Workplace Bullying

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Workplace bullying is the tendency of groups or individuals to use aggressive actions or unreasonable behavior against a subordinate or a co-worker. Most of the workplace bullies use the institutional traditions and norms to back up their acts thus making the act difficult to manage. Workplace bullying has several other terms that depict the same act depending on the institutions like harassment, workplace aggression, and mobbing or workplace abuse. Much research has been done to define workplace bullying with some viewing bullying from a legal perspective while others view it from a harassment perspective. Namie (2009) defines bullying as a persistent and inappropriate treatment expressed towards a group of people or individuals occurring …show more content…

The common behavior is the verbal mechanisms and rarely physical abuse or violence. The victims can be affected by the actual abuse but most of the time grapevine information provides more harm than good. Spreading of information across the workplace makes workplace bullying effective. The bosses also start the bullying process by allocating tasks that are not favorable to the employee (Gullander et al 2014). Other forms that can be seen include harassing, humiliation and physical abuse. There are common behaviors that are seen in workplace bullying. The first one is false accusations whenever a mistake happens. The other common features include staring, glaring, silent treatment and separation from the other employees. Others can be less destructive to include encouraging people to turn against the victims, sabotage, punishment through work and …show more content…

However, it has consequences that cut across the organization. The perpetrator and the victim are the ones that get affected most, but the co-workers and the organization can be caught up in a mess. The effects can be either financial or psychological (Olsen, 2010). Among the factors of production, human resource is the major factor and once affected, the organization cannot move forward. When the workplace bullying affects the activities of the employees, the performance of the firm goes down. The cost of bullying is therefore enormous, and it ranges from illness to replacement of the employees. Low productivity is the biggest loss in the organization when bullying becomes rampant. Other extra costs in the institutions include those of litigation and conflict resolution. Absenteeism is a major challenge that affects the firm when bullying is common. Missing work means that services are not provided well hence the organization falls. There are effects that can be observed in the individuals who are affected to include post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a long-term effect that affects the performance of the employees or the victims if the bullying was physical. Other individual consequences are light and include shouting, defensive behaviors, anger and peer

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