Bullying in the Workplace - Essay Example

Student’s name Institution Course Professor Date BLAME THE SYSTEM RATHER THAN THE VICTIM ON WORKPLACE BULLYING Workplace bullying is the repeated unreasonable actions of individuals or a group of persons directed towards employee(s) intended to intimidate or create health or safety risk to them. It occurs mainly due to abuse and misuse of power. Bullying or ill-treatment to workers creates feelings of defencelessness to employees and undermines their rights to dignity at work. Examples of such actions include exclusion or social isolation, being shouted at or being humiliated, being the target of practical jokes, excessive monitoring, being treated differently than the rest of your work group, unwarranted or invalid criticism, blame without factual justification, beating among other mistreatments. The causes of bullying can be classified into two groups: those resulting due to the functionality of the system and those resulting from the characteristics of the victims themselves. Blame in bullying thus lie either on the system or on the victim. In my view, the system is highly responsible for the bullying incurred in the working place. This essay analyses both kind of factors and comes up with the conclusion that the system should be blamed highly for bullying and ill-treatment in the workplace. The workplace system in general has largely contributed into the increase in bullying and ill-treatment in the workplace in a wide range of ways. Organisation culture and leadership is key factor in ensuring there is either absence or lack of bullying in the organisation. The culture of the organisation and its leadership is the biggest decider on the interrelationship between workers, management and other stakeholders in the organisations. There are various behaviours or actions in the organisation that cause ill-treatment or bullying in the organisation. Some of them include; Poor leadership and management styles in the organisation increase bullying in the organisation. Poor leadership in the organisation fosters the emergence or perpetuate bullying in the pretext of achieving the organisations goal. (Hoel & Salin, 2003) notes that coercive/authoritarian leadership styles promote harassment and bullying while (Einarsen et al., 2003) analysed the way in which Laizzefaire leadership styles contributes to bullying and worker harassment. Coercive leadership in many cases apply bullying in their leadership in order to achieve their goals and objectives. They see it as a ‘motivator’ for workers to achieve high performance. Those who favour the use of Laizzefaire leadership style in many occasions do not intervene when workers report bullying incidents. Presence of effective leadership in the organisation is a hindrance to perpetuation of bullying in the organisation. The leadership in the organisation should be able to put in place measures that deal with any forms of bullying. The general leadership of the organisation is the key pillar in elimination or fostering of ill-treatment. Those who do nothing on bullying cases or punish the victims that report it foster its practise in the organisation. Practising of bullying by key top leaders and mangers of the organisation is a sign of poor leadership and a way of encouraging other employees to practise ill-treatment as a culture of the organisation. The leadership should be participatory and democratic rather than being autocratic or authoritarian in order to reduce instances of bullying or ill-treatment. Organisational workplace production policies and measures contribute to bullying in the organisation. Ideologies in the organisation that praise profitability and increase in productivity while reducing production costs places enormous stress on managers and employees, it triggers abusive behaviours in managers ( Lutgen, 2009). Managers in such conditions may be forced to deal with demanding situations by applying bullying to the managed. They may use harassment, threats or other means to force workers to achieve required productivity in the organisation. Bullying in the organisation may also emerge during global economic crisis. Vandekerckhove & Commers (2003, p. 41) notes that during economic shifts bullying occurs due to inadequate transformation of leadership and power to react to the consequences of the crisis. The organisation can thus be said to be a contributing factor because of the policies that in may adopt to increase its productivity or to cope with economic underlying economic conditions. The managers mainly perpetuate bullying at these occasions in order to meet the objectives of the directors and owners of the business. Organisations should be able to formulate good economic and production policies that foster improved productivity while taking into consideration workers rights and obligations. Such policies should ensure ill-treatment is not practised in achievement profitability as well as overcoming economic down turns. Organisations laws and policies influence bullying. Organisations are usually guided by policies, rules and norms that guide behaviour of organisation members in their daily activities. Ramsey et al., (2012) argue that it is the responsibility of the employers to put in place laws against bullying and ensure that Australia workers health and safety laws are adhered to as a means of ensuring that ill-treatment of workers in their organisation is reduced. In Australia, there are no specific anti-bullying laws but most of the safety and health laws cover most actions relating to workers bullying and ill-treatment. The rate of organisations formulation and implementation of health and safety of workers highly influence bullying in their organisations. Organisations that do not have strict anti bullying laws in their policies usually have high rates of bullying. These is because in many instances do not have disciplinary measures to cope with emerging bullying incidents. When such incidents go unpunished, there are high chances of repetition of same actions in the future. Workers will also fear or lack the motivation of reporting bullying in the organisation since they know that no action in will be taken to its perpetrators’. Organisations should be able to align their laws to established health and safety laws set by the government in its laws. Any bridges in the laws should be dealt with using either the existing government laws or their internal disciplinary mechanisms. Organisations that strictly follow their disciplinary, anti-bullying