Mobbing; a research on academicians

In this study, the subject of mobbing was examined. In the first part of the study, the definition and history of mobbing, mobbing behaviours, mobbing process, main types of mobbing, the main factors causing mobbing and the main consequences of mobbing were evaluated. Also, prevention and intervention methods that can be used in the individual, organisational and societal level were touched on. In the second part of the study, mobbing was analyzed between research assistants and assistant professors who worked in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir. First part which contains the literatur review started with the definition and history of mobbing. The research about the very old phenomenon mobbing had started with Leymann in the early 1980?s. The awareness about mobbing increased and spreaded all over the world in the 1990?s. Leymann (1990:120) defines mobbing as ?hostile and unethical communication which is directed in a systematic way by one or a number of persons mainly toward one individual.? Besides this definition, mobbing is sometimes described with different words and called differently. The common points of these definitions are duration and frequency of the negative acts, power inequalities between the parties, direction of the acts and serious negative consequences separate mobbing from another terms such as conflicts, management?s mean practices, bad working conditions and work stress. Mobbing can be practised with different negative behaviours under different circumstances. Negative acts are categorized under different classifications, although they generally contain very similar examples. For example, Leymann (1996a) classifies these behaviours such as impact on self-expression and the way communication happens (to be interrupted constantly, to be restricted by superior to express yourself), attacks on target?s social relations (not to let others to speak with you, to be putted into a workspace that is isolated from others), attacks on target?s reputation (to be ridiculed about a handicap or nationality, to be the subject of unfounded rumors), attacks on target?s professional and life situation (to be given meaningless jobs to carry out, to be given tasks blow your qualification), direct attacks on target?s health (to be the subject of physical violence or threats of physical violence, to be exposed to sexual harassment). On the other hand, Baron and Neuman (1996) claims that not all the negative acts are performed in front of other people. While considering this, they classify mobbing behaviours as verbal or phsysical, active or passive, direct or indirect on behalf of the nature of the negative acts. To consider negative acts which all people can experience nearly everyday as mobbing, these acts should be repeated systematically in a certain process. The first stage of the mobbing process is critical incidents. The stage which lasts a very short time starts with a triggering event. In the next stage, targeted person are manipulated through aggressive acts. In the third stage which the management of the organization is involved in mobbing process, the situation becomes official. The prejudices claimed about the target are accepted by the management and the situation is misjudged. Misdiagnosis of psychologists and experts who do not have the required knowledge and experience are added to the misjudgements of management and colleagues about the target in the fourth stage. Therefore, target?s psychological well-being becomes corrupted and target starts to drift apart from the work environment. The last stage is expulsion. Target may leave the organization voluntarily or the management may terminate target?s employment contract. There are some classifications about the types of mobbing according to the direction of acts with regard to organizational hierarchy or the number of perpetrators. On behalf of the organizational hierarchy, mobbing generally takes place from top the bottom. Moreover, it can be practised between the same levels (colleagues) and bottom to up. Perpetrator can be one person or more than one person, even the whole organization. According to the number of perpetrator, mobbing is classified as individual, collective or institutional mobbing. There are plenty of research about mobbing in Turkey and in the world. For example, a study conducted in USA concludes that 35% of American population are exposed to mobbing (WBI, 2010). According to the findings of the study conducted in Canada, the mobbing ratio is 15% (Soares, 2002). In another study held in England, it was found that 10,6% of participants had been exposed to mobbing (Hoel ve Cooper, 2000). Studies conducted in Turkey results in higher mobbing scores than the other countries. Although some Turkish researchers claim that mobbing mostly occurs between colleagues, research results showed that perpetrators are generally the supervisors. The most common negative acts are given impossible deadlines and exposing to unmanageable workload, given meaningless tasks and ordered to do work below the level of competence, withholding necessary information to perform the job, belittling in front of other, making up gossips/rumors, critized and controlled constantly and unfairly critized on job performance. While the reasons of the worlwide issue of mobbing considered, perpetrators? and victims? personality, organizational factors, social environment at work, economic and social reasons and some other mediator factors are claimed to be the reasons of mobbing. Besides, it should be noted that, a large number of researchers argue that mobbing does not occur due to a single factor, rather a lot of factors are merged and establish a ground for mobbing. Some of the personal characteristics and personality disorders of perpetrators? are considered as triggering reasons for mobbing. Protection of self-esteem, lack of social competencies and micropolitical behaviours provide a basis for some people to carry out negative acts. Moreover, some people who have personality disorders such as paranoid, narcissistic, antisocial, obsessive compulsive and sadistic can become a perpetrator in the mobbing process. Not only the perpetrator is accounted for this destructive acts. In some cases, victims? personal characteristics are considered as antecedents of mobbing. The researches on this subject were generally based on the five factor model of personality. The findings showed that victims of mobbing scores high on neuroticism, low on extraversion items. Besides five factor model, some studies examined the spirituality, positive and negative affectivity and core self evaluations, and concluded that these personality characteristics are related to be a mobbing victim. Moreover, demographic characterististics of victims were thought to be related to mobbing but studies gave contradictory results. Age, sex, education level, ethnic background, position were examined in lots of studies. Some studies found significant relationships between the groups, some did not. In addition, enviable and good performed, moral and prosocial people were said to be the potential targets. There are many researchers claim that organizational factors establish a much bigger ground for mobbing rather than victims? and perpetrators? personality. Indeed, studies revealed that there are some factors which are related to mobbing such as changing nature of business environment, organization structure and the sector in which the organization took part, organizational culture and climate, management and leadership styles. Whatever the reasons, mobbing has some serious consequences for the individual, organization, family, economy and the society. It is found that mobbing has social, physical, psychological and psychosomatic consequences. Some victims are suffered from serious diseases such as post traumatic stress syndrome and even some victims commit suicide. For the organizations, there are some costs such as increasing absenteeism, presenteeism and turnover, decreasing efficiency, performance and organizational justice perception, compensation payments in case of legal complaints. There are also negative consequences such as breakdown of family life, increasing divorces, increasing unemployment, early retirements, medical payments and insurance payments with regards to family, economy and the society. To prevent and intervent from the destructive negative communication of mobbing, some measures should be taken and some strategies should be developed for both individual, organizational and societal level. Legal actions and sanctions are being practising to prevent mobbing and punish the guilty sides in Turkey and in the world. In the organizational level, policies and procedures should be the starting point. Organizational culture and the work designs which allow mobbing should be changed, managers should be trained about mobbing, human resources departments should be organized in a way that decrease the mobbing cases and negative consequences of mobbing, psychological consulting services should be offered to the victims and a proper alternative dispute resolution techniques should be implemented. Beyond legal and organizational precautions, the most effective way to prevent and struggle with mobbing is the victims? own efforts. First of all, employees should have extensive knowledge about mobbing and should not give too much detailed information in their workplaces. In the beginning of the process, they should not afraid of confronting the perpetrator. Even they choose not to do anything at first, they should react to the perpetrator if mobbing evolves. Despite that, if mobbing evolves more, it is important to ask for help from the managers and the other departments in the company before they make the situation legal. On the other hand, protecting the maneuver distance and communicate with the perpetrator as if nothing has happened; while doing these, collecting evidences to be used in case they decide to file a lawsuit and whatever happens not to make any compromises on job performance are strategies can give succesfull results. If the mobbing becomes unbearable, targets are suggested not to get into the ?victim mentality?, to seek support from their surroundings and the experts, to find another job if they wish to change the present one and to file a lawsuit if it is necessary. In the second part of the study, a mobbing research were held on academicians. The study aims to examine the extent of mobbing, the most common negative acts and reactions against the aggression, and whether these results differ according to age, sex, position, institution and term of employment on academicians who work as research assistants and assistant professors in their universities. There are seven main hypothesis in this research which are ?high level of perceived social support decreases the mobbing perception?, ?high level of perceived social support decreases the tendency of victimization?, ?high level of external locus of control increases the mobbing perception?, ?high level ol external locus of control increases the tendency of victimization?, ?high level of social support and low level of external locus of control decrease the tendency of victimization?, ?high level of social support for the externals decreases the tendency of victimization? and ?witnessing to mobbing increases the tendency of victimisation?. Survey method was employed as a research tool. 9898 research assistants and assistant professors who worked in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmır and had proper e-mail addresses on their universities websites were requested to contribute to the research by sending the survey?s link in the e-mail. Although 605 participants took part in the survey, only 481 participants did complete the questionnaire. While looking at the sample, 42,6% of the participants worked in Istanbul, 32,4% in Ankara and 24,9% in İzmir. 68% of participants worked in public schools while 32% in foundation universities. Sample consisted mostly of research assistants with a percentage of 70,7% and women with a percentage of 60,9%. Among the total of 481 respondents, 15% was between 20-25, %37,6 was 26-30, 37,8% was 31-40 years old and 9,6% was over 41 years old. Regarding their educational level, 17% had graduated from university, 43% had Masters degree, 40% had PhD degree. 13,3% had less than 1 year, 51,6% 1-5 years, 21,8% 5-10 years, 13,3% 10 or more years of tenure in their current jobs. Questionnaire was designed by adapting the scales which had been used in various psychological studies to Turkish culture or by using the adapted scales in previous studies. In the questionnaire, mobbing, reactions against mobbing, perceived organizational support, victimization, work locus of control, general presence of mobbing at work scales were used and all the scales were arranged as five-point Likert style anchor. Reliability analyses showed that all the scales had high internal consistencies. SPSS 20.0 statistical package were used in the data analysis. Aggressive behaviours and their frequency were examined by using frequency analyses. As a result, it is found that the most common negative acts were attacks on the target?s reputation and professional status. Aggressive acts were mostly (up to 90%) performed by the people who were in superior positions than the target. To evaluate the aggressive acts, level of mobbing and victimization in terms of demographic variables, t-tests and ANOVA analyses were conducted. According to the findings, age, sex and status did not make any difference in terms of level of harassment. On the other hand, institution and tenure in the current institution were found statistically significant and academicians in public universities experienced more mobbing significantly. Also, it is found that victimization is not related to demographic variables. To analyze the reactions against aggressive behaviours, frequency were determined and found that employees demonstrated more emotional and social support-seeking focused behaviours than problem focused behaviours against aggressive acts. To decide whether these reactions differ in terms of demographic variables, t-tests and ANOVA analyses were used. Women are found to demonstrate significantly more emotional reactions than men. Besides, increasing age, status and tenure were found to increase problem focused behaviours. To evaluate mobbing, victimization and reactions according to locus of control and perceived social support, t-tests, correlation and regression analyses were conducted. As a result, perceived social support and low level of external locus of control were found to decrease mobbing perception and victimization tendency. Besides, findings suggested that tendency of victimisation decreases with social support for the employees who have high scores on external locus of control. Moreover, when mobbing and victimization increases all the reactions started to be repeated more, significantly. On the other hand, when perceived social support decreases and external locus of control increases only emotional reactions started to be repeated more, significantly. Witnessing to aggressive acts were examined too. It was found that 13% of participants witnessed bullying in their workplaces. Also, there found a significant strong relationship between witnessing to mobbing and victimization, Lastly, findings showed that the more the level of mobbing and level of witnessing mobbing, the more the victimization.