are differences between simple workplace incivility and workplace bullying, those differences typically never enter into the equation in an NLRA

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enforcement action because those actions are (at least to date) focused not on any actual conduct but rather on the mere existence of policies that chill the Section 7 rights of employees. Further, the fact that the NLRA is inapplicable to management and supervisors is of little solace to employers who (like most employers) do not have one set of personnel policies applicable to management and a separate set applicable to rank-and-file employees. As a result, the federal NLRA will preempt and thus preclude enforcement of any state antibullying statutes.

CONCLUSION Workplace bullying is present in most American workplaces. The harmful effects of workplace bullying on targeted employees and the employer are well documented and undeniable. If left unchecked, workplace bullying will spread throughout a company like a cancer, causing widespread economic and competitive harm in quantifiable and unquantifiable ways. The causes of workplace bullying are varied and most likely dependent on workplace dynamics unique to each workplace, but it is clear that a lack of corporate leadership allows bullying to flourish and spread. Legislative efforts to outlaw workplace bullying have not yielded useful results and may be preempted by the NLRB’s current vision of the NLRA, thus precluding enforcement, assuming the NLRB’s current vision of the NLRA continues indefinitely. The likely remaining avenue to address the bullying phenomenon (apart from employees organizing to oppose bullying) is for employers to adopt their own antibullying policies prohibiting bullying, following the model of their existing antidiscrimination and retaliation policies. However, employers may have to resist efforts by the NLRB to void such antibullying policies. Given the costs of not adopting a bullying policy, it is recommended that employers adopt a properly worded antibullying policy and take their chances with the NLRB.

NOTES 1. Lafayette Park Hotel, 326 N.L.R.B. No. 69 (1998) (the Hotel Employees Local 2850 brought an unfair labor practices charge against the hotel and alleged that 7 of the 42 “unacceptable conduct” rules listed in the hotel’s Employee Handbook “interfere[ed] with, restrain[ed], or coerc[ed]” the hotel employees in violation of the NLRA, even though no employee had ever been disciplined under any of the seven rules). 2. William Beaumont Hospital & Jeri Antilla, 363 NLRB No. 162 (2014) (the NLRB ordered a nonunionized hospital to rescind this provision in its Code of Conduct, finding the prohibitions to be unfair labor practices). 3. Valley Health System LLC, 363 NLRB No. 178 (2016) (striking provisions of a health care facility’s conduct rules, finding that it chills employees’ exercise of their Section 7 rights to engage in protected, concerted activity).

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4. Flamingo Hilton-Laughlin, 330 NLRB No. 287 (1999) (finding that the rule in the Employee Handbook violated the NLRA because it did not define abusive or foul language and could be interpreted as barring lawful union-organizing propaganda). 5. 2 Sisters Food Group Inc., 357 No. 168 (2011) (finding this provision in the Employee Handbook to be unlawful because, according to the NLRB, the rule was too imprecise that it could encompass any disagreement or conflict among employees, including discussions and interactions protected by Section 7). 6. Claremont Resort and Spa, 344 NLRB No. 832 (2005) (finding the non-union employer violated the NLRA by maintaining a work rule prohibiting employees from having negative conversations about their managers because the NLRB believed that employees could construe the rule to “bar them from discussing with their co-workers complaints about their managers that affect working conditions, thereby causing employees to refrain from engaging in protected activities.”) 7. Model Abusive Conduct Prevention Policy Pursuant to Public Chapter 997, the Healthy Workplace Act, Report of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, pp. 13–17, https://tn.gov/assets/entities/tacir/attachments/2015Tab _4HealthyWorkplace.pdf. 8. Give Me Your Lunch Money! Dealing with Bullies in Today’s Workplace, American Bar Association Model Anti-Bullying Policy, http://www.americanbar. org/content/dam/aba/events/labor_law/2012/03/national_conference_on_equal _employment_opportunity_law/mw2012eeo_eisenberg2.authcheckdam.pdf (last visited Aug. 1, 2016). Used by permission of Sue Ellen Eisenberg.

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Hoobler, J. M., & Brass, D. J. (2006). Abusive supervision and family undermining as displaced aggression. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(5), 1125–1133. Hutchinson, M., & Jackson D. (2014). The construction and legitimation of workplace bullying in the public sector: Insight into power dynamics and organizational failures in health and social care. Nursing Inquiry, 22(1), 13–26. Koonin, M., & Green, T. (2005). The emotionally abusive workplace. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 3(3–4), 71–79. Ley, T. (2014, February 14). Messages between Jonathan Martin and his parents are heartbreaking. Retrieved from http://deadspin.com/the-messages-from -jonathan-martin-to-his-parents-are-he-1522865373 Leymann, H. (1990). Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces. Violence and Victims, 5(2), 119–126. Leymann, H., & Gustafsson, A. (1996). Mobbing at work and the development of post-traumatic stress disorders. European Journal of Work and Organizational, 5(2), 119–126. Lim, S., Cortina, L. M., & Magley, V. J. (2008). Personal and workgroup incivility: Impact on work and health outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 95–107. Loeb, S. (2014, June 10). CIA cites officers for “bullying” and other harassment. CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-cites-officers-for -bullying-and-other-harassment Lutgen-Sandvik, P., Tracy, S. J., & Alberts, J. K. (2007). Burned by bullying in the American workplace: Prevalence, perception, degree and impact. Journal of Management Studies, 44(6), 837–862. Mattice, C. (2016, June). The real world: Case studies of real organizations who solved their workplace bullying problems. Presentation at the Society for Human Resource Management 2016 Annual Conference and Exposition, Washington, D.C. Mehdi, A., Raju, R. M., & Mukherji, A. (2012). Abusive supervision and employee attrition: A study of executives in the Indian high technology sector. Competition Forum, 10(2), 42–48. Mikkelsen, E. G., & Einarsen, S. (2002). Basic assumptions and symptoms of posttraumatic stress among victims of bullying at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 11(1), 87–111. Mitchell, M. S., & Ambrose, M. L. (2007). Abusive supervision and workplace deviance and the moderating effects of negative reciprocity beliefs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(4), 1159–1168. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.92.4.1159 Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., & Lee, T. W. (2001). How to keep your best employees: Developing and effective retention policy. Academy of Management Executives, 15(4), 96–108. Namie, G. (2003a, October). 2003 Report on abusive workplaces. Retrieved from http://www.workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/N-N-2003C.pdf Namie, G. (2003b). Workplace bullying: Escalated incivility. Ivey Business Journal Online, 68(2), 1–6. Retrieved from http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication /workplace-bullying-escalated-incivility Namie, G. (2007, September). U.S. workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from http: //workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBIsurvey2007.pdf

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Namie, G. (2013). 2013 WBI survey: Bullying by industry. Retrieved from http://www .workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2013-Industry.pdf Namie, G. (2014). The WBI website 2014 instant poll-F—believe it or not: Impugning the integrity of the targets of workplace bullying. Retrieved from http://www.workplace bullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-IP-F.pdf Namie, G., Christensen, D., & Phillips, D. (2014). 2014 WBI U.S. workforce bullying survey. Retrieved from http://workplacebullying.org/multi/pdf/WBI-2014-US -Survey.pdf Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 83 F. 3d 118 (U.S., 1998). Rafferty, A. E., Restubog, S. L. D., & Jimmieson, N. L. (2010). Losing sleep: Examining the cascading effects of supervisors’ experience of injustice on subordinates’ psychological health. Work & Stress, 24(1), 36–55. doi:10.1080 /02678371003715135 Rose, K., Shuck, B., Twyford, D., & Bergman, M. (2015). Skunked: An integrative review exploring the consequences of the dysfunctional leader and implications for those employees who work for them. Human Resource Development Review, 14(1), 64–90. doi:10.1177/1534484314552437 Ruffley v. The Board of Management of St. Anne’s School, IECA 287 (2015). Safe Work Australia. (2013, November). Guide for preventing and responding to workplace bullying. Retrieved from http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/SWA /about/Publications/Documents/827/Guide-preventing-responding-workplace -bullying.pdf Shpigel, B. (2014, February 14). “A classic case of bullying” on the Dolphins, report finds. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15 /sports/football/investigation-finds-pattern-of-harassment-in-dolphins-locker -room.html?_r=0 Society for Human Resource Management. (2012, February 28). Workplace bullying survey. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/research/surveyfindings/articles /pages/workplacebullying.aspx Steeves, V. (2014). Young Canadians in a wired world, phase III: Cyberbullying: Dealing with online meanness, cruelty and threats. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts .ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/pdfs/publication-report/full/YCWWIII_Cyberbully ing_FullReport.pdf Tennessee Healthy Workplace Act, Tenn. Code Annot. §50-1-501 et seq. (2014). Tepper, B. J., Carr, J. C., Breaux, D. M., Geider, S., Hu, C., & Hua, W. (2009). Abusive supervision, intentions to quit, and employees’ workplace deviance: A power/dependence analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 156–167. Tracy, S. J., Lutgen-Sandvik, P., and Alberts, J. K. (2006). Nightmares, demons, and slaves: Exploring the painful metaphors of workplace bullying. Management Communication Quarterly, 20(2), 148–185. Utah Code §67-19-44 (2015). van Heugten, K. (2010). Bullying of social workers: Outcomes of a grounded study into impacts and interventions. British Journal of Social Work, 40(2), 638–655.

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APPENDIX A Sample Definitions of Workplace Bullying Workplace Bullying Institute “Workplace bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is (1) threatening, humiliating, or intimidating; or (2) work interference— sabotage—that prevents work from getting done; or (3) verbal abuse” (Workplace Bullying Institute, 2014, para. 1). California Code “Abusive conduct” is defined as, conduct of an employer or employee in the workplace, with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests. Abusive conduct may include repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, . . . verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance. A single act shall not constitute abusive conduct, unless especially severe and egregious. (California Government Code §12950.1.)

APPENDIX B-1 Tennessee Model Bullying Policy*7 The [Insert Entity Name] is firmly committed to a workplace free from abusive conduct as defined herein. We strive to provide high quality products and services in an atmosphere of respect, collaboration,

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openness, safety and equality. All employees have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. All complaints of negative and inappropriate workplace behaviors will be taken seriously and followed through to resolution. Employees who file complaints will not suffer negative consequences for reporting others for inappropriate behavior. This policy applies to all full-time and part-time employees of [Insert Entity Name] including interns. It does not apply to independent contractors, but other contract employees are included. This policy applies to any sponsored program, event or activity including, but not limited to, sponsored recreation programs and activities; and the performance by officers and employees of their employment related duties. The policy includes electronic communications by any employee. Abusive conduct includes acts or omissions that would cause a reasonable person, based on the severity, nature, and frequency of the conduct, to believe that an employee was subject to an abusive work environment, which can include but is not limited to: 1) Repeated verbal abuse in the workplace, including derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets; 2) Verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a threatening, intimidating, or humiliating nature in the workplace; or 3) The sabotage or undermining of an employee’s work performance in the workplace. A single act generally will not constitute abusive conduct, unless such conduct is determined to be severe and egregious. Abusive conduct does not include: 1) Disciplinary procedures in accordance with adopted policies of [Insert Entity Name]; 2) Routine coaching and counseling, including feedback about and correction of work performance; 3) Reasonable work assignments, including shift, post, and overtime assignments; 4) Individual differences in styles of personal expression; 5) Passionate, loud expression with no intent to harm others; 6) Differences of opinion on work-related concerns; or 7) The non-abusive exercise of managerial prerogative. Supervisors and others in positions of authority have a particular responsibility to ensure that healthy and appropriate behaviors are exhibited at all times and that complaints to the contrary are addressed in a timely manner. Supervisors will: 1) Provide a working environment as safe as possible by having preventative measures in place and by dealing immediately with threatening or potentially violent situations; 2) Provide good examples by treating all with courtesy and respect; 3) Insure that all employees have access to and are aware of the abusive conduct prevention policy and explain the procedures to be followed if a complaint of inappropriate behavior at work is made; 4) Be vigilant for signs of inappropriate behaviors at work through observation and information seeking, and take action to resolve the behavior before it

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escalates; and 5) Respond promptly, sensitively and confidentially to all situations where abusive behavior is observed or alleged to have occurred. Employees shall treat all other employees with dignity and respect. No employee shall engage in threatening, violent, intimidating or other abusive conduct or behaviors. Employees are expected to assume personal responsibility to promote fairness and equity in the workplace and report any incidents of abusive conduct in accordance with this policy. Employees should co-operate with preventative measures introduced by supervisors and recognize that a finding of unacceptable behaviors at work will be dealt with through appropriate disciplinary procedures. Retaliation is a violation of this policy. Retaliation is any act of reprisal, interference, restraint, penalty, discrimination, intimidation, or harassment against an individual or individuals exercising rights under this policy. All supervisors and employees are encouraged to undergo training on abusive conduct prevention conduct as directed by [Insert Entity Name]. Training should identify factors that contribute to a respectful workplace, familiarize participants with responsibilities under this policy, and provide steps to address an abusive conduct incident. Any employee who feels he or she has been subjected to abusive conduct is encouraged to report the matter orally or in writing to a supervisor including his or her supervisor, manager, appointing authority, elected official, or to the human resources office. Employees should not feel obligated to report their complaints to their immediate supervisor first before bringing the matter to the attention of one of the representatives identified above. Any employee seeking to file a complaint should ensure the complaint consists of precise details of each incident of abusive conduct including dates, times, locations and any witnesses. Formal complaints should be documented in writing, but are not required to be in writing. An employee who witnesses or is made aware of behavior that may satisfy the definition of abusive conduct (as defined herein) should report any and all incidents as set forth herein. Supervisors must timely report known incidents involving workplace abuse, intimidation, or violence to the [HR, appointing authority or investigator]. Supervisors and appointing authorities are required to take reasonable steps to protect the complainant, including, but not limited to, separation of employees involved. The person complained against will be notified that an allegation has been made against him or her and informed of the investigative procedure.

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Investigations of abusive conduct shall be conducted as soon as practicable and in accordance with the policies and practices of [Insert Entity Name]. In the event of a finding of abusive conduct, the employer will take immediate and appropriate corrective action. Remedies may be determined by weighing the severity and frequency of the incidences of abusive conduct and in accordance with existing disciplinary policies of [Insert Entity Name]. Such corrective action may include but is not limited to participation in counseling, training, and disciplinary action up to and including termination, or changes in job duties or location. Supervisory personnel who allow abusive conduct to continue or fail to take appropriate action upon learning of such conduct will be subject to corrective action. Such corrective action may include but is not limited to participation in counseling, training, or disciplinary action up to and including termination, or changes in job duties or location. Any employees exhibiting continuing emotional or physical effects from the incident in question should be informed of established employee assistance programs or other available resources. When abusive conduct has been confirmed, the employer will continue to keep the situation under review and may take additional corrective actions if necessary. Preventative measures may also be taken to reduce the reoccurrence of similar behavior or action. To the extent permitted by law, the [Insert Entity Name] will maintain the confidentiality of each party involved in an abusive conduct investigation, complaint or charge, provided it does not interfere with the ability to investigate the allegations or to take corrective action. However, state law may prevent the employer from maintaining confidentiality of public records. Therefore, the [Insert Entity Name] cannot guarantee confidentiality. *Note: The Tennessee Advisory Commission charged with creating this model policy refused to accept this policy.

APPENDIX B-2 American Bar Association Model Bullying Policy8 Company, Inc. considers workplace bullying unacceptable and will not tolerate it under any circumstances. This policy shall apply to all employees, regardless of his or her employee status (i.e. managerial vs. hourly, full-time vs. part-time, employee vs. independent contractor).

