Bullying 20Causes

Chapter One



The Darkness Within

by Shirley Waugh



Sigmund Freud appears to have been the first person to

recognise the existence of an unconscious part of the mind

in every person, although poets and writers for many

generations had talked of our inner selves and our hidden

wishes and thoughts.



We seem to have within us an unconscious inner world

where there are stored all sorts of memories right from

our earliest babyhood. I am not speaking of the sorts of

memories we store in our conscious mind, which are

visual and verbal, but memories of feelings, memories

associated with a relationship with another significant

person, and our feelings about that person.



These memories of our inner unconscious world can be

thought of as like a film clip which can be run through

again and again. When present circumstances in our life

remind us in some way of an occasion in the past, then our

reactions to the present situation may be altered in some

way by these feelings from long ago.



Here is an example. Ms A, a woman in her forties, was

saying goodbye to a friend and mentor going overseas.

While they were saying goodbye, Ms A. began to cry. She

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





said to me, “Some tears would have been quite

appropriate, but though it started like that, quite quickly I

began to cry as if my heart was breaking. I couldn‟t stop, I

cried and cried. Tears poured down my face. I felt

absolutely devastated, and yet at the very same time I felt

bewildered and embarrassed, and apologised to my friend

who was also embarrassed. All I could say was I‟m sorry,

I don‟t know what‟s got into me.”



After she had parted from her friend, Ms A. felt so shaken

that she cancelled the rest of her working day and went

home. She arrived home, still crying at intervals, and still

feeling bewildered, as well as devastated and shaken. At

home, certain flowers reminded her of her mother, dead

for many years.



She then realised it was the exact anniversary of her

mother‟s death 27 years before. As soon as she realised

this, she was able to stop crying, although still feeling

exhausted and devastated. She fell heavily asleep, and

awoke next morning feeling her usual self.



An intense feeling, stored for many years in the

Unconscious, can erupt, with all its original intensity, into

the present, particularly if in the present there is a

somewhat similar situation.



There are also other ways in which our unconscious mind

makes its presence known. Slips of the tongue, perhaps

forgetting a name or a person one knows well, particular

ways of relating, may all be the Unconscious showing

itself. It can be likened to an underground river which





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The Darkness Within





comes to the surface at certain points where there is some

special vulnerability.



Infantile Omnipotence



Infantile omnipotence is an unconscious belief (developed

in our earliest babyhood), that there is someone, either

oneself or another (mother in the first instance), who has

all power and all knowledge, immortality, and

invulnerability, and that this God-like person never ever

makes any mistakes. Allied with this is a belief in the

absolute uniqueness of that person. This belief is there in

our unconscious mind for ever. Many of us as we mature

can modify it, and thus modify our expectations of

ourselves and others, but under stress we can all slide

back into it and then have to catch ourselves and struggle

back to a more balanced state.



Nina Coltart, A British psychoanalyst, says that living life

is like walking a tight rope, very difficult and one is sure

to „fall off‟ at times. If you fall off on one side of the tight

rope, unconsciously you feel you are unique, all-knowing,

and that everyone else is dust beneath your feet - if you

fall off the other side of the tight rope, then unconsciously

you feel that you are the lowest dustiest dust beneath

others' feet, and then the people whom you look up to as

having knowledge or power, are idealised, „put on a

pedestal‟ to an unreal extent.



These two states of feeling are two sides of the same coin,

infantile omnipotence. Any hierarchical system in human

culture is patterned on the two aspects of infantile





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





omnipotence.



Obviously a baby cannot tell us verbally what he/she is

feeling, but a lot of information has been gathered by

infant observation, and from child psychotherapists and

analysts. Winnicott, a well known child psychoanalyst,

said that there is no such thing as a baby, and this is quite

true. A very young baby is only a part of a whole - the

other part is the mother, forming the mother/baby dyad.

It is through the mother‟s empathic care that the baby can

feel safe and contained enough to be able to explore his

limited world, which slowly grows to include more

people.



It does seem that in the early days of a baby‟s life, the

baby feels comfortably part of mother, safe and secure

within her mind, and feeling protected by the

powerfulness which seems to be felt by the baby as

belonging to both mother and baby. It could be said that

they are merged to the point where the baby becomes

unsure as to whose is the powerfulness. One of my adult

patients, many years ago, who had trouble in some very

early areas of the personality, said to me „I don‟t care

which one of us it is, but one of us has to control the world

- I can‟t bear it otherwise‟.



It seems probable that a baby may feel something very

similar about his or her mother, and as you can see by the

statement I have just reported, at this stage it seems to be

felt as an „all or nothing‟ split - the power is either all

yours or all mine. The one who is without power is felt to

have absolutely nothing at all, to be so fragile that he/she





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The Darkness Within





could be blown out like a candle flame.



Now if I may jump from a baby to a two-year old - „the

terrible twos‟ as they are called. Around the age of two the

child reaches a stage of development where it seems that

most of the time he/she believes that he/she is all

powerful. The child now feels separate from the mother,

but the original dyad seems to have been taken inside

him/herself so that there is a part of the child which feels

very powerful, and another part which feels totally

powerless. The 2 year old child, feeling so powerful, not

only can act on it, but believes there is no power left for

anyone else. This is the stage which is so clearly

exemplified in the old rhyme, „I‟m King of the Castle-

You‟re the Dirty Rascal‟. This little nursery rhyme couplet

clearly shows the triumph that is felt at the height of this

feeling of infantile omnipotence, and also the scorn and

contempt which is felt for the one without power, who is

felt to be the outsider, dirty, and of no account.



This development of infantile omnipotence from

babyhood into childhood is a perfectly normal and

necessary part of our development. If at these early

stages, we did not have this defence we would feel

helpless and terrified, lost in an immense and random

world, too intensely frightened to be able to explore or

link our perceptions, thoughts and experiences, and so

learn.



However, the contempt felt for the powerless one can also

be felt within the individual, in the one self. When a child

of this age finds something that he/she cannot do, often it





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





then seems to the child that there is nothing he/she can

do, everything is felt to be irrevocably lost for ever, and

then, in the child‟s mind, he/she becomes for ever

contemptible, weak, frail, someone to be jeered at by

others. This belief is in the child‟s own mind - made

worse of course, if external reality (i.e. jeering from others)

confirms the fantasy.



If development continues in a benign way, then the child‟s

feeling that a vulnerable, helpless part within the self is

contemptible, will be modified, and he/she will

eventually feel less savagery and contempt towards this

vulnerable aspect of the self, and of course, towards

similar vulnerable aspects of others. However, for a great

many of us, development does not proceed as benignly or

smoothly as this, and even when the overall development

is along benign lines, there are still times when there are

pauses and plateaus in maturation, and sometimes

regression to an earlier state.



At this early stage in our lives (around 3 years), it is

possible to see clearly how children try to disown and

discard unwanted parts of themselves; that is, the more

vulnerable, not knowing, weaker part of themselves,

which is felt to be the part of them which makes mistakes.

Children want to project these parts onto other children or

younger children. I am sure you have all heard a 3 year

old speak of a younger sibling to a parent:



“He‟s little, isn‟t he, Mummy, not big and strong like me?”

“I know more than him, don‟t I?”

“He‟s a little bit silly, Mummy, isn‟t he, but he can‟t help





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The Darkness Within





it, he‟s only little.”



This, of course, is a relatively benign form of project-ion,

and associated probably with affectionate feelings

towards the smaller one. However in battles within their

own peer group, „punches are not pulled‟, in more ways

than one, and one can see the precursors of what, if it were

to be unmodified by further maturation, would develop

into recognisable bullying.



Precursors Of Bullying



I think we have to accept that the precursors of bullying

are there in humans, are part of normal development, and

are well developed by the age of 3 years. These

precursors are allied to infantile omnipotence, to the wish

to be all powerful, and also to the subsequent wish to

project the despised vulnerable powerless parts of oneself

on to another, who is then the „despised one‟. Here I

should perhaps offer my definition of bullying, which will

in some ways, differ from others.



I found two definitions of bullying in the paper „Bullying;

a whole school response‟ by Delwyn and Eva Tattum

(1996), the first of which (a citation of Roland, 1988) is:



Bullying is long standing violence, physical or psychological,

conducted by an individual or a group, and directed against an

individual who is not able to defend him or herself in the actual

situation.



The second definition is by the Tattums (1996) themselves:





7

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





Bullying is a wilful conscious desire to hurt another, and put

him/her under stress.



The definition I would offer from my own background is:



Bullying is physical or psychological violence by an individual

(or a group) against another individual who is not able to defend

him or herself in the actual situation. Bullying is usually a

conscious wish to attack another individual, but under the

conscious desire to victimise the Other, there is an unconscious

wish by the bully to disown and project his/her own despised

vulnerabilities, fragilities and fears, and to believe that these

attributes belong solely to the bullied individual, in whom they

can be safely despised and scorned.



My definition of bullying, and the whole of this paper, is

concerned with bullies and victims who are in

comparatively brief relationships. If the relationship

between bully and victim is on-going for a long time (as in

cases of domestic violence) then, in my opinion, the

relationship enters a different area, where sudden

alternation of roles can occur. This would come under the

heading of a sadomasochistic relationship, although, I

shall not be commenting further on the characteristics of

this type of relationship in this paper.



It is this infantile omnipotence, and the feelings associated

with it of triumph and contempt, which in my opinion

comprise in all of us „The Darkness Within‟.



Taming Process - The Tamed, The Partly Tamed And

The Untamed





8

The Darkness Within







The maturational process for most of us will enable us to

end up as reasonably mature and caring adults, who have,

(most of the time anyhow), abandoned the excesses of our

baby omnipotence, and are more accepting of the parts of

ourselves which we may not altogether approve of,

including our vulnerabilities, powerlessness at times, our

quirks and frailties. Most of us find that we can, with pain

and some humour, accept these failings and failures, and

allow ourselves to grieve the loss of our infantile fantasy

of being perfectly ideal, and loved and adored by

everyone. This group could be thought of as The Tamed.



However maturation is a continuum - at one end are those

of us who are mature enough to look compassionately and

with forgiveness, on our own faults and the faults of

others. At the far other end of the continuum are those of

us who have not been tamed, and I will speak further of

this group a little later.



In between these two groups is another group of us who

could be seen as Partly Tamed. Those of us in this group

can be compassionate and forgiving to the faults of others,

but enough infantile omnipotence is left functioning so

that we set quite different standards for ourselves, and

appear to have no compassion or forgiveness for

ourselves - indeed we often seem to feel that to forgive

ourselves would be wrong - self-indulgent in some way.

We still secretly believe that we should be perfect. Most

people in this group are unhappy - usually fairly

constantly, and may also become severely depressed.







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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





The first group, The Tamed, is not a problem from the

point of view of bullying. In my opinion most adult

bullies would probably come from a second group: the

Partly Tamed. I think also that the bullying would occur

when they were feeling very unhappy and persecuted

within themselves, or were clearly depressed.



The third group at the far end of the continuum consists of

those adults whom the resources of family and

community have failed to tame, in other words, failed to

help them to mature. For what I am going to say now I

am indebted to Dr Arthur Hyatt Williams, a British

psychoanalyst. He has written extensively about

aggression, and I shall quote in particular from his article

called The Failure to Tame.



Dr Williams, in this paper, quotes Edward Glover who

was one of the first British analysts to take an interest in

crime and delinquency. He believed that in many cases

crime was due to a failure in the taming process, and that

crime is part of the price paid in the domestication of a

natural wild animal, (viz. us, Homo Sapiens), and another

way of putting it is that crime is one of the results of an

unsuccessful domestication.



Glover believed that psychopaths have a conscience, but

in the psychopath, conscience worked in reverse. For

most of us conscience works as a guide, and helps us to

curb aggressive behaviour; however, in the psychopath it

acts as a goad, (or rather, that the psychopath uses it as a

goad), and his/her consequent actions escalate (not

modify) aggressive behaviour.





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The Darkness Within







Dr Williams speaks of this as a very interesting concept. It

ties in with things he has observed; I have also seen these

things, and I am sure others here will also have observed

them. He speaks of how, for most people, the sight of

someone who is in distress evokes feelings of sympathy

and a wish to help. But for people who fall within this

third untamed group - a pathetic sight, or frightened eyes,

provoke not a wish to help, but a wish to attack, to

obliterate the pathos and fear which are so persecuting to

him/her.



One can see that this is a further escalation from the

position I discussed earlier in children, where parts of

themselves which they disliked and felt persecuted by,

were projected out and away from themselves, and onto

someone else who was then scorned and bullied; but the

core of the interaction in that case is that the bully feels

relieved - the scorned parts are no longer in him but in

someone else, so he/she does not wish his/her victim to

disappear, but to continue as a container for these

despised parts of him/herself, and so release the bully

from his own persecutory inner world. This, I believe,

explains why bullying is usually a continuing process

rather than a one-off situation.



However, in this further escalation in those of us who

have not been tamed, the persecution of a vulnerable

helpless part within themselves is felt to be so intense, that

even to see it in another evokes not relief (as in bullies) but

a rage and underlying fear so intense, that the urge is to

obliterate this pathetic sight which is felt to be so





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





persecuting. This may lead to severe physical damage or

even murder. The underlying process is different, and

continued, repeated bullying would not, in my opinion,

occur.



Addiction



There is a fourth group which I will mention only briefly

for the sake of completeness, the addicted. In this group I

include those people who are addicted to -

(a) watching or seeing suffering or/and

(b) the use/abuse of power which gives an addictive

excitement (possibly due to an adrenalin rush).



The question may well be asked, of what use is all this

from a practical point of view. I have always found, that to

have more understanding of the underlying process leads

to a better understanding of why certain strategies work,

or perhaps what could be done to improve other

strategies.



Dr Wilkie told me of one very successful strategy he used

with one of his victimised patients. I will not go into

detail, but from the point of view of the things I have

discussed in this paper, Dr Wilkie assisted the victim to

change from a position of vulnerable fear of the bully, to

treating the bully with apparent friendliness and

gratitude. As soon as the victim's attitude changed from

fear, the bully ceased bullying, and moved away (my

suggestion is that the reason for this is that the bully was

no longer getting relief from the relationship, and that was

why there was a movement away from his former victim).





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The Darkness Within





Two of the preceding categories, viz. The Untamed and

the Addictions, are different problems from usual

bullying, and I shall not comment further on these at the

moment.



In summary, I am suggesting that due to infantile

omnipotence and its role in the development of human

beings, bullying in a small way must be expected from

small children, and that these bullying relationships

should disappear with further maturation, bringing with

it more recognition of the feelings of others, more ability

to empathize with others, and more acceptance of one's

own limitations. Continuing bullying in older age groups,

and in adults, brings up the possibility of more severe

disorders in the personality.



Infantile omnipotence which is there within us all, plus

the additional factor of a failure of the individual to deal

satisfactorily with it during the maturing process, can be

seen as the darkness within us all.









13

Chapter Two



Treating Post Traumatic Stress

Disorders Caused By Bullying

by William Wilkie



Remember back when your parents used to ask you what

you learned in school that day? And you could not

remember, even though you were obviously learning new

material. Now you have grown up, you may respond the

same way when you‟ve come out of a lecture and

someone asked you what the lecturer said. If the lecture

was good you may not remember much of the actual

words.



We often don't remember clearly what people actually

said, if it accords with what we already believe. When a

lecturer is speaking strongly and convincingly, providing

proofs for things we've already been thinking about, our

suspicions are confirmed, vague ideas are fortified into

strong opinions. The lecturer's material has been taken

into our own circuits and integrated into our previous

beliefs. And later when we describe our strengthened

beliefs to someone else, we will use our terminology, not

that of the lecturer. Even though we know we have been

strongly influenced, it is often difficult to recall the words

the lecturer actually used, unless in the course of his

lecture he said something we didn't agree with. And then

we may remember it word for word.

Treating Post traumatic Stress Disorders Caused by Bullying





The things that are hard to forget are those foreign to our

way of thinking and doing things. They are not spliced

into pre-existing similar ideas. What the bully said, what

the bully did, we do not forget easily. These memories

just sit there. The brain doesn't know where to put them.

And along with the memory of what the bully said and

did, we remember our own feelings at the time. Feeling

ashamed and humiliated, wanting to crawl into a gutter

away from the sneers and jeers, the ache in the jaws, the

desire to smash his grinning face down his lying throat.



Years later, we may find the incident is still there in the

memory, as fresh as yesterday, and anything that draws

our attention to it brings back the same feelings. So we

don't talk about it, we don't think about it, we find an

excuse to avoid going somewhere that reminds us of the

event, avoiding people who will want to mention it. We

dream the same dream about it, over and over again. We

get depressed, we feel like idiots, we think about ending it

all. And unless we do something about these memories,

they don't go away.



We are talking about post traumatic stress disorder.



The aim in treating post-traumatic stress disorders is to

deal with them in such a way that the traumatised person

is able to integrate the experiences with their

understanding of human nature. An example of a

traumatic event which was successfully integrated might

be in the series of questions and responses beginning with

the concern "What happened to you after school?" - "It was

just some losers from the senior school trying to make





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





themselves look big by picking on us little kids. We told

the teacher and they got a detention". "What were they

saying?" - "I don't know, a whole lot of stupid stuff."



Steps In Treatment of PTSD



Firstly, the person must be recognised as someone who

has been damaged. For example, a child sexually abused

by an adult must be recognised as someone who was

taken advantage of, not a bad child. An adult victimised

at work must be recognised as a person treated unfairly,

and not a wimp, a coward etcetera.



Secondly, the painful memories must be re-worked and

discussed so that they begin to make sense within some

coherent framework, concept, or theology. The traumatic

experience is transformed into an opportunity for

learning.



And finally, the person returns to the situation where the

trauma occurs. This may require sophisticated

psychological techniques such as progressive

desensitisation.



Step One



The description of step one may appear a little odd to

people who have little experience of working with

victims. When people come along for help because they

have been bullied, one would imagine that they would

have no difficulty recognising themselves as people who

have been grievously wronged. However, many of them





16

Treating Post traumatic Stress Disorders Caused by Bullying





have difficulty accepting they personally were not to

blame.



In my experience, all cases of bullying involve some

internalisation by the victim, so that he or she is

diminished by the victimisation. The boy who has had his

schoolbag broken and his books thrown out on the road

by the three bullies from two grades up, comes home and

hates himself because he let them see him cry, because he

wasn't able to physically stop them. The woman who has

broken down after being victimised at a meeting at her

workplace set up specifically to damage her credibility

and self-confidence, may in fact offer excuses for the

behaviour of her tormentors, assuming that she must have

been at fault.



