Bullying, blogging and higher education

I came across an article on the BBC News (Education) web-site the other day - 'Bullied' academics' blog attack, which reports on a group of academics, who say they are being bullied at work, and have in turn set up a blog to record their experiences of alleged unfair treatment within universities.

The blog is called Bullying of Academics in Higher Education.

The article contains interviews with one of the contributors to the blog, as the follow brief excerpt suggests:

A contributor who wants to remain anonymous says it gives a voice to academics who have been bullied.

"It's a critical issue - there are people in universities almost reaching the point of suicide over this. It really is that serious," she says.

As well as attacking bullies - both among academic staff and management - the website also talks of the phenomenon of "mobbing", in which lecturers gang up against a colleague.

A contributor defines this as the action of "a mob, a crowd of normal people who have temporarily lost their good sense".

I thinks this is a sign that many workers feel quite powerless to take action in the workplace and the Web represents and increasingly attractive outlet for such grievances.

Cyber-bullying at work

According to an article in The Guardian, nearly one-fifth of teachers are being bullied by mobile phone, email or over the Internet.

Cyber-bullying in the case of school teachers ranges from "upsetting emails" and unwelcome text messages, to silent phone calls and the malicious use of websites and Internet chat rooms.

Further findings include:

"The results also showed that 53% of respondents did not know whether their school had a code of conduct to address cyber-bullying, and 39% said their schools did not have such a policy. Of those schools which did have a code of conduct to address the issue, 19% said it was not properly enforced and 72% did not know if it was."

For more details see Cyber-bullying affecting 17% of teachers, poll finds by Alexandra Smith.

If you are a teachers facing similar problems the Teacher Support Network has provided some useful advice on cyber-bullying.

New research findings on workplace bullying and harassment

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has just published some findings from a survey on workplace bullying and harassment.

In this sense, bullying and harassment is taken to mean the failure of organizations to act upon employees using psychological tactics and behaviour to undermine and intimidate colleagues. It doesn't look at bullying and harassment that comes from the nature of organizations or informal or covert organizational norms.

'Top forms' of bullying and harassment are said to take the following forms:

Power play: misuse of power or position was cited by 70 per cent. Respondents claimed they were also aware of overbearing supervision (63 per cent) and undermining by overloading and criticism (68 per cent)

Career closure: almost half (47 per cent) said they knew of incidents where opportunities for promotion or training were blocked. A similar proportion (43 per cent) also suggested they had seen threats made about job security

Word of mouth: 69 per cent said they heard verbal insults aimed at specific individuals and just over half (53 per cent) also identified spreading of malicious rumours as a key tactic used by bullies.

For more details see Bullies use psychological tactics to intimidate colleagues in the workplace (CMI). Further guidance on the management of bullying and harassment, and some further research findings on the same subject can be found here.