Managing Workplace Bullying

Abstract

Workplace bullying is attracting increasing recognition and is an issue of concern for human resource managers and other actors in employment relations. This paper explores the concept of workplace bullying to determine its exact nature, features, sources, types, tactics and consequences of workplace bullying. It also examines how to deal with workplace bullying. The study had 280 participants selected from different organizations in the education, finance, communications and health sectors in Lagos Nigeria. Four hypotheses were tested on the relationship between work place bullying and organizational responses and attitudes, organization climate, gender and the self esteem. It found a significant relationship between gender and workplace bullying. Women tend to be more workplace bullies than men and have greater risks of becoming targets. There was a significant relationship between organizational attitudes and responses and the willingness of workers to report workplace bullying. A significant relationship was found between perceived organization culture and level of workplace bullying. Also there was a significant relationship between self esteem and workplace bullying. Victims of workplace bullying often exhibit lower levels of self-esteem and feel that their personalities caused them to be bullied.