The internalisation of abuse is the most destructive aspect

of bullying, particularly school bullying, because repeated

self-accusations in early life may set up a lifelong pattern

and a permanently impaired self esteem. Rage which

cannot be expressed externally may be turned on the self

and become a clinical depression with the possibility of

self-harm. It is therefore very important that the

traumatised person is helped to see that there is no

acceptable excuse for the abuse he or she endured. And

therefore it makes no sense to keep on blaming yourself

for what happened.



Step Two



Once the victim has agreed that there is no acceptable

excuse for the behaviour of the bullies, it is important to





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





try to find some explanation for the behaviour in terms of

what is already understood about human nature. If the

person has no pre-existing concepts of good and evil, it

may be necessary for the therapist to offer various

explanations from different cultures and religious belief

systems.



A Hindu explanation might be that the abuse has arisen

from Karma generated in a past life, where the person had

it all too easy. A Buddhist explanation might be that

being upset by criticism points out that the victim had

placed too much importance on the approval of others.

Or a Christian explanation might be that God allows His

children to be crucified so that the evil hidden within the

power structures in the workplace might become easily

visible.



In some cases, the person might be so hurt that the

traumatic events can only be seen in simplistic terms as

good guys versus bad guys. And the rules are that the

bad guys win to start with, but the good guys triumph in

the long run.



Psychotherapy in stage two can be conducted in a variety

of ways, depending on the training of the therapist.

Regardless of the methods employed, if the therapy

succeeds in making sense of the experience of

victimisation, it will be successful.



Step Three



Eventually getting the bullied person back to the scene of





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Treating Post traumatic Stress Disorders Caused by Bullying





the original trauma may tax the ingenuity and skill of a

trained therapist. Should the patient attempt to return too

early, an acute panic attack may cut the rehabilitation

short. On the other hand, delaying a confrontation

because of the therapist‟s fears of failure might increase

the patient‟s fears about himself, and prove counter-

productive.



Prevention of PTSD



Preventing post traumatic stress disorders involves

bringing victimisation to a speedy end. When I am asked

what someone should do if they are being bullied, my

advice usually is:



1. Tell as many people as you can

2. Change your response

3. Harden the target



Bullies threaten their victims with dire consequences

should they report the abuse and violence being inflicted.

Simply telling someone begins to weaken the bully‟s hold

on the situation. And reporting abuse can activate various

agencies which might be able to have the bullying

stopped.



Change your response. Do the opposite to what you

normally do. The bully is like a predator who knows your

weaknesses very well. In fact he relies on your response

being predictable. Sometimes the predictability of your

response keeps him entertained and amused. When you

catch him off guard you make him nervous, and he might





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





decide to go off and bully someone else.



Harden the target. Police usually advise householders

who want to minimise the risk of being burgled, to begin

by making it harder for a thief to break in, with more

secure locks and screens. You may not stop a determined

thief, but many just give up and seek some easier pickings

elsewhere. Likewise if you are not where the bully is, you

won‟t be victimised.









20

Chapter Three



Bullying in Pastoral Care

by Cara Beed with Clive Beed



Bullying and abuse within a culture of secrecy can occur

in pastoral care situations.



This is well illustrated in the case of a Christian religious

group described by David Millikan in 1991. “Families

were split, wealthy people denuded of their resources.

People have been left so broken that, twenty years out of

the group, they still have bitter memories of what

happened to them”. Millikan claimed there were family

links between the Church hierarchy and members of the

cult, and that no action was taken to bring the group‟s

destructiveness into the open.



In acknowledging the presence of abuse in pastoral care,

the first Australian & New Zealand Conference on Sexual

Exploitation by Health Professionals, Psychotherapists

and Clergy in 1996 has now put the topic firmly on the

public agenda. The conference analysed patterns of

power and vulnerability, and called for abusers to be held

legally accountable.



Writers such as Don Browning (1993) have stressed the

importance of background foundations for any pastoral

care „so that individuals and the public know what kind of

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





ethical world the subtle socialising forces of all therapies

are opening up to clients‟.

Ian Freckelton's paper on bullying in religious cults cites

extreme examples where leadership has led members

through „coercive persuasion‟ to „horrific deaths‟. At the

least, control of behaviour is a highly developed system

involving mind control that removes the personal

autonomy of victims, endorses the power of leaders and is

enhanced by secrecy and isolation.



Margaret Singer has written of the needs of ex-cult

members: “systematic social and psychological influences

that have been used to get the person to reject the past and

take up the ways dictated by the cult." This access to

information must be in a safe atmosphere, where the cult

member is protected from the pressures and influences

that have led her or him, "a step at a time, to give up her

or his freedom and become dependent on the group and

distrusting or rejecting of the world.”



Laurence Iannaccone's 1992 analysis of patterns of

religious behaviour in an economic framework, suggests

religious groups which demand sacrifices appear more

successful than those that do not:

“Analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with

perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma, self-

sacrifice, and bizarre behavioural restrictions.”



Cult Structures And Behaviour



However, it is not necessarily religious doctrine that leads

to bullying, but structures and behaviour. Problems exist





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Bullying in Pastoral Care





in „any group which has a pyramid type of authoritarian

leadership structure with all the teaching and guidance

coming from the persons at the top. The group will claim

to be the only way to God .... and will use thought reform

or mind control techniques to gain control and keep their

members‟ (Chaplaincy Centre, University of Queensland

1996).



The Australian cult analysed by Millikan „started out with

aspirations that the Evangelical world of Sydney found

hard to fault‟. So it is with many foundation formation

processes of new religious groups. It is only with fuller

participation that participants realise there is aberrant

behaviour in the group. However by that time,

participants have been so socialised as to sacrifice their

personal power. This opens the participant to domination

by the leadership that is tantamount to permanent

bullying.



As Millikan points out, people joining an organisation

espousing ideas in line with religious tradition, pursue „a

long line of mystic and holy people who have striven for a

higher spirituality than the church normally offers to its

members‟. This can make them vulnerable to behaviour

they might not normally countenance.



The misuse of structural power is emphasised by Neil and

Thea Ormerod because structures and processes within

the organisation encourage individuals to follow advice,

instructions, programs and leadership of one or a

particular powerful few: „The minister is seen as God‟s

representative and one doesn‟t get much more powerful





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





than that !‟



Although much literature, training, faith material and

Christian texts themselves emphasise the importance of

servanthood, ministers may misuse their power in

pastoral situations. Such abuse is paradoxically adverse to

the very foundation of the philosophy of servanthood. In

the context of Christian religious organisations, the abuse

is contradictory to the very foundations of Christian belief.



Because abuse by a minister is a betrayal of belief (the

minister being seen as an ambassador for God) the abuse

carries with it an attack on faith. „Spiritual assassin‟ and

„spiritual rape‟ are terms used by victims describing such

abuse.



Some Processes Operating In Authoritarian Religious

Groups



We have developed a list of ten processes which may

operate in authoritarian religious groups.



An autocratic, authoritarian structure: This includes

leaders exerting absolute control over policy details,

including minutiae; disagreement is not tolerated;

teaching inculcates group ideas.



Loyalty, submission to, and dependence on the demands

or insinuations of the leader or group: The individual is

isolated from others; all confidences must be told to

leaders who provide guidance and demand obedience; the

individual is made vulnerable through group sharing;





24

Bullying in Pastoral Care





leaders are venerated; there is self diminishment in

deference to the leader or the group.

Absorption into new artificial community: The

individual is encouraged to fit into the group; group

entanglements, long hours of shared activities; praise and

ridicule responses motivate members to fit into activities;

disproportionate importance on new membership.



Isolation from family, friends and internalised norms:

Distortion sometimes occurs in relation to family of origin;

new identity excludes links and traditions of old family;

remote sites used for activities; ideals and interests are

espoused as in conflict with past; details of past associates

are confided in leader; trust is imbued in the leader or

group rather than family and friends; bewilderment of

family is seen as rejection of leader or group.



Idiosyncratic teaching: Selective teaching; misuse of

legitimate church beliefs and doctrine.



Avoidance of evil as defined by the leader: Avoiding

evil is frequently discussed; evil attributed to particular

people (eg participant's family of origin), plus

environments and things; evil to be avoided at all costs.



Divergent moral standards for leader/s: Divergent, secret

moral standards for leader; differing from "ordinary"

group members and mainstream society; increasing

isolation from mainstream moral standards; dilemma and

quandary for victim.



Denial of victim's claims: Victims accused of lying or of





25

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





fantasy are afraid they will not be believed.

Mind Control: Undermines personal autonomy, and may

be a sophisticated pattern of thought manipulation which

erodes personal autonomy. Mind control can occur via:

the 'guidance' method

encouragement to attend programs constantly, with

deepening commitment

rejection of independent members in meetings

techniques and inner group members can be used to prime

and control public teaching sessions

focus on inner core to prime meetings

thought stopping techniques eg praying, meditation, chanting

frequently used

making difficulties for assessment of meetings

special activities and confidences seen as for inner

group only

distrust and rejection of self is basic requirement

erosion of ability to make independent decisions



Cognitive dissonance : Here the individual‟s own

personal identity is threatened by major discrepancies

between patterns of thought, feelings and behaviour; the

former meaning of one‟s life may be lost as the person

comes to believe in irrational ideas, responding to

challenges to look at the truth by increased commitment to

the leader or the group



Secrecy



“It is only righteousness that has a right to secrecy, and

does not want it; evil has no right to secrecy, alone

intensely desires it, and rages at being foiled of it ...”





26

Bullying in Pastoral Care





(MacDonald)



The culture of secrecy should not be confused with

confidentiality. The latter is a sound part of therapy, of

benefit to the client. However, when confidentiality

inhibits victims of abuse from gaining help it becomes

secrecy, which represents further abuse.



Neither should the culture of secrecy be seen as the

appropriate use of legal controls available to our society.

Legal controls are meant to safeguard the innocent from

false accusation, to protect them by limiting disclosures of

alleged abuse until proper enquiry has been conducted.



The Senate Standing Committee on Public Interest

Whistleblowing (SSCPIW) supports the need for laws

governing confidentiality and defamation. These legal

controls allow damage control, protecting the organisation

from false accusation. However, the culture of secrecy

may be so effective that accusations are never adequately

examined, leaving the purveyor free to continue abuse in

other environments. The SSCPIW was particularly

concerned about „the use of defamation law to suppress

critical comment, including „stop writs‟ which prevent

public consideration of matters of immediate concern‟.



The Victim May Consciously Hide The Abuse



Out of their commitment to the group, victims may even

voluntarily practise restriction on information about

abuse. Limitations imposed on public disclosure are a

form of institutional bullying which serves as a further





27

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





destructive force within the organisation itself, and in the

wider society. Restriction of information allows church

authorities and its workers to be exempt from the scrutiny

of the society in which they claim to serve major pastoral

roles. There are legal liabilities if information about abuse

is divulged by the victim. The threat of these liabilities

acts as a bullying tool to further limit publication, and

even discussion, of abuse by pastoral workers, ensuring

victims remain surrounded by secrecy and isolation.



The need for recognition of the danger of secrecy is

supported by Marie Fortune (1992). She describes abuse

by the pastor in a mainstream U.S. church of a number of

women in his parish. Fortune details how the pastor

wove a „veil of secrecy‟ with all his victims. The church‟s

responses to requests for accountable action were years of

silence, unfulfilled promises of intervention, and finally

compromised action and partial silence continued by the

authorities.



Six of the women decided to challenge the pastor to stop

the abuse. Instead of the responses the women expected,

the church responded by „shooting the messenger‟, a

common response to whistleblowing. The victims‟

credibility was questioned, their motives regarded as

suspect, their vulnerabilities assessed as the cause of the

abuse, and the abuser and the church escaped

recrimination.



The church then reimposed the need for secrecy which led

to the women‟s isolation from the wider congregation;

„when the women lost their right to speak publicly, the





28

Bullying in Pastoral Care





secret of the abuse regained its power and stifled the

healing of the church‟.



Similar dissatisfaction with the outcome of intervention is

reported by Sarah Hamilton-Byrne:

“There was no justice for what happened to us. Most of

the abuse was subject to statutory limitation, which meant

that charges could not be laid because a certain period of

time had elapsed since the abuses had taken place I will

never understand just why it all ended this way; maybe I

am naive about the justice system and don‟t know how

things work, but it looks to me like the whole thing was

handled badly from beginning to end- the justice system

let us down. It took a long period for some of us to accept

that there was never going to be any form of retribution

for all the years of abuse”.



Witness About Abuse Is Educative And Therapeutic



Sharing knowledge of destructive activities is of

therapeutic benefit, even if the witnessing is done by

others on behalf of victims. Removal of secrecy lifts

isolation and is of great healing value to victims and the

wider community. Others in similar situations may be

able to discover new ways of assessing their experiences -

a process that enhances their lives and allows them to

move on.



Marie Fortune emphasises the freedom experienced from

the abuse when victims are able to „truth tell‟. When

victims can give voice to their specific experiences of

violation, the secret loses its potency. She stresses that





29

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





justice can only be fulfilled if truth is acknowledged

publicly.



Sarah Hamilton-Byrne says that publicly revealing abuse

was important politically in gaining support from the

State both for the „children‟ who had exited from the cult

about which she wrote, and to foster continuing enquiry

into it. The unity of the „children‟ describing their

experiences became:

“a political force, and the telling of our story over and

over again on television could guarantee the politicians‟

support for new enquiries or changes to legislation that

meant adoption searches became swifter.”



Steven Hassan (1990) reminds us that speaking out about

abuse in cult settings provides vital education alerting

people about assessing organisations before they join.

Neil and Thea Ormerod suggest the need for education

and warnings about commonly held „naive‟ expectations

that religious organisations and personnel have „forms

and structures of accountability ‟. They considered such

education „would put an end to the abuse of power‟.



Other writers confirm the vitality experienced once

victims of abuse become aware of what they have

survived. Margaret Singer wrote of one man midway

through exit counselling from a cult, who said 'he

suddenly felt that his mind was like a muscle that he was

beginning to exercise'. In recovering from pastoral care

abuse, sharing information is vital, along with company,

family relationships and activities accepted as „ordinary‟

by the world at large. In the midst of information there





30

Bullying in Pastoral Care





must be equal emphasis on „friendship and love outside

the welfare system to become human and find the secret

of happiness in the outside world‟ (Hamilton-Byrne,

1995).



Investigating Abuse In Pastoral Care



Abuse in pastoral care cannot be investigated by people

who previously shared mutual interests with the abuser.

Too often there is a merging of the vested interests of the

organisation and its representatives. Patterns and

characteristics in the structures and processes that were

foundational to the abuse require explicit recognition of

and openness to discussion and change, only available

through independent enquiry.



Establishing open discussion of the elements contributing

to the culture of secrecy can help stop abuse. Such

discussion has to be frank and honest. Although

mainstream churches such as the Catholic, Anglican and

Lutheran have recently sought to develop protocols to

deal with the issues of sexual abuse by church workers,

these have still to be tested.



Legal Redress



While the possibility of dealing with bullying in pastoral

care situations through legal action has been discussed by

Ian Freckelton, this area is new to the legal system and

needs testing. Citing examples of other patterns such as

the battered woman syndrome and child sexual abuse

accommodation syndrome, Freckelton considers that legal





31

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





redress may be possible:

“if significant dependency of a cult member upon

leadership of a group can be demonstrated, together with

the fact that, objectively speaking, a person has acted

adversely to their own interests but advantageously to the

interests of the group”.









32

Chapter Four



Assertiveness- The Missing Skill

by Michael Breen



Teaching assertive behaviour for 18 years is a story of

small successes and some less than successful attempts.



We need to be able to manage ourselves assertively before

we can manage others assertively. Assertiveness is an art,

a matter of where you draw the line, which requires

ongoing practice and reflection on that practice. This can

be done in a group, with another or alone. Assertiveness

assists those who are oppressed as well as those in danger

of abusing power in organisations or personal lives. What

is needed is to get beyond bullying.



When considering what skill would assist people in

changing their behaviours or their organisations, I realised

it was assertive (problem solving) behaviour. This was

after I had experienced the powerlessness of trying to

change my own behaviour or trying to help assist other

people change behaviour in various kinds of

organisations.



The Non Assertive Context



Most workplaces are not assertive problem solving

environments. Bullying and non-assertive compliant

behaviour are much more the norm. When we consider

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





the environmental elements, this is not surprising. Some

of the environmental factors in making bullying seem

normal include:



• The language of the competitive organisation is often

the language of war, e.g., „Become a master of strategy

on today‟s corporate killing fields‟, make a killing,

industrial spies, etcetera.

• Governments put cost-cutting before social needs.

• Restructuring, downsizing, right sizing, etcetera, are

often euphemisms for sacking staff.

• Absenteeism, the „silent strike of the 1990‟s‟, is one of

the counter measures staff use to exercise some passive

aggression.

• Shrinking amounts of work often mean that those who

are employed keep more of that work for themselves

by extending their overtime in a costly fashion rather

than recommending extra part time staff be employed,

and that work be shared.

• CEO salaries in the USA which in 1974 were 35 times

that of the average manufacturing worker are today

between 150 and 160 times larger. Australia is not

dissimilar.

• Overwork and over attendance at work often result in

abandonment of families, or tiredness and irritability

being brought into the home from the workplace.

• Mental health suffers when managers and staff feel

they are losing control of their environment and, as

happens with other mammals, depression results.



The power relationships between the public and private

sector are unclear in our post-socialist world. Henry





34

Assertiveness - The Missing Skill





Mintzberg wrote in the May-June 1996 Harvard Business

Review: „The very notion that an institution, independent

of people who constitute it, can be free is itself a

subversive notion in a democratic society. When the

enterprises are really free, the people are not.‟ He goes on

to point out the silliness of calling needy users of public

service, like health, „Customers‟, as if they have the same

power as the person who goes in and buys a BMW by

writing a cheque.



Once a woman was sent to an assertive problem solving

workshop because she had kicked a distribution manager

employed in her firm. However, on enquiry, the kicking

was discovered to have come at the end of a long series of

put-downs and sexist insults. To do penance, she had to

write a five thousand word assignment, stay on probation

for nine months and attend a training course on assertive

problem solving. Some male members of her company,

whilst on a marketing exercise away from head office,

drank too much, (on the company expense account)

urinated in the city fountain, destroyed property at their

motel and were taken to the local police station. No action

was taken by the company in response.



