Mobbing
Mobbing, as a sociological term, refers either to bullying in any context, or specifically to that within the workplace, especially when perpetrated by a group rather than an individual.[1] The term originated as a loanword from English which did not reflect the original English meaning,[2][3][4] but has been loaned back into English by some sociologists to refer specifically to workplace harassment.[5][6][7][8] Outside of this narrow academic sense, "mobbing" is a false friend, and the term "bullying" is usually preferred.[9][10]
Psychological and health effects
Victims of workplace mobbing frequently suffer from:
In mobbing targets with PTSD, Leymann notes that the "mental effects were fully comparable with PTSD from war or prison camp experiences." Some patients may develop alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders. Family relationships routinely suffer and victims sometimes display acts of aggression towards strangers in the street. Workplace targets and witnesses may even develop brief psychotic episodes occupational psychosis generally with paranoid symptoms. Leymann estimated that 15% of suicides in Sweden could be directly attributed to workplace mobbing.[11]
Development of the concept
In the 1970s, the Swedish physician Peter-Paul Heinemann [sv; de; pl] applied Lorenz's conceptualization to the collective aggression of children against a targeted child.[12] In the 1980s, professor and practising psychologist Heinz Leymann applied the term to ganging up in the workplace.[12] In 2011, anthropologist Janice Harper suggested that some anti-bullying approaches effectively constitute a form of mobbing by using the label "bully" to dehumanize, encouraging people to shun and avoid people labeled bullies, and in some cases sabotage their work or refuse to work with them, while almost always calling for their exclusion and termination from employment.[15]
Cause
Janice Harper followed her Huffington Post essay with a series of essays in both The Huffington Post[16] and in her column "Beyond Bullying: Peacebuilding at Work, School and Home" in Psychology Today[17] that argued that mobbing is a form of group aggression innate to primates, and that those who engage in mobbing are not necessarily "evil" or "psychopathic", but responding in a predictable and patterned manner when someone in a position of leadership or influence communicates to the group that someone must go. For that reason, she indicated that anyone can and will engage in mobbing, and that once mobbing gets underway, just as in the animal kingdom it will almost always continue and intensify as long as the target remains with the group. She subsequently published a book on the topic[18] in which she explored animal behavior, organizational cultures and historical forms of group aggression, suggesting that mobbing is a form of group aggression on a continuum of structural violence with genocide as the most extreme form of mob aggression.
Online
Social networking sites and blogs have enabled anonymous groups to coordinate and attack other people. The victims of these groups can be targeted by various attacks and threats, sometimes causing the victims to use pseudonyms or go offline to avoid them.[19]
In the workplace
British anti-bullying researchers Andrea Adams and Tim Field have used the expression "workplace bullying" instead of what Leymann called "mobbing" in a workplace context. They identify mobbing as a particular type of bullying that is not as apparent as most, defining it as "an emotional assault. It begins when an individual becomes the target of disrespectful and harmful behavior. Through innuendo, rumors, and public discrediting, a hostile environment is created in which one individual gathers others to willingly, or unwillingly, participate in continuous malevolent actions to force a person out of the workplace."[20]
Adams and Field believe that mobbing is typically found in work environments that have poorly organised production or working methods and incapable or inattentive management and that mobbing victims are usually "exceptional individuals who demonstrated intelligence, competence, creativity, integrity, accomplishment and dedication".[20]
In contrast, Janice Harper
Shallcross, Ramsay and Barker consider workplace "mobbing" to be a generally unfamiliar term in some English speaking countries. Some researchers claim that mobbing is simply another name for bullying. Workplace mobbing can be considered as a "
Mobbing as "downward bullying" by superiors is also known as "bossing", and "upward bullying" by colleagues as "staffing", in some European countries, for instance, in German-speaking regions.[22]
At school
Following on from the work of Heinemann, Elliot identifies mobbing as a common phenomenon in the form of group bullying at school. It involves "ganging up" on someone using tactics of
In academia
Checklists
Sociologists and authors have created checklists and other tools to identify mobbing behaviour.[23][26][27] Common approaches to assessing mobbing behavior is through quantifying frequency of mobbing behavior based on a given definition of the behavior or through quantifying what respondents believe encompasses mobbing behavior. These are referred to as "self-labeling" and "behavior experience" methods respectively.[28]
Limitations of some mobbing examination tools are:
- Participant exhaustion due to examination length
- Limited sample exposure resulting in limited result generalizability
- Confounding with constructs that result in the same affect as mobbing but are not purposely harmful
Common Tools used to measure mobbing behavior are:
- Leyman Inventory of Psychological Terror[29] (LIPT)
- Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised[30] (NAQ-R)
- Luxembourg Workplace Mobbing Scale[28] (LWMS)
Counteracting
From an organizational perspective, it has been suggested that mobbing behavior can be curtailed by acknowledging behaviors as mobbing behaviors and that such behaviors result in harm and/or negative consequences.[31] Precise definitions of such traits are critical due to ambiguity of unacceptable and acceptable behaviors potentially leading to unintentional mobbing behavior. Attenuation of mobbing behavior can further be enhanced by developing policies that explicitly address specific behaviors that are culturally accepted to result in harm or negative affect.[32] This provides a framework from which mobbing victims can respond to mobbing. Lack of such a framework may result in a situation where each instance of mobbing is treated on an individual basis with no recourse of prevention. It may also indicate that such behaviors are warranted and within the realm of acceptable behavior within an organization.[33] Direct responses to grievances related to mobbing that are handled outside of a courtroom and training programs outlining antibully-countermeasures also demonstrate a reduction in mobbing behavior.[citation needed]
Persecutory delusions
See also
- Cyberbullying
- Group narcissism
- Industrial and organizational psychology
- Lynch mob
- Ochlocracy
- Occupational health psychology
- Real estate mobbing
- Relational aggression
- Scapegoating
- Swatting
- Stalking
- Victim blaming
- Victimisation
References
- ^ "Bullying vs mobbing". www.kwesthues.com. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
- ^ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315480030_Bullying_no_trabalho_Percecao_e_impacto_na_saude_mental_e_vida_pessoal_dos_enfermeiros/fulltext/58d3a1cc458515e6d901d536/Bullying-no-trabalho-Percecao-e-impacto-na-saude-mental-e-vida-pessoal-dos-enfermeiros.pdf
- ^ https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=Mobbing&tl=true
- ^ "Definition of MOBBING". www.merriam-webster.com. 18 March 2024. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
- ^ Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace by Noa Davenport, Ruth D. Schwartz and Gail Pursell Elliott.