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Any employee found in violation of this policy will be disciplined, up to and including immediate termination. Independent contractors found to be in violation of this policy may be subject to contract cancellation. Company, Inc. defines bullying as persistent, malicious, unwelcome, severe and pervasive mistreatment that harms, intimidates, offends, degrades or humiliates an employee, whether verbal, physical or otherwise, at the place of work and/or in the course of employment. Company, Inc. promotes a healthy workplace culture where all employees are able to work in an environment free of bullying behavior. Company, Inc. encourages all employees to report any instance of bullying behavior. Any reports of this type will be treated seriously, investigated promptly and impartially. Company, Inc. further encourages all employees to formally report any concerns of assault, battery, or other bullying behavior of a criminal nature to the local Police Department. Company, Inc. requires any supervisor who witnesses any bullying, irrespective of reporting relationship, to immediately report this conduct to the Human Resources Director. Company, Inc. will protect an employee who reports bullying conduct from retaliation or reprisal. Company, Inc. considers the following types of behavior to constitute workplace bullying. Please note, this list is not meant to be exhaustive and is only offered by way of example: Staring, glaring or other nonverbal demonstrations of hostility; Exclusion or social isolation; Excessive monitoring or micro-managing; Work-related harassment (work-overload, unrealistic deadlines, meaningless tasks); Being held to a different standard than the rest of an employee’s work group; Consistent ignoring or interrupting of an employee in front of co-workers; Personal attacks (angry outbursts, excessive profanity, or name-calling); Encouragement of others to turn against the targeted employee; Sabotage of a co-worker’s work product or undermining of an employee’s work performance.

APPENDIX B-3 Sample Corporate Policy Incorporating Bullying Prohibition into Sexual Harassment Policy

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Definition Harassment or bullying can take the form of a number of different behaviors, including persistent comments, actions, jokes, or suggestions, which are unwanted by the recipient and create an intimidating environment. Other forms of harassment or bullying may include: • Physical contact, sexual or otherwise; • Offensive language, gossip, or slander; • Posters, graffiti, obscene gestures; • Abuse of internal e-mail systems, the Internet or intranet; • Pestering, spying, and stalking; • Persistent undermining of confidence, competence, and self-esteem; • Failing to acknowledge the rights or needs of people with different views or practices; • Undignified treatment or exclusion of people with disabilities or on the grounds of gender, age, sexual orientation, or race; • Request for sexual favors; • Express/implied threat of dismissal/loss of promotion on racial grounds or for refusal of sexual favors. Harassment can occur on the grounds of • Race • Sex • Sexual orientation • Age • Disability • Bullying generally • Policy The Company fully supports the rights and opportunities of all people to seek, obtain, and hold employment without harassment. Harassment is conduct that is unwanted or offensive to the recipient, whether on the basis of sex, race, or disability or whether it takes the form of bullying generally. Harassment is a form of unlawful direct discrimination, which may expose the company as well as culpable employees to proceedings in the Employment Tribunal. Appropriate disciplinary action, in accordance with the Company’s Disciplinary Procedure, including dismissal for serious offenses, will be taken against any employee who violates this policy.

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Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the Nonprofit Sector Vega Subramaniam

The nonprofit sector shares some similarities with its public and for-profit counterparts. Like the public sector, nonprofit organizations seek to benefit society, not to make profits that benefit private shareholders. Like the forprofit sector, the nonprofit sector is not publicly accountable in a closely transparent way. Unlike the public sector, management behaviors and decisions in nonprofits are not subject to greater public scrutiny, despite the public tax benefits nonprofits accrue. The unique characteristics of the nonprofit sector require a separate examination of the topic of workplace bullying and mobbing within the sector. This chapter offers an introduction to the nonprofit sector, a statement of the problem of toxic leadership (as defined in Lipman-Blumen, 2005) in the nonprofit sector, and a summary of research to date. This is followed with a synopsis of manifestations of toxic leadership in the sector and the impact workplace bullying has on individual organizations as well as on the sector as a whole. The chapter concludes with a discussion of causes of and possible solutions to toxic leadership in the sector.

INTRODUCTION TO THE NONPROFIT SECTOR A nonprofit organization is an entity established for member or community benefit and for which any funds and surpluses must be used to further its mission or organizational purpose. The nonprofit sector is a major contributor to the economy. As of June 2016, the IRS reported almost 1.6 million nonprofit organizations, and in 2015, the public gave a record $373.25 billion to public charities (Internal Revenue Service, 2016; Pon, 2016). In 2013, public charities reported $1.74 trillion in revenues, $1.63 trillion in expenses, and over $3 trillion in assets (National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2016).

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In 2012, the sector accounted for more than 11 million jobs and generated $532 billion in wages alone (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014, 2016). While workplace bullying likely manifests the same everywhere, the nonprofit sector is worth considering separately. In particular, three unique characteristics affect the nature of workplace bullying in the sector: its purpose, its funding structure, and its governance.

Purpose A defining characteristic of nonprofit organizations is that they do not exist to make money but to serve a purpose. Individuals are thus drawn to working for nonprofit organizations because they are inspired by the mission. In this context, where both the organization and the employee seem to hold similar values, encountering toxic leadership perhaps as widely as in other workplaces seems surprising. Violations of principles of equity, fairness, and dignity feel like a greater betrayal for new staff than similar violations at forprofit or government workplaces.

Funding Structure To operate their organizations, nonprofits rely on charitable funding from individuals, foundations, the government, and corporations. For funders, grantee success indicates that they are mindful stewards of their donations. Currently, “mindful stewardship” is associated with low administrative (or overhead) costs (Bedsworth, Gregory, & Howard, 2008; Josephson, 2015; Klein, 2003; Le, 2014; Masaoka and Zimmerman, 2014; Pettijohn, Boris, De Vita, & Fyffe, 2013; Snibe, 2006; Song, 2014). Underinvesting in administrative costs, and indeed seeing administrative costs as “wasteful,” is unique to the nonprofit sector. While the for-profit sector recognizes the need to invest in staff development and safer working conditions, nonprofits struggle to raise money for these same things (Brandt, 2013; Francis & Talansky, 2012; International Labour Organization & International Finance Corporation, 2013). Nonprofit staff are thus underpaid (relative to their qualifications and to the for-profit sector) and overworked (relative to their job descriptions, employee policies, overtime regulations, and federal holiday schedules; Alexander, 2013; Cohen, 2010; GuideStar, Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, & Charity Navigator, 2013; Manzo, 2004; Schmidt, 2016).

Governance Nonprofit organizations are governed by volunteer boards of directors. Too often, people selected for board service have little to no experience

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with or knowledge about running a nonprofit (No Bullying: Let’s Stop Cruelty @ Work, 2013). Quite often, they are friends of the executive director (ED) and recruited to the board by the ED (La Piana Consulting, 2003; Straughan, 2003). Board members are thus too often ill-equipped to vet potential EDs or to provide or require the training necessary to develop management skills.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM There appears to be an explosion of toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector (Bloom & Farragher, 2010; Eisenberg, 2002). Nonprofit sector magazines and online industry sites increasingly report stories of staff experiences with abusive or exploitative supervisors. Simultaneously, capacity-building attention is increasingly directed at building healthier organizations and shifting organizational cultures. This increased focus on “healthier organizations” is a tacit implication that current organizations are not “healthy.” Bloom (2006) suggests that toxic leaders emerge from unhealthy environments: Such an unhealthy environment lends itself to the emergence of what have been described as “toxic leaders.” Toxic leaders are subtly or overtly abusive, violating the basic standards of human respect, courtesy, and rights of the people who report to them. They tend to be power-hungry and appear to feed off of the use and abuse of the power they have. They play to people’s basest fears, stifle criticism, and teach followers never to question their judgment or actions. They lie to meet their own ends and tend to subvert processes of the system that are intended to generate a more honest and open environment. They compete with rather than nurture other leaders, including potential successors, and tend to use divide-and-conquer strategies to set people against each other. Toxic leaders will not hesitate to identify scapegoats and then direct followers’ aggression against the designated scapegoat rather than themselves. They frequently promote incompetence, corruption, and cronyism and exploit systems for personal gain (p. 47).

LITERATURE REVIEW The past decade has seen a proliferation of management literature on toxic leadership and workplace bullying. The literature can be categorized based on their target audience: the victim of abuse, the manager, and a broader field of people interested in systemic issues such as organizational culture and health.

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Self-Help Literature targeting victimized individuals comes in the form of self-help support. Self-help literature mostly assume the leadership cannot be held accountable and cannot change because the leader is truly certifiable with a personality disorder; the systems and institutions at play will never address the victim’s needs or provide a remedy; and the reader should focus on what is in his or her control to change. Self-help literature is designed to help individuals recognize and handle their toxic situations (Cavaiola & Lavender, 2000; Maravelas, 2005; Weinstein, 1998). Management consultants might offer individual behavior-based solutions to achieve higher-functioning workplace cultures. Other texts review profiles of personality disorders: narcissists, sociopaths, and others. The emphasis is on what workers can do to respond differently and how to navigate toxic coworker interactions. Such literature typically does not tackle broader causes or solutions of toxic workplaces; nor does it offer insights into the nonprofit sector specifically.

People-Centered management Literature targeting managers focuses on skills development and centers on greater self-awareness and interpersonal effectiveness. Such literature assumes leaders can change with the right motivation and new skills. Peoplecentered management literature focuses on positive intervention in supervision, management, and leadership (Pfeffer, 1998; Plas, 2013; Williams, 2015). This literature offers leaders resources on how to manage oneself, how to manage people in organizations and in projects, and how to create employeecentered workplaces (DeCarlo, 2004). People-centered management literature tends to promote self-management: taking self-assessments or employing practices for mindfulness, selfregulation, behavior-modification, and resilience. Topics on managing people include increasing employee engagement, conducting performance management, engaging in participatory decision making, and building communication skills, such as giving and receiving feedback (Carbonara, 2012).

Organizational Health Literature targeting the field of organizational health and culture focuses on systemic dynamics and effects on organizational health and culture. This literature typically assumes that many complex factors combine to create toxic leadership and workplaces, and it focuses on identifying the context and root causes of workplace bullying.

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Organizational health and culture interventions include developing positive organizational cultures; establishing fair workplace policies, processes, and procedures; and addressing systemic issues around organizational health, trauma and healing, and trauma-informed organizations (Bloom & Farragher, 2013; Clarke, 2012; Kanter & Sherman, 2016; School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), 2006; Vivian & Hormann, 2013). Beyond anecdotal evidence of toxic leadership, formal research specific to the nonprofit sector is scant. As nonprofit consultants with expertise in leadership development and human resources who have heard stories of workplace bullying with alarming frequency, we saw an urgent need to better understand this problem. We therefore undertook a research project that offers a systematic exploration of the problem of toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector. We examine how toxic leadership practices affect leadership development and retention in the sector and the resultant impact on organizations’ effectiveness in fulfilling their missions.

OUR RESEARCH Our research is a qualitative study based on one-hour structured interviews. We interviewed 35 nonprofit staff members, 5 nonprofit leaders, 5 organizational consultants, and 3 nonprofit funders. Interview participants were recruited through snowball sampling, and the 48 interviewees represent dozens of organizations and geographic locations throughout the United States. Despite the fact that we anticipated minimal risk to our subjects through our interview process, and that our subjects did not constitute a vulnerable population, we took every precaution to maintain our interviewees’ well-being and confidentiality. We received informed consent prior to each interview in the form of signed consent forms outlining the purpose and form of our research; the risks involved to the interviewee (who were all willing adults interested in sharing their stories for the sake of bringing the topic of workplace bullying in the nonprofit sector to light); the assurance that interviewees were at liberty to withdraw from the interview at any time; and the assurance of confidentiality and our methods of handling confidential information. At the start of each interview, informed consent was received again by verbally outlining the above procedures and receiving verbal assent from each interviewee, which are preserved in each transcription. Interview transcriptions are kept confidential through a secured, password-protected local file. Our results are based on the qualitative analysis of these interviews, using standard thematic analysis methods. Below is a summary of our findings regarding manifestations of workplace bullying in nonprofit organizations. All quotes within boxes represent actual quotations from research

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participants. Given the small sample size and nonrepresentative nature of our sample, these findings should be seen as tentative rather than definitive and as a foundation for future research.

MANIFESTATIONS OF WORKPLACE BULLYING IN NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS Problems in the Hiring and Onboarding Processes When asked what excites them about joining a nonprofit organization, new staff note how important it is for them to work on causes they “believe in,” on a mission “so from the bottom up,” in an organization that “intersects” with their values and interests. They mention how organizations appear to celebrate their social, racial and ethnic, gender, and religious identities; to reflect strong, balanced, and diverse leadership; and to welcome the value that new staff will add. New staff start, by and large, with great expectations and a desire to contribute meaningfully. Red flags emerge very early on, even during the hiring process: job descriptions seek a superhero. Job responsibilities exceed what could reasonably be expected from one person and include a combination of skill sets that are rare, such as financial duties combined with fund-raising. Red flags continue to surface during the selection process: Interview dates are shifted with little notice. Applicants are told they will be interviewed by one person, but they show up to find a panel of five interviewers. Applicants do not hear from an organization for weeks and then get a call asking if they are available the following morning for an interview with the ED. That level of chaos suggests a leader who is controlling and who keeps everyone around them continually guessing. Once new staff are hired, signs of a toxic workplace also emerge relatively early on. An early warning sign is that supervisors fail to offer new staff guidance, structure, onboarding, training, or strategic vision. Also, actual job responsibilities are largely unrelated to the posted position descriptions. Thus, new staff struggle to cobble together the training and guidance they need to do their jobs, in a context where they cannot even be sure what their job responsibilities are. “The job description had nothing to do with what I did. My job title had nothing to do with what I did. Nothing I have ever done has been sourced from my job description. Or the job description is so vague that it could cover anything, like ‘help with stuff, assist with organizational efforts.’” “My peers were my main source of support. But as far as training goes, there was none. I asked for it; I repeatedly asked for more information. They were like, ‘Why are you asking so many questions?’ It seemed ridiculous to me that they didn’t train people, like, there was no training.”

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Common Patterns of Toxic Behaviors Workplace bullying behaviors that staff experience over time can be grouped into the following six categories: (1) creating an atmosphere of mistrust, (2) micromanagement, (3) capriciousness, (4) blaming and criticism, (5) exploitation and violation of labor laws, (6) ethical violations. Toxic leaders deliberately create an atmosphere of mistrust. They talk about staff behind their backs to other staff members. They also falsely tell one staff member that they are disliked or distrusted by their colleagues. “My boss would go to my colleagues and complain about me. She would also talk about colleagues behind their backs in a common area.” “She would try to pin people against one another. . . . Her goal was to say this about this person so you wouldn’t trust that person. So then people didn’t know if they could trust you with whatever they were doing or whatever they were saying.” Toxic supervisors also micromanage. They tell staff in excruciating detail how to do something and require approval of every step, however small and however skilled or experienced the staff member is. Leaders perceive themselves to excel at everything and find it difficult to delegate. They cause long, unnecessary delays by demanding to approve each step and creating a bottleneck. They insist on tracking every minute of staff’s time and demand frequent updates, requiring unnecessary meetings under the guise of staying in the loop. They demand to be copied on all e-mails. “We had leadership that based their leadership on fear and people were afraid to do anything other than what she wanted you to do. Or, you know, ‘Got to run this by that person first.’” “It was a joke, but he could not stop himself. Meetings meetings meetings. Every little thing turns into a meeting. And then reports. Reports about every little single thing. Every day.” Toxic supervisors are typically capricious and unpredictable. They make new decisions on the fly and without connection to strategy or agreed-upon goals. They change their minds about priorities at a moment’s notice and with no communication. “Whatever the job description says, it was decided on a per-week/permonth basis. ‘Oh this is how we’re going to do it.’ . . . That allowed this sense in which the goal posts were always moving, so it was hard to tell what I was being evaluated by.”

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“She would also be changing the rules of the game. She would make a major change, and people were in the dark. There would be major changes, and people were like, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to do what now?’” A common complaint about workplace bullies involved public, unfair, and often false blaming and criticism. The blaming and criticism negatively affected performance by instilling an environment of fear and secrecy. “One time, a coworker and I were preparing for our major event, and we were playing music, so we had the door closed so we wouldn’t disturb the rest of the office. And instead of coming to talk to us about it, the ED sent around an email—to all of us—and the tone of it was so nasty. ‘I don’t know if you guys are keeping the door closed to camouflage the fact that you’re working on other things or just chatting. We have all this work to be doing.’ And I’m here in my free time for hours and hours.” “I wasn’t doing enough or I wasn’t smart enough or she was constantly criticizing me and not recognizing the things that I do well.” “She would yell, swear words, every other word was the f-bomb. She would just flare up.” Nonprofit staff, especially those working at small organizations, typically work well beyond a full-time 40-hour work week. For many, this is a choice they willingly make, at least for short bursts of time (for example, before a major event), because of their passion for the mission. However, while functional leaders encourage their staff to take time off, leave work at a reasonable time, and minimize evening and weekend work, this is not so in toxic workplaces. Toxic leaders make workers feel guilty for leaving work at a reasonable time, expect staff to regularly work evenings and weekends, and require staff to work during time off or over federal holidays. “I worked a lot of extra hours from the very, very beginning.” “If I would question, ‘Why do we work so many hours?’ ‘Well, this is what it takes; this is what it means to care about our communities and to care about this work.’” “She slammed the door open and yelled at the both of us. She was like, ‘You guys are just watching YouTube videos.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, my best friend is watching YouTube videos. Because she’s here, because it’s hours after I was supposed to leave work, and she’s very nicely keeping me company.’” “If you tried to leave at the stated hour, she would be like, ‘Oh, do you have plans?’ like that’s the only reason that you could be leaving at 6:00.