The case illustrates some of the multi-layered aspects of

abuse of power and authority which need to be addressed.

Often managers who feel powerless to address serious

strategic or management issues take out their frustrations

on those people and issues which allow them to abuse

their authority in an aggressive way. The case also shows

the interweaving of gender and cultural issues in

organisations. Often there is incongruence between the





35

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





ways different people are treated and the „Vision‟ and

„Values‟ statements of the organisation. This

incongruence leads to cynicism and further disregard for

values statements or even for the attempt to manage with

equity and fairness.



A supervisor at a course, „Managing Ourselves and Others

Assertively‟, wanted to explore an issue which troubled

him in the workplace. He was responsible for supervising

workers who had to strip insulation from copper wires.

One of the strippers was intellectually disabled. His

hands were bleeding from the copper wire cutting his

hands. The supervisor wanted to know how he could

„assertively‟ get his boss to open the safety cupboard so

they could get a pair of gloves for the disabled worker

with bleeding hands. Like the former case, it shows the

layered nature of these kinds of problems. Brutality can

become part of the culture of the organisation and the

victim can then be labelled as a „wimp‟ or „not tough

enough to work around here‟.



Certainly, hands which were not as tough as leather were

hands which were not tough enough. Neither was the

supervisor powerful enough with his manager to get the

gloves out of the safety cupboard. It would then be

tempting to see the manager as a heartless bully who

ought to be taught a lesson. However, that kind of

thinking and analysis suggests that we have become

embroiled in the problem. The problem is systemic. That

is, it is an expression of several intersecting forces, factors

and cultural aspects of the organisation and the people

involved.





36

Assertiveness - The Missing Skill







Simple solutions („arrest the usual suspects‟) usually give

instant relief that a solution has been found. They also

frequently ensure that the problem will continue or arise

again.



If we enquire about the most senior person, who holds the

keys to the safety glove cupboard, we may find he too is a

victim. His director may have threatened that if he does

not reduce safety glove expenditure, his job is on the line.

Or he may have been told to find a way to get rid of (fire)

the disabled guy in the wire stripping area! And the

director; how does he come to behave like this? Well, as a

new employee, he was told by his old mentor, „This is a

tough place, you will only get promoted if you are tough

and fair.‟ (Like the Piranha Brothers in Monty Python.)



Now that he is a director he has had to fairly but toughly

compete with his peers to get on top of them as a director.

He is terrified that he might be found wanting at this level

of the organisation. As it transpired, he really didn‟t need

to bother because there was a change of government, the

organisation was split in two and restructured and the

director was on the redeployee list.



What Can Be Done?



Sound philosophical and ethical bases are required lest we

perpetuate the problem or push it down for re-emergence

somewhere else. This will mean in practice the solution

will need to be legally and morally just. Secondly, the

solution will need to involve systemic thinking about the





37

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





problem. The skills developed and the diagnosis of the

problem both require clear simultaneous thinking about

the individual and the group, the organisational

environment and culture. Solutions which work for the

kidneys and ruin the lungs are not enabling solutions. So

there needs to be clear and systemic thinking.

Assertiveness needs to be able to be defined.



Boundaries between assertive, non assertive and

aggressive behaviour require at least descriptive

operational definitions. The rights of all parties need to be

considered in an interrelated fashion. Diagnostic activity

needs to be carried on from the position, „naive inquirer‟

not „prosecutor‟, „champion of the oppressed‟ or, worse

still, „Mr Fixit‟ or, „dogooder‟. Einstein said, „The

interpretation of a system is relative to the vantage point

of the observer‟. In assisting people to find enabling

solutions to the problems of their organisations we need

to assist them to distance themselves from the problems in

which they are embroiled, so as to understand what is

happening. Before attempting to do anything, X-Ray first,

then decide whether to operate.



Thirdly, solutions should have a sound psychological

base. Maslow said that for people whose only tool is a

hammer, every problem is a nail. Solutions need to offer

options, open ended options to all. The fundamentalist

rigidity of some methods of conflict resolution and

training packages, usually from the other side of the

Pacific Ocean, are often recipes for transforming the

problem into one of slavish dependence on a new

(franchised) model rather than the development of





38

Assertiveness - The Missing Skill





spontaneous creativity, constructive dialogue and

personal power.



All solutions sit within the constraints of real life and

fallible humanity. There are no magic answers; no matter

what the magic costs or promises. It is easy to recreate the

persecutor, victim, rescuer triangle. Self talk is important

but affirmations are not the only way. For most people,

learning and caring for their foibles will be more possible

than therapy. Solutions need to deal with the whole

person, their thinking, decision making, feeling and

actions. The more options people have, the more they can

be creatively powerful.



Fourthly, solutions need to be artistic as well as scientific.

Assertiveness is an art, and a lifetime is not very long to

learn to practise an art. It is a matter of where you draw

the line between the poles of aggression and non assertive,

compliant behaviours. The assertive person is not a

peculiar kind of person: every person is, in their peculiar

way, capable of being assertive.



The Judeo-Christian tradition has enshrined concepts of

scapegoat, martyr and crucifixion often at the expense of

more expansive myths like transformation and

resurrection, or even being „in the moment‟, face to face

with exactly „what is‟, in a Zen or Existentialist way.

Assertive skills require practice, playing with the options

and responses of others, in a respectful, joyous way. We

need to know equally that we are doing the best we know

how to do and that we never „get it right‟. Concern about

being right or winning is quite different from assertive





39

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





behaviour. „In the beginner‟s mind there are many

possibilities; in the expert‟s mind there are few.‟ (Shunryu

Suzuki: The artistry in maintaining the beginner’s mind.)



Fifthly, there is the need for solutions to be put in an

educational framework. Skills need to be able to be taught

and learned. Some people may need therapeutic

remediation. Some people need opportunities to learn to

prevent trauma, to improve their style of management

and avoid inappropriately coercive methods.



It is also important to have some principles of educational

psychology to sieve out inappropriate or unethical

learning content or processes. The end does not justify the

means. It is not appropriate to teach any old methods to

people to get their own way, to humiliate as retribution, to

teach that something „will always work‟ or to humiliate

people so that they find their own assertive self. What is

sought in assertive behaviour is equity and justice, not

„kindness‟, charity or forgiveness which individuals may

desire for themselves, or may wish to express towards

others. Distinctions need to be made between loving the

person and loving the behaviour. This is particularly

important in family relationships.



Too infrequently in the workplace is there explicit

discussion of issues surrounding power and authority.

The ideal is to use authority appropriately and to see the

authority attaching to the task to be done but not to the

person themselves. Their personal authority comes from

the ability to ask for what they want, to express all their

feelings, not just the angry ones but the fearful, soft and





40

Assertiveness - The Missing Skill





uncertain ones and to allow others to do the same.



Some participants at workshops have been surprised to

learn that listening is an assertive skill. If a manager

wants someone to do a task, how can they do the task well

if the manager does not listen to their requirements for

resources, their fears for safety, etcetera? One piece of

learning for people in assertiveness training is that what is

often seen as „soft‟ behaviour is appropriate assertive

behaviour. Also that soft behaviour often achieves long

term productive results and costs less, of persons and

materials.



How well does the development of assertive skills fit these

five criteria?



1. Assertive skills are respectful of others rights and the

rights of the person. As stated above, justice rather than

charity is the desired principle. This means that one can

always be assertive with a good conscience. The same is

not true of undue coercion or whimping out. Tacitus said

that, „More faults are often committed when trying to

oblige than while we are giving offence.‟



Authority vacuums (managers not exercising appropriate

authority) can cause as many problems as over using

management authority. Whenever there is a major abuse

of power, there is often a commensurate lack of

assertiveness among stakeholders surrounding the event.

Sometimes assertive skills carry the added qualifier

„responsible‟ assertive skills. This means taking

responsibility in justice for one‟s behaviour and the





41

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





consequences of that behaviour.



2. Systemic thinking, as outlined in criterion 2 above,

means looking from all possible points of view at a

given situation. This also means not ascribing praise or

blame to people involved.



It means describing behaviours rather than evaluating

people. By using role training in workshops, rather than

role play, learners „experience‟ the whole system from

several points of view. Participants also learn to reverse

roles with those with whom they are dealing so that they

see their own behaviour as it appears to others; not just to

themselves.



By using descriptive definitions of assertive, non-assertive

and aggressive behaviour, participants become clearer

about the boundaries between the three sets of

behaviours. In this context it is also worth pointing out

that what often looks like non-assertive or compliant

behaviour can be a passive way of being aggressive. Mr

Bean is a master of passive aggression. Guilt making,

victim behaviour, too, can be seen as a non-assertive way

to dominate by attempting to cause others to feel guilty.



3. The psychological base for assertive skill

development sits more in the area of humanistic or third

force psychology and educational psychology than

analytic, behaviourist or ego psychologies. Though it

borrows insights and models from these methodologies,

e.g., from analytical psychology, material from dreams or

families of origin may be introduced by participants.





42

Assertiveness - The Missing Skill





Reinforcement and rewarding new healthy behaviours is a

way to support assertive behaviours of participants and

others. J.L. Moreno‟s theories of role theory, sociodrama

and sociometry are used to underpin systemic thinking

and provide techniques such as role reversal.



4. Artistry and science. The case for artistry and science

is explored in outlining the criterion itself. (See fourth

point)



5. Solutions need to be able to be taught and learned.

This is necessary in a variety of settings. Some people

come for coaching one to one, some for group coaching,

some attend two day or longer workshops. Some

workshops are in-house in a particular organisation, some

are for people from different levels in different

organisations.



Participants in workshops develop their individual adult

learning contracts with their own personal objectives and

measures. Participants practise assertive skills in the

workshops where they can receive feedback on their

practice. Participants evaluate their objectives and

practise during the workshop. They are also encouraged

to develop an ongoing personal development plan for

after the workshop. This plan may include some post

workshop negotiation or dialogue about their work with a

superior, peers or subordinates in the workplace.

It is important that, although some people may seek or

need therapy to come to terms with their family or work

history, most people can learn ways to be more assertive.

The learning needs to be in a wide context which will





43

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





accommodate learners who are just becoming aware of

their need for assertive behaviours to those who are

seeking self-actualisation or the transcendence of

enlightenment.



Workshops need to accommodate people from differing

cultural backgrounds, with due respect for their ethos,

mores and taboos. (e.g., eye contact may be outrageous

and impolite in some cultures.) Workshops need also to

be able to accommodate people with disabilities. [I have

run several workshops for people with disabilities. One

series was stopped „because people from the workshops

were speaking up for themselves too much‟.]



As researchers, indignant victims and people with a

strong sense of justice raise the spectre of bullying to

society, we will discover more and more incidents of

bullying. As awareness grows it is like lowering the

water in a dam where we become more and more aware

of the submerged stumps, rocks and trees. They have

been there all the time. It is just that we are now able to

see them. We need to be able to restore some balance.

Those who bully need as much assistance as those who

make it easy for them to bully. Tacitus said, „Slaves make

more tyrants than tyrants make slaves.‟



Assertive skills training both raises awareness of what is

happening and gives people models, behavioural training

and practice in the skills needed to bring about productive

assertive problem solving. Once people know how to be

assertive, they have a way to continually enhance their

personal capital. It increases confidence instead of





44

Assertiveness - The Missing Skill





grandiosity or undue self doubt or self criticism. It

provides frameworks to consider appropriate behaviours

to manage difficult situations at home or at work.









45

Chapter Five



Bullying At School And Beyond

by Ken Rigby



There is now good evidence that children brought up in

dysfunctional families, where they experience uncaring

and aggressive behaviour from family members, are more

likely than others to engage in bullying at school. We

know, too, that repeated exposure to violence through the

media can incline some children to act aggressively

towards other students. Further, if a person becomes a

bully at school, it is likely that he or she will be a bully

elsewhere, such as in the family and in the workplace.



In my work in schools I have proposed that when bullying

occurs we can generally identify seven elements or

aspects.



1. An initial desire to hurt.

A large proportion of students from time to time want to

hurt someone. In an ongoing study by Rigby and Slee of

approximately 25,000 Australian students aged 8 to 18

years using the Peer Relations Questionnaire, more than 3

out of 5 students reported that they sometimes felt like

hurting or upsetting someone.



Both age and gender influenced the students‟ responses.

The desire to hurt another person appears to peak around

Bullying at School and Beyond





14 years for both boys and girls. For each age group;

however, more boys than girls appear to experience the

urge.



Among some children the desire to hurt is particularly

intense and often this intensity can be traced back to

extremely unhappy experiences in their families. Where

children are not loved and there is little sense of

belonging, where adults abuse each other and their

children; where no-one at home seems to care about what

becomes of them: these are the conditions that often breed

anger and hostility which may be expressed through

bullying others.



2. The desire is expressed in action.

Bullying can only occur when the impulse to hurt is

actually expressed. Many children suppress the urge or

express it in less socially undesirable ways than bullying.



The most common means of bullying is verbal, involving

ridicule, name-calling and verbal abuse; next in frequency

is indirect forms of bullying, especially deliberately and

repeatedly leaving targeted individuals out of activities

they wish to be involved in, but also spreading malicious

rumours and removing and hiding people's belongings.



Physical bullying becomes less common as students

become older and verbal bullying becomes

correspondingly more frequent. Boys are generally more

physical than girls in their bullying behaviour; girls are

more inclined to use more indirect methods, especially

exclusion.





47

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





3. Someone is hurt.

Bullying is effective only if someone is hurt. About half

the children who report being sometimes bullied at school

say they are not bothered by it; about a quarter say they

are made to feel sad and miserable, and a similar fraction

say that their main reaction is one of anger. Older

students are somewhat less likely to be disturbed by

bullying; girls are more likely than boys to say that being

bullied by another person makes them feel sad and

miserable.



4 Bullying is directed by a more powerful person or

group against someone less powerful

In the Primary School physical size and strength enable

some children to bully others. But with increasing age the

bases of power tend to shift and the reasons for inequality

become more subtle. The bully may triumph because of

well developed verbal skills that can be used to ridicule

others; or because the bully has achieved, or been granted,

a certain status which enables him or her to call on

support from others in order to isolate someone he or she

dislikes. About half the amount of reported bullying

involves groups of students as perpetrators.



There is an increase in reported bullying in the first year

of secondary school. This occurs in Year 7 in Victoria,

Tasmania, New South Wales and ACT and in Year 8 in

South Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory and

Western Australia. Regardless of when secondary school

begins, reported bullying is relatively high in Year 8, that

is when children are around 13 or 14 years. Starting

secondary school earlier means that one is likely to be





48

Bullying at School and Beyond





subjected to far more bullying.



Boys are much more likely to bully girls than vice-versa.

Whilst boys are usually bullied by boys at school, girls

appear to be equally victimised by boys and girls.



Bullying in the school community includes teachers.

Some teachers have the power to bully students, and do so

when they cross the wavy line between imposing

discipline and treating a child unnecessarily harshly. But

sometimes teachers are bullied by students who may

manifest their superior power by acting as a group to

overwhelm and humiliate their teacher.



5. Bullying is without justification.

We cannot say that it is always wrong for a stronger

person or group to coerce a weaker person. There are

circumstances under which hurting someone weaker than

oneself may appear justified. When a mother forcibly

restrains her child from running into the road; when a

teacher castigates a student for cheating in class; when the

law imprisons a man for sexually molesting a young child;

in such cases as these power is used against a weaker

person; most of us approve of its use; but the victim

commonly feels hurt by it, even oppressed.



6. It is typically repeated

In our studies of bullying in schools we found that some

children had been bullied by the same individuals or

groups for extended periods: as many as 15% of boys and

girls say that such bullying has continued for months or

more.





49

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







But we should note that not all bullying is of a repeated

kind. A one-off act of bullying is certainly possible and the

threat of its recurrence can stay with some children for a

long time. Whilst some bullies cling to their victim like

parasites; others may change their victim continually,

seeking fresh conquests.



7. With evident enjoyment

A survey of over 25,000 children indicated that 28% of

boys and 17% of girls report that if they were to bully

someone it would be "for fun." More chilling are the

results of an earlier study in which substantial numbers of

children (23 % of boys and 13% of girls) did not disagree

with the statement: " it is funny to see kids get upset when

they are teased."



Some would argue that not all bullying has such malign

features, and I would agree. Often children are simply not

aware of the distress they are causing. This is especially

true when they are operating in groups, when they are

"caught up" in the game of tormenting someone, without

any realistic conception of the consequences of their

actions.



Consequences For Victims: Short-term



For many children who are bullied there is an immediate

loss of self-esteem. Approximately 50% of children who

report being bullied say that they feel "worse about

themselves" afterwards; among children frequently

victimised it is much higher. Some children suffer from





50

Bullying at School and Beyond





extended periods of depression in which they seriously

think of taking their lives. Case studies strongly suggest

that being bullied at school has contributed to child

suicide.



Many children stay home from school because of fear of

continued bullying. Some 6% of boys and 9% of girls

report that they have stayed away from school for this

reason. A further 15% have informed us that they have

thought of doing so.



The general health of children who are bullied frequently

tends to be worse than that of others. In surveys of

children's health in South Australia using the Goldberg

General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg and Williams

1988), larger proportions of victimised students reported

poor health in a number of different areas compared with

other students.



Not surprisingly children who frequently bully others are

more likely to become involved in delinquent activities

outside the school. Students attending one large

Australian High School who were identified as bullies

were found to engage more frequently than others in

"wagging" school, shoplifting, writing graffiti in public

places and getting in trouble with the Police. The link

with delinquent activities was much stronger among those

who bullied others and also had low self-esteem.



Longer Term Outcomes For Bullies



It seems clear that many children who bully others at





51

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





school are indeed likely to persist in their bullying

behaviour. The most compelling longitudinal study of

school bullies comes from the Swedish psychologist, Dan

Olweus, who has reported that children in Norway

identified as bullies at age 11 years are four times more

likely than others to come before the courts subsequently

on charges of delinquency (Olweus, 1993). Other

researchers including Farrington (1993) in England and

Cairns and Cairns (1995) in America have confirmed that

bullies at school frequently embark on a career of crime.



One of the difficulties we have; however, lies in

disentangling the effects of school from those of home

background and perhaps also predisposing characteristics.