laws and related government laws and legislation in many occasions experience low levels of bullying than those that do not follow them. On the other hand, the victim of bullying can be blamed in some circumstances for bullying in the organisation. In some cases, there is presence of factors or characteristics among employees that make them vulnerable to bullying. Organisational position and individual traits have been some of the contributing factors to being targets. Organisational position for instance is inversely correlated with bullying and ill-treatment. According to Hodson (2006), the higher the organisational position, the lower the incidence of bullying, low-status workers are more vulnerable to bullying. Increase in the status and position of the workers in many occasions comes with more powers over other workers and hence the chances of being bullied by junior workers reduces and thus generally reducing the general bullying among this kind of workers. Certain individual traits, behaviours and markers are more associated with increasing the risk of bullying among the targeted, for instance appearing too weak, submissive, anxious, unassertive or conflict-averse is claimed to provoke aggression in others (Coyne et al., 2000). These traits among the workers makes them vulnerable to bullying since bullies in the organisation will see them as easy landing points among other workers in the organisation. Workers in the organisation should try as possible to avoid these kinds of characteristics in order to avoid being the targets. This reduces the chance of portraying oneself as helpless and enforces the image of being defensive and being able to confront work related challenges. Being aggressive in the workplaces is a contributing factor to increase in bullying among the workers. Communicating aggressively to other employees makes some of them unhappy and some tend to revenge through bullying behaviours. Coyne et al., (2000) further note that, poor social and communication skills contribute to bullying. Lack of social skills in the work place among some kind of workers makes their relationship with other workers difficult. The poor relationship triggers other workers to sideline such kind of workers and in some cases may direct negative behaviours in terms of ill-treatment to them. Poor communication skills like poor listening, negotiation, talking and discussion skills among other important communication skills makes understanding among the workers difficult. Those with such skills in many occasions are misunderstood and find it hard communicating with other co-workers and the management of the organisation. They are usually victims of bullying due to these characteristic. Overachievers, more talented and more liked workers are more likely to be the targets of bullying, Lutgen-Sandvik, (2006). These characteristics of workers make them to be significantly different from the rest of the working mates and hence making them targets of bullying. Some workers in the organisation are usually negative oriented towards the achievement or good qualities of other workers. Being overachieves will attract their attention and make them selfish or see it as an avenue of getting promotion or making the organisation to set higher achievement levels in the organisation. They will thus use all methods including bullying to discourage such kind of achievement in the organisation. Being too much talented will trigger same reactions from such kind of workers. Those more liked by the management or other workers in the organisation in some instances attract bully behaviours from enemies who do not want such liking. They see it as having an edge over them and will want to use all means including harassment and ill-treatment to those liked in order to frustrate them and thus make them not to achieve want makes them to be liked. As seen above factors resulting to bullying in the organisations mainly result from the organisation system and the individual victims themselves. The system is to be highly blamed than the victim. The organisation system causes bullying by having poor leadership style, law anti-bullying law implementation, poor economic policies among other means. The victim behavioural victim traits and behaviour like poor communication skills, over achievement, good talents and being more liked contribute to being the targets of bullying. The system should take more responsibility because it has high influence in nearly all happenings in their organisations. For instance, the organisation is in a position to change its culture, leadership styles, policies to eradicate ill-treatment of workers. The organisation should be able to implement anti-bullying culture in the organisation to cope with it. In the other hand, we cannot largely blame the victim because he largely suffers from effects of bullying despite many of his traits attracting bullying to them are to the advantage of the organisation. Traits like being high achievers, having exemplary talents and more liked by the management or co-workers are attributes that make them to be more productive to the organisation. It will be unfair to blame the victim for being the victim of bullying because of such traits since the objective of each organisation striving to excel is to have such kind of players in their possession. It is only few negative traits like poor communication skills, appearing too weak, submissive, anxious, unassertive or conflict-averse among the victims that make them to be blamed. The system in the workplace should be highly blamed for highly contributing to bullying and ill-treatment in the organisation. It is thus necessary for the system to put in place necessary measures to cope with the factors emerging from it that contributes to ill-treatment. The system or organisation at large is in a position to also influence individual victim characteristics in the organisation and thus reduce bullying in the organisation. Reference Coyne, I., Seigne, E., & Randall, P. 2000. Predicting workplace victim status from personality. European Journal ofWork and Organizational Psychology, 9(3), 335-349. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D., & Cooper, C. L. (2003). The concept of bullying at work. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf & C. L. 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New York: Routledge Press. Vandekerckhove, W., & Commers, M. S. R. 2003. Downwardworkplace bobbing: A sign of the Times? Journal of Business Ethics, 45(1), 41-50. Read More