- ^ Maier, Prof Dr Günter W. "Definition: Mobbing" (in German). Retrieved 21 March 2024.
- ^ https://www.kwesthues.com/graz0701.htm
- ^ "Bullying". www.spektrum.de (in German). Retrieved 21 March 2024.
- ^ Ola Agevall: The Production of Meaning in Bullying Relation. Artikel präsentiert auf The Society for the Study of Social Problems 54th Annual Meeting. San Francisco 2004, 13.–15. August 2004.
- ^ Langenscheidts Handwörterbuch Englisch. Berlin u. a. O. 1988, Lemma bully.
- ^ a b Hillard JR Workplace mobbing: Are they really out to get your patient? Archived 9 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine Current Psychiatry Volume 8 Number 4 April 2009 Pages 45–51
- ^ a b c "Workplace Mobbing in Academe". arts.uwaterloo.ca. Archived from the original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2006.
- ^ Westhues, Kenneth.(2007) Mobbing a Natural Fact, Adapted and revised from "Mobbing am akademischen Arbeitsplatz," a lecture given in the Society for Sociology at the University of Graz, Austria, on 23 January 2007, Retrieved on 17 August 2018
- ISBN 978-0-19-501680-2.
- ^ Harper, Janice (1 November 2011). "The Bully Label Has to Go". HuffPost.
- ^ "Janice Harper – HuffPost". www.huffingtonpost.com.
- ^ "Beyond Bullying". Psychology Today.
- ^ ISBN 978-0692693339.
- ^ Citron, Danielle Keats (February 2009). "Cyber Civil Rights" (PDF). Boston University Law Review. 61. 89: 62. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
- ^ a b Davenport NZ, Schwartz RD & Elliott GP Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, 3rd Edition 2005, Civil Society Publishing. Ames, IA,
- ^ Shallcross, L, Ramsay, S, & Barker M, (2008) Workplace Mobbing: Expulsion, Exclusion, and Transformation Archived 13 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 17 May 2010
- ^ Oberhofer, P Bossing und Staffing, retrieved 25 November 2015
- ^ ISBN 978-0-203-49861-3.
- PMID 36142079.
- ^ a b Workplace Bullying in the Academic World?, Higher Education Development Association, 13 May 2007, archived from the original on 24 July 2011
- ^ Westhues K. Checklist of Mobbing Indicators Archived 13 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine 2006
- ISBN 978-1-60138-236-8.
- ^ S2CID 54649984.
- ^ Leymann, Heinz (1996). "Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terror". Tübingen: Deutsche Gellschaft für Verhaltenstherapie Verlag.
- S2CID 145212957.
- doi:10.1037/a0016936.
- doi:10.1037/a0016783.
- doi:10.1037/a0016783.
- PMID 33666560.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 20 August 2016.
- ^ Flatley, Joseph (2 February 2017). "Paranoid delusions in the police state". The Outline.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-19-538001-9.
- Davenport NZ, Schwartz RD & Elliott GP Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, 3rd Edition 2005, Civil Society Publishing. Ames, IA,
- Hecker, Thomas E. (2007). "Workplace Mobbing: A Discussion for Librarians". The Journal of Academic Librarianship. 33 (4): 439–445. .
- Shallcross L., Ramsay S. & Barker M. "Workplace Mobbing: Expulsion, Exclusion, and Transformation (2008) (blind peer reviewed) Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management Conference (ANZAM)
- Westhues. Eliminating Professors: A Guide to the Dismissal Process. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
Westhues K The Envy of Excellence: Administrative Mobbing of High-Achieving Professors Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
Westhues K "At the Mercy of the Mob" OHS Canada, Canada's Occupational Health & Safety Magazine (18:8), pp. 30–36. - Institute for education of works councils Germany – Information about Mobbing, Mediation and conflict resolution Archived 19 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine (German)
- Zapf D. & Einarsen S. 2005 "Mobbing at Work: Escalated Conflicts in Organizations." Counterproductive Work Behavior: Investigations of Actors and Targets. Fox, Suzy & Spector, Paul E. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. p. vii