Attitudes Of Students Which Encourage Bullying



Here are some statements endorsed by a sample of 2,158

boys and 1,884 girls attending Australian secondary

schools: Percentages are of those agreeing with each

statement.



Bullying other students makes you:

1. Feel good about yourself (Boys: 15.4%; girls, 9.6%)

2. Gets you admired by other children at this school

(Boys: 23.4%; girls, 14.5%)

3. Prevents you from being bullied (Boys: 35.6%; girls,

26.8%)

4. Shows them you are tough (Boys: 39.3%; girls, 31.2%)

5. Makes you feel better than them (Boys: 47.1%; girls,

40.3%)







52

Bullying at School and Beyond





The positive feelings expressed about bullying are not too

dissimilar for boys and girls.



It is true that the majority of students express a good deal

of sympathy for children who are often victimised but

unfortunately as bystanders they commonly do not act,

preferring to be detached and uninvolved.



It is difficult to predict how people who have been bullied

as children will adjust or react to circumstances in later

life. Some will overcome their difficulties; others may

continue to feel hurt and demoralised. Some may feel

angry and vindictive towards others. Research into

attitudes towards spouse abuse indicates that teenage

boys frequently bullied at school may be more approving

than others of husbands who abuse their wives. This

suggests that just as children abused by adults in the

home may grow up to become abusers themselves, so

some children victimised by peers at school may become

aggressive and uncaring in their dealings with others that

they can in turn oppress.



Bystanders



It is well to remember that the majority of children are

neither bullies nor victims. There are about 80% or so of

students who are seldom or never bullied and, in fact,

most bullying episodes last for only a day or so. The

persistent bullies constitute a smaller group of around 5%

or so; although it is worth remembering that there are

many more children who do join in to ridicule or tease

quite cruelly that minority of victims who are being





53

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





victimised - and think nothing of it.



Bystanders can be subdivided into those who are simply

amused; those who are detached - and feel vaguely glad

it's not they who are in the firing line; those who feel

guilty because they are standing by, perhaps even

colluding, and doing nothing to stop it; and the small

minority of children who actually try to do something to

discourage the bullying. I suspect that the situation is

often replicated when bullying happens in the workplace.

And it seems very likely that the tendency for many

adults to ignore what is going on when bullying occurs in

the workplace, however much they may disapprove, has

origins in their schooldays when they first encountered

bullying among their peers and felt that they should keep

out of it.



What Can We Learn From The Schools?



1. Acknowledge that bullying happens. Thanks to the

research that has been done in school and the thousands

of questionnaires students have answered, it is becoming

extremely difficult for Principals of schools to deny that

bullying happens in their school as it happens in every

school. But some try. I suspect that managers of

workplaces are often similarly reluctant. The more

evidence that can be provided through well-conducted

surveys of workplace bullying, the more difficult it will be

for management to deny that it is happening.



2. Develop an anti-bullying policy. Increasingly schools

are developing anti-bullying policies and publicising them





54

Bullying at School and Beyond





as widely as possible so as to be understood by students,

teachers and parents. Whilst workplaces often have in

place policies relating to sexual harassment and racial

discrimination, they commonly lack the necessary broader

perspective. Bullying within homogeneous groups, and

between people of equal status, as well as bullying

between those of unequal status, needs to be included in

any comprehensive workplace policy. In schools, policies

are nowadays often developed with representation from

students, teachers and parents. Similar representativeness

is needed in the workplace if the resultant policy is to

have credibility and widespread acceptance.



3. Discuss the issue of bullying openly. We know from

extensive research that most students are sympathetic

towards victims of school bullying. It seems highly likely

that there is on the part of most people in the workplace, a

similar feeling of support for victims and a corresponding

abhorrence of bullying. The problem is how to translate

sympathy and abhorrence into actions directed towards

stopping bullying. Some teachers work effectively with

classes so as to involve their students in helping to

discourage bullying whenever they see it happening.

There are of course differences between teacher/student

relationships and those found elsewhere, but we need to

ask whether the skills that some teachers employ in

promoting constructive discussions cannot be adapted for

use in meetings of adults in the workplace.



4. Devise acceptable procedures for dealing with

incidents of bullying. Schools employ various approaches

in dealing with incidents in schools. These can be





55

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





categorised as Moralistic (tell the bullies how they should

behave); Legalistic (treat bullying as a crime and punish

the bullies appropriately); and Humanistic (talk with the

bullies and help them to behave responsibly). There is

scope for each of these approaches, depending in part on

the „sensitivity‟ of those who bully others (not all are

incorrigible), and the seriousness of the bullying.



As an initial approach to a person identified as bullying

someone, I personally strongly favour a humanistic

approach (rather than a moralistic or legalistic approach)

because I think it is generally the most effective way in

schools - and also I suspect in the workplace. In schools I

support and seek to promote the so-called Method of

Shared Concern invented by the Swedish psychologist,

Anatol Pikas (see Pikas 1989; Rigby 1996a, 1996b).



The starting point is always one of sharing one's concern

for the victim with the suspected bully in a non-

threatening way, and then examining with the „bully‟ how

things can be changed. Research conducted in schools

indicates that it works with students about two times out

of three (see Smith and Sharp 1994). By contrast, abusing

and threatening the bully often results in continued and

less overt forms of bullying which are extremely difficult

to detect. Of course, on occasions disciplinary action in

keeping with a widely accepted policy will be necessary.

But if bullying can be stopped through persuasion, and

encouragement of constructive behaviours, outcomes are

much more likely to be enduring.

5. Provide help for those who are bullied. Some schools

are providing direct help for children who suffer as a





56

Bullying at School and Beyond





result of bullying by others at school. This can be of

several kinds:



(a) moral or psychological support from someone who

will listen sympathetically and give advice

(b) more active support in undertaking to help the victim

to cope effectively with the bullying (e.g. through

developing appropriate assertiveness skills) and

(c) setting into motion action, including legal or quasi-

legal action, to deter further bullying.



All three may have their place, depending on the nature of

the bullying and (of course) the wishes of the person

victimised. Again, the experience of teachers and

counsellors in schools who deal with cases of bullying can

be of much value to those who are concerned about how

to proceed when bullying occurs in the workplace.



6. Recognise that it is the social environment that is

often crucial, not simply the psychology of the individual

bully. This is a lesson we are continually learning in

schools. First, there are enormous differences between the

extent of reported bullying in schools which in fact appear

similar with respect to gender socio-economic status,

racial and gender composition.



Secondly, as we have seen already, the extent of reported

bullying among 12 year olds usually depends on whether

they are in Primary or alternatively in first Year High

School, where they are much more likely to be bullied.

Statistics are not currently available on the extent of

bullying in different workplaces, but it would indeed be





57

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





surprising if there was not the same kind of variation in

workplaces as is found in schools.



Although, counselling and, if necessary, disciplinary or

legal action may at times be justified, and have significant

effects on an individual's propensity to bully, the ethos

generated in a workplace by styles of management and by

work practices is frequently much more important. Part

of that ethos, too, can be a climate of opinion that

encourages witnesses of bullying to act so as to discourage

it when it happens.



7. Be optimistic: understand that bullying can be

reduced. When the notion of reducing bullying in schools

was first suggested, a common response was that it

couldn't be done. Bullying was part of human nature.

Then in the 1980s Olweus (1989) demonstrated that the

extent of bullying could be halved in Norwegian schools

and people began to sit up and take notice. Subsequently,

the possibility of substantial reductions in bullying has

been demonstrated in many schools in Australia as well as

overseas. There are indeed grounds for optimism. If it

can be done in schools, why not in the workplace?









58

Chapter Six



Bully Busters

A School Program In Action

by Lois Anderson and Kaye Grieve



Bullying can be distinguished from normal rough and

tumble by two features; by how the victim feels and by an

identified imbalance of power. Three main groups are

usually involved: the victims, the perpetrators and the

colluders. Colluders are usually friends or supporters of

the bully. These students may or may not give verbal

support, but they will add to the imbalance of power.



In 1993, Maroochydore High School launched their Bully-

Buster program. Since that time we discovered there is no

quick fix in dealing with bullying. We have also learnt a

lot about effectively managing change through

consciously and systematically addressing the issue of

bullying.



Our focus has been to build teams and partnerships. We

identified the importance of transforming school culture

by articulating shared values and by building an identity

of fairness, tolerance, self-responsibility, co-operation and

support through the words, actions and relationships of

staff, students and the wider community. Our continuing

goal is to become an action learning organisation.

Published and distributed in 1993, the Queensland

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





Department of Education policy Managing Behaviour in a

Supportive School Environment required schools to use the

document to develop a school specific behaviour

management plan. The policy clearly identified bullying

as a significant issue for schools. The foreword insisted

„All members of the school community must work

together to determine acceptable standards of behaviour

and to tackle problems such as bullying, truancy and

violence‟. The preferred future for schools is captured by

the definition outlined in the policy of the supportive

school environment as one where:

• All members of the school community feel safe and are

valued;

• Social and academic learning outcomes are maximised

for all through quality practices in the areas of

curriculum, interpersonal relationships and school

organisation

• School practices involve a planned continuum from

positive to preventive actions for all students to

responsive actions for specific individuals and groups;

• Non-violent, non-coercive and non-discriminatory

language and practices are defined, modelled and

reinforced by all members of the school community;

• Suspension and exclusion procedures are considered

only when all other approaches have been exhausted

or rejected



The philosophy of a supportive school environment is

embedded with the school culture and is reflected in a

code of behaviour based on a set of principles that are

understood, accepted and practiced by all members of the

school community. The policy promotes an action





60

Bully Busters - A School Program in Action





learning approach by the school community who are

expected to:

“use the schools collaborative planning and review

processes and structures to analyse and respond to

specific problems such as truancy, harassment, bullying,

vandalism, violence and suspected abuse and neglect

through curriculum, interpersonal relationships and

school organisation”.



As part of the development of a School Behaviour

Management Plan, we mapped current practices and were

thus able to identify areas of need and make future plans.

Bullying and violence were also identified by the school

community as an increasing concern. Educational research

and established best practices from ours and other schools

were investigated.



Once thematic concern had been identified, it was a matter

of following through with the action learning process.

The next step was to develop a plan that could be

implemented with the observations made, and with time

allowed for reflection. The plan has continuously been

revised and re-implemented.



As bullying and violence are such deep rooted problems

in our communities, it is important that we continue to

follow the action research spiral to maximise the

effectiveness of our intervention. As well as reducing

bullying, anti bullying campaigns can also reduce other

undesirable behaviour such as truancy and school refusal.

The Plan







61

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





The major focus of the plan was to educate our school

community members to the advantages of a pro-tolerant

environment and thus encourage a change in the school

ethos to one of non-violence. Olweus noted from the

Bergen Study „that the attitude of the teachers towards

bully/victim problems and their behaviour in bullying

situations are of major significance for the extent of

bully/victim problems in the school or the class‟.



Research also told us that to deal with bullying effectively

and thus become a low bullying school we needed to

develop a systems approach where firstly, our teachers

and administrators have strongly expressed views

regarding the unacceptability of bullying.



Secondly, we had to have a clearly stated and well

advertised plan including consequences; and lastly, we

needed programs to enhance student problem-solving

skills.



The initial anti-bullying plan incorporated the

implementation of action in three identified areas:



• raising the awareness of school community members

to the unacceptability of bullying and violence

• developing a consistent approach to intervention

• utilising existing structures, and creating new ones, to

extend a pro-tolerant and non-violent environment in

the school.

Implementation



The first area of action - awareness raising - was





62

Bully Busters - A School Program in Action





implemented with four targets:

• utilising current forms of communication to

community members,

• forming an anti-bullying committee,

• training (Sexual) Harassment Referral Officers

(SHROs)

• identifying appropriate areas of curriculum for skills

development.



Parent newsletters, form meetings, student notices, staff

notices, staff meetings, faculty meetings, various

committees and the local media were used to raise

awareness of the serious nature of bullying and violence.

This was supported with information from research article

extracts, highlighting school community beliefs, outlining

intervention strategies and the thinking behind them and

identifying who to contact to report an incident.



Secondly, an anti-bullying committee (made up of

concerned representatives from the school community)

organised a poster competition with the slogan Bully Free

Zone with prizes donated by local surf shops. This was

endorsed by the Art department who allowed students to

include the poster as a piece of assessment in Year 9, 11

and 12. An interview with pictures of the winner and

their entry were featured in the local paper. Around the

same time, SHROs were being trained by the Department

of Education with the brief of raising awareness in the

schools, data collection and helping victims identify their

chosen intervention for reported cases.



These staff members took part in awareness raising by





63

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





producing and displaying harassment posters on school

notice boards and the backs of toilet doors. Lastly, the

Human Relationships Education Committee as part of the

process of writing school programs included a

developmental program (from Year 8-12) to build skills in

the areas of communication and conflict resolution.



The second area of action included the implementation of

consistent approaches to intervention. Olweus (1993)

found that intervention in a determined and consistent

way marks the unacceptability of bullying in the

community. Action included actively encouraging the

reporting of incidents of bullying by parents, staff, victims

and their friends.



Reporting needs to be seen by students, teachers and

parents as a legitimate way of telling people who need to

know about this behaviour so that something can be done

to stop it (Rogers, 1995). All reports were taken seriously

with each being documented, investigated, followed up

and monitored. Research indicates that schools with less

supportive attitudes towards victims have a higher

incidence of bullying. In addition, refraining from

intervening implies a silent condoning of bullying

(Olweus, 1993). Taking reports seriously and acting on

them are features of low-bullying schools.



Our data suggests the most common perpetrator is an

average student who has a conflict with the victim over a

particular incident, which may be exacerbated by the

perpetrator‟s peer group. The majority of these cases are

solved by the Care and Concern Coordinators using the





64

Bully Busters - A School Program in Action





„no blame‟ approach to conflict resolution with no further

retaliation by the bully.



We encourage the reporting of bullying so that action can

be taken to resolve conflict without fear of retaliation.

However, „many victims are reluctant to speak up about

their situation for fear that it will make it even worse‟

(Byrne, 1993). This concern is addressed by using the „no

blame‟ approach to conflict resolution, which takes place

in three separate interviews. The first is an interview with

the victim/s and involves fact finding, building their

awareness, reassurance, the restitution needed and

preparation for the final interview.



The second interview involves the perpetrator/s with a

reassurance that they are not in trouble but we have a

situation that needs to be sorted out, encouraging them to

admit involvement, building their awareness, exploring

restitution and the consequences for further abuse then

preparation for the final interview.



Lastly, the final interview, involving both victim/s and

perpetrator/s starts with a reassurance that the

perpetrator is not in trouble. It then follows with an

outline of abuse, restitution (for example, apology or

reassurance that abuse will not continue), consequences

for further abuse, and setting a date for follow up.



The third area of action involves utilising existing

structures, and creating new ones, to support the pro-

tolerant, non-violent environments within the school.

Action here required the adapting of current staff roles





65

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





[i.e. Care and Concern Coordinators, Deputy Principals,

SHROs, Guidance Officers (GOs), Principal and HRE

teachers] to accommodate the development,

implementation and follow up of new plans. Rights and

responsibilities for all community members were

established and published. To uphold these rights and

responsibilities, non-violent approaches to behaviour

management in the school were developed and published

with clear, logical, inevitable, known, and consistent

consequences. The anti-bullying committee was formed

with school community representatives. Relevant staff

were also trained in „no blame‟ approach to conflict

resolution.



We also recognise the need to have structures and systems

in place to promote students‟ wellbeing and to involve

those with interest, expertise and accountability in student

welfare and behaviour. These included Deputy

Principals, Year Coordinators, student leaders, student

mediators, Parent and Citizen Association, Harassment

Referral Officers and most particularly Care and Concern

Coordinators.



All three Deputy Principals are responsible for overseeing

the behaviour management for particular year levels

working closely with the Care and Concern Coordinators

(1.5 full time equivalent teachers dedicated to whole

school behaviour management). These coordinators

centralise data using access data base in relation to student

misconduct within and outside the classroom and have

regular contact with parents via letter and phone calls

(approximately 30 a week). They have strong





66

Bully Busters - A School Program in Action





interpersonal and conflict management skills. Their

information management is supported by 11 hours of

teacher aide time weekly particularly for data entry.

Playground misbehaviour, including bullying, is usually

referred first to them. They investigate all cases reported

and take appropriate action including feedback to all

involved. They also have regular contact with parents.



In students‟ homework diaries we publish the rights and

responsibilities of school community members as well as

consequences of inappropriate behaviour. These were

developed to uphold the rights of all and help all

members of the school community accept their

responsibilities. While consequences such as parent

contact are inevitable, some other consequences vary. For

fighting, suspension is automatic but the length of

suspension varies from 1 to 3 days as a matter of

judgement.



Not all the consequences listed are at the discretion of the

school. For example, consequences for sexual harassment

are specified in the legislative framework. Also, decisions

by parents or teachers will determine whether there is

possible legal action in a case of physical or verbal abuse.

However, the consequences are tabled for the information

of all community members. Also published are the rights

and responsibilities of all.



To support the ethos of collaboration, pro-tolerance and

non-violence, reciprocal rights and responsibilities for

students, parents and staff were collaboratively

formulated. For example, all have the right to be treated





67

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





with respect and dignity, to be free from intimidation, put

downs and bullying, to be free from threats and verbal

and physical abuse, and to expect property to be safe. All

have the responsibility to cooperate with members of the

school community and treat them with respect and care,

to accept consequences for their decisions and actions,

support systems and procedures to address issues

affecting people‟s rights and responsibilities and to

contribute to the positive image within and outside the

school.



Observation and Reflection



Data for reflection was collected via two main avenues:

the school data base and a bullying survey of all Year 8, 9

and 10 students.



Data has been managed through referral books issued to

staff. Details of incidents, action taken and strategies

applied are recorded with one copy retained by the

teacher and the other sent to the Care and Concern Office

for centralised filing. We are now in our second year of

entering all of this data onto Microsoft Access Database.



The Year 8 Coordinator, Administration and Care and

Concern Officers are all connected to the network with

hard copies still filed at the Care and Concern Office. The

advantages of a centralised database are that we can have

immediate print-outs of all data on a student's behaviour

and generate lists for specific problem areas, for example,

smoking, fighting, truancy, and bullying. Patterns of

inappropriate behaviour can be identified by year level





68

Bully Busters - A School Program in Action





and particular students who persistently bully can be

quickly identified.



“Not working” in 1994?