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She would say, ‘Sometimes I wonder about the commitment of you and the people in this organization to this work.’ And I’m like, REALLY?!” A particularly egregious sign of a toxic leader is their willingness to cross ethical lines that comes from feeling so important or superior that rules sometimes need to be ignored for the greater good. A typical example is EDs requiring staff to misrepresent organizational work on grant reports. “We weren’t being honest with our funders. When I would be exposed to our grant documents, I was like, we are not doing this stuff. We’re just not. We promised to do this stuff and we’re not doing them. And I always felt very, very uncomfortable with that.” “I always wondered how honest we were being with funders. If I had access, I would feel like it was my ethical responsibility to tell them. But I had no access.”

Responsive Actions by Staff Nonprofit staff try to address bullying at their organizations in various ways, such as responding directly to the bully, going up the chain of command (including seeking support from their direct supervisor), unionizing, and disengaging or leaving. A reality that staff who respond directly learn swiftly is that workplace bullies cannot accept negative feedback. They do not believe they are doing anything wrong or that they need to change. If someone who works for them points out a problem, workplace bullies immediately make the problem the other person. “I tried to follow the grievance procedure. I wrote her a letter, I asked for a meeting. But I can’t really do anything through this grievance process because I can’t really prove anything.” “My boss refused to listen to the feedback offered by my predecessor, me. She had that reputation: that you cannot give her feedback because she would get very defensive and she would turn against you personally.” “I know my life will be harder if I try to fight [her]. So let me just stop bothering. It is just so much easier to let you be the way that you want to be. Because I will never win. It will only make you retaliate more and more.” Staff who went up the chain of command or observed other staff doing so found that to be ineffective and demoralizing.

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“I tried to talk to [the VP] about that. . . . So the VP checked in with my boss: ‘Is this true?’ My boss says, ‘Of course it’s not true.’ My boss is the VP’s friend. The VP is going to take my boss’s word.” “I do happen to know a person that took action. I don’t know all the specifics, but I do know that our lawyer was involved and I don’t think much came of it, to be honest. As far as I know. Which is really unfortunate because it is almost like people don’t feel like there is any kind of support.” “I couldn’t find a way to hold him accountable. The board liked him; they were his friends.” Occasionally, staff attempt to unionize. Some staff reported discussions among themselves to explore the route of unionization. “The best experiences have been when colleagues have come together to talk about their experiences and create spaces, this power structure be damned, we’re going to think of the best interests of ourselves and our colleagues and our clients. There’s so much empowerment and strength in that. The odds may be stacked too high against you. But once that happens, it makes everything so much better. We have to start building alliances in our workplaces that are based on mutual trust.” Absenteeism and presenteeism are rampant at nonprofit organizations with toxic EDs. “I would do things reluctantly and with minimal effort.” “If I am going to have to be here until 9:00 p.m. every night anyway, and I will never satisfy you anyway, then I am going to spend a significant number of hours doing whatever the f* I want to.” “You know, when I first started, I had a theory that was like, ‘first one in, last one out.’ So, I was trying to get in earlier than everyone else and work and leave after—just really show that I was really committed. But after that [last incident], I get to work when I’m supposed to get to work. And at 4:59, I have my purse and I’m ready to go.”

Impacts on Staff Bullying has repercussions on the lives of staff members. For most, the bullying consumes their personal, interpersonal, emotional and physical, and professional lives. Eventually, staff leave (or are pushed out of) the organization.

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As a result of being bullied at work, staff members stop doing things they enjoy. They have no energy to get together with people. They have no energy for hobbies. They spend their weekends recovering, and they spend Sundays dreading Monday. “I didn’t realize it was happening, but at a certain point I realized that so much of my mental real estate was taken up by this one person, and their reaction to everything, everything that I did: how I was dressed, how I was walking, how I was talking, who I talked to, what I said when I talked to them, how I addressed them, how I addressed her, how I addressed other people in front of her.” “I felt under so much pressure that it was difficult for me to sleep at night, but I was at the same time working very long hours. I was constantly in a state of stress while at work. I was sick frequently. I was not eating. It crowded out time for me to have a personal life.” “My hair started to fall out. I was miserable. It was a misery-making kind of job.” Once staff “come out” to each other about their experiences, they find that the bullying is all they can talk about, both in and out of the office. Their intimate partners and loved ones, while wanting to support them, feel helpless to do so, and at the end of their rope: “You need to stop talking about this.” “You do not want to spend time with friends because soon people get turned off by your negativity.” “My partner just kept saying, ‘You have to stop bringing that home. You have to stop bringing that home. All we do is talk about her. You have to stop bringing that home.’ It was all I could do to get any joy out of [my friendships and rest of my life].” Staff experience emotional and physical effects as well, including depression, dread, anxiety, anger, and trauma. Physically, individuals gain or lose weight, drink heavily, and experience hair loss, rashes, and other physical changes. “I remember having this terrible conversation with my coworkers because all of us hated Sundays. Because Sundays reminded us it was going to be Monday soon. And Monday means ‘reckoning.’” “One of my coworkers: her hair was falling out. She was all splotchy and broken out.” “You don't want to exercise. You put on weight.” “I drink too much because of my work.”

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“It was devastating. After the campaign, I basically went to my home country for six months and slept, and got my spirit back. Because my spirit had disappeared.” “I will never be the person that I was before I met [my ED].” Professionally, people lose their sense of competency. They also lose valuable years of their lives because they are not able to use their professional competencies in their jobs. When they apply for new jobs, they have few or no relevant experiences to point to. Small nonprofit organizations are notorious for hiring young people out of college or with few years of experience. Without a long track record, losing two, three, or four years of professional development leaves staff with a hole in their resume, a spotty track record to have to explain to potential employers, and few professional references. Often, personnel policies explicitly state that only the ED is allowed to serve as a reference for anyone in the organization, even those who report to others. While this policy is supposed to “protect” the organization, it also means staff either lose a reference or must go behind the ED’s and organization’s back. Finally, people leave or are terminated from their positions, leaving them professionally and financially vulnerable. “Everybody left . . . due to mismanagement.” “After this incident, I sat at my desk and I thought about my experiences. And something dawned on me, and I said, I don’t want to be part of an organization where I have to spend my whole time on internal political fights. So I wrote a one-sentence letter of resignation. They were very shocked. And I left. And I got a job for 10% more than the original raise that I had asked for.” “The biggest thing I tell people is not to go work at nonprofits.” “I’m never working for a nonprofit again. At least at a for-profit company, I’ll get paid well even if I’m exploited.” “This? This is a cesspool. It’s like a rapist trap. It’s a workplace bullying trap. I think there’s another workplace bullying trap in the for-profit sector, but I think that there’s a little bit of ability to push back there. But here there is none at all. So all we’re going to do is keep attracting these sociopaths into this work. And so I don’t know what we’re doing about that as a sector. And I take myself out of that, what you and others are doing, because I’m not in the sector, and I don’t want to be in the sector, because I see it as a cesspool of predators.” Our research finds clear patterns in how toxic leadership is manifested in the nonprofit sector and the impact of such toxic leadership on nonprofit staff. Workplace bullying not only causes harm to individuals, but it also

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ruptures the nonprofit ecosystem. Our research, however, does not explicitly address these larger, sector-wide impacts.

IMPACTS OF TOXIC LEADERSHIP ON THE NONPROFIT SECTOR The section below outlines the current state of the literature regarding the impact of bullying and mobbing at the organizational, movement-building, and sector-wide levels. While this research is in its nascent stages, some patterns are emerging. At the organizational level, staff turnover results in increased costs to replace staff, delays in project outcomes, and perhaps, most importantly, loss of talent. The loss of talent also results in a loss in the leadership pipeline: those who would otherwise have become leaders in their organizations. Team productivity also suffers; toxic leadership leads to team members losing trust in one another, avoiding conflict, and feeling disengaged from projects and outcomes. Finally, in toxic organizational cultures, staff are disempowered and discouraged from challenging ineffective ideas or practices of the ED (Davis, 2007; Kim & Kunreuther, 2016; Landles-Cobb, Kramer, & Smith Milway, 2015; Opportunity Knocks, 2010; Solomon & Sandahl, 2007). At the movement-building level, toxic leadership negatively affects the ability of nonprofit coalitions and collaborations to make progress on their joint missions (Truit, 2012). For example, micromanaged staff who attend coalition meetings are not empowered to commit to actions or activities without reporting back to their supervisors, thus slowing down the coalition’s forward progress (Blackney, 2013; McAndrews, 2010). Likewise, staff turnover in individual organizations within coalitions means that new relationships must be built over and over again, and institutional knowledge is continuously lost (Center for Community Change, 2014; TCC Group, 2011). As Herold (2012) puts it, Everyone knows that organization A has an executive director who’s a megalomaniac. Everyone knows that two particular organizations bully other smaller organizations. Everyone knows that organization B likes to fire (almost) everyone every couple of years. Everyone knows that certain national organizations have less than cordial relationships with their local affiliates (para. 2). At the sector-wide level, there are also impacts worth noting. Funding and resources are misused or underused: when turnover is frequent, programs are not delivered, or are not delivered effectively or in a timely fashion. Parties who witness the bullying are reluctant to talk publicly about the issue. Such publicity puts organizations at risk, and staff remain loyal to the organization

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and the mission, regardless of the toxicity of the leader. Finally, public distrust of not only individual nonprofit organizations but of the nonprofit sector as a whole increases (Berman, 2016). Manifestations of toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector and the resulting negative effects on staff, organizations, and the sector are clear and require urgent attention. It is therefore imperative to understand the conditions that lead to or allow for toxic leadership in the sector and possible solutions that could be derived from those conditions. The following sections explore the causes and consequences of toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector.

CAUSES OF TOXIC LEADERSHIP IN THE NONPROFIT SECTOR While some toxic leaders may truly suffer from a personality disorder (e.g., narcissistic personality disorder), most experts feel that toxic leadership in nonprofit organizations is caused by structural, not personality, factors (Lipsky, 2009; Vivian & Hormann, 2013). Structural causes exist at the organizational level as well as at the sector-wide level. Organization-level causes include the lack of clear qualifications required of EDs; the lack of managerial accountability and board oversight; the notion ingrained in the culture that the noble cause of the mission trumps employee mistreatment; and the lack of resources and concomitant stresses placed on organizations. These factors are described in greater detail below. The process by which individuals become EDs is haphazard. Frequently, people become EDs merely by virtue of passion for a cause. While passion for a cause is necessary, it is not sufficient for effective leadership, management, or supervision (Carver, 1997). Indeed, sometimes, the two are incompatible. When leaders’ egos and identities become enmeshed with the nonprofits at which they work, organizational effectiveness is at risk (Dobbs, 2004; Vivian & Hormann, 2013). Managerial accountability is a challenge in nonprofit organizations. For example, funders operate with limited information, receiving much of their information through the EDs of the organizations they fund. EDs monitor and control staff relationships with funders, affecting the flow of complete and accurate information. Likewise, boards of directors, charged with evaluating EDs, are ill-equipped for this function, and they rarely require 360-degree evaluations. The 360-degree evaluations are a challenge in any case; the small size of the vast majority of nonprofits makes anonymity almost impossible. Staff are unlikely to feel comfortable giving honest feedback in such circumstances. As mentioned earlier, people often become EDs based on the passion that they have for a cause. Passion for a cause is not sufficient for effective leadership, management, or supervision. Passion for a cause does, however, lead to

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unrealistic expectations of what their employees can and should be willing to do and tolerate. Nonprofit EDs often expect that “passion for a cause” must be proven through unending service, and “working for the cause” is considered payment enough. Therefore, when staff express needs for time off, professional development, employment benefits, or work-life balance, it is not uncommon for them to be told they are betraying the cause or are not taking their jobs seriously. The mission of the organization is glorified at the expense of the staff’s mental and physical well-being. Recent trends in accountability and high performance in the nonprofit sector have predominantly focused on being mission-focused and data-driven, but there is scant attention paid to what kind of productive workplaces and healthy employees are needed to make that sustainable. Because nonprofits are expected to do more with less, bullying results from leaders feeling squeezed. Funder demands to minimize administrative costs and focus on programming puts EDs in a position of exaggerating their organization’s successes and understating their administrative costs (Barden, 2015). Low annual budgets result in leaders operating with a mind-set of scarcity. This scarcity mind-set is a fertile ground for exploiting labor and minimizing staff salaries and benefits, all under the guise of the urgency of the organization’s mission: “There is often a general understanding that if you don’t accept the way you’re being treated, you aren’t truly committed to the movement” (Kacere, 2015, para. 12). Relatedly, lack of unrestricted funding also leads to a form of exploitation in which EDs improperly use interns and contractors to essentially do employee work. Some sector-wide causes of toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector include the increased urgency caused by economic decline and the obsession with short-term results. In economic decline, wealthy donors hold onto their money or shift more of their funding to direct services. This reduction and shift creates greater pressure on nonprofits, a greater sense of scarcity, and greater stress on the ED to raise funds—all of which increase the likelihood of toxic leadership. Nonprofits are increasingly expected to run like businesses. And the business sector has increasingly become obsessed with short-term results. That obsession with short-term, data-driven results is misplaced in a sector in which societal changes may take years or even decades to observe. In addition, societal change efforts require collective action, so EDs cannot necessarily splice apart exactly which parts of the collective impact result from their specific organization’s efforts. Still, it is not uncommon for funders to expect unrealistic short-term results and clear organizational outcomes tracked to their funding. Naturally, the pressure EDs face from these unrealistic requirements has trickle-down negative effects on their organizational culture.

