Workplace Bullying — What It Is and What It Does

In 2011, Clive Boddy, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at Middlesex University published a paper on Workplace Bullying.

He defines the practice as a regular and repeated criticizing, ignoring, belittling, undermining, over-supervising, over-managing, intimidating, and/or ridiculing a person at work.¹

His study involves analyzing the behavior of what he calls Corporate Psychopaths. While he noted that most people who demonstrate psychopathy do not land in prestigious careers, there are nevertheless those who seep into every industry. Only around 1% of the population exhibits such. However, the worrying figure is that despite the rarity of such, 26% of incidents of workplace bullying in Australia are performed by these people. The same research conducted in the UK shows an even more worrying result in that as much as 36% of incidents of workplace bullying are committed by corporate psychopaths. Moreover, those who do so can sleep perfectly well at night thinking nothing was wrong.²

His study further shows that under normal managers, employees experience around 9x bullying a year. Whereas corporate psychopaths do so on the average, 64x a year.³

Now thus the question. Why do they do it? Why do people engage in bullying? Bullying it turns out, is rewarding. Bullies engage in predatory behavior because they enjoy it. Moreover, Boddy’s research shows that bullying also is used as a political tool to create confusion and advance their own agenda. The rationale behind is that since they are the perpetrator of confusion, they can keep their cool and appear in control, hence from an epistemic sense, they are seen as genuine asset.

Such practices in the company induces incivility at work.

Dr. Christine Porath, associate professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business noted that the reason normal people engage in uncivilized behavior is because of stress and overwhelm.

Incivility negatively affects people’s performance, psychology, and health. Porath’s study shows that more than two out of three people withhold effort after experiencing incivility. 80% lose work time after experiencing the interaction. It robs cognitive resources.

She did a study on how incivility affects a person’s performance in a control group. It turns out that those who experience incivility perform 86% worse on verbal tasks, 17% worse in recalling information and miss 43% more errors in math problems.⁴

Across a study of 4500 doctors and nurses, 71% tied uncivil behaviors to medical errors that they know of. 27% tied incivility to the death of their patients.⁵

Cisco once put a detailed estimate of the effects of incivility in the company. They factored in its reputation as a consistently great place to work, assumed an extremely low probability of rudeness among its employees, and looked at only three potential costs. They estimate that incivility costs them $12 million a year.⁶

Wegman Food Markets is consistently nominated as one of the best companies to work in. They have topped the list in 2005 and in 2018, held the number 3 position. When the COO was asked what was the secret behind the company’s success, the answer was that because they serve their employees. It turns out that efficacy in leadership is directly proportional to the amount of service you provide to your team.

Of course, it cannot be denied that anomalies occur. There are ruthless bosses who were able to drive their company to great heights. Ford, the well known automotive company, had an amazing leader in Henry Ford. He was ruthless yet successful. Yet he saw his company’s market share tank that despite having an incredible lead over his competitors, they were left with only 28% of market share by 1931. Half of what it used to have 17 years earlier. It wasn’t until Ernie Breech came into the scene and nursed the company back to health by 1949. Incivility may enjoy short term benefits at the expense of long term momentum.

In the Software Industry, a large portion of the workforce are knowledge workers. They are paid to think. To stifle the creative problem solving process by incivility and workplace bullying is a self-inflicted hamstring. It is rather interesting how the current semiotic inferences between hard skills and soft skills gives the impression that the former is far more important than the latter. Yet companies today are increasingly recognizing the value of “soft skills” in the industry.⁷

It must be argued further that the designation of “soft skills” obscures the importance of critical social skills in the organization’s success. In the workplace, a sizable amount of interactions are interpersonal. Research on the negative effects of toxic social environment are replete, as already noted above. While “hard skills” are indispensable in hiring, social skills must not be sacrificed on the altar of technical expertise. The need of greater social skills grow in proportion to one’s rank in the org chart. In the absence of civility in any interaction, one must expect a performance dip. These things often go ignored, not undetected. Eric Schmidt was right when he noted that the seeds of destruction of a large and successful company is inside it. The leadership knew it and the people knew it… and the leadership didn’t act.

This blog is part of a series on Software Engineering Management and Leadership.

¹ Boddy, Clive R. “Corporate Psychopaths, Bullying, Conflict and Unfair Supervision in the Workplace.” Corporate Psychopaths, 2011, 44–62. doi:10.1057/9780230307551_3.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Porath, Christine Lynne. Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2016.

⁵ Rosenstein, Alan H., and Michelle O’Daniel. “A Survey of the Impact of Disruptive Behaviors and Communication Defects on Patient Safety.” The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety 34, no. 8 (2008): 464–71. doi:10.1016/s1553–7250(08)34058–6.

⁶ Pearson, Christine., and Porath, Christine. “The Price of Incivility.” Harvard Business Review. February 07, 2019. Accessed February 16, 2019. https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility.

⁷ Tandon, Rajguru. Soft Skills Extremely Important As Machines Take Over Work. BW Business World. February 16, 2019. Accessed February 16, 2019. http://www.businessworld.in/article/Soft-Skills-Extremely-Important-As-Machines-Take-Over-Work/30-11-2018-164758/