Our bully-busters program with its „no blame‟ approach

to bullying in 1993 met with considerable success. The

commitment remained but a random sample of Year 9s

volunteered in mid 1994 that bully busters was not

working. And yet bullying continued to be dealt with

effectively when it came to staff attention. After we

excluded a Year 9 girl from the school for assault of

another student, a Year 9 class spoke to their English

teacher about their concerns in relation to the playground

and the need to confidentially report concerns without

fear of retaliation. Research also confirms bullying is a

covert problem (Griffiths 1993), and to obtain good results

we need a good knowledge of the problem (Olweus,

1993).



A bullying survey was one of the strategies considered

and after further reflection it was put to a staff meeting.

The proposal was enthusiastically received, though

concern was raised about the need to ensure it was

administered consistently and effectively with all targeted

classes. Very practical concerns were raised, including the

need to have standard procedures and protocols to

administer the survey, with a standard introduction, two

people in each classroom to ensure it was managed well

and administered consistently and the need to administer

the survey over a short time (two periods) to limit the

opportunity for collusion. A number of staff volunteered





69

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





to assist. The Deputy Principals and Care and Concern

Officers played the major role in ensuring these issues

were addressed in implementation.



The survey was developed with major input from the

Guidance Officer, a person who had considerable

expertise in the area. Students were expected to circle

responses, often with a range of choices including „don‟t

know‟. The questionnaire began with a focus on students`

own experiences, asking first if they bullied, then

inquiring whether they had been bullied, and whether

they had seen bullying. The survey gave all students the

opportunity to disapprove of bullying which most of them

did. The responses required very little writing, though

students were invited to provide the names of bullies.



Although the survey was anonymous, the responses of

some known bullies were identified during the collection

of surveys. It is interesting to note that some of these did

not admit at all to bullying. Optional responses from

students covered the extremes of, you‟ll never stop it

(from a known bully), to good luck - I hope it works. Did

you tell? was also on some students' lips after the survey.



For two years all the students in Years 8, 9, and 10 have

been surveyed about bullying/harassment in the school

(i.e., where it occurs, and who does it). This data is then

collated and used by the school to take action. Alleged

perpetrators are rank ordered and then interviewed using

the „no blame‟ approach. Serious consequences are

outlined for further bullying, and interview notes are held

in the student's file. The names of alleged and known





70

Bully Busters - A School Program in Action





bullies are recorded in a bullying register. The records

form the basis of a „no blame‟ letter to the parents of

alleged bullies. The letter provides information to parents

about the bullying survey and the „no blame‟ interview,

and is mailed home just after the interviews. As the

following excerpts show, the letter also aims to enlist

parents‟ support in dealing with bullying:



“As you may recall from the school newsletters, bullying

can reduce the quality of learning and life prospects of

victims, bullies themselves as well as those around them...

We hope you can help us to get (student‟s name) to see

that bullying is an unacceptable behaviour and that every

student at Maroochydore High deserves the right to feel

safe at school just as (student‟s name) does. We believe

that time spent in helping people to make better choices is

an investment for quality schooling now and quality lives

in the future.”



The survey also provides information to altering

Playground Duty rosters thus ensuring better teacher

coverage in areas where bullying occurs.



We have found the survey had an immediate impact.

Spending a period of class time in having students fill out

the survey confirms to all students that we treat bullying

seriously. Some students feel emboldened to report the

bullying that is currently affecting them to Care and

Concern Officers in the hope of immediate resolution. For

the first two years there was an immediate short term rise

in the number of bullying incidents reported by victims.

In the third year, only one student reported bullying to





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





Care and Concern Officers directly after the survey.



This survey is also part of the communication program

that raises students' awareness about the unacceptability

of bullying and the many forms it takes. We used this

information at assemblies to further assert the

unacceptability of bullying to the whole school

community. An indication of students' increased faith in

the method of intervention has seen an increase in the

number of bullying incidents reported every year since

1993. Significantly, survey responses indicate that

students see the school as increasingly safer.



One unanticipated outcome in the first year of the survey

was reported to us by the parent of a bright year eight girl

who had been the victim of bullying by a group of other

girls for most of the year. The bullying had begun by

name calling and then moved to shunning and bag hiding.

It had just escalated to hitting at the time of the survey.

The family had decided that the girl should continue to

ignore it in the hope that the perpetrators would tire of it.

Almost immediately after the survey, the offenders

apologised to the girl and at the end of the year gave her

Christmas cards. Why these girls changed their behaviour

is open to debate. Perhaps they realised the

unacceptability of bullying and felt remorse. Cynics might

say that they felt that a thousand pairs of eyes were

watching their behaviour and decided to placate their

victim in the fear that she had reported them. Our 1996

survey shows that from Year 8 to Year 9, there is a

significant increase in the number of girls who report they

are never the subject of teasing and name calling at school.





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Bully Busters - A School Program in Action







Revise Plan



After reflection a number of changes were suggested for

the plan. These included the introduction of further

programs skilling students in conflict resolution. Staff and

then several rounds of students have been trained in

conflict resolution skills for handling lower level

harassment and conflict in a „train the trainer‟ program.

The focus is on students developing skills and providing

opportunities to solve problems themselves, with adults

offering a support structure. This approach is based on

the New Zealand „Cool Schools‟ program model that was

adapted to local circumstances.



Playground Duty rosters were also revised to include

more teachers and make areas smaller when identified in

the survey as high bullying areas. Community

Accountability Conferences were also trialled.

Conferencing is used when there is no doubt about the

victim or the perpetrator, as in cases of admitted

responsibility. The conference is made up of victim/s,

perpetrator/s, their families and/or supporters. The

process uses reintegrative healing to emphasise the

unacceptability of the deed (not the doer), how the deed

has affected the victim/s‟ and perpetrator/s‟ families

and/or supporters, and gives an opportunity for problem

solving by members including arrangements for

restitution with the community responsible for

monitoring the outcomes. This process represents a

fundamental shift in philosophy from punishment to

restitution.





73

Chapter Seven



Bullying - A Legal Response

by Peter Gorman



In general terms, law is split into two main divisions:

criminal law and civil law. In the criminal context, severe

physical bullying may be controlled by a sanction such as

a fine or imprisonment. When the bully physically applies

force to the complainant without permission we are in the

area of assault, where there is the opportunity for criminal

or civil redress or both.



But insulting words and behaviour are a form of bullying

too, the aim being to coerce the victim into some action or

more often, lack of action. In these kinds of bullying, we

see the criminal offences of intimidation and blackmail.



In a supposedly enlightened society, it is said that we have

gradually been moving towards demonstrating integrity

towards each other. Hence the United Nations have

promulgated a declaration of Human Rights, a code of

conduct proscribing all discriminatory practices, including

those relating to race, sex, religion, politics, physical and

mental disabilities and age.



Recent Australian statutes have pursued the same

objectives. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992, the

Disability Services Act 1992, the Intellectually Disabled

Bullying - A Legal Response





Citizens Act 1985 and the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 all

reflect an officially recognised trend towards fair

treatment of citizens in Australia. Each of these acts of the

State and Federal Parliaments entitle people who have

been discriminated against, harassed or bullied to have

their complaints investigated and to receive monetary

awards. In some cases, criminal sanctions may also apply.



Bullying In The Home



Zoe Rathus in her recent work „Rougher than Usual

Handling‟ (1993) provides examples of many different

kinds of family difficulties and she speculates how they

may be dealt with and addressed in the future. One of the

major family difficulties is the insidious, „this is our secret‟

syndrome which is a common thread in physical assaults

or sexual assaults or psychological harm. The proper

authorities are now looking at how to handle family

problems related to power and control issues. One of the

major difficulties is that to go in and break up a family

will often actually add to the trauma involved. The Dutch

have an enlightened view on this. They use live-in social

worker helpers who become members of the household in

an endeavour to reduce the bullying.



The legal armoury available to assist injured parties in

these types of cases, includes a Domestic Violence Order

made in the Magistrates Court, placing limits on the

extent of physical association between the parties. If the

conditions imposed by the Court are breached, then more

serious sanctions, even imprisonment, can result. In my

experience there is little overall monitoring or supervision





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





of these orders.



Take for example a murder trial in which I was involved

in 1994. The woman charged with murder actually had

three simultaneous but different domestic violence orders

out against the male whom she killed. At the time of the

killing she was nevertheless co-habitating with him. One

of the orders had been enforced for almost 12 months, yet

there had been no inquiry as to why a second order and a

third order were necessary. Even allowing for the limited

budgets of the Department of Family Services and the

Queensland Police Service, there should have been some

supervision and monitoring of the situation. Perhaps then

the underlying issues causing the domestic violence could

have been addressed and perhaps even resolved. Instead

the result was a human being's death.



Civil Law, Tort And Contract



Each of us, in our everyday lives, enters into contracts

quite simply and often unknowingly. In organisations

such as schools, particularly the private schools, contracts

to look after children, are quite explicit and are usually

reduced to writing. The contract will first consist of an

offer, to educate and look after the child. Secondly, this

offer is accepted by the parents, and there is then „legal

consideration‟, usually involving the payment of a sum of

money. Such a contract will usually require the school to

educate the child in the most efficient and proficient

manner, always with the best interests of the child at

heart. Whilst the child is in the school's care, there is an

ongoing obligation to look after the welfare of the child.





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Bullying - A Legal Response







The school also has a responsibility to safeguard the

children in its care from harmful misconduct by other

students, or by intruders. Anyone in charge of children,

whether as a parent, or a teacher who stands in the shoes

of the parent, owes a duty to take reasonable precautions

to protect their charges from foreseeable dangers. There is

a vicarious liability on the school employer and its

controllers, be they the Department of Education or the

Trustees of a private school, that the teachers and

teachers‟ aides will also act prudently and conscientiously,

to carry out the duty of care imposed upon the school.

Where bullying occurs in the schoolyard, before and after

school or during breaks between lessons, it is necessary

that there be adequate supervision. If the school and its

staff breach their duty to protect children from bullying,

and injury occurs, then the school, its teachers and the

employing authority can be sued for damages.



Supervision in the schools is probably the most familiar

illustration of a legal duty to control another person which

arises from the relationship of parent and child. The

common law insists that parents at least exercise

reasonable care, commensurate with their own particular

ability to keep their offspring under discipline and

supervise their activities for the sake of public safety. In

the High Court case of Smith v. Leurs (1945) 70 C.L.R. 256

at 260, Stark J said „young boys, despite their mischievous

tendencies, cannot be classed as wild animals‟. In other

words, they have to be kept under control. The standard

expected by law is that of „reasonable care‟. „Having

regard to the practices and usage prevailing in the





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





community and the common understanding of what is

practicable‟, which is how it was put at 262 of the same

judgment.



Akin to the responsibility of the parents, is the general

responsibility of schools to maintain reasonable

supervision and discipline in the interests both of the

child's own safety and also of the public who are likely to

be endangered by them. In Richards v The State of

Victoria (1969) V.R. 136 there was a classroom brawl and

spastic paralysis as a result of a fight between schoolboys

in a classroom during a lesson in the presence of a teacher.



At the hearing of the case, it was revealed that the teacher

involved had failed to maintain discipline in his class for

some months preceding the fight. The behaviour which

erupted into the fight had taken place in an ongoing

atmosphere of a general lack of supervision by the teacher

during classes. The Court held then, that the test to be

applied on supervision was to be that of a reasonable

careful parent. That test has now been abandoned, and

teachers are judged on a professional standard rather than

a reasonable man standard. Teachers are now required to

act always to prevent foreseeable risks by taking

reasonable precautions to avoid danger. Protocols are

now being developed in schools to avoid situations like

that of the Richards case, and to monitor carefully, the

actions of students, the relationships between the students

and the level of supervision required of the teachers.

Discipline



The Criminal Code of Queensland Section 280 refers to





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Bullying - A Legal Response





domestic discipline, where, „it is lawful for a parent or a

person in the place of a parent, or for a school master or

master, to use, by way of correction, towards the child,

pupil or apprentice, under his care such force as is

reasonable under the circumstances‟. There are strict

limits on the right of a parent to inflict punishment:

1. The punishment must be moderate and reasonable;

2. It must have a proper relation to the age, physique

and mentality of the child;

3. It must be carried out with reasonable means or

instrument.



Therefore a parent of an infant child of 19 months of age,

or a person authorised by the parent, is not lawfully

entitled to administer any physical punishment to her,

except of the very slightest description (see R v. Terry

(1955) V.L.R. 114). Should the discipline go beyond what

is reasonable, criminal sanctions will apply against the

person for inflicting the injury. Although this section of

the Criminal Code would appear at first sight to give

teachers the right to use corporal punishment, the

Education Act and Regulations explicitly prohibit the use

of any kind of corporal punishment in a State school, not

however in private or church schools.



A similar duty to control applies to anyone who takes

charge of an adult with known dangerous propensities. A

mental hospital will be liable should it allow a patient

with a history of sexual crimes to escape and commit an

indecent assault for example. Similarly, prison authorities

must exercise care to protect not only inmates from

dangerous fellow prisoners, but also outsiders whose





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





property or persons are likely to be endangered by

escaping prisoners, even those held under minimum

security. Even if the establishment of a corrective system

is solely a government decision, this does not dispense

with the requirements that due care must be exercised in

the interests of public safety.



In the prisons, there are some „protected‟ prisoners who

are segregated from the other prisoners. This is done due

to the nature of the crimes for which they are incarcerated.

Sexual offenders are one example of such protected

groups. The government has an obligation to protect such

prisoners from the inevitable bullying and worse, which

would be directed at them by their fellow inmates, if they

were in normal conditions of custody.



Bullying By Landlords



It is a well known tenet of law, that tenants have an

implied covenant for quiet enjoyment of the premises

which they rent during duration of their leases. Threats,

which breach this covenant of quiet enjoyment or

possession, and abusive letters to tenants, and shouting at

them and banging on their doors, in an attempt to force

them out of their tenancy, or to remove their belongings

unlawfully, are a very common form of bullying in the

rental market of this city.



A mere written request asking people to cut short the

tenancy, would not be sufficient to bring a civil sanction.

However, when there is persistent harassment which

tends to vex or annoy, the tenant can bring the matter





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Bullying - A Legal Response





before the Courts seeking either an injunction to restrain

the landlord from further interference and/or an award of

damages, depending upon the severity of the interference

with quiet enjoyment. In fact it is rare that such

harassment will be caused by real estate agents, who have

their own codes of conduct. It is more often perpetrated

by the owners of the properties themselves, in order that

they have vacant premises, the reason is usually a

commercial one. The Tenants Organisation in Queensland

is keen to hear of and to assist and give advice in these

types of matters, including taking such matters to Court.



Bullying By Police Officers



In this enlightened age, the professionalism of the Police

Service is constantly being upgraded and internally

monitored by such departments of the Police Service as

the „Professional Standards Unit‟. One hears from time to

time of persons allegedly being harassed or bullied by

police officers. However, one needs to look at the facts of

each case, to determine whether or not it is really bullying

or harassment.



While a person who is given a ticket for exceeding the

speed limit may inevitably feel upset, a proper look at the

facts may reveal they have breached one of the rules of

conduct designed to cut down the road toll. In such cases

rationalisation and denial often act as psychological

defence mechanisms shifting the blame onto the Police in

order to maintain a feeling of self worth. What is labelled

as bullying or harassment is often just a Police Officer

reasonably doing his or her job.





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







There are some graphically reported decisions on Police

harassment which illustrate the extreme rather than the

norm of bullying by Police officers. In McCrae v. Holt

(1991) 777 F.Supp. 945, Police officers in California abused

the deaf passenger physically and sexually, threw her

property around, and kept other occupants in a Police car

with a heater turned on during the afternoon of an

extremely hot day. This resulted in an award of damages

to the complainants.



A similar case occurred in Queensland. In Henry v.

Thompson (1989) 2 Qd. R. 412, the three Defendants all

police officers, assaulted the Plaintiff, a person of

aboriginal extraction. During the assaults, one of the

Defendants jumped up and down on the head and

shoulders of the Plaintiff and another urinated on him.

Damages were assessed at $5000 for the injuries inflicted,

$10,000 for aggravated damages for injury to the Plaintiff's

feelings and a further $10,000 exemplary damages. The

award of exemplary damages was intended to punish the

Defendants for conduct showing a conscious disregard for

the Plaintiff's rights and to deter them from committing

like conduct again (see also Johnston v. Stewart (1968)

S.A.S.R. 142).



Lesser incidents involving members of the public usually

are dealt with internally by the Police Service through

their Professional Standards Unit and by the Criminal

Justice Commission's Discipline Tribunals.



Bullying In The Workplace





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Bullying - A Legal Response







Bullying in the workplace is usually more subtle than the

overt bullying of the schoolyard, often through 'toxic

management'. Many psychologists and psychiatrists

identify a quest for power and control as the motivation

for individuals to become workplace bullies. Workplace

bullying may take the form of discriminating against an

employee because of his physical appearance, religious or

ethnic background, marital status or predilection. Such

type of bullying is easy to see. But when management

gets out of control and becomes 'toxic', the resultant

bullying is extremely difficult to isolate and its causes are

very difficult to comprehend.



In the code of conduct used by the Australian Institute of

Management, managers have personal responsibilities

and should demonstrate:-

1. Integrity and humanity, and observe the principles

of the United Nations declaration of human rights,

avoiding all discriminatory practices including those

relating to race, sex, religion and politics;

2. Have regard for the interests of society in acting

loyally and honestly in carrying out the policies of

the organisation;

3. Not injure or attempt to injure maliciously or

recklessly, directly or indirectly the professional

reputation of others;

4. Look to the creation of a humane, safe, healthy and

satisfying work environment;

5. The fair and equal treatment of employees;

6. The development of effective communications,

understanding and co-operation between all





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





employees at all levels.



The foregoing are extracts from the code of conduct of the

Australian Institute of Management's Queensland

Division. In that code, there are other tenets such as:-

1. Preserving, and where possible, improving the

quality of life within the organisation's sphere of

influence;

2. The exclusion of corrupt practices;

3. Respecting cultural and moral standards and the

dignity of the individual.



Whilst the Australian Institute of Management is aiming

to bring enlightenment in the workplace, their efforts are

not being mirrored in some private industry and public

departments. One of the most outstanding reported legal

decisions on bullying in the workplace is the case of

Latham v. Singleton (1981) 2 N.S.W.L.R. 843 a decision of

Nagle CJ.