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POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS Researchers are just beginning to address the problem of toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector and are therefore at very preliminary stages regarding prevention and interventions. The following discussion is therefore an exploration of possible solutions. One set of solutions is preventive. These measures are designed to minimize the possibility of toxic leadership. A more rigorous hiring process could incorporate preventive measures, such as including a requirement in the job description that ED applicants have had formal management training and using assessment tools to gauge emotional intelligence (Brightman, 2014). A promising sign in the sector is that organizations are starting to value managerial experience (Kim & Kunreuther, 2016). Measures could also be put into place outside of the hiring process to prevent or minimize the potential for toxic leadership. For example, boards of directors could tie ED salaries to staff salaries, effectively reducing the large power inequity between them. We know that increased income inequality leads to increased narcissism (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2014). Intervention measures are measures taken after toxicity manifests. These interventions include performance management, professional development, and termination or exit. Some suggest traditional approaches to address the issue, using effective performance management (Eisenberg, 2002; Mitnick, n.d.). Some have suggested using 360-degree behavioral assessments (Brightman, 2013). However, if 360-degree assessments are not administered or interpreted properly, they can be ineffective. For example, boards may not recognize the need to use a third-party entity to administer the 360, to keep responses confidential, or to solicit multiple perspectives and not just the respondents identified by the leader. Interpreting 360 results requires looking at the results with respect to the leader-respondent power relationship and the divergence between the leader’s self-evaluation and the respondent’s. Also, in small organizations, 360s require particular care in administering, especially with regard to confidentiality. Some advocate for keeping open avenues for subordinates to give feedback, maintaining checks and balances, and moderating toxic behaviors immediately to reduce their harmful effects (Aubrey, 2012). Others recommend that 360s be used solely for development or coaching purposes and not for annual performance evaluations (Grote, 2011). Professional development includes executive coaching and leadership development opportunities (Herman & Wilson, 2016). It is not clear whether professional development is effective in reducing toxic behavior in leaders. In fact, some leaders who have had management training, executive coaching, mentorship, or other professional development simply become more adept at

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manipulating and abusing their power in more subtle nonpublic ways. In our research, capacity builders and staff reported limited success with coaching and mentorship. First, leaders must be open to receiving critical feedback. Second, the approach must disarm the defensiveness, resistance, and aggression that arises when leaders consider feedback threatening. Each personality type requires a different approach and coaching strategy, and leaders seem to respond more positively by having mentorship from more seasoned leaders with a similar personality type to themselves. Third, the coach or mentor must be able to report results to the board (Kets de Vries, 2014; Williams, 2016). Coupling executive coaching or other professional development with staff support mechanisms, anonymous 360-degree evaluations, and exit interviews is a fruitful avenue to explore, as together these strategies are likely to yield more positive results than an individual strategy on its own (Johnson, 2016; Kets de Vries, 2014). When all else fails, it is possible to terminate the leader (although nonprofits have also been known to simply wait, knowing the leader will eventually depart). While this may seem to offer a temporary fix to the problem, toxic leadership leaves dysfunctional organizations in its wake. Even with a new leader, the organization continues to operate under the same conditions as the previous ED. Staff continue to be demoralized and suspicious (Vivian & Hormann, 2013). Firing may also just migrate the issue to another organization. To effectively use the firing of an ED to set the stage for healing and recovery, those working in or with the organization need to give attention to staff recovery and healing the organizational culture (Taylor, 2014). Funders have a potential role to play as well. They could offer professional development funding for entire teams rather than only leadership, helping to level the playing field and create leadership pipelines; they could test for toxic leadership with appropriate questions in grant applications; or they could actively intervene with technical assistance. In egregious cases (such as misappropriation of funds), funders have been known to require their grantees to accept technical assistance. And as a final resort, they could (and some have chosen to) defund an organization. When that happens, organizations dissolve (Cohen, 2012; Heintz, 2013). This is an outcome everyone in the sector works to avoid and is one reason that staff are hesitant to come forward about their experiences. The damage to the organization, the mission, and even the sector overall are potentially very costly indeed (Harshbarger & Crafts, 2007).

CONCLUSION The unique characteristics of the nonprofit sector both strengthen organizations in the sector as well as create the conditions in which toxic leadership is difficult to prevent, observe, or stop. We are still at the initial stages of

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understanding the full extent and impacts of workplace bullying on individuals, organizations, and employment sectors overall. Nevertheless, emerging research offers more information about the effects of workplace bullying and toxic leadership in the nonprofit sector. And emerging best practices offer insights and tools toward building healthy organizational cultures and supporting healthy, emotionally intelligent leadership.

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Brightman, B. (2014, October 2). Preventing toxic behavior at work [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://bairdbrightman.blogspot.com/2014/10/preventing-toxic-behavior -at-work.html Carbonara, S. (2012). Manager’s guide to employee engagement. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill Education. Carver, J. (1997). Boards that make a difference: A new design for leadership in nonprofit and public organizations (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Cavaiola, A. A., & Lavender, N. J. (2000). Toxic coworkers. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications. Center for Community Change. (2014). Change starts here: A report on the center for community change and its continuing journey to individual and organizational transformation. Retrieved from http://www.communitychange.org/wp-content /uploads/2014/11/CCC_Future_Report.pdf Clarke, M. (Ed.). (2012). People practices for sustainable organizations: Social justice approaches to human resources management. Retrieved from http://www.roadmap consulting.org Cohen, R. (2010, June 21). Nonprofit salaries: Achieving parity with the private sector. Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved from https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2010/06/21 /nonprofit-salaries-achieving-parity-with-the-private-sector Cohen, R. (2012, August 29). Faces of the fallen: Nonprofits folding after federal cuts. Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved from https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2012/08/29 /faces-of-the-fallen-nonprofits-folding-after-federal-cuts Davis, E. (2007). Young nonprofit professionals: Preparing the path for leadership. Retrieved from http://download.2164.net/PDF-newsletters/preparingthepath.pdf DeCarlo, D. (2004). eXtreme project management: Using leadership, principles, and tools to deliver value in the face of volatility. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Dobbs, S. M. (2004). Some thoughts about nonprofit leadership. In R. E. Riggio & S. S. Orr (Eds.), Improving leadership in nonprofit organizations (pp. 11–18). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Eisenberg, P. (2002, October 17). The buck stops with the board of directors—or at least it should. Chronicle of Philanthropy, 15(1). Retrieved from http://www.eisen howerfoundation.org/docs/ChroniclePhilanthropy_Buckstops_021017.pdf Francis, A., & Talansky, J. (2012). Small nonprofits solving big problems. Retrieved from http://www.nonprofitfinancefund.org/sites/default/files/ccer_final12-12.pdf Grote, D. (2011). How to be good at performance appraisals: Simple, effective, done right. Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Review Press. GuideStar, Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, & Charity Navigator. (2013). The overhead myth [Open letter]. Retrieved from http://overheadmyth.com Harshbarger, S., & Crafts, A. (2007, December 21). The whistle-blower: Policy challenges for nonprofits. Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved from https://nonprofitquar terly.org/2007/12/21/the-whistle-blower-policy-challenges-for-nonprofits/ Heintz, P. (2013, September 17). After Feds pull funding, Vermont health co-op folds. Seven Days. Retrieved from http://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage /archives/2013/09/17/after-feds-pull-funding-vermont-health-co-op-folds

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Herman, M. L., & Wilson, E. (2016, May 10). The dark side of leadership. Center for Nonprofit Studies at Austin Community College. Retrieved from http://sites.austincc .edu/npo/the-dark-side-of-leadership Herold, S. (2012, April 25). Toxic work environments in the reproductive health, rights, and justice world [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://abortiongang.org/2012/04/25 /toxic-work-environments-in-the-reproductive-health-rights-and-justice-world Internal Revenue Service. (2016). Exempt organizations business master file extract [Data file]. Retrieved from https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizations -business-master-file-extract-eo-bmf International Labour Organization, & International Finance Corporation. (2013, December). Improving business outcomes by understanding what matters to workers. Retrieved from http://betterwork.org/global/wp-content/uploads/Research-Brief -What-Matters-to-Workers-LR.pdf Johnson, K. (2016, June 28). Toxic leadership 2: Its impact and how to address it. Training Journal. Retrieved from https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/feature /toxic-leadership-2-its-impact-and-how-address-it Josephson, B. (2015, March 22). Nonprofit overhead doesn’t matter: Except when it does [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brady-josephson /nonprofit-overhead-doesnt_b_6508830.html Kacere, L. (2015, May 6). 6 things to do if your social justice job is a toxic environment [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/09 /social-justice-job-toxic Kanter, B., & Sherman, A. (2016). The happy, healthy nonprofit: Strategies for impact without burnout. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons. Kets de Vries, M. (2014, April). Coaching the toxic leader. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/04/coaching-the-toxic-leader Kim, H., & Kunreuther, F. (2016). Vision for change: A new wave of social justice leadership. Retrieved from http://www.buildingmovement.org/pdf/FINALVisionForChange.pdf Klein, K. (2003). “Outing” overhead. Grassroots Fundraising Journal, November/December. Retrieved from http://www.grassrootsfundraising.org/wp-content/uploads /2014/03/22_6_OutingOverhead.pdf Landles-Cobb, L., Kramer, K., & Smith Milway, K. (2015, October 22). The nonprofit leadership development deficit. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved from http://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_nonprofit_leadership_development_deficit La Piana Consulting, Inc. (2003). Tool for assessing startup organizations: A due diligence supplement for grantmakers. Retrieved from http://www.lapiana.org/portals/0 /documents/tool%20for%20assessing%20startup%20organizations.pdf Le, V. (2014, December 8). Can we all just admit there is no such thing as nonprofit sustainability? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://nonprofitwithballs.com /tag/nonprofit-funding Lipman-Blumen, J. (2005). The allure of toxic leaders: Why we follow destructive bosses and corrupt politicians—and how we can survive them. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Lipsky, L. (2009). Trauma stewardship: An everyday guide to caring for self while caring for others. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Manzo, P. (2004). The real salary scandal. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved from http://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_real_salary_scandal Maravelas, A. (2005). How to reduce workplace conflict and stress. Wayne, NJ: Career Press. Masaoka, J., & Zimmerman, S. (2014). A board member’s guide to nonprofit overhead [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blueavocado.org/content/board -members-guide-nonprofit-overhead McAndrews, C. (2010). What works: Developing successful multigenerational leadership. Retrieved from http://www.buildingmovement.org/pdf/what_works.pdf Mitnick, E. R. (n.d.). Transforming toxic employees into positive performers: Essential and effective management skills to improve employee performance [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://www.mma.org/resources-mainmenu-182/doc_view /293-transforming-toxic-employees-into-positive-performers National Center for Charitable Statistics. (2016). Quick facts about nonprofits. Retrieved from http://nccs.urban.org/statistics/quickfacts.cfm No Bullying: Let’s Stop Cruelty @ Work. (2013, May 22). Workplace bullying in nonprofit organizations [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.nblsc.org/?p=94 Opportunity Knocks. (2010). Opportunity Knocks nonprofit retention and vacancy report 2010. Retrieved from http://commongoodcareers.org/assets/pdf/Retention _Vacancy_Report.pdf Pettijohn, S. L., Boris, E. T., De Vita, C. J., & Fyffe, S. D. (2013, December). Nonprofitgovernment contracts and grants: Findings from the 2013 national survey. Retrieved from http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/412962-Non profit-Government-Contracts-and-Grants-Findings-from-the-National-Survey .PDF Pfeffer, J. (1998). The human equation: Building profits by putting people first. Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Press. Plas, J. M. (2013). Person-centered leadership: An American approach to participatory management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Pon, S. (2016, June 22). Giving USA 2016 report: $1B+ given each day in 2015 [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://grantspace.org/blog/giving-usa-2016-1b-given -each-day-in-2015 Schmidt, A. (2016, May 19). Is exploiting workers key to your nonprofit enterprise model? The new overtime requirements. Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved from https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/05/19/is-exploiting-workers-key-to-your -enterprise-model-nonprofits-and-the-new-overhead-requirements/# School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL). (2006). Support and accountability manual: SOUL’s organizational development and supervision model. Retrieved from http://www.schoolofunityandliberation.org/soul_sec/resources/re-shp_manuals .html Snibe, A. C. (2006, Fall). Overhead isn’t everything. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved from http://ssir.org/articles/entry/overhead_isnt_everything

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Solomon, J., & Sandahl, Y. (2007). Stepping up or stepping out: A report on the readiness of next generation nonprofit leaders. Retrieved from http://www.ynpn.org /stepping_up_or_stepping_out Song, U. (2014, April). A funder’s message to other funders about overhead [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blueavocado.org/content/funders -message-other-funders-about-overhead Straughan, B. (2003). Managing in hard times. Retrieved from http://www.rmnat.org /wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Managing_in_Hard_Times_full_000.pdf Taylor, G. T. (2014). Transformation and reconciliation in the toxic workplace (Unpublished master’s thesis). Fresno Pacific University, Fresno, California. TCC Group. (2011, July). Strengthening organizations to mobilize Californians: Lessons learned from a major initiative to build the capacity of civic engagement nonprofits. Retrieved from http://www.tccgrp.com/pdfs/Strengthening_Organizations-Lessons _Learned.pdf Truit, J. (2012, April 25). Quick hit: Toxic workplaces in the reproductive health,​ rights, and justice fields [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://feministing.com /2012/04/25/quick-hit-toxic-workplaces-in-the-reproductive-health-rights-andjustice-fields/ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2014, October 21). Nonprofits account for 11.4 million jobs, 10.3 percent of all private sector employment. Economics Daily. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20141021.htm U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2016, February). Nonprofits in America: New research data on employment, wages, and establishments. Monthly Labor Review. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/nonprofits-in-america .htm Vivian, P., & Hormann, S. (2013). Organizational trauma and healing. North Charleston, NC: Author. Weinstein, B. (1998). I hate my boss!: How to survive and get ahead when your boss is a tyrant, control freak, or just plain nuts! New York: McGraw-Hill. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2014, February 2). How inequality hollows out the soul. New York Times. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/02 /how-inequality-hollows-out-the-soul/?_r=0 Williams, R. (2015). Eye of the storm: How mindful leaders can transform chaotic workplaces. Vancouver, Canada: Author. Williams, R. (2016, February 15). The rise of toxic leaders [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://coachfederation.org/blog/index.php/5797

Epilogue

An Agenda for Moving Forward David C. Yamada and Maureen Duffy

This project has been rooted in the presumption that research, analysis, and practice join together in understanding, preventing, and responding to workplace mobbing and bullying. We hope that the preceding chapters have reinforced that conviction in ways that are helpful and informative to our readers. This epilogue gives us an opportunity to suggest where we go from here, by offering a proposed agenda that builds on the contents of these volumes. Systems of employment relations, mental health care, law and dispute resolution, and research and public education all play important roles in preventing and responding to mobbing and bullying behaviors. We offer the following comments as food for thought on how they operate as individual and component parts.

ORGANIZATIONAL PREVENTION AND RESPONSE Overall, we are encouraged by the growing attention now being devoted to mobbing and bullying behaviors by scholars and practitioners in fields such as industrial and organizational psychology, occupational health psychology, business management and human resources, and labor relations. Professional and academic conferences and seminars regularly cover workplace bullying, mobbing, and incivility, joined by a burgeoning number of journal articles and books—many of which are cited in these volumes. However, we still have a long way to go. Survey data discussed in the preceding chapters clearly show that bullying and mobbing are serious problems in the American workplace, that too many employers are not adequately responding to these behaviors, and that workers and organizations are suffering the consequences. Furthermore, merely adopting policies and establishing procedures are not enough. As David Yamada wrote in an article applying principles of ethical leadership to workplace bullying (Yamada, 2008),

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The real test appears, however, when leaders who profess to abhor bullying are asked to address specific, inconvenient occurrences of such behavior. . . . For example: • What does a manager do when she learns that one of her best friends in the office has been a serial bully and most recently was responsible for the departure of an excellent worker who resigned to avoid facing further mistreatment? • How does an organization respond to an administrative assistant who is suffering from depression because of bullying and retaliation that occurred after she rightfully accused her highly-productive supervisor of engaging in an unethical business practice? • What does a human resources director do when confronted with a socially quirky, adequately performing employee who fears going to work because he is being bullied and ostracized by productive, more popular co-workers? (p. 59). In the United States, since the 1980s, when the early research about workplace bullying and mobbing started to get the attention of stakeholders, the focus necessarily has been on identifying and acknowledging the nature and scope of the problem. In boardrooms and in courtrooms around the country, there is still active resistance to acknowledging that the problem of workplace bullying and mobbing exists, accompanied by a propensity to deny its significance by blaming individual workers for their misperceptions of it or for having allegedly difficult personalities that invite aggression toward them. Yet, the body of research and practice documented in these volumes is overwhelming with respect to the nature of the negative behaviors involved in workplace bullying and mobbing, the social and organizational processes that fuel it, and the significant health and psychosocial harm to targets and their families that result from it. Healthy organizations will either begin or continue to address workplace bullying and mobbing by policy development and education about what it looks like and how it harms workers and the organization. The key variable in determining organizational response will be leadership buy-in and support of efforts to reduce and prevent workplace bullying and mobbing. With leadership acknowledgment and buy-in, the sticky questions about how to manage the inevitably complicated interpersonal dynamics reflected in the questions above will be easier to address. Leadership acknowledgment and buy-in create a conversational space within organizations to talk about how we expect to treat each other in the workplace and how we might respond when our expectations and standards are not met. In terms of protection of health in the workplace, the future is here, and it unquestionably includes organizational responsibility and accountability for

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the protection not only of the physical health of workers but also of their psychological health.

