Abstract
This article investigates why workers submit to managerial bullying and, in doing so, we extend the growing research on managerial control and workplace bullying. We employ a labour process lens to explore the rationality of management both engaging in and perpetuating bullying. Labour process theory posits that employee submission to workplace bullying can be a valuable method of managerial control and this article examines this assertion. Based on the qualitative feedback in a large-scale survey of nurses in Ireland, we find that management reframed bullying complaints as deficiencies in the competency and citizenship of employees. Such reframing took place at various critical junctures such as when employees resisted extremely pressurized environments and when they resisted bullying behaviours. We find that such reframing succeeds in suppressing resistance and elicits compliance in achieving organisational objectives. We demonstrate how a pervasive bullying culture oriented towards expanding management control weakens an ethical climate conducive to collegiality and the exercise of voice, and strengthens a more instrumental climate. Whilst such a climate can have negative outcomes for individuals, it may achieve desired organisational outcomes for management.
Highlights
Evidence indicates that bullying is a widespread occurrence across many sectors and sizes of workplace [1,2,3]
We explore how a pervasive culture of workplace bullying is linked to employee perceptions of a strongly instrumental ethical climate
The reflections by nurses clearly indicated that managerial responses to formal complaints of bullying had been internalised, and significantly that respondents felt a sense of powerlessness to resist when competency or citizenship was called into question
Summary
Evidence indicates that bullying is a widespread occurrence across many sectors and sizes of workplace [1,2,3]. Employees can try to resist bullying for instance by using workplace complaint procedures, or through their union if one is present. In this way, employees possess a certain degree of agency and countervailing power in the employment relationship [7,8]. A second apparent contradiction is that despite the negative impact of bullying and other negative behaviours on organisations, and the establishment of procedural mechanisms, organisational responses are often weak [11]. Can organisational responses be ineffective, but research highlights the role of management in tolerating and perpetuating bullying [11,12,13].
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