In this particular case, the Plaintiff had been employed by

the Broken Hill City Council as a motor mechanic. He

worked a day shift and an afternoon shift on alternate

weeks at a city council depot in Broken Hill. That depot

consisted of a number of workshops, and housed various

city council vehicles which were used to carry out the

garbage and sanitary services of the city. On the day shift

there were usually some 70 to 80 employees of the council

working to or from this depot, and on the afternoon shift

the Plaintiff, who was a leading hand, had certain

supervisory duties to perform whilst working as a team,

with two labourers. The afternoon shift was in fact what





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Bullying - A Legal Response





was called „a servicing shift‟ for vehicles owned by the

council.



The Plaintiff was asked to join the local union but refused.

As a consequence of this, the other employees refused to

take orders from him and there was initially a

demarcation dispute. Later the matter escalated into a full

blown industrial dispute during which the Plaintiff was

sent to Coventry, he and his family were vilified in the

street, and he was called names at work. The last straw

was when the Plaintiff arrived at work to commence his

day shift; most of his fellow employees, who were on the

day shift with him, did not commence work, but walked

away from the depot.



The management of the City Council became involved at

this stage and matters became so strained that the Plaintiff

who had been working on city vehicles was stood down

on full pay, in an attempt to get him out of the way.



In due course, the matter was taken to Court where Mr

Latham, the Plaintiff, sued for damages for the torts of

intimidation and conspiracy to intimidate. He also asked

for aggravated damages. There were a large number of

Defendants and the case took many weeks before the

Chief Justice. Finally Mr Latham, who was by now totally

ostracised in the city, was awarded damages of $110,000.



This was an extreme case but it shows how management

can allow matters to get out of hand; although here the

union was also involved seeking to exercise its powers

over the Plaintiff.





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







Grievance Procedures



In the Queensland Public Service, when bullying or

harassment occurs, there are grievance procedures

provided by the „Public Service Management Act 1988‟.

Such grievance procedures are designed not only to

address the way people are mistreated in the workplace,

but also to air grievances over promotions. In my

experience, the grievance complaints with regard to

bullying at work are usually discouraged by senior

management. Grievance procedures thereby tend to

become circuitous and time consuming, and the issues

remain alive, whereas proper management procedures

would have been able to resolve them quickly, and not

leave the complainant in a state of psychological arousal

while the matter grinds endlessly on.



Many of the bullying tactics employed against employees

in the workplace are subtle and hard to document.

However some are not so subtle and these are well

covered in the book „Violence - A Risk Management

Handbook for Dealing with Violence at Work‟ by Carol

Grainger with Sheryl-Lee Kerr (1994). Grainger outlines

procedures which can be used by employers to safeguard

employees in areas of risk. Although many employers

will deliberately ignore employees' complaints, the more

enlightened employers are now starting to take notice of

the recommendations of the authors. The implementation

of some of their suggestions make life easier, so that

people may have, as it were, the right of a „quiet

enjoyment of one's work‟, just as everyone has the right of





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Bullying - A Legal Response





the quiet enjoyment of one's home. Grainger and Kerr's

ideas of elimination, substitution, engineering controls,

administrative controls and even personal protective

equipment start to address some of the difficulties which

are encountered.



In the English Court of Appeal decision in Bliss v. South

East Thames Regional Health Authority (1987) I.C.R. 700,

Lord Dillon at page 714 encapsulated the above

proposition of quiet enjoyment of one's work in a way

which was considered by many to be novel. He said „it

was an implied term of the Plaintiff's contract, that the

authority would not without reasonable cause conduct

itself in a manner likely to destroy or damage the

relationship of confidence and trust between the parties as

employer and employee.‟



Despite well meaning efforts of the Australian Institute of

Management, the Public Service Management

Committees, and other forces in the community to avoid

and to cut down bullying and harassment at work, it still

exists widely. Toxic management pollutes the workplace

and ruins lives. Many employees are being stressed out at

work. The workplace bullying they undergo causes them

to suffer from psychological and psychiatric conditions.

They are forced to retire early from their chosen careers,

and to suffer indignities and financial hardships. As they

suffer, so too do their families.

The Tort Of Loss Of Dignity.



During my research into an earlier paper, I came across a

tort which was hitherto unknown to me. This was the tort





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





of Loss of Dignity. I found reference to it in an early

English decision, Wright v. Court (1825) 4B and C 596.

That case involved a person who had been summoned to

appear at Court for a breach of the Electoral Act. On his

non appearance, it was ordered that he be brought before

the Court immediately. The Bailiff went and found Mr

Wright, and brought him in handcuffs through a crowded

marketplace to the Courtroom.



He was well known in the town and was awarded

damages of ten pounds for the loss of his dignity. One can

envisage situations where employees are shouted at and

vilified by managers, and foremen, leading hands and the

like in public, thus losing their dignity. These instances

would obviously fall within the category of this tort of

Loss of Dignity.



The High Court of Australia, in a comparatively recent

decision, involving injuries to a passenger on a cruise liner

which sank during a holiday cruise, held that damages for

disappointment and distress are not recoverable unless

they proceed from physical inconvenience caused by the

breach, or unless the contract is one the object of which is

to provide enjoyment, relaxation or freedom from

molestation.



The case in question in the High Court was the Baltic

Shipping Company and Dillon 1993 176 C.L.R. 344.

McHugh J held, that damages for distress or

disappointment are recoverable in an action for breach of

contract if it arises from breach of an expressed or implied

term that the promisor will provide the promisee with





88

Bullying - A Legal Response





pleasure or enjoyment or personal protection, or if it is

consequent upon the suffering of physical injury or

physical inconvenience. Their Honours Deane and

Dawson JJ held that the general rule that a Plaintiff is not

entitled to recover damages for a disappointment and

distress occasioned by a breach of contract does not apply

to cases where the disappointment and distress have been

caused by breach of a contract under which the Defendant

agreed to provide pleasure, entertainment or relaxation or

to prevent molestation or vexation.



By linking together what Lord Dillon said in Bliss (supra),

and Wright v. Court (supra) and what the High Court said

in Dillon and the Baltic Shipping Company, one can see

that there is an implied covenant or condition of

employment that employees will be permitted to work

quietly and free from molestation or vexation, at their

workplace.



The Public Sector Ethics Act 1994 shows that a code of

conduct will come into force in the various public service

departments of Queensland, and indeed such a code of

conduct approved by the Governor in Council came into

being in 1993. That code of conduct at 2.2 shows that

officers should treat other departmental employees with

respect and dignity, not mistreat other employees, or

distract them from carrying out their duties. This would

lead one then to look at a possible action not only for

breach of contract but for a breach of statutory duty,

should an injury occur in the public service by bullying to

an employee.







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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





Whistleblowers



Concerned citizens known as „whistleblowers‟ today span

all the occupations and professions. They come in all sorts

of shapes, sizes and ages and gender. These people are

driven by inner feelings of what is right and wrong.

When they voice their legitimate concerns, they are often

so grossly mistreated that they suffer from work related

anxiety and succumb to stress disorders. Their downfall

and the ruin of their health is often brought about by

vilification at the hands of both their peers and their

immediate superiors, and also at the hands of the very

same wrong doers whom they have reported to authority.



The Criminal Justice Amendment Act 1990, has made a

start towards providing protection for whistleblowers, but

it does not go far enough. There is no assurance of

confidentiality, although it is usually asked for by

whistleblowers. I understand that the Criminal Justice

Commission has been looking at an educational program

aimed at increasing public sector awareness with regard

to the maintenance of confidentiality. So far, little

progress has been made in this important area.



Clearly the issue involves economics. On the one hand,

there is the desire by the whistleblowers to prevent the

misuse of public funds and malpractice in the public

sector. That requires expenditure of public funds. Further

spending is necessary to protect the whistleblowers.

There is not enough money to cover all needs, and

whistleblowers have not enjoyed a high official priority, it

would seem.





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Bullying - A Legal Response







Many whistleblowers appear to be in some respects fairly

rigid thinkers with strong notions of what is right and

wrong. Those notions often permit them only to see

things in black and white. The rest of the community are

not so straight laced in their thinking, and can see things

in many shades of grey. Those differences in perception

often result in the crusading whistleblowers receiving a

level of official support which they regard as inadequate.

There is also a continuing uncertainty as to the injunctive

power of the Criminal Justice Commission, and the Court,

in enforcing the confidentiality of the whistleblowers

position.



In the English decision of Stephens v. Avery (1988) 2

A.E.R. 477, the proposition was put forward that „the basis

of equitable intervention to protect confidentiality, that it

is unconscionable for a person who has received

information on the basis that it is confidential,

subsequently to reveal that information. It is the

acceptance of the information on the basis that it be kept

secret that effects the conscience of the recipient of the

information‟.



One can see that although injunctions may be granted, this

may be of little solace to a whistleblower, who could then

be subject to harassment and bullying in the workplace.

They are often moved sideways because they are

considered to be troublemakers and not to be trusted.



In the United States, whistleblower legislation gives right

to damages where confidential information with regard to





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





who is blowing the whistle is released into the public

domain. Our legislators should also look to assisting

those who believe, as all the community should, that

stealing from the public purse is not acceptable behaviour.



Medico-Legal Examinations



Dr Jean Lennane (1996) has described many cases of

bullying occurring in medico-legal examinations. People

being examined medically because they are the victims of

bullying may be subjected to further bullying during the

examination. I give my clients the following advice - take

a tape recorder with you every time you have to see a

doctor who is not your own treating physician or

therapist, and let the tape recorder be obvious. By this

means it will quickly become apparent as to who will not

take part in an interview whilst a tape recorder is present.

From such refusal, it might reasonably be inferred that

they have something to hide.



Some medico-legal bullying may go as far as the

Intentional Infliction of Nervous Shock, that, of course is a

tort, according to Wilkinson v. Downton (1897) 2 Q.B. 57.



The facts in this case are straightforward. Mr and Mrs

Wilkinson owned the Albion Hotel in London. During the

course of one particular day, Mr Wilkinson went to the

races at Harlow. In the evening, Mr Downton, a well

known customer, entered the Wilkinsons' hotel and told

Mrs Wilkinson that her husband had on the return

journey from the races been involved in a road accident.

He was said to be lying injured at Leytonstone with both





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Bullying - A Legal Response





legs broken. Downton also told Mrs Wilkinson that her

husband required someone to come and fetch him home.



Mrs Wilkinson believed Mr Downton, and even though

her husband had told her that he intended to return home

by train, she sent her son and a servant by train to

Leytonstone on a mission to bring her husband back to the

hotel.



Mr Wilkinson arrived home safely at midnight having

returned by train, as he said he would. Downton's story

caused Mrs Wilkinson to suffer severe shock. She was

seriously ill for some time, to the point that at one time her

life and sanity were threatened, and her hair turned white.

She and her husband brought an action against Downton

in the High Court alleging that Downton's report had

been made falsely, fraudulently and maliciously with

intent to aggrieve, injure and annoy. Mrs Wilkinson

claimed damages for mental anguish and resulting illness,

and her husband claimed for medical expenses and the

loss of his wife's services.



By way of defence, Downton pleaded that he had no

intention to injure anyone and that the circumstances were

too remote to show causation of the injury caused. The

case was heard in front of a jury, who decided on behalf of

the Wilkinsons. They assessed her damages at 100 pounds

(quite a large amount of money in 1897) plus a small sum

for the wasted train fares to Leytonstone.



It appears to me from the foregoing, that people in a

healing profession who deliberately upset patients during





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





the course of an interview, and provide incorrect

information in reports to third parties will run a high

degree of risk of being sued for such Intentional Infliction

of Nervous Shock, should the necessary evidence be

available.



Bullying By Mail



In this electronic age, cases have already emerged where

there has been harassment by computer, for bills already

paid. Stores have sent out demand notices, even after

being aware of their mistake. This has resulted in the

award of damages. Such was the outcome in Moorehead

v. J C Penney Co (1977) 555 SW 2D 713, a Tennessee case.

The current tactics by certain telemarketing companies

will surely bring intervention by the Courts, on behalf of

those being bullied and harassed by frequent telephone

calls. There will inevitably be injunctions stopping this

type of behaviour. Even people who have silent telephone

numbers no longer feel confident that their telephone

numbers will not be released, and fall into the hands of

these commercial sharks.



These cases, to which I have drawn attention, are gross

and exceptional cases, certainly. But let us not forget all

those other instances involving an absence of the duty of

care. Employers owe a duty of care to employees under

the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 for example.

Too often, management causes unnecessary stress to

employees by either over working or by deliberately

causing them stress. Many cases pass by virtually

unnoticed. As a society, we need a vast change in





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Bullying - A Legal Response





attitude, so that people become more tolerant, where they

can utilise better channels of problem solving and

communication between employee and employer, where

the dollar is not Almighty God, and where consultation

and, if necessary counselling are available when situations

of stress do occur.









95

Chapter Eight



Costs Of Silence

Women Bullying Women

by Charmaine Hockley



People often make assumptions about health care

organisations. Two assumptions are widespread within

the health care system: men (medical officers and hospital

administrators) will be dominant in the organisation; and

nurses‟ work will mirror what used to be traditionally

referred to as „women‟s work‟. These assumptions reflect

the accepted, formal „rules‟ and are generally not

questioned or analysed.



Cheek, Shoebridge, Willis and Zadoroznjy (1995) suggest

that the rules people use are made up as they go along

and that individuals „make sense of the world while in the

middle of it‟. This idea of the personal and individual

nature of the meaning of social interaction was further

expounded by Bowers (1992), who claimed that social

interactions are not only shaped by the social structure, but

they also serve to create and elaborate that social structure.



People interacting are more than mere players on a stage.

Each individual is simultaneously the author and

interpreter of the action. When women interact at work,

they do not come with blank minds or heads devoid of

feelings, ideas or beliefs. Each is already living a life

Costs of Silence - Women Bullying Women





„constituted by meanings and taken for granted

assumptions which shape the way [she] think[s] or act[s]‟

(Street 1995, p.1). Each uses a variety of methods to attach

meaning to the situations in which she finds herself.



Every action and reaction, every word and silence will be

perceived slightly differently by each woman. And it is

possible that it will be perceived differently by the same

woman according to the time, place and context. It is

difficult, therefore, to define any activity unequivocally.

An act perceived as bullying in one context may be

regarded as nothing more than unpleasant criticism at

another time or place. For instance, the young nurse

changing a dressing may perceive and act towards the

criticism of a director of nursing totally differently from

the mature registered nurse working in the operating

theatre. The young nurse may even interpret and react

differently if the criticism is offered privately rather than

in the midst of a busy, crowded emergency room.



The Gender Influence In The Workplace



Women entering the paid workforce may find themselves

in organisations that value assertiveness, even aggression,

and where feelings are not readily verbalised and

collaboration uncommon. If they aspire to managerial

positions, they find that „the masculine traits of rationality,

efficiency and lack of emotionality‟ are valued when „the

qualities of effective managers‟ (Still and Jones 1984) are

discussed.



According to Still & Mortimer (1992) qualities such as





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





deference, inclusivity, collaboration and cooperation

usually given priority amongst women in the community,

are linked with subordinate roles rather than with

leadership. Women‟s intuitive and emotional behaviour

is not likely to be valued or even understood.

Furthermore, when women enter the paid workforce, they

often enter a structure and culture that operates within

male norms and standards (Still & Mortimer, 1994).



The „masculine model is considered to be the professional

model: this applies to communication, standards of

behaviour, processes and practices in organisations . . .

[and] the cultural view is that men‟s way of doing things

is the standard and the norm‟ (Still & Mortimer 1994, p.4).

They assert „...power remains firmly in the hands of the

male enclave because of the failure of managerial women

to learn to „play by the rules‟ of the male managerial

culture‟ (Still & Mortimer 1994, p.5). Furthermore,

according to Still & Mortimer „women are generally not

accepted or promoted because they do not know how to

behave (according to the male standard), do not

understand the rules (according to male standard) and

therefore are perceived as a „loose cannon‟ who is

unpredictable and difficult to control‟ (p.5).



Women As Perpetrators Of Bullying



There has not been, to date, a systematic study on women

bullying other women in the workplace. Studies into

female behaviours and bullying have, to a great extent,

been restrained by the stereotypical view of women. This

view has probably been reinforced because most of the





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Costs of Silence - Women Bullying Women





research into violence has been undertaken by males from

the perspective of explaining male behaviour. This

approach has favoured the male forms of bullying, which

has led to the myth of „non-aggressive females‟ (Bjorkqvist

and Niemela 1992, p. 13). The stereotypical view of

women reinforces this common myth.



Abundant research material supports the theory that

women either adapt to a male dominated environment,

structured for males, or remain constantly „out of place‟ in

a place where they spend many of their waking hours

(Still and Jones 1984; Still 1986; Sinclair 1994). Some

organisations, then, seem aggressively or exclusively

masculine in their nature and structure. The culture of

such organisations may inadvertently encourage and

perpetuate bullying. Bullying of co-workers will become,

if not approved behaviour, at least accepted and

unquestioned. When women behave like bullies, there is

a suggestion that it is worse than the bullying of males.

The standard attitude seems to be that you can expect

such behaviour from males, but a woman as the

perpetrator of bullying, does not fit the stereotypical

view, especially if she bullies other women.



Bullying In Nursing



Bullying in nursing has been addressed recently in a series

of articles from the UK (Adams 1992; Turnbull 1995;

McMillan 1995). The research mainly concentrates on the

physical, psychological and economic harm done to the

victims. However, it is also important to consider why

women remain largely silent about their experiences. Is





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





there a perception of women and nurses, reinforced by

myths and stereotyping, that encourages women to

quietly and patiently bear the burden of harassment, to

hide the victims and protect the perpetrators?



Image Of Nursing And Nurses



The silence of women may be associated with the image

that society maintains of women in general and of nurses

in particular, and may come from a number of

perspectives.



The image of a nurse, for some, may be formed through

the experience of being a patient, or a visitor, in a hospital.

For others, it may be formed through literature, movies or

plays. We are surrounded by images of women and

nurses; they have been created by our culture and society

and give meaning to our experiences by creating

expectations.



Two very famous portrayals of woman-as-nurse exist in

Western literature. Each represents a stereotypical nurse

at each end of a continuum. Florence Nightingale

represents all that is right and good in women and nurses.

Nurse Ratched is her antithesis.