MENTAL HEALTH AND COACHING Building a larger cadre of trauma-informed mental health treatment providers who are familiar with workplace bullying and mobbing must be a top priority. Among the unmet stakeholder needs in terms of responding to workplace bullying and mobbing, mental health treatment ranks with the highest. Over and again, we have encountered individuals who have not been able to find counselors and therapists who comprehend the traumatic impacts of their abusive work experiences. This is ironic but not surprising. Back in 1998, when Gary and Ruth Namie wrote their first prototype edition (Namie & Namie, 1998) of what would evolve into the leading informational and self-help guide on workplace bullying, their overwhelming focus was on the experiences of targets and how to help them. Over the past two decades, both research and countless individual accounts have documented the health-harming effects of bullying and mobbing behaviors. However, any casual survey of professional conference agendas for mental health providers reveals a paucity of educational programming devoted to working with clients and patients who are seeking this kind of help. In addition, the psychological literature concerning mobbing and bullying is much richer in the organizational realm as opposed to clinical interventions. But perhaps we are seeing signs of positive change. For example, in the spring of 2016, Counseling Today ran a cover story on bullying behaviors, including the workplace, urging that “counselors need to increase their understanding of bullying in all of its forms” (Meyers, 2016). The piece extensively profiled the counseling and coaching work of Jessi Eden Brown, who coauthored chapters 13 and 14 to this book project. Also, later that year, Maureen Duffy presented a keynote address about counseling targets of workplace mobbing and bullying at the annual conference of the American Mental Health Counselors Association. Both of these developments indicate that the mental health community is placing greater importance on offering services to those who are suffering from the effects of abusive work environments. Nonetheless, the current reality is that very few mental health professionals have an understanding of the dynamics of workplace bullying and mobbing or experience in working with targets and their families. There is an urgent need for formalized training for mental health professionals in the area of workplace bullying and mobbing to increase the number of professionals with the requisite skills to assess and treat targets and their families. Given the prevalence rates for workplace bullying and mobbing in the United States,

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the absence of skilled mental health providers in this area is glaring and represents a public health challenge that needs to be addressed as a top priority. Although the field of coaching remains something of a cottage industry, this modality holds promise for helping targets in at least three ways: First, coaching can serve a triage function by helping targets to assess their situations and to identify potentially helpful resources. Second, coaching can help those who are well into the recovery stages from their abusive work experiences and are now ready to make more affirmative choices for the future. Third, and finally, the niche specialty of career coaching can help targets transition into new jobs and vocations. We offer more tempered enthusiasm regarding therapeutic and coaching interventions for individuals who engage in mobbing and bullying behaviors. For those whose psychological profiles suggest psychopathic, sociopathic, or severely narcissistic traits, psychotherapy or coaching may be of limited application, at least as a realistic workplace intervention tool. Unfortunately, such individuals can be the main drivers of some of the most virulent, targeted bullying and mobbing actions. However, plenty of workers who engage in such behaviors are not suffering from a clinically diagnosable personality disorder. Samples of the general population indicate that only about 1 percent of females and 3 percent of males have antisocial personality disorder, the kind of personality associated with disregard for the feelings and rights of others (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Thus, the vast majority of workers who participate in abusive and aggressive behaviors toward others in the workplace do not suffer from the personality disorder most associated with a willingness to trample on the rights of others. As Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry (2014) put it, “Most people who display aggressive, mobbing-type behaviors in the workplace are ‘normal’” (p. 182). Accordingly, individual psychopathology is but one factor that potentially contributes to workplace mobbing and bullying behaviors, and in most instances, it is likely not relevant at all. Overall, in the case of the proverbial “bad boss” or “nightmare coworker,” the usefulness of therapy or coaching depends on how receptive those individuals are to potential interventions and how determined the organization is to promote a fair-minded, dignityembracing, and safe workplace by finding solutions for abusive behavior.

LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY American legislatures are slowly becoming more hospitable to Healthy Workplace laws that respond to bullying and mobbing behaviors. For now, however, the lack of comprehensive legal protections against workplace bullying and mobbing leaves workers vulnerable to psychological abuse.

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America lags behind many countries around the world in not having direct legal protections against workplace bullying and mobbing. Canada, Australia, and many European nations are among the jurisdictions that have enacted laws, regulations, and codes in response to these forms of workplace mistreatment. Widespread adoption of the Healthy Workplace Bill or similar legislation would not only provide targets of severe workplace bullying with a legal claim for damages, but also provide employers with legal incentives to prevent and effectively respond to these behaviors. This, in turn, would prompt greater attention by organizational leaders and employees, including, hopefully, the adoption and actual implementation of policies and practices designed to address bullying and mobbing behaviors. Furthermore, by proclaiming that the law should intervene when these behaviors become targeted and health harming, we would be affirming, as a populace, that a decent society does not condone these behaviors. In addition to enacting Healthy Workplace legislation, at least two additional areas need to be addressed in the law and public policy realm. First, targets of bullying and mobbing need a stronger, nonlitigious safety net of employee and public benefits to provide income replacement and health care to help them cope with their situations and to make necessary job transitions. Paid family and medical leave, workers’ compensation, and unemployment benefits and comprehensive, affordable health care are chief among them. Second, and concededly this is a much larger topic, our systems of resolving legal disputes need to reduce the stress and anxiety of employment litigation, especially for those who have already experienced severe mistreatment at work and face daunting odds toward obtaining relief: Although the creation of individual employment protections was spurred in part by civil rights advocacy backed by the solidarity of social movements, workers often must effectuate these rights in solitary fashion, pursuing stressful, lengthy, and expensive legal proceedings, typically without the benefit of large group or union support. . . . Modern employment litigation all too often encompasses the David vs. Goliath scenario of an aggrieved worker and a small plaintiffs’ law firm vying against a large company armed with an overstaffed team of attorneys. (Yamada, 2009, p. 535)

CHANGING WORKPLACE STANDARDS While responsibility for initiating organizational change to prevent workplace bullying and mobbing rests squarely on the shoulders of leadership, all organizational members must ultimately be involved in organizational culture

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change that will lead to psychologically safe workplaces for all. Responsibility for treating one’s coworkers, supervisors, and subordinates appropriately and with dignity is a shared responsibility that binds each member of an organization. Accountable workplaces in which every person takes seriously the obligation to communicate ethically and to behave appropriately requires that the model or schema in use within the organization is one in which all members are regarded as responsible adults, not as demanding parents or as wayward children. The templates of parent-child relationships and all the approval-seeking and rebellious behavior that goes along with them have long ceased to be useful models for workplace relationships. An emerging model for workplace practices and relationships is the values-driven workplace, also variously referred to as a conscious culture, an intentional workplace, a high-performing workplace, a mindful workplace, or an employee-driven workplace. The key standard in such workplaces is that organizational values are spelled out and that actions are aligned with those values and the degree of alignment between values and actions is routinely assessed. For an organization to be truly values-driven, the match between values and actions has to be real and in practice, not just on paper. In a values-driven workplace that upholds the values of respect and care, for example, it would not be acceptable behavior to engage in negative gossip about a coworker, to gang up on someone, to exclude a coworker from workplace conversations or interactions, to not give credit where credit is due, or to shut someone out of information loops necessary for that person to get the job done. The responsibility for behaving consciously and respectfully cuts across the entire organization at every level. What are acceptable and unacceptable standards for workplace behavior change over time. Prior to changes in the law and in levels of personal awareness, it was common for jokes and comments of a sexist and homophobic nature to be shared openly and repeated. These kinds of comments have not been wholly eliminated from the workplace, but their utterance has been reduced and brings with them the risk of personal sanctions such as discipline or firing and legal actions such as discrimination lawsuits. As awareness of the nature of the abusive actions involved in workplace bullying and mobbing and of the harm inflicted on targets by them increases, these bullying and mobbing behaviors will also change from being tolerated to being unacceptable, especially if laws like the Healthy Workplace Bill are adopted.

TOWARD A “DIGNITARIAN” SOCIETY In terms of the bigger picture, the concept of human dignity relates strongly to workplace mobbing and bullying. For example, Robert Fuller, a physicist

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and former college president, has called upon us to create a “dignitarian” movement devoted to advancing individual dignity (Fuller, 2006). Fuller believes that the ongoing presence of “rankism,” which he defines as “abuses of power associated with rank,” presents the main obstacle to building such a society (Fuller, 2006, p. 7). He has placed workplace bullying squarely within a dignitarian framework—calling it a form of “archetypal rankism”—while expressing optimism that we are “approaching a tipping point” in responding to it (Fuller, 2006, p. 65). Robert Fuller’s work dovetails comfortably with that of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), a “global, transdisciplinary fellowship of researchers, practitioners, activists, artists, and others who collaborate in a spirit of mutual support to understand the complex dynamics of humiliation, especially as it relates to violence” (Hartling, Lindner, Britton, & Spalthoff, 2013, p. 134). Founded by Evelin Lindner, a physician and psychologist, HumanDHS is dedicated to advancing human dignity and to understanding the experience of humiliation as a root cause of aggression and violence. At first glance, even the most horrific mobbing and bullying behaviors may not appear to rise to the level of global human rights abuses that concern many members of the HumanDHS community. However, David Yamada, a HumanDHS board member, has found a very receptive audience for his work on workplace bullying at the organization’s annual workshops, sounding consistent messages of abuse, injustice, and trauma. Simply put, workplace bullying and mobbing are dignity violations that create enormous human carnage. Workplace aggressors often intend to shame and humiliate their targets and drive them out of the organization. These reasons alone underscore why we must pursue all effective ways to reduce the frequency and severity of these abusive behaviors and help those who have been wounded by them.

REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text revision). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Duffy, M., & Sperry, L. (2014). Overcoming mobbing: A recovery guide for workplace aggression and bullying. New York: Oxford University Press. Fuller, R. W. (2006). All rise: Somebodies, nobodies, and the politics of dignity. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Hartling, L. M., Lindner, E. G., Britton, M., & Spalthoff, U. (2013). Beyond humiliation: Toward learning that dignifies the lives of all people. In G. P. Hampson, M. Rich-Tolsma (Eds.), Studies, reflections, questions (Vol. 2 of Leading transformative higher education, pp. 134–146). Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacký University Olomouc Press.

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Meyers, L. (2016, April 21). Fertile grounds for bullying. Counseling Today. Retrieved from http://ct.counseling.org/2016/04/fertile-grounds-for-bullying Namie, G., & Namie, R. (1998). Bullyproof yourself at work!: Personal strategies to recognize & stop the hurt from harassment. Benicia, CA: DoubleDoc Press. Yamada, D. C. (2008). Workplace bullying and ethical leadership. Journal of ValuesBased Leadership, 1(2), 49–62. Yamada, D. C. (2009). Human dignity and American employment law. University of Richmond Law Review, 43(2), 523–569.

About the Editors and Contributors

EDITORS MAUREEN DUFFY, PhD, is a workplace consultant to organizations and individuals and a preeminent authority on workplace mobbing behaviors. She is coauthor of Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions and Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying. She is also a family therapist who works with targets and their families. Her clinical and consulting work focuses on workplace mobbing and bullying. Maureen has been a frequent featured speaker at national conferences addressing workplace issues. DAVID C. YAMADA, JD, is a professor of law and director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. David is an internationally recognized authority on the legal, public policy, and organizational implications of workplace bullying. He wrote the first comprehensive analysis of workplace bullying and American employment law (Georgetown Law Journal, 2000), and his antibullying Healthy Workplace Bill is the template for American law reform efforts in this realm. He is a frequent speaker and presenter at regional, national, and international conferences and is widely quoted and cited in articles on workplace bullying and employee relations generally. His Minding the Workplace blog is a popular source of commentary on work, workers, and workplaces. David received his JD degree from New York University School of Law in 1985.

CONTRIBUTORS TONY BELAK, JD, was ombuds at the University of Louisville and a cofounder of the International Center for Compassionate Organizations (http: //compassionate.center), which currently has initiatives in leadership, conflict

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management, policing and peacekeeping, and public information. He is also cofounder of the 4Civility Institute (http://4civility.com) established to prevent and correct incivility and bullying. He was senior dispute resolution counsel for the Department of Veterans Affairs and established a shared neutral program among all federal agencies in the region, which was instrumental in the creation of the U.S. Postal Service’s internal EEO mediation program (REDRESS), where he continues to serve as a mediator, and he was an initial member of the Civil Justice Reform Act Committee for the Western District of Kentucky, a former assistant commonwealth attorney, a special assistant U.S. attorney, and president of the Federal Bar Association, Kentucky Chapter. He is an arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). PEGGY ANN BERRY, PhD, MSN, RN, is the CEO of Thrive_At_Life: Working Solutions, providing occupational services and training to employers and individuals regarding physically and psychologically safe workplaces. She received a National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health Education Resource Center grant and stipend for her master’s in nursing and PhD through the University of Cincinnati as well as internal and external grants to study workplace bullying. She is an American Nurses Foundation Scholar and a founding fellow of the Workplace Bullying Academy. Novice nurse productivity following workplace bullying (2012), her first research-based article as co- and first author was awarded the 2013 Best of Journal of Nursing Scholarship for Profession, World Health, and Health Systems. She was a commentator in Dellasega and Volpe’s (2013) Toxic Nursing. She continues collaboration and publication on her dissertation research in workplace bullying. JO BLASE, PhD, is research professor emerita of educational administration and leadership at the University of Georgia and a former school administrator. Since receiving her PhD from the University of Colorado, her research has focused on instructional and transformational leadership, school governance and reform, professional development, the principalship, and discourse analysis of principal-teacher communications. She also conducts research on discourse among physicians and consults with physicians in U.S. medical centers. Professor Blase has received research and teaching awards, is an expert witness, and holds international doctoral faculty appointments. She has published over 100 academic articles, chapters, and books. Her nine book editions include such best sellers as Handbook of Instructional Leadership. With Joseph Blase, she conducted seminal studies of administrative mistreatment of teachers and coauthored Breaking the Silence: Overcoming the Problem of Principal Mistreatment of Teachers.

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JOSEPH BLASE, PhD, is research professor emeritus of educational administration and leadership at the University of Georgia. Since receiving his PhD from Syracuse University, his research has focused on educational micropolitics, school reform, transformational leadership, the principalship, principalteacher relationships, and principal mistreatment. His work on school-level micropolitics received the Davis Memorial Award given by the University Council for Educational Administration, and he is recognized as an elite scholar among the Most Productive and Influential Scholars of Educational Administration in the world. Professor Blase has published over 120 academic articles, chapters, and books. His 13 book editions include the winner of the Critic’s Choice Award of the American Education Studies Association and several best sellers, such as Bringing Out the Best in Teachers. He is coauthor, with Jo Blase, of seminal studies of administrative mistreatment of teachers and the book Breaking the Silence: Overcoming the Problem of Principal Mistreatment of Teachers. JESSI EDEN BROWN, MS, LMHC, LPC, NCC, is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Seattle, Washington. As the professional coach and former administrator of the Workplace Bullying Institute, Jessi has garnered national recognition as a counselor-expert in the area of workplace bullying. She works with hundreds of bullied targets annually through professional counseling and coaching services offered in the United States and worldwide. ELLEN PINKOS COBB, JD, is the author of Workplace Bullying and Harassment: New Developments in International Law (2017). She is a senior regulatory and legal analyst at the Isosceles Group, an environmental health and safety consultancy, in Boston, Massachusetts, and a founding fellow of the Workplace Bullying Academy. Ellen also has years of experience in the employment discrimination field as a neutral fact finder for state and federal agencies and is a certified Equal Employment Opportunity investigator. She has been tracking international laws and developments in workplace bullying, violence, harassment, discrimination, and stress since 2010. A magna cum laude graduate of Bowdoin College, she received her JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law. RENEE L. COWAN, PhD, is an affiliate assistant professor of communication at Queens University of Charlotte. She has published numerous journal articles on workplace bullying in journals such as Management Communication Quarterly, Human Resource Management Journal, Personnel Review, and others. She cochairs the National Communication Association’s Anti-Bullying Task Force.

622

About the Editors and Contributors

JOHN-ROBERT CURTIN, PhD, is a senior fellow and executive director of the 4Civility Institute, Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of An Exploratory Study of Existing State Anti-Bullying Statutes (2016), Lambert Academic Press. The 4Civility Institute provides mediation training, ombuds training, certifications, software reporting systems, restorative justice, and behavioral transition practice solutions to schools, businesses, and organizations. He has extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution, restorative justice, education, training, and in antibullying efforts. He also the founded the Connected Learning Network, an education-based company, that has provided online services to over 120 schools, colleges, businesses, and organizations worldwide. John-Robert is also known for his work in public television, as an Emmy award-winning producer and station president. His PhD is from the University of Louisville in alternative dispute resolution. His academic background also includes degrees in creative writing and oceanography. He describes himself as a “serial social entrepreneur with an overcommitment addiction.” TERESA A. DANIEL, JD, PhD, serves as dean of the Human Resource Leadership Program at Sullivan University, based in Louisville, Kentucky. She is also chair of the HRL concentration in the university’s PhD in management program. Her growing body of work on toxic leadership and workplace bullying has been actively supported by the Society for Human Resource Management through numerous interviews about her research and its implications and the publication of two of her books. She is the coauthor of Stop Bullying at Work: Strategies and Tools for HR, Legal, & Risk Management Professionals (2016) and was named as an initial fellow of the International Academy on Workplace Bullying, Mobbing, and Abuse in 2014. CAROL FEHNER, BA, is a retired American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) officer with the Social Security Administration. She received a Hammer Award for her work on the first benchmarking study under the government reinvention initiative. She teaches union members about workplace bullying. SUSAN JOHNSON, RN, PhD, is an assistant professor of nursing and health care leadership at the University of Washington Tacoma. After working as a hospital staff nurse for over 20 years, she obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Washington Seattle in 2013. Her dissertation research was on managerial and organizational discourses of workplace bullying. For this work, Susan was honored with the Dissertation Award from the UW School of Nursing and was named March of Dimes Nurse of the Year (2012) in the category of “New Generation.” Susan has written numerous journal

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623

articles and book chapters and has given presentations locally, nationally, and internationally on the subject of workplace bullying among nurses. She is a member of the American Nurses Association, and as a member of the Steering Committee on Workplace Violence and Incivility, she helped draft a position statement that also covers the topic of workplace bullying. MELODY M. KAWAMOTO, MD, MS, is a retired occupational medicine and public health specialist with more than 25 years’ experience in evaluating workplaces for health hazards. LORALEIGH KEASHLY, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Communication and associate dean for Student and Curricular Affairs for the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. She is intrigued by workplace relationships because of how they affect the quality of our work, the meaning and identity we derive from it, and the overall workplace climate and culture. In her research and consulting, she has focused on tough and difficult relationships, for example, conflict and bullying with an eye to taking our understanding of the “why” and “how” and translating that into ways to ameliorate at the individual and organizational levels. Most recently, she has developed training in building bystander efficacy to take constructive action in challenging work situations. Her works in progress focus on the power of relationships at work and (in)civility in academia. She has published over 40 articles and book chapters. KELLY H. KOLB, JD, is a shareholder in the Labor & Employment Section at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC. He received his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University and his JD degree from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a frequent author, contributor, and lecturer on employment issues for publications and audiences across the country. He has been selected for inclusion in the Florida Super Lawyers list and was selected by his peers for inclusion in the 20th–23rd editions of The Best Lawyers in America list under the Employment Law–Management and Litigation–Labor and Employment category. Mr. Kolb currently serves on the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity of Broward County. He also serves as chair of the Business First Sub-Committee for the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce and is on the Chamber’s board of directors. PAMELA LUTGEN-SANDVIK, PhD, is an associate professor at North Dakota State University–Fargo, teaching and researching organizational communication. She is the author of Adult Bullying—A Nasty Piece of Work and coeditor of Destructive Organizational Communication. She has published

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About the Editors and Contributors

numerous monographs in such top-tier journals as Journal of Management Studies, Organization, and Management Communication Quarterly. National, Western States, and Central States Communication Associations have conferred to her research Top Book and numerous Top Articles and Top Papers awards. She has studied workplace bullying since the early 2000s, examining U.S. prevalence, effect on identity, worker emotions, sensemaking or trying to explain abuse, and a host of related topics. Dr. Lutgen-Sandvik’s work has branched out to examine positive communication at work, especially the power of positive managerial communication on employees and organizations. Prior to working in academia, she was an administrator of nonprofit agencies dealing with domestic violence, sexual assault, and alcoholism–drug addiction treatment. GARY NAMIE, PhD, and RUTH NAMIE, PhD, are pioneers of the U.S. Workplace Bullying movement begun in response to Ruth’s abuse by a bullying woman supervisor. In 1997, they founded the Workplace Bullying Institute (workplacebullying.org), the first and only organization to combine help for targeted individuals; empirical research; books; public education; training for professionals, unions, and employers; legislative advocacy; expert witness services; and consulting to organizations. WBI’s national scientific prevalence surveys are the most cited workplace bullying statistics in America. WBI is also the lead advocacy organization in U.S. states to enact the antibullying Healthy Workplace Bill. Together, the Drs. Namie authored the books The Bully-Free Workplace (2011) and The Bully At Work, 2nd ed. (2009). Gary serves as expert witness in litigation and arbitrations. He is a social psychologist and former university professor of management and psychology. Ruth holds a doctorate in clinical psychology. JOEL H. NEUMAN, PhD, is emeritus associate professor of management and organizational behavior in the School of Business, State University of New York at New Paltz. His research and consulting activities focus on workplace aggression and bullying. His work has appeared in publications such as the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Public Administration Quarterly, Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, Aggressive Behavior, Journal of Healthcare Management, and the Journal of Management & Organization. His book chapters have been included in Antisocial Behavior in Organizations, Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace, The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior, Counterproductive Work Behavior, The Destructive Side of Organizational Communication, Insidious Workplace Behavior, the Handbook of Unethical Work Behavior, Gender and the Dysfunctional Workplace, Work and Quality of Life, and Bullying in

About the Editors and Contributors

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Higher Education. He is currently retired and living a nonaggressive life of travel and leisure. MARY BETH RICKE, JD, is an associate attorney in the Labor & Employment Section at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC. She received her undergraduate degree from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and her JD degree from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2013. She was selected as a 2016 Florida Rising Star and included in the 2016 Florida Super Lawyers list. She routinely contributes articles to the Broward County Bar Association publication The Barrister. She is active in the charitable organization of the Junior League of Greater Fort Lauderdale. PIETER J. ROSSOUW, PhD, is director of Mediros Clinical Solutions, the BRAINGro Institute, and the Neuropsychotherapy Institute—companies that provide training and conduct research in neurobiology and neuropsychotherapy. Pieter is professor in brain-based education at Central Queensland University and president of the International Association of Clinical Neuropsychotherapy. He conducts teaching and research in the fields of neurobiology and neuropsychotherapy as well as clinical training for clinicians, psychologists, and general practitioners. Pieter’s latest books—The Predictive 6 Factor Resilience Scale: Clinical Guidelines and Applications, with Jurie Rossouw, and Bullying: Taking Control, with Melisa Kaya—were published in 2016. His other major works in applied neuroscience are Neuropsychotherapy: Theoretical Underpinnings and Clinical Applications and BrainWise Leadership (coauthored with Connie Henson). He is chief editor of the International Journal for Neuropsychotherapy and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Psychiatry, the Journal of Psychology and Clinical Psychiatry, and The Neuropsychotherapist. GREGORY SOROZAN, MEd, is president of SEIU/NAGE Local R1-282 in Quincy, Massachusetts. Greg has served as president since the year 2000 and represents more than 3,000 professional-level state employees. Greg also serves as national vice president to SEIU/NAGE, representing more than 60,000 members. As president, he negotiated one of the first antibullying clauses in the nation into the NAGE Contract Bargaining Agreement in 2009. Greg is a licensed certified social worker and is experienced in child welfare practices. Knowledge of interactional patterns of behavior connects family and work. Greg has served as a consultant and trainer for the National Resource Center on Family Based Services and has served on the Professional Advisory Committee for the Workplace Bullying Institute. He is an experienced trainer and interventionist. “Each day brings its own rewards.”

626

About the Editors and Contributors

LEN SPERRY, MD, PhD, is professor of mental health counseling at Florida Atlantic University and clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is coauthor of Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions and Overcoming Mobbing: A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying. VEGA SUBRAMANIAM, MA, is a nonprofit consultant and leadership coach at Vega Mala Consulting in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. She holds an associate certified coach certification through the International Coach Federation. She is a member of the RoadMap consultant team and Maryland Nonprofits and serves as the board president of Training for Change. BENJAMIN M. WALSH, PhD, is assistant professor of management at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His research program addresses interpersonal treatment in organizations, with a focus on understanding antecedents and outcomes of mistreatment experiences and the effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent workplace mistreatment. His research is published in outlets such as Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Stress and Health, Journal of Business and Psychology, and International Journal of Selection and Assessment.

Index

Italicized numbers refer to figures and tables. Absenteeism, 120, 204–205, 208, 210–211, 249, 359, 393, 395, 491, 570, 598. See also Presenteeism Abuse. See Abusive supervision; Emotional abuse; Work abuse Abusive supervision, 10, 66, 338, 482; definitions of, 12; effects of, 202; and labor union members, 428–429; perpetrators’ characteristics, 63–65; and target personalities, 54; and teachers, 490 Abusive work environment: and bullying policies, 583; definitions of, 11, 16–17, 416, 498; effects of, 180, 204, 210; and family/medical leave, 426; and Healthy Workplace Bill, 11, 230, 415–416; and legislation, 415–416, 426, 430, 436, 498; and mental health services, 613 Adams, Andrea, 5, 16, 18, 381 Addiction. See Alcohol and drug abuse Aggression. See Workplace aggression Alcohol and drug abuse, 65, 171, 181, 182–183, 292, 309 Alvesson, Mats, 133 American Counseling Association, 318 American Psychiatric Association (APA), 224, 318, 342. See also

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Andersson, Lynne, 207, 368 Anxiety, 5, 88, 105–108, 111–112, 140, 145–146, 179, 184, 209, 292–293, 307, 309, 322, 347, 369, 391, 422, 481, 490, 563–564, 568, 575, 615 Arkansas Supreme Court, 422 Australian Human Rights Commission, 153 Balducci, Cristian, 114 Banas, Kasia, 137 Barling, Julian, 203, 205 Baron, Robert, 201 Batsche, George M., 153 Behavior classification and inventories, 36–39 Behavioral consequences of bullying, 204–206 Behaviors of bullying and mobbing, 14–16; and definitions, 3–13; measuring, 36–38; person-related, 36, 38; physical intimidation, 36, 38; work-related, 36, 38 Bergen, Daniel E., 213 Bergen Bullying Research Group (University of Bergen, Norway), 55 Bergman, Matt, 203, 207, 562

628

Bonfiglioli, Roberta, 114 Book, Angela S., 64–65 Breland, Jacob W., 63 Brodsky, Carroll M., 10 Brown, Jessi Eden, 71, 613 Bullying. See Workplace bullying; entries under Workplace bullying and mobbing Burnazi, Laurela, 39, 41 Bystander action, 35 Bystander effect, 56, 377 Bystanders and witnesses: and conflict resolution, 266–267, 271, 273–275, 277, 279–280, 282–283; education of, 249, 399, 472, 529–530; and education sector, 517, 525, 529–530; and impact of bullying and mobbing, 205–207, 211; and vicarious and secondary victimization, 172–177, 181, 186, 188 Califano, Joseph A., 35, 41, 42 Camilleri, Joseph A., 64–65 Campaign Against Workplace Bullying, 5, 414 CareerBuilder, 33, 41, 42, 44 Chen, Serena, 63 Chesler, Phyllis, 57 Choi, Bongkyoo, 120 Civil rights, 57–58, 366, 370, 615 Civil Rights Act (1924), Title VII, 13–14, 212, 416–417, 423–424, 567 Coaching, 145, 227, 275; for aggressors and offenders, 276–277, 335–351; for bystanders, 279–280; case example, 326–329; coaching versus psychotherapy, 315–318; definitions of, 336–337; effectiveness of, 337; and human resources, 237, 238, 239, 245, 250–253; licensing and credentials, 317–318, 325–326; International Coach Federation (ICF), 316–317, 320; legal and regulatory issues, 325–326; practitioner skills, 323–325; process of coaching, 318–323; for

Index

targets, 278–279, 315–330. See also Consultants Cognitive behavioral therapy, 307, 309, 337, 348–349 Cognitive processing therapy, 121 Cole, Richard T., 213 Comorbidities: definition of, 105; and PTSD, 107, 111, 116 Conflict resolution, 21, 70, 137, 264–286, 365; and bystanders and supporters, 279–280; and civility, 284–285; coaching offenders, 276–277; conflict roles, 266–267; and human resources, 243, 250, 252; and ombuds, 283–284, 388–393, 399–401; positive and negative conflict, 266; restorative justice myths and realities, 275–276; restorative justice steps, 273–275; restorative practices, 265–286; safe reporting, 270, 280–284, 286; and social pain, 137; and targets, 278– 279; three-party system, 280–283 Consultants, 357–383; American employer attitudes and reactions, 362–363; antecedents to traditional consulting, 357–362; goals, 373–375; indirect alternatives to, 364–370; and legal system, 381–383; and policies, 370–373; and unions, 380–381. See also Coaching Cooper, Cary, 5, 6, 9, 17, 18, 34, 207 Corporate sector, bullying and mobbing in, 561–577; causes of, 567–571; effect on employers, 565–567; obstacles to antibullying efforts, 575–577; prevalence, 562–563; responses to, 571–574; victims, 563–565 Costello, Kimberly, 64–65 Counterdependency, 86. See also Dependency Crawshaw, Laura, 338, 341, 343, 345, 346–348, 351, 377 Critical incident model of workplace mobbing, 7, 9, 15

Index

Cubela Adoric, Vera, 143, 144 Cyberbullying, 280; and Brodie’s Law (Australia), 445; definition of, 115; and education sector, 514, 521; workplace, 36, 267; and zerotolerance policy, 573 Daniel, Teresa, 17 Darwinism, 156. See also Social Darwinism Davenport, Noa: definition of workplace mobbing, 6, 7–8, 18; effects of workplace mobbing on friendships, 190; effects on performance and productivity, 205, 207; prevention of workplace mobbing, 213 D’Cruz, Premilla, 56, 186, 241 Denmark, 438–440, 450. See also Scandinavia Dependency, 86–87, 90 Depression, 88, 105–112, 137, 140, 143, 147, 171, 182–184, 204–205, 209–210, 277–278, 292, 309, 322, 337, 366, 428, 430, 489–490, 564, 568, 599, 612 Derks, Belle, 57 Dewey, John, 4 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): DSM-III, 103, 106–107; DSM IV, 107–109; DSM-5, 88, 107–109, 293–295; and narcissistic personality disorder, 88; and “neurosis,” 103; and PTSD, 106–109, 293–295 Dignitarian society, 616–617. See also Future agendas and visions Displaced aggression, 179 Displaced workers, 60, 62, 68–69, 71, 359 Disruptive behaviors, 10, 102, 458–463, 469–473 Diversity, 284, 366–367, 370, 399, 431 Dollard, Maureen, 203 Dopamine, 157, 161, 163. See also Neuroscience Dormann, Christian, 203

629

Drug abuse. See Alcohol and drug abuse DSM. See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Duffy, Maureen: on aggressors, 614; American Mental Health Counselors Association keynote, 613; definition of workplace mobbing, 7, 8–10, 16, 17, 18; intent as element of bullying and mobbing, 26; isomorphism, 177; mental health of aggressors, 614; negative acts, 16; negative impacts, 17; psychological impacts, 144–145; restorative justice, 213; vicarious and secondary victimization, 171, 172, 177, 178, 180–182, 189–190 Education sector, bullying and mobbing in: higher education, 507–351; mistreatment and abuse by administrators, 482–483; prevalence of, 481, 516–517; principal mistreatment and abuse of teachers, 481–501; studies and research, 492–500 Egocentrism, 88. See also Narcissism Einarsen, Stale, definition of workplace bullying, 5, 6, 9, 17, 18, 33, 55, 203, 295, 369 Eisenberger, Naomi I., 137 Ellemers Naomi, 57 Elliott, Gail, 6, 7–8, 18 Elliott, Ray, 317 Embitterment disorder, 68, 109–111 Emotional abuse, 61, 118, 509; cycle of, 206; definitions of, 11, 16; emotional and psychological consequences of, 59, 66; and mobbing syndrome, 7; performance and productivity consequences of, 205; spousal, 66; use of the term, 10, 391, 509 Emotional intelligence (EQ), 61; assessment of, 604; and coaching, 345, 347; and leadership, 249, 250, 347, 349, 387, 392, 393, 604; and perpetrators, 63, 341; and soft skills

630

training, 251, 399; and states of being, 269 Empathy, 64, 137–138, 159, 174, 184–185, 227, 230, 237–238, 250–251, 265, 273–274, 323, 341–342, 345, 347–349, 398, 489, 497, 570 Employability, 17, 131, 132, 139–140, 145 Epigenetics, 113, 152, 157 Epstein, Seymour, 161, 162 Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), 58, 67 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 249, 300, 497, 562 Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, 121–122, 307 Exposure therapy, 306–307; prolonged exposure therapy, 121 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), 426–427 Fast, Nathanael J., 63 Fix, Bryan, 138 Flannery, Raymond, 12 French Supreme Court (Court of Cassation), 442 Fryers, Tom, 135, 136 Fuller, Robert, 616–617 Fundamental attribution error, 55, 375 Future agendas and visions, 611–617; dignitarian society, 616–617; law and public policy, 614–615; mental health and coaching, 613–614; organizational prevention and response, 611–613; workplace standards, 615–616 Gallup, Inc., 119–120, 394 Garcia, Patrick Raymund James M., 63 General affective aggression model, 201 General Social Survey (GSS), 25, 34, 41 Generalized Workplace Harassment, 36

Index

Generalized workplace harassment, 40, 369, 508–509. See also Workplace harassment Glambek, Mats, 205 Glaso, Lars, 55 “Going postal,” 45, 223. See also United States Postal Service Gok, Sibel, 68 Grawe, Klaus, 161 Guglielmi, Dina, 114 Guilt: of aggressors, 191, 404; of bystanders, 172, 175, 186, 530; and clinical evaluations, 121; and coaching, 321, 322; shame versus, 66; of targets, 66, 68, 107, 321, 322; and toxic leadership, 596. See also Shame Gustafsson, Annelie, 105, 106 Harassment. See Students: harassment of; Workplace harassment Hare, Chauncey, 10–11 Hare, Robert, 64 Hart, Vicki, 318 Health, World Health Organization definition of, 101, 105, 118, 122 Health care sector, bullying and mobbing in, 457–474; contributing factors, 463–468; current responses to, 468–473; use of labels, 458–460; prevalence of, 460–463 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), 108 Health outcomes, definition of, 104 Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB), 11, 213, 223–225, 229–230, 246, 395, 414, 415–421, 431, 492, 615, 616; antiretaliation protection, 417; damages, 417; definition of abusive conduct, 11, 229, 416, 419–420, 498; definition of abusive work environment, 11, 230, 415–416; and educational settings, 492, 495, 497, 499–500; features of, 415–418; influences on, 424; liability, 416–417;

Index

primary cause of action, 415–416; state versions of, 499, 571; support for, 421, 429, 497–499, 500; and unions, 497, 558 Healthy workplace legislation: California, 418; Georgia, 420; Tennessee, 418–419; Utah, 419–420. See also Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB) Heath, Renee G., 138 Henle, Christine A., 53 Hershcovis, M. Sandy, 203, 205 Hetland, Jorn, 205 Hoel, Helge, 5, 6, 9, 17, 18, 34, 58, 207, 369, 397 Hollis, Leah P., 202, 203, 210, 513 Horizontal violence. See Lateral (horizontal) violence Hostile work environment, 43, 45, 340, 572; definitions of, 13–14, 102, 416, 423–424; and harassment, 416, 423–424, 438; neck pain caused by, 114; and workplace bullying, 13–14, 35, 114, 340 Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, 617 Human resources (HR), 56, 81, 91, 208, 357, 397, 429, 435, 437, 546, 561, 565, 573; accountability strategies, 252–254; identifying bullying and mobbing, 244–247; intervention strategies, 249–251; organizational roles of HR professionals, 235–239, 283; organizational strategies, 247– 254; perceptions of HR’s role and performance, 239–244; prevention strategies, 247–249; responsibilities of, 236, 240, 243, 246; restoration and recovery strategies, 251–252; and safe reporting, 212, 280; workplace relationships, 254–255 Hutchinson, Marie, 78, 81, 83, 90 Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, 157–158, 161. See also Neuroscience

631

ICD-10 (World Health Organization diagnostic manual), 103, 108–111. See also World Health Organization (WHO) ICD-11, 108–109, 111 Illness, definition of, 104 Incivility. See Workplace incivility Indiana Supreme Court, 229, 382 Injury, definition of, 104 Institute of Medicine (IOM), 107 Intentionality: and definitions of workplace bullying and mobbing, 16–17, 18, 26, 153, 246, 494; in education sector, 487, 490, 527; and legal system, 381–382, 404, 407, 415, 419, 422; and power harassment (Japan), 447; and tort law, 415, 422 Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED), 212, 381–382, 415, 422 Intentional workplace, 616 International Labour Organization, 13 Intervention studies in the United States, Australia, and Finland, 165 Isolation. See Social isolation Jagatic, Karen, 39, 41, 482 Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie, 60, 61 Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act, 498 Job strain, 88, 113–116, 205. See also Stress and stressors; Work stress Job strain model, 113–114, 116 Job stress, 80, 360. See also Job strain; Stress and stressors; Work stress Johns, Gary, 204 Johnson, Susan L., 206 Just-world beliefs, 141–144 Kandel, Eric, 156, 158, 160 Karasek, Robert A., Jr., 113–114 Karatuna, Isil, 68 Keashly, Loraleigh, 39, 41, 206, 428; bystander training, 377, 529; definition of emotional abuse, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18

632

Keeney, Bradford P., 3 Kiewitz, Christian, 63 Knoff, Howard M., 153 Kvartuc, Tina, 143, 144 Labor unions, 324, 615; and consultants, 357, 371, 372, 374, 380–381; corporate sector, 561, 569, 575–576; education sector, 305, 488–489, 493–494, 497; health care sector, 464; and legal system, 421, 425, 428–429; mobilizing support for, 361–362; nonprofit sector, 597–598; public service sector, 540, 544–546, 548–549, 551–558 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 157 Lambert, Lisa Schurer, 53 Lambert, Ronald D., 524 Lateral (horizontal) violence, 10, 57, 458–459, 471–472 Law, Rebecca, 203 Leadership: definition of, 82–83; and emotional intelligence, 249, 250, 347, 349, 387, 392, 393, 604; instructional leadership, 499–500; toxic leadership, 337, 342, 589–593, 595–597, 600–606; transactional leadership, 83; transformational leadership, 83, 499–500 Legal system and legislation: antiretaliation provisions, 417, 424; Australia, 444–445; Belgium, 441–442; Canada, 446–447; collective bargaining laws, 424–425; and consultants, 361; cultural influences, 448–450; damages, 395, 415, 417, 498, 575, 615; Denmark, 440; and diversity, 431; employee handbooks, 425; and employees’ lawyers, 428; and employers and their lawyers, 429; employment discrimination law, 423–424; Europe, 436–444; France, 442–443; Germany, 444; and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), 212, 381–382, 415, 422; international,

Index

435–450; Ireland, 443–444; Japan, 447–448; and labor unions, 428–429; liability, 326, 359, 370, 395, 416, 419, 422, 428–429, 435, 442, 450, 498, 539, 558; and mental health providers, 430; occupational safety and health laws, 425; policy objectives, 414–415; public benefit programs, 426–427; redress and liability, 413–432; Slovenia, 441; Sweden, 439; therapeutic jurisprudence, 431–432; tort law, 212, 272, 415, 417, 422–423, 426, 444; United Kingdom, 444; whistleblower provisions, 424. See also Civil Rights Act (1964); Healthy Workplace Bill Leymann, Heinz, 71–72, 119, 206; critical incident model, 7, 9, 15; definition of workplace mobbing, 6, 17, 18, 37, 369; psychological effects of workplace bullying, 105, 106, 121, 292 Liability, 326, 359, 370, 395, 416, 419, 422, 428–429, 435, 442, 450, 498, 539, 558. See also Legal system and legislation Lieberman, Matthew D., 137 Lind, Karina 55 Linden, Michael, 68, 109–110 Lindner, Evelin, 617 Lipscomb, Jane, 33, 38, 40, 41, 42 Lorenz, Konrad, 7 Lutgen-Sandvik, Pamela, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41, 134, 144, 202, 205–208, 213, 482 MacDonald, Geoff, 137 Machiavellianism, 61, 230, 546 Malice, 14, 576; and abusive conduct (California), 418, 582; definition of, 17; and distinction between bullying and tough management, 17; and moral harassment (France), 442; and negative acts, 16; and workplace bullying and mobbing, 5, 7, 17, 242–243, 246, 586

Index

Martin, Brian, 9 Martin, Jonathan, 366–367, 564 Matthiesen, Stig Berge, 205 McEwen, Bruce, 112 McGinley, Meredith, 40 Meditation, 307. See also Mindfulness Metcalf, Gary, 17 Mindfulness, 307, 309, 592 Mobbing. See entries under Workplace bullying and mobbing; Workplace mobbing Moral exclusion theory, 54 Moser, Klaus, 141 Namie, Gary, 40; BullyProof Yourself at Work, 414, 613; Campaign Against Workplace Bullying, 5, 414; “communal character” of bullying, 207; definition of workplace bullying, 5–6, 13, 16–17; effects of workplace bullying on organizations, 206–208, 211, 212, 213; as expert witness, 229, 382; psychological violence, 13; role of human resources, 254; Workplace Bullying Institute, 6, 221, 495; workplace bullying in the corporate sector, 562–563, 568–570; Workplace Bullying Survey, 495 Namie, Ruth: BullyProof Yourself at Work, 414, 613; Campaign Against Workplace Bullying, 5, 414; definition of workplace bullying, 5–6, 13, 16–17; effects of workplace bullying on organizations, 211, 212, 213; psychological violence, 13; role of human resources, 254; Workplace Bullying Institute, 6, 221 Narcissism, 66, 88, 230, 493, 554, 567, 592; and coaching, 342, 348–349, 614; and disrespect, 368; and education sector, 489; and group cohesiveness 90; and income inequality, 604; and management, 570 Narcissistic personality disorder, 88, 602 Narrative therapy, 307–308

633

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: Preventing Bullying through Science, Policy, and Practice, 77 National Education Association (NEA), 77 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), 25, 41–43, 292 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 12, 25, 43, 120 Natural selection, 156 Negative acts: and behavior classification, 36–38; and coaching, 277; and critical incident model, 7, 15; and definitions of workplace bullying and mobbing, 16, 18, 37, 153, 389, 461; definitions of, 16; and gender, 58; and restorative justice, 275, 405; and self-labeling, 33, 58; and social capital, 141; and states of being, 269; and strain theory, 268; and victimization, 439; withholding or denial of job references, 147 Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ), 36, 38, 369, 460–461, 464, 471 Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R), 27, 29, 34, 36–37, 516 Negative affectivity (NA), 53–54 Neuman, Joel H., 201 Nielsen, Morten Birkeland, 37, 202–203 Nelson, E. D., 524 Nelson, Eric, 346 Neurobiology of pathology, 155–156 Neurofeedback, 308 Neuroplasticity, 155–156, 159 Neuropsychotherapy, 160–166 Neuroscience, 121, 151–160; brain development and genetics, 156–157; bullying and neural structures, 158– 160; bullying and neurochemicals, 157–158; and conflict management, 402; dopamine, 157, 161, 163; and emotions, 396; and health care professionals, 465; neural development and connectivity, 154–156; and neuropsychotherapy,

634

160–166; and ostracism and exclusion, 137, 146; serotonin, 157, 161 Neurosis, 103, 106 Nonprofit sector, workplace bullying and mobbing in, 589–606; impacts on staff, 598–601; literature review, 591–593; responsive actions by staff, 597–598; toxic behavior patterns, 595–597; and toxic leadership, 601–605 Nordgren, Loran F., 137 Noronha, Ernesto, 56, 186, 241 Norway: education sector, 222, 483; surveys and research, 55, 449, 483; workplace bullying and mobbing laws, 212, 439, 440. See also Scandinavia Obsessiveness, 66–68, 106, 486 Occupational Safety and Health Administration. See U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Oppressed group behavior, 10 Occupational Safety and Health Act, 425 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 120, 360, 497; Preventing Workplace Violence: A Road Map for Healthcare Facilities, 468–469; on workplace violence, 12, 465, 468–469 Olweus, Dan, 153, 222 Ombuds, 387–407; advanced skills for, 402–405; historical perspective, 388; office of ombuds, 396–397; role of, 389–391; strategies for, 397–402; as trust leader, 391–393; and workplace culture, 393–394; and workplace trust, 394–396 Organizational climate, 119, 300, 404, 405; and bystanders, 172, 517; climate surveys, 249; and coaching, 338–341, 351; definition of, 82; and

Index

definitions of bullying and mobbing, 9; and education sector, 491–494, 497, 517, 522, 525, 528; negative impacts of bullying and mobbing on, 35, 208–209, 212, 213; and organization development, 86; and prevention of bullying and mobbing, 247–249; and psychological safety, 360. See also “Climate of fear” 207, 23 Organizational culture, 119, 393, 615; and bystanders, 172; definition of, 81–82; and definitions of bullying and mobbing, 9, 18; negative impacts of bullying and mobbing on, 176, 207–209, 213, 254, 284; and nonprofit sector, 591, 593, 601–606; and organization development, 85–86; as precedent to mistreatment and abuse, 493 Organizational developmental trajectory, 84–87; consolidation, 85–86; early bureaucratization, 86; expansion, 85; late bureaucratization, 86–87; new venture, 84–85; professionalization, 85 Organizational responsibility, 18, 45, 68, 71, 223, 254, 363, 372–373, 522, 612, 615–616. See also Human resources (HR): responsibilities of Organizational risk factors for bullying and mobbing, 75–95; case study, 91–94; and individual dynamics, 87–89; and integrative model of prevention, 78–79; and organizational dynamics, 79–87; and work team dynamics, 89–90; zerotolerance policies, 76–78 Organizational shame, 69. See also Shame Ostracism, 19, 612; as behavior of bullying or mobbing, 65, 68, 82, 144, 240, 245; and education sector, 222, 496; effects of, 65, 137, 144, 178, 179; and incivility, 368; and

Index

leadership, 82; neuroscience of, 146; and power harassment, 447; and prevention policy, 371; and “social death,” 137. See also Social isolation Pallesen, Stale, 55 Panic attacks, 106, 322, 481, 564. See also Anxiety Passive-aggression, 86, 174, 285, 459 Pearson, Christine, 13, 207, 209, 368 Peña Saint Martin, Florencia, 9 Perceived injustice, 66–67, 68, 110, 495, 524–525 Perfectionism, 62–63 Perry, Tara, 138 Political intelligence, 61 Porath, Christine, 13, 209, 240 Postal workers. See United States Postal Service Posttraumatic embitterment disorder (PTED), 68, 109–111 Posttraumatic stress disorders, 105–111, 121, 292–296; and bullying and mobbing, 8, 111, 171, 181, 184, 209, 292–293, 295–296, 391, 428, 430, 564; complex PTSD, 108–109; diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 108–109, 116, 293–297; posttraumatic embitterment disorder (PTED), 68, 109–111. See also Trauma; Traumainformed care Power, healthy, 404–405 Power distance, 449 Power harassment (Japan), 436, 447–448 Power imbalances and differentials, 63, 387; and administration, 482–483; and conflict resolution, 21, 58, 266, 267, 286, 365, 402–404; contrapower bullying, 515, 517; and counseling and coaching, 300, 302–303; and definitions of bullying and mobbing, 5, 11, 12, 18–19, 153, 244; and education sector, 341, 493–495,

635

501, 509, 515, 517–519, 524–526; and gender, 58; and health care sector, 464–470; and hierarchy, 464, 468, 515; and mediation, 365; measurement of, 26, 33; mirroring strategy for, 403–404; and political intelligence, 61; power swapping strategy for, 403–404; and public service sector, 548–550, 552, 556–558; and rankism, 617; and recovery from bullying and mobbing, 144; and toxic leadership, 591, 598, 601, 604–605 Powerlessness, 56, 58, 300, 302, 305, 501 Presenteeism, 204–207, 210–211, 271, 277, 395, 598. See also Absenteeism Prolonged exposure therapy, 121. See also Exposure therapy Protected class status, 11, 13–14, 370, 416, 418, 423–424, 428, 431, 436, 567 Psychological safety, 66, 69, 71, 301, 306, 360, 382 Psychological violence, 6, 12–13, 57, 66, 364, 372, 398. See also Violence; Workplace violence Psychopathology, 64–65, 106, 158, 159, 230, 273, 568, 614 Psychosocial, definition of, 131 Psychosomatic illness, definitions of, 103–104 Psychotherapy: best practices, 291–310; coaching versus psychotherapy, 315–318; posttraumatic stress disorder, 292–296; specific treatment modalities for trauma, 306–309; trauma-informed care, 296–309 Public service sector, bullying and mobbing in, 539–558; bullying behaviors 545–546; enabling behaviors, 548–560; examples of interventions, 551–554; grievance processes, 543–544; impact of success, 555–557; politics of,

636

547–548; public sector workplaces and systems, 542–543; and resilience, 550–551; and unions, 540, 544–545 Queen bee phenomenon, 57 Rape, 12, 59. See also Sexual assault Rea, Ruth, 206 Reeves, Maiyuwai, 63 Reintegrative shame, 273. See also Shame Reio, Thomas G., 203 Relaxation therapy, 307 Resilience, 113; and coaching, 324, 337; definitions of, 120–121, 154; and employability, 139; and neuropsychotherapy, 154, 162, 164, 166; as protective factor, 120–121; and public service sector, 550–551; and recovery, 139–140, 162, 164, 166, 324, 337, 592; and selfmanagement, 592; training for, 252 Restorative justice, 265–286; myths and realities, 275–276; practices, 265–286; safe reporting, 270, 280–284, 286; steps and procedures, 252–273–275; and victims, 272–280 Restubog, Simon Lloyd D., 63 Richman, Judy, 40, 369 Rose, Kevin, 203, 207, 562 Rospenda, Kathleen M., 41, 369 Safe reporting, 265, 270, 280–284, 286, 399 Sakmann, Bert, 156 Salin, Denise, 58, 495, 524 Sanders-Reio, Joanne, 203 Scaer, Robert, 292 Scandinavia, 34, 37, 436, 448–449. See also Denmark; Norway; Sweden Schat, Aaron, 41 Schwartz, Ruth Distler, 6, 7–8, 18 Schwartz, Tony, 346 Scott, Kristin L., 63 Sebastian, Catherine, 159

Index

Self-harm, 65, 326. See also Suicide and suicidal ideation Sensky, Tom, 110, 111 Sensorimotor psychotherapy, 308 Serotonin, 157, 161. See also Neuroscience Sexual assault, 59, 64, 107, 624 Sexual harassment, 11, 39, 56, 115, 246, 295, 450; anti–sexual harassment policy, 79, 93, 212, 573–574, 586–587; and bullying, 367, 368–369, 371, 561; and California, 418; in education sector, 487; prevalence of, 14; and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 13–14, 416, 424; and tort law, 422; use and impact of the term, 19, 20; and workplace mobbing, 8; and workplace training, 546, 574. See also Workplace harassment Selye, Hans, 103, 112, 115 Shame, 555; of aggressors, 273; and coaching, 321, 322; destigmatizing, 69; and education sector, 489; as intent of bullying and mobbing, 617; guilt versus, 66; organizational shame, 69; and public education, 226–227; reintegrative shame, 273; of targets, 66, 107, 226, 321, 322, 564. See also Guilt; Stigma Shaughnessy, Brooke A., 63 Shuck, Brad, 203, 207, 562 Sias, Patricia, 138 Silva, Deborah, 138 Social Darwinism, 568 Social isolation, 65–66, 105, 136, 322; as behavior of bullying or mobbing, 15, 65, 134, 201, 267, 397–398, 485, 520, 527, 562, 586; and coaching, 322, 323; and education sector, 485, 486, 487, 489–491, 494; effects of, 146, 163; as enabling bullying and mobbing, 548–550; and general workplace harassment, 369; and mistrust, 299; and power harassment,

Index

447; and prevention policy, 371; as response to bullying or mobbing, 65, 105, 136–138, 163; and suicide, 65. See also Ostracism Social pain, 132, 136–138, 145–146, 159 Social rejection, 159. See also Ostracism; Social isolation Society for Human Resource Management, 42–45, 236–237, 239–240, 243–244, 248, 254, 573; SHRM Body of Competency and Knowledge, 254 Somatoform disorders, definitions of, 103–104 Sperry, Len: definition of workplace mobbing, 7, 8–10, 16, 17, 18; isomorphism, 177; mental health of aggressors, 614; negative act and negative impacts, 16, 17; psychological impacts, 144–145; restorative justice, 213; vicarious and secondary victimization, 171, 172, 177, 178, 180–182, 189–190 Stigma, 15, 19, 58, 69, 105, 229, 572. See also Shame Stress resilience, 121. See also Resilience Stressors and stress: definitions of, 103; Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED), 212, 381–382, 415, 422; karoushi (stress-related suicide), 448; and physical health, 112–115; work stress, 10–11, 342, 347, 489. See also Posttraumatic stress disorders Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 296–298, 309 Sugden, Karen, 153 Suicide and suicidal ideation, 366, 442; case of Brodie Panlock (Australia), 445; case of Phoebe Prince (Massachusetts), 281; and children of divorce, 185; France Telecom suicides, 443; karoushi (stress-related

637

suicide), 448; media coverage of suicide, 222, 223; risk for targets of bullying and mobbing, 65–66, 105–106, 111, 171, 222–223, 369, 564; and social isolation, 65; and traumatic brain injury, 160; and work orientation, 89 Supreme Court. See United States Supreme Court Sutton, Robert, 76 Sveningsson, Stefan, 133 Sweden: ombudsman, 388; surveys and research, 105, 113, 483; workplace bullying and mobbing laws, 361, 439, 439–440. See also Scandinavia Symptoms, definition of, 104 Syndromes, definition of, 104 Tang, Robert L., 63 Targets of workplace bullying and mobbing: anger and embitterment, 67; behavioral antecedents to targethood, 62–63; behaviors as predictors, 60; and blaming victims, 55; and coaching, 278–279, 315–330; and conflict resolution, 278–279; and gender, 56–58; high self-disclosers, 62; and personalities, 53–55; and fighting back, 56; history of prior abuse, 59–60; negative affectivity (NA), 53–54; obsessiveness, 66–68, 106, 486; ostracism, isolation, and self-harm, 65–66; perceived injustice and obsessiveness, 66–68; and perpetrators’ characteristics, 63–65; and race, 58–59; as representing our “better nature,” 70–71; risk factors, 53–72; shame and guilt, 66; strengths as liabilities, 60–62; unwanted and uninvited assault, 56. See also Victims and victimization Telomeres, 112–113 Tepper, Ben, 12, 53–55, 202, 482 Terkel, Studs, 70

638

Tort law, 212, 272, 415, 417, 422–423, 426, 444. See also Legal system and legislation Tracy, Sarah J., 213, 482 Transactional leadership, 83 Transactional stress theory, 489 Transformational leadership, 83, 499–500 Transformative prescriptions, 277, 279 Trauma: and neuroscience, 156; and nonprofit sector, 593, 599; retraumatization, 59, 487, 542; and service sector, 569; trauma-informed care, 146, 291, 296–310 (see also separate entry); traumatization theory, 60, 61; treatments, 121 (see also Trauma-informed care); work trauma, 10, 330; and workplace friendships, 138. See also Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) Trauma-informed care, 146, 291, 296–297, 315, 378; case illustration, 304–306; and coaching, 319–330, 613; and cognitive behavioral therapy, 306; and exposure therapy, 306–307; and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, 121–122, 307; and mindfulness and meditation, 307; and narrative therapy, 307–308; and neurofeedback, 308; principles of, 297–298; from principles to practice, 298–304; and relaxation therapy, 307; and sensorimotor psychotherapy, 308; and somatic experiencing, 308–309 Traumatic brain injury, 160 Treadway, Darren C., 63 Tuckey, Michelle, 203 Twyford, Devon, 203, 207, 562 Unemployment benefits, 427 Unions. See Labor unions United States Postal Office, 35, 42, 45, 223, 620

Index

United States Supreme Court: Burlington Industries v. Ellerth, 416; definition of hostile work environment, 13, 416; Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 416, 423–424; Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc., 571 Van Laar, Colette, 57 Vicarious and secondary victimization, 171–192; aggressor allies, 173–174; children and parenting, 180–185; coworkers and bystanders, 172–177; friendships, 185–187; future research, 188–191; intimate partners, children, and friends, 177–188; silent bystanders, 175–176; target allies, 174–175; target-partners, 176–180; witness bystanders, 173 Victim blaming, 55–56, 142–143, 147, 297 Victim-perpetrator interactions, 494–495 Victim precipitation, 53–55 Victims and victimization, 35, 38–39, 42, 45, 64, 153, 366; “bullied/ nonvictim” category, 40; criminal victimization, 54; definitions of, 439–440; in education sector, 487, 500, 515; and human resources, 241; and self-labeling, 33–34, 38–39; and social pain, 137; vicarious and secondary, 171–192. See also Restorative justice: and victims; Targets of workplace bullying and mobbing Victimology, 118 Vignoli, Michela, 114 Violence: against children, 59, 115; conflict resolution as violence, 365–366; domestic or partner violence, 54, 59, 108, 115, 120, 226, 229, 336, 365–366; Domestic Violence Awareness Month, 226; humiliation as cause of, 617;

Index

lateral (horizontal) violence, 10, 57, 458–459, 471–472; and posttraumatic stress disorder, 293; prevention of, 371–372; psychological violence, 6, 12–13, 57, 66, 364, 372, 398; sexual violence, 59, 293, 529; suicide as violence, 369; symbolic violence, 240; witness bystanders to, 173, 181; work as violence, 70. See also Workplace violence VitalSmarts, 35, 36, 40, 45 Westhues, Kenneth, 7, 292, 519, 521, 527 Whistle-blowing, 71, 284, 424 Whitehall studies, 113 WHO. See World Health Organization (WHO) Williams, Patrick, 316 Witnesses. See Bystanders and witnesses Wolff, Hans-Georg, 141 Work abuse, use of the term, 10–11 Work orientation, 89, 94 Work pressure, 80 Work stress, 10–11, 342, 347, 489. See also Job strain; Job stress; Stress and stressors Work trauma, 10, 330. See also Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD); Trauma; Trauma-informed care Workplace aggression, 391; and bullying, 9, 40, 43, 45, 153, 171–173, 208, 209, 267, 346, 561–562; and bystanders, 173–174, 176, 377; and chronic stress, 466; displaced, 179, 401; effects and costs of, 160, 176–177, 203, 205, 208–209; and embitterment disorder, 110; and emotional abuse, 11; family origins of, 63, 182; general affective aggression model, 201–202; and generalized workplace harassment, 369; and gender, 57, 565; group, 9;

639

in higher education, 507–508, 524, 531; humiliation as cause of, 617; and incivility, 368; and individual dynamics and differences, 87–88, 341–342, 612; indirect, relational, and social, 10; and leadership, 82; levels of, 484, 485–487; and mobbing, 9, 40, 43, 45, 171; and narcissism, 230; and negative affectivity, 64; and norm violations, 524; occasional, 26, 34; one-on-one, 9, 57; passive-aggression, 86, 174, 285, 459; physical, 12, 229, 423; prevalence of in the workplace, 25, 38, 45–46; psychological, 25; and PTSD, 294; reciprocal, 180, 565; relational, 10; vicarious, 34–35; workplace aggression defined, 369. See also Workplace incivility Workplace bullying, definitions of, 5–6, 9–10, 16–21, 102–103 Workplace bullying and mobbing, definitions and concepts: abusive work environment, 11, 16–17, 416, 498; actors, 18; frequency and duration, 17; implications of terms and definitions, 19–21; intentionality, 16–17, 18, 26, 153, 246, 494; malice, 17–18; negative acts, 16, 18, 37, 153, 389, 461; negative impacts, 17–18; power imbalances and differentials, 5, 11, 12, 18–19, 153, 244 Workplace bullying and mobbing, impacts of, 101–102; attitudinal and affective consequences, 202–204; cardiovascular disorders, 113–114; and childhood adversity, 113, 115; exclusion, 136–139; and just-world beliefs, 141–144; latency of, 116; loss of work relationships, 136–139; mental health outcomes, 105–112; musculoskeletal disorders, 114; organizational impacts, 201–214; organization-level consequences,

640

208–213; physical health outcomes, 112–115; posttraumatic disorders, 106–112; professional reputation, 139–141; protective factors, 120– 121; psychosocial impact, 131–147; public and occupational health, 117–122; and recovery, 144–146; reemployability, 139–141; research and clinical issues, 115–117; and resilience, 120–121; role of clinicians and health care system, 121–121; social pain, 136–139; symptoms and diagnoses, 105–106; terms and definitions, 102–105; work and personal identities, 133–136; workplace behavioral consequences, 204–206; workplace group-level consequences, 206–207 Workplace bullying and mobbing, research and measurement: actors and targets, 43–44; behavioral classification, 36–40; industries and occupations, 42; intentionality, 26, 33; measurement, 25–26, 33–46; prevalence, 25–46; sampling, 41–42; self-labeling, 33–35, 38–40; time frames, 40–41; U.S. studies, 27–32 Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), 5–6, 28, 33; definition of workplace bullying, 57, 102–103; WBI Blueprint, 374, 376, 378–379 Workplace harassment, 9, 92; antiharassment policy and procedures, 91, 208, 284, 286, 425, 574, 586–587; and bullying, 102, 118, 153, 370–371, 398, 586; and cultural influences, 448–450; and disability, 424; and educational sector, 40, 495, 497–498, 507; effects of, 113, 117, 266; generalized workplace harassment, 36, 40, 369, 508–509; and health care sector, 461; and hostile work environment, 13–14, 423–424; and independent investigators, 67; international terms

Index

and policies, 435–444, 446–450; legal protections against, 11, 13–14, 212, 416–417, 423–424, 431, 437; and leadership, 83; and mobbing, 7–8, 398; moral harassment (Belgium and France), 435, 441–443; and organizational culture, 82; perpetrators of, 268–269, 275–276; power harassment (Japan), 436, 447– 448; prevalence of, 34; psychological harassment (Canada), 435, 446–447; status-blind harassment, 66, 498; and target personalities, 88; and verbal violence, 12, 118; and workplace training, 93. See also Hostile work environment; Protected class status; Sexual harassment; Students: harassment of Workplace incivility, 391, 471, 472; and bad bosses, 394; bullying or mobbing versus, 13, 34, 45, 102, 367, 368, 368–370, 509, 576–577; and coaching, 341, 351; definitions of, 13, 367–369; effects of, 203, 286; and federal legislation, 576–577; multiplier effect of, 207, 209; prevention of, 611, 620; school climate predictors of, 491–492; and workplace aggression, 203, 209, 369; and working conditions, 365–366; and workplace restorative practice, 286 Workplace mobbing: definitions of, 6–8; workplace bullying versus, 9–10. See also entries under Workplace bullying and mobbing Workplace violence: and bullying and mobbing, 15, 66, 75–76, 118, 367, 398; and bullying policy, 583–584; and bystanders, 181; and Canada, 446; definitions of, 12–13, 118, 446; and education sector, 489; and Europe, 437–441, 449; and health care sector, 458–459, 465, 469, 471–473; and human resources, 240;

Index

prevalence of, 25; prevention of, 371–372, 488–489; and regulatory agencies, 468–469; and working conditions, 465; and zero-tolerance policies, 77. See also Violence World Health Organization (WHO): definition of health, 101, 105, 118, 122; ICD-10 (diagnostic manual), 103, 108–111; on psychological violence, 13; on workplace conditions, 120 Wyatt, Judith, 10–11 Yamada, David, 541; definition of abusive work environment, 11, 16–17; employment litigation, 615;

641

ethical leadership, 611–612; Healthy Workplace Bill, 11, 213, 229, 395, 498; HumanDHS board member, 617; human resources (HR) role, 237–238, 243, 255; intent as element of bullying and mobbing, 26; Minding the Workplace (blog), 224. See also Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB) Yang, Haiou, 114 Yang, Jun, 63 Zero-tolerance policies, 76–78, 93, 94, 335, 471, 572–573 Zogby Analytics (was Zogby International), 6, 14, 421, 482, 483, 495