Florence Nightingale



Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, has

been portrayed as a slender, graceful lady walking through

miles of darkened wards full of wounded soldiers, carrying a

lantern to dispel the gloom; soldiers kissing her shadow as she





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Costs of Silence - Women Bullying Women





passes by... (Kalisch and Kalisch 1983).



Women and men, offered this image of a nurse, of in fact,

the nurse to end all nurses, will meet any other nurse with

expectations and assumptions that will unavoidably shape

their interaction. Reality, of course, may be quite different

from the image of reality. Cheek (1995), reports on a

biographer‟s account of not revealing details about

Florence Nightingale in fear of offending her family. This

however, means nothing to the viewer of the image of

Florence Nightingale, of course. He or she may only be

dealing with the shadow and not the substance of the

woman-nurse, but since the shadow is usually all that the

viewer sees, it must be the truth. Furthermore, the

viewer‟s behaviour toward any woman-nurse will reflect

that personal truth.



Ultimately, the image may be so powerful that to view

nurses and nursing as anything other than kind and

caring will make the viewer uncomfortable and uncertain.

Even finding out the truth about Florence‟s real character

and behaviour will not shake the benign image of the

woman-nurse formed by years of viewing the Lady with

the Lamp‟s shadow!



Nurse Ratched



An image of a woman-nurse that portrays a reality

opposed to that of Florence Nightingale is that of Nurse

Ratched, a central character in Ken Kesey‟s novel and later

film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Few works of

literature or art have portrayed nurses as anything other





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





than angels of mercy. However, as Darbyshire (1995)

points out, for the angel myth to be entirely successful,

there must be a counterpoint, a demonic vision... For

many years Charles Dickens‟ Sairey Gamp fulfilled this

function. While the ideal nurse was synonymous with the

ideal mother, Gamp was the wicked-witch, drunk and

dishevelled, sadistic and negligent. (p.198)



And he continues: Gamp, [however], was to pale into

insignificance beside Ken Kesey’s Nurse Ratched who became

synonymous for all that is bad in nurses and nursing. She

epitomises rigidity, authoritarianism, malevolence, power,

control, uncaring aloofness, and in much the same way that

Sairey Gamp did, she manages to make ‘professional’ seem like a

term of abuse’. (p.198)



The image of Nurse Ratched is a powerful one. Women,

and men, adopting this image of a nurse, will meet nurses

with expectations and assumptions that will as

irrevocably shape their interactions as it would had they

adopted the more kindly picture of Nurse Nightingale.

Another individual „truth‟ has been created.



The Effects Of Stereotyping



Kesey emphasised an image of the woman-nurse that is

the antithesis of that created by the promoters of the

Nightingale myth. In doing so, he highlighted one of the

explanations offered for the use of violence against

women (Scutt 1994; Cheek 1995; Darbyshire 1995). As

Scutt (1994, p.88) asserts:







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The way women are stereotyped as all comforting, all

succouring nurturers, or as depraved sexual beings wholly

driven by their sexuality or ‘womanness’ was, it seemed to me,

fundamental to the infliction on women of pain, injury and

violence.



The character of Nurse Ratched is that of a woman who

„refused to adopt the submissive sexually available role

which is the only one other than whore that the inmates

are capable of conceiving of a woman‟ and therefore „the

manner in which Nurse Ratched is dealt with is so familiar

to many men who see violence against women as a

justifiable strategy to ensure their position of power and

control.‟ (Darbyshire 1995, p.199).



If the image of Nurse Ratched constitutes the viewer‟s

reality, it will colour all his or her social interaction with

nurses. This is equally true if the viewer‟s image of nurses

is that of Florence Nightingale. The Nightingale image is

the more acceptable and common stereotype. She is the

„good‟ nurse-woman who does „not make waves‟ or „rock

the boat‟. Women and nurses are expected to be more like

Nurse Nightingale than Nurse Ratched.



But what happens when social rules are broken, when

reality does not mesh with the expectation of reality

created by cultural images? An exploration of the

consequences as suggested by Garfinkel (1967) may assist

in providing some of the answers as to why women,

particularly nurses, remain silent when being bullied.



Why The Silence?





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







In a national nurse labour market study conducted in 1989

(DEET, National Nurse Labour Market Study 1991), there

were an estimated 333,000 people in Australia qualified to

become registered or enrolled nurses. Of these, 230,000

were qualified as registered nurses who had the potential

to be promoted to a senior management nursing position.

Of the 333,000 eligible for registration, approximately 80%

actually registered and 63% were working as nurses.

Many of these were working part time. Thus, „a „head

count‟ workforce participation rate of 63% reduces to a

full time equivalent (FTEs) workforce participation rate of

50%‟ (p.3). The FTE participation rate is: high for people

aged under 25, relatively low for people in their thirties,

rather higher for people in their forties and then tailed

away with age, with no set age of retirement (DEET,

National Nurse Labour Market Study 1991, p.3).



In addition to the part time nature of the work of many

nurses, the nursing workforce exhibits a gendered

division of labour. While nursing is a predominantly

female occupation with approximately 7% of registered

nurses being male, there is a tendency within nursing for

males to be promoted to more powerful decision-making

positions than females (Mortell 1994). This can, of course,

be related to the part time nature of many of the female

nurses. Part time workers rarely earn promotion.

However, there is also a gendered hierarchy within

organisations employing nurses (and other organisations)

that is constructed on patterns of power relations between

men and women and reflects the relationship evident

between the genders in society as a whole.





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Women in the workforce are submitted to patriarchal

attitudes, such as men being expected to lead and women

to follow; or the idea that women are not capable of

succeeding in senior management positions or that they

are incapable of doing serious harm to one another. When

these attitudes and fallacies are applied to women who are

bullies, a profound misunderstanding and minimisation

of the impact of bullying may occur. Women are simply

not expected to be bullies. And if they are bullies, they are

viewed as somehow tainted by „maleness‟, regarded as

rare sexual aberrations to be denied, hidden, avoided.



Nurses’ Experiences Of Bullying At Work



Studies into bullying in nursing (Adams 1992; McMillan

1995) demonstrate that female bullying occurs. Many

studies, however, when examining female bullying,

confine themselves to observing and describing what has

been done, but not why. This is unfortunate. Finding

reasons to explain why women bully other women at

work would assist in quantifying the real cost of bullying.

We could then examine the human cost to the individual

(emotional costs), as well as organisational costs (how

many sick days) and medical costs (costs of any

treatment). The cost of women bullying women cannot be

underestimated, particularly in predominantly female

occupations.



The studies into the bullying that occurs in nursing

showed that there are many factors to be taken into

consideration when attempting to ascertain the costs, most





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





of which are hidden from the public. For example, one

anonymous writer describes the physical effects that the

workplace bully had on her. She writes:

"I suffered with diarrhoea and vomiting and I would vomit

before going to work because of what and who might confront

me when I got there. I experienced chronic stomach pains

during the shift that plagued me throughout the night. My

anxiety was so great that I was unable to sleep; I had

palpitations and continual headaches." (Viewpoint 1993, p.50)



Nurses who are bullied have the potential to suffer a

range of effects including both physical and psychological

effects. The physical effects of violence, (diarrhoea and

vomiting) do not appear to receive the same attention as

the psychological effects (low self esteem) or medical

diagnoses (depression). Many researchers into violence

have discussed how it has become medicalised despite the

lack of perceived understanding by the medical

profession, particularly, general practitioners who are

usually the first line of contact for the victim (Scutt 1990;

Hoff 1990). A similar correlation could be made to being

bullied.



The physical effects of women bullying other women in

the workplace have particular importance. One reason is

the effect it has on the „victim‟. The other is the amount of

sick leave an individual may require which in the long

term has the potential for affecting future promotional

positions. A high level of sick leave may even have the

potential to have employment terminated.



McMillan‟s (1995) survey into bullying at work among





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Costs of Silence - Women Bullying Women





nurses highlighted that although various forms of

bullying occurred, very few nurses reported physical

abuse (2.5%) and approximately 25% of the participants

reported verbal abuse. Over 50% of the responses

reported threats of disciplinary action. Criticism of work

performance (73.2%) and not being promoted (61.5%)

were also reported (McMillan 1995, p.41).



The course of action taken by the respondents in this UK

survey of nurses ranged from talking to different levels of

managers, to union or professional organisations or to

colleagues and friends. The least used form of action was

speaking to counsellors (4%), but 87.5% of those who did

found this the most useful action. The least useful form of

action was keeping the situation to yourself, although

more than 11% of the respondents had used this form of

action. This indicates that keeping silent about bullying

only benefits the perpetrator and possibly the

organisation, but does nothing for the victim, the

individual who has been bullied.



The Cost Of Silence



The results of McMillan‟s (1995) study indicates that there

are huge emotional and financial costs in situations that

are perceived as bullying. Even if some of the situations

reported were, by some sort of objective definition, not

bullying, if the individuals involved in the situation

perceived them to be such, then that is the reality of the

situation and it has to be investigated and acted upon, not

shrouded in silence. The costs of unreported,

uninvestigated and unresolved bullying can be high,





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





particularly if the effects on the organisation and the

victim‟s families were included. Much of the time

bullying cannot be measured in financial terms.



For instance, almost one in three nurses reported

experiencing bullying for more than two years. One of the

respondents described a six year campaign of bullying

that „culminated in an overdose‟ (McMillan 1995, p.42).

Another nurse described her experiences; „The final straw

came when I started considering suicide. Fortunately I

resisted these feelings. I decided that if this is how nurses

behave, then I do not want to be part of their culture‟

(McMillan 1995, p.43). As has already been implied, there

are difficulties in defining bullying that makes costing the

effects difficult. For instance, one person may react

minimally and continue working effectively (McMillan

1995), whereas others may pay a high price by committing

suicide (Hastie 1996).



Hastie‟s account of a colleague committing suicide

illustrates in a most profound way the high cost, not only

to the individual but also to friends and family. Hastie

writes:



About 5 pm on Monday evening 17 July 1995, after working an

early shift, a twenty five year old midwife ended her life. Her

suicide note clearly stated her disillusionment, her frustration

and her profound sense of hopelessness. Her words implicated

the way our profession treats women; women as midwives and

women as mothers as the basis for her decision to end her life.

(Hastie 1996, p.28).







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Costs of Silence - Women Bullying Women





If bullying in this context is considered along a

continuum, then at one end would be the non-physical

aspects and the other end the extreme form of violence

that is homicide and suicide. And what price can be put

on a life?



The cost of women bullying women cannot be estimated

at this stage because what we see of bullying in the

workplace is only the tip of the iceberg. The other two

thirds are hidden, and so are the associate costs.

Therefore, before we can move forward, breaking the

silence should be our first target.



How To Break The Silence?



If a code of silence is maintained because individuals feel

socially or economically intimidated, then they must be

protected and empowered by structures and cultures put

in place in their organisations by understanding and

compassionate, firm and fair managers and directors; and

by the employees themselves. If it is maintained because

of misunderstanding and disbelief in the power of women

to injure and intimidate other women, the powerful myths

and stereotypical views of women need to be challenged.

We cannot continue to ignore that women are equally

capable of bullying in the same form and manner as their

male counterparts, no matter how bullying is defined.



We must break the silence, then bravely, rationally and

constructively examine and address the issue of women

bullying women in the nursing profession - as in any other

situation where this form of harassment and abuse





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





proliferates.









110

Chapter Nine



Electronic Mail And Petty Tyranny

by Richard Joseph



Electronic mail (e-mail) is a form of information

interchange in which messages are sent from one personal

computer (or computer terminal) to another via modems

and a telecommunications system. It has been used

extensively in the United States for years and with the

growth in the Internet, the prospect of universal e-mail

access is now being seriously discussed.



It is common to read claims that e-mail can increase office

productivity and efficiency, improve archival practices,

lower paper costs and provide a more coordinated

approach to work performance (Anderson et al 1995).



On the question of social impacts, researchers have

claimed that e-mail can flatten hierarchies, democratise

workplaces, promote teamwork and improve decision

making (Sproull and Kiesler 1991). Corporations have

adopted e-mail as part of their drive towards

restructuring and efficiency and the rhetoric of the

technology has often become enmeshed with justification

of organisational change.



However, it is becoming apparent that the relationship

between e-mail and organisational change (and hence

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





communication patterns) is far more complex than was

first thought. Rather, e-mail has a multivalent character

with unpredictable and often unintended consequences

(Leslie 1994, p.2). For example, e-mail may produce

productivity gains in some functions but generate

„information overload‟ for staff and hence lead to a

reduction in work performance. Likewise, instead of

reducing paper usage, e-mail can have the potential of

increasing paper usage if the office practice of filing

memos in hard copy is not altered.



Efficiency of communications may be enhanced by e-mail

but the anonymity of mail messaging (in some

circumstances) can lead to a phenomenon of „flaming‟ - a

hostile e-mail message - which can sour interpersonal

relations. As Macdonald (1993) has pointed out,

pioneering works such as Sproull and Kiesler (1991), have

neglected the role of such electronic communication

within the context of the organisation or firm itself. This

leads to distorted and often overly-enthusiastic claims for

the benefits of e-mail.



The real impact is more likely to be found in the subtle,

yet pervasive and compelling ways in which the

technology changes the communication function and

context. By changing those, the technology not only

challenges the organizational communication, but alters

the concept of the organization as well.



While e-mail can be used in may ways, even promoting

democracy (Anderson et al 1995, p.151), the fact is that it is

biased towards monitoring and control. This theme is





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Electronic Mail and Petty Tyranny





central to many critiques of technology and is emphasised

by studies such as Zuboff (1988) on the informatization of

work, Beniger (1986) on the control revolution and

Dunlop and Kling (1991) and Aungles and Parker (1988)

on computerisation and the transformation of work.



The second reason why e-mail and power are linked

relates to the perceived „distance‟ and asymmetries the

technology can place between people. Power holders can

avoid discussing issues with subordinates and use threats

more readily.



Electronic Mail and Petty Tyranny



Ashforth (1994, p.755) defines a petty tyrant as one who

lords his or her power over others. Tyrannical behaviour

in organisations includes arbitrariness and self-

aggrandisement, belittling subordinates, lack of

consideration, a forcing style of conflict resolution,

discouraging initiative and non-contingent punishment.

As well, petty tyrants may demand to supervise

subordinates closely, indulge in boastful condescending

and patronising behaviour and be given to coercive

emotional outbursts.



Dependency on e-mail as a communication medium can

make petty tyranny easier. In a work environment where

nearly all day to day formal office communication is e-

mail based, staff may be obliged to check the „in box‟ for

mail several times a day, perhaps even interrupting tasks

to check mail. Information items (such as the notification

of a morning tea) which normally might be considered





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





more appropriate for an informal informational channel,

are placed on e-mail. As such staff can become very

reliant on e-mail, excluding other information channels.

This reliance and dependency can create some problems.



A petty tyrant can easily reduce the need for face to face

meetings or formal meetings with staff by relying more on

e-mail to dictate tasks and monitor performance. The

tyrant can intrude into the daily work lives of the

subordinate and effectively screen out attempts by the

subordinate to have direct contact by deflecting messages

to other support staff to deal with. The communications

struggle becomes unequal. The subordinate is left to

interact almost exclusively with the tyrant in a text-only e-

mail format which can have the effect of both formalising

the relationship and simplifying complex issues.



Indeed, every response via e-mail by the subordinate to

the tyrant enmeshes the subordinate in an ongoing

„conversation‟ where the tyrant may have a considerable

information advantage. The text-only medium allows the

tyrant considerable liberty to distort context and ensure

that the linguistic battle is fought on his or her terms. If

petty tyranny is reinforced by an organisational culture

that emphasise „innovation‟ and „getting the job done‟,

then e-mail becomes a vehicle for constant monitoring and

abuse.



Subordinates trying to escape abuse and electronic

monitoring by taking themselves off the network may be

regarded as technological reactionaries and of attempting

to avoid legitimate supervision. If an e-mail „good





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Electronic Mail and Petty Tyranny





practice‟ policy is not able to be enforced and the

organisational culture favours the use of network

technology, the tyrant is free to exert a constant and

relentless barrage of psychological abuse on victims.



The distancing effect and lack of contextual cues may

allow a tyrant to send an e-mail that immediately puts

two subordinates at opposition to each other. For

example, it may be the fact that the tyrant has had an

informal meeting with one subordinate bestowing some

sort of favouritism on the person and then chose to

„carbon copy‟ a mail message reporting this to others.

This tactic can involve anything from reporting a meeting

to deliberately misleading two people with information

that is out of context. The effect is a „divide and rule‟

situation where the tyrant gains power from coordinating

people who are now suspicious and perhaps unwilling to

communicate because of the perception of „playing

favourites‟.



Another tactic used by tyrants relates to the „press release‟

style of e-mail that is broadcast widely and often not

solicited by the recipient. For example, if the tyrant has

something boastful to say or establish that he or she has

succeeded in an organisational battle against „foes‟ to

secure more resources, this news can be broadcast widely.

Such „press releases‟ may be taken out of context in that

they present distorted views of what happened.



While all users are able to send messages, not everyone is

able to circulate the messages with the authority of a

„press release‟. In the same way, a tyrant can use e-mail to





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heap lavish praise on sycophants and new arrivals.

Political support can be shored up in a relentless and

reinforcing way that is not able to be pursued by more

traditional means such as group meetings.



E-mail‟s lack of context and communications cues can

promote the sending of messages that accuse and distort

an account of an incident. This shifting of blame can be

easily archived for later retrieval and also easily copied to

many people, many of whom may have a purely marginal

interest in the micro-management of a subordinate.

However, the effect on the accused person can be

damaging both psychologically and in career terms.



The knowledge that a growing e-mail dossier is being kept

by the tyrant can be very worrying. This information can

be archived and used at a later stage to provide a basis for

unfavourable annual performance reports or even destroy

promotion prospects. If the tyrant is looking to reduce

staff numbers or force an individual to leave, this tactic

can be used to slowly build up a case for eventual

dismissal or demotion.



The possibility of avoiding a face to face confrontation

makes e-mail an ideal medium for delivering a managerial

rebuke or reprimand. While such criticism from a petty

tyrant is often arbitrary and petty, e-mail emphasises its

impact by making it easily recorded, stored and copied.

Again, it is difficult for a subordinate to force a retraction

from the tyrant. Often the incident is petty and if

retraction occurs it is often not done publicly - the damage

has been done.





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From: A Tyrant

Date: 23 June 1998, 8.08 pm

Subject: Turkey?

To: Division All

Cc. Divisional Manager, General Manager, Director -

Personnel Office

Message: What‟s another name for a turkey. His name is

John.

Enclosures:[account of the mistake made based on the e-

mail trail - not included]



In this case it is important to note that the criticism is

public, blame is placed on the individual (with little

context added), it is on record, and the tyrant has chosen

to publicise the correspondence that „proves‟ his or her

point. E-mail makes this sort of criticism possible since

the organisational communication culture is likely to be

tolerant with a degree of spontaneity.



Another way in which a tyrant can use e-mail to belittle

staff is to provide an open invitation to selected staff to

have „input into an important decision‟. Usually the

request is framed lacking all the context. Once staff have

made their input the tyrant can publicly criticise over e-

mail those staff that he wants to belittle on the grounds

that their advice is inappropriate, „out of touch‟, of just

wrong. Of course, this tactic shores up the tyrant‟s power

base under the guise of participatory decision-making

using e-mail, but leaves opponents divided and feeling

used. Sycophants and favourites can benefit from this

tactic by being praised by the petty tyrant.







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The effect of this sort of behaviour can mean that

victimised staff under a tyrant‟s supervision can expose

themselves to unjust reconstructions of their work

performance if the innuendo and criticisms persist

unchecked. The public use of e-mail in such a way quickly

creates a workplace culture of performers and non-

performers.



As certain decision-making processes are placed on e-mail

by the petty tyrant, rank and file participation in open

network debate is likely to fall for fear of rebuke. The

result is a form of apathy and helplessness that further

fuels the tyrant‟s willingness to exercise power. The

victim is prevented from performing to the best of his or

her ability and this creates a spiralling effect which invites

further attacks from the tyrant. Paranoia is one outcome

that is possible under this environment.



It is possible on many e-mail systems to prioritise

messages such that an urgent message can be configured

to flash up on the recipient‟s screen interrupting work in

progress. In this way a tyrant is able to set time priorities

for a subordinate, sometimes setting impossible time

deadlines to be met.

From: A Tyrant

Date: 30 June 1998, 3.02 pm

Subject: Deadlines

To: A Subordinate

Message: I need to know how you intend to assess your

classes this session. If you have not replied by 5 pm today

I will be taking the decision for you.







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What this message does not say is that the subordinate is

most likely not „logged-on‟ the network and the tyrant is

probably aware of this, having either checked the

computer or knowing full well that the subordinate has a

class and would not be there anyway. There is no reason

given why the deadline is so short and the

unreasonableness of the time allowed for a response

effectively means the tyrant can assume the responsibility

for an important job which the subordinate identifies with

his or her autonomy. Faced with reading this message the

next day, the subordinate has the choice of accepting the

decision or trying to retrieve the situation and possibly

exposing him or herself to further manipulation.



In another example, a tyrant can use the asynchronous

nature of e-mail to allocate difficult tasks or appointments

to unsuspecting subordinates (who are perhaps

conveniently out of the office for a few days) and at the

same time copy the message to other workers in the

division.

From: A Tyrant

Date: 13 June 1998, 10.08 pm

Subject: New Responsibilities

To: A Subordinate; Division All

Cc. Divisional Manager, General Manager, Director -

Personnel Office

Message: A Subordinate will now be heading up

purchasing section for the next four weeks. I hope this

change improves cooperation between the heads of

Purchasing and Marketing since Advertising and

Accounts ARE doing what they were told.







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The recipient is less able to refuse such tasks or

appointments once they have been „set in concrete‟ and

the expectations of other staff have been raised. The

above e-mail gives no indication that the subordinate did

not know in advance of the change or was ever asked.

Likewise, it gives the recipients of the message (copied to

Division All and senior management) no hint of „A

Subordinate‟s‟ absence from the office or his or her lack of

compliance. There is also a clear hint in this message that

the former head of Purchasing was not cooperative

without saying so exactly. This is a subtle rebuke.



In yet another tactic, the tyrant can by-pass normal

channels of hierarchy and give orders to staff further

down the line without consulting with direct supervisors.

This tactic is particularly powerful if the petty tyrant‟s aim

is to undermine the legitimate authority of the supervisor

who is „caught in the middle‟.



The effect of these tactics can shift power to the tyrant by

reducing a subordinate‟s autonomy. Staff can feel less

committed to an organisation once this occurs. Another

effect is that urgent messages draw an immediate

response from the recipient. Once this „conversational‟

mode of interaction is established, the tyrant is able to

monitor the performance and feelings of the subordinate

fairly regularly. This can give the tyrant the upper hand

in gaining access to information that might not otherwise

be available from the recipient.



Forcing Style of Conflict Resolution







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Electronic Mail and Petty Tyranny





A forcing style of conflict resolution is another attribute of

petty tyrants. The easy distribution and message storage

possibilities of e-mail facilitate this behaviour. One

possible strategy for tyrants is to widely distribute mail

about the need for consultation on an issue, but

deliberately distort the broader context or background to

the issue, bringing subordinates into conflict.



Another strategy is to use the „enclosure‟ facility of e-mail

to circulate numerous documents relating to a meeting to

all participants who are unable to read all of them. By

„snowing‟ meeting participants with information, it is

easier for the tyrant to set agendas and avoid opposition

since there is no excuse for „not taking the time to read the

agenda papers‟. Giving participants all the information

they need to know does not equate with everyone

knowing everything. However, for those participants

who are not „in the know‟ or only have access to what has

been circulated electronically, the possibility of being out-

witted is very high. This can further undermine a

subordinate‟s work performance to the tyrant‟s

advantage. The effects of these tactics often lead to an

environment where meetings are simply seen as

legitimising decisions that have already been taken by the

tyrant.



Non-contingent Punishment



A direct threat over e-mail can give the recipient of such a

message no time to respond. An example is „do this by a

certain time or expect the following consequences‟

(Joseph, 1994). The 24 hour open office culture enabled





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





by e-mail encourages these tactics. Of course, such threats

are possible using paper memos and in direct

conversation but e-mail provides the necessary

„psychological distance‟ between the tyrant and the

subordinate to encourage these strong power tactics.



Another general threat is that of defamation. This carries

with it the possibility of financial loss in addition to

sanctions that might be imposed in the work environment.

Such threats act to put the onus of any „blame‟ arising

from the interchange or incident onto the recipient or

subordinate unjustly. This has the effect of giving the

tyrant power through the use of an „ultimate weapon‟,

such as defamation.



Further, the uncertainty around the legality of e-mail

messages (since individual computers are often only

protected by a password) may encourage a tyrant (Doss

and Loui, 1995). The obvious effect on staff can be the

generation of fear and a desire not to participate in e-mail

or other discussion. However, such threats from tyrants,

when not made public, have the tendency to circulate

quickly via office gossip. Once this has occurred the

tyrant can capture the moral high ground:

From: Mr Tyrant

Date: 23 June 1998, 8.10 pm

Subject: Be Careful and Considerate and Don‟t be Hasty

To: Forums and Debates

Message: It is important for everyone to remember that E-

mail MUST not be used for improper purposes which

certainly includes defamation. So please be very cautious

when you broadcast.





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The emphatic „MUST‟ in capitals is not uncharacteristic of

some e-mail users use of language to make a point.

However, what is missing from a message such as this

which appears innocently to a broader audience is the

context which spawned it. If it is a context shrouded in

fear and mistrust, then little will be done to correct the

possibility of mis-information becoming corporate history.



A deliberate but so-called „keystroke error‟ can also

provide an advantage to the petty tyrant. In the case

where some information critical or even mildly

defamatory of a subordinate is being circulated on the

network, a simple error of copying the message more

widely can have the desired effect. Such mistakes can be

shrugged-off as a mistake but they need not be so.



Close Supervision



The close supervision of subordinates is a particular trait

of petty tyrants that indicates a deep desire to restrict

autonomy and control subordinates. E-mail can facilitate

this through its conversational mode, the possibility of

network management and monitoring and the „return

receipt‟ facility. A petty tyrant in a position of power in

an organisation can influence network managers to

disclose information about e-mail traffic. For example,

log-on times may be made available to a tyrant who can

then use that information to build up a case against an

unsuspecting subordinate.



The same can be true for the message content itself. Once





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





this can be captured, it can be stored for future reference.

Another tactic is for the tyrant to add his or her name to

key mail groups under the „blind carbon copy‟ facility of

e-mail. This means that a sender of a message can list

group addresses when posting mail without being aware

that certain „silent‟ names are in the group but not

showing up on his or her mail address system. So for

example, two under-managers „plotting‟ against the petty

tyrant could be easily monitored if they were unaware of

this facility. This allows for direct monitoring of messages

as part of managerial prerogative. In short, a petty tyrant

who is well placed to gain access to mail network

management data (with senior management‟s approval) is

in a very powerful position indeed. The negative effects

of this happening, or more likely just the suspicion that it

is happening, is mistrust and paranoia.



Responding To The Petty Tyrant



Developing an effective strategy is often very difficult. It

is likely that coercive tactics used over e-mail will form

part of a broader culture of bullying pursued by more

traditional means. To this extent, the advice of Adams

(1992) to build up a record of abuse as proof of tyrannical

behaviour is an essential component of any strategy.

Adams notes the need for keeping a good contemporary

record or diary as proof. When interchange occurs on e-

mail, the storage capacity of the technology can work in

the victim‟s favour. However, context is often lost in e-

mail and it will be necessary to keep other records which

place any e-mail messages in context. Records of

conversations need to be kept, and if necessary, important





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Electronic Mail and Petty Tyranny





points repeated verbally to other staff that can be trusted.

The emphasis must be to build up a reliable record of

events and context around the e-mail messages.



Around this strategy of self protection, the actual issue of

e-mail is hard to avoid. It may not be possible for a victim

of e-mail tyranny to remove themselves from the network.

The vigilance and relentlessness of the petty tyrant will

see to this. In such circumstances, playing the e-mail

„conversation‟ game on the petty tyrant‟s terms could be a

dangerous strategy where the weaker party literally digs a

private grave for themselves covered with public

humiliation. The petty tyrant is likely to have access to

information and information channels not accessible to the

subordinate. As such the struggle will always be unequal

since no matter what the issue, the tyrant is likely to use

twisted logic to get his or her way or prove some petty

point (Killinger 1992, pp.59-61).



Strategies involving „conflict resolution‟ may be possible

but in may cases the problem extends beyond „conflict‟.

Being passive and hoping the problem will go away is

likely to provide little more protection from the tyrant

than making a stand. Indeed the metamorphic effects of

power would suggest that a passive stance is inevitably

doomed when faced against a determined petty tyrant.



Another strategy is to involve an intermediate supervisor

so that a communication barrier can be placed between

the subordinate and the tyrant. With an effective barrier it

may be possible to deflect e-mail messages along a chain

or hierarchy, in that way avoiding direct contact with the





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





tyrant. However, if the intermediate supervisor is a

favourite of the tyrant and willing to do his or her

bidding, the prospect of being enmeshed in an almost

impossibly difficult and distorted situation arises.



If the assistance of a colleague or supervisor is not

possible, there may be value in avoiding the use of e-mail

to respond to the demands of the petty tyrant and revert

to traditional hard-copy responses if necessary. This

certainly will slow down the speed and rate of

communication and remove it from its „conversational‟

mode into a more formal setting. If this can provide a

strategic advantage, it is better to follow this approach.

However, in some circumstances it is not possible to avoid

e-mail. In such cases, keeping essential e-mail

communication to a factual basis and as infrequent as

possible may pay dividends. Reasserting and regaining

autonomy over work tasks should be an objective in such

circumstances. Of course all such interchanges need to be

recorded and placed into context.



The above suggestions address personal responses. The

organisational context cannot be ignored in shaping or

planning a personal strategy. Often when petty tyranny

presents itself it is difficult for staff to recognise it is

happening and many will even deny it is happening.

Sycophants will certainly deny the possibility since they

have much to gain from the petty tyrant. Once divisions

have been set up amongst work colleagues,

communication becomes difficult and fear and suspicion

reign. If senior management are unwilling to

acknowledge that a problem exists (and in some





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Electronic Mail and Petty Tyranny





restructuring organisations this is quite likely), it may be

sensible to try and ensure that traditional and informal

channels of communication remain open wherever

possible (e.g. regular staff meetings and tea breaks).



A shift towards e-mail as the dominant medium for office

communication can play into the hands of the petty

tyrant. If possible, enlisting the help of supportive people

outside the sphere of influence of the petty tyrant can

help. Likewise, the operation of an effective

organisational e-mail policy with appropriate penalties for

abuse of e-mail needs to be in place. A penalty of

removing an offender from the network for a couple of

days will do little to deter a tyrant who is a compulsive e-

mail user. A system of „shaming‟ may be worth exploring

as a way of enforcing good practice. However, to get this

far, the climate of fear that is often created by a petty

tyrant will need to be overcome.



Finally, one long term strategy may be to change the

communication culture of the organisation or at least the

immediate workplace. The enthusiasm of some

organisations for networked technology could be a

particularly difficult stumbling block to change. However

no opportunity should be lost to try and change existing

beliefs. To some extent the need to recognise the social

and legal dimensions of communication through e-mail

and the Internet is being forced on organisations

(Bucholtz, 1995). Despite this, one of the most fruitful

strategies may be to attempt to influence the culture of

communication that has grown up around e-mail in the

immediate workplace.





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







Often technology is adopted by people with little thought

to its effects or the manners required to use it effectively

(Marx, 1994). Educating colleagues to use e-mail

intelligently in conjunction with other information

channels may not remove the petty tyrant but it may help

to overcome the division and isolation that often

accompanies bullying in the workplace.









128

Chapter Ten



The QWWS Bullying

Support Program

by Jenny Carman and Cath Rafferty



For the 7,190 clients assisted by the Queensland Working

Women‟s Service (QWWS) over the 30 months to June,

1997, problems of harassment at work far outstripped any

other single issue. Complaints about workplace bullying

increased from 10.2% of all queries in 1995/96 to 19.2% of

all queries in 1996/97. In June 1995, QWWS was dealing

with close to 10 complaints a week from women

concerning Workplace Bullying. In June 1997, that

number has doubled with approximately 20 client

complaints reported per week.



Approximately 40% of all clients reporting Workplace

Bullying are from the clerical and retail sectors, followed

by health, manufacturing and personal services. By far

the majority of bullies (80%) in the workplace are men

although there is now a significant number of women in

positions of authority who are responsible for bullying

behaviour.



The majority of QWWS clients are women working in

clerical or retail positions in very small businesses. In this

situation, women are often in very close proximity to the

employer or manager and often working in an isolated

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





environment. The vast majority of these women are not

members of unions and have no access to internal support

mechanisms or grievance procedures if they experience

bullying behaviour.



In larger companies, support networks are available with

more emphasis on professional management styles. In

smaller enterprises, good management techniques are not

a high priority and often a bullying or threatening attitude

to staff is considered the only way „to get things done‟.



Women are therefore more likely to experience bullying

than men because they have a tendency to work in smaller

and less regulated businesses, are less likely to be in a

union and more likely to be a casual employee with low

job security.



What Is Workplace Bullying?



Workplace bullying is the repeated less favourable

treatment of a person by another in the workplace,

beyond that which may be considered reasonable and

appropriate workplace practice.



Bullying involves behaviour that can intimidate, degrade

or humiliate an employee. It may include abuse of power,

isolation, and alienation of employees. Inappropriate

comments about personal appearance or work

performance are common.



Bullying behaviour in the workplace can be engaged in by

work colleagues, supervisors or managers. The important





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The Queensland Working Womens Service Bullying Support Program





point about such behaviour is that it is unproductive, and

workplaces need to consider guidelines to eliminate

inappropriate behaviour.



Why is Workplace Bullying Such an Issue in the 1990s?



The issue of workplace bullying has received some

publicity lately. However, this is not because it is a new

problem. The increase in reports of bullying can be

attributed to many factors. These factors include growing

awareness that bullying is not acceptable behaviour, the

effects of new legislation, and job market related factors.



New legislation may well have made people more aware

of social justice issues, and of possibilities to protect their

rights. For example, Anti Discrimination Legislation has

been instrumental in raising awareness.



Furthermore, with the introduction of the Human Rights

and Equal Opportunity Commission, people may believe

that they have an avenue to seek relief. However, while

this may raise awareness of entitlements to rights, in

reality most cases of bullying fall outside of the very

specific guidelines of the Commission.



The introduction of unfair dismissal laws may also have

had the unintended consequence of raising the incidence

of bullying. This has come about because employers are

now aware that they cannot sack someone without good

reason. Bullying an employee will quite often force them

to leave, thereby avoiding any action being taken against

the employer.





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







However, whereas in previous times, a person could leave

a position when they were subjected to bullying, the job

market has become much more difficult. This leads many

people to try to find ways of solving problems of bullying

rather than avoid them by leaving the job.



While there is an increase in reports of bullying, the

proportion of employees who are experiencing bullying

actually approaching their employer, or taking other

action to relieve the situation, remains small. Factors such

as low self-esteem, uncertainty as to whether a complaint

is valid, and fear of job loss, all affect a person‟s potential

to take action in the face of bullying.



People who have been subjected to bullying in any form

quite often suffer from very low self esteem. Their

personal appearance and work performance may have

been criticised continually. After prolonged exposure to

bullying, some people actually start to believe that their

employer is right and that they are no good. These people

may have no confidence in their ability to gain

employment elsewhere, and may be too frightened to take

any action for fear of losing their job, and therefore their

livelihood.



Take for example a sole parent with children in child care.

They may have to pay for child care. If they are out of the

workforce for any period of time, they still have to pay to

retain their child‟s place. In this situation a person cannot

afford to give up a job and look for alternative

employment. This may lead to women putting up with





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The Queensland Working Womens Service Bullying Support Program





inappropriate behaviour resulting in very high levels of

stress.



What Can People Do to Protect Themselves?



Much relief has been gained by our clients by simply

having the issue validated for them and being assured

that they may not be the one with the problem. It is

important that women experiencing low self-esteem be

made aware that what they are suffering has a name and

is a valid complaint.



There is always the option to apply for workers‟

compensation as a result of work related stress. These

claims however, take a very long time to process and are

investigated thoroughly. The result may be that some

people are subjected to even more stress.



There are however steps QWWS counsellors recommend

can be taken by a person in a situation where she is being

bullied: When commencing employment, become familiar

with the provisions of the award or agreement that covers

your work.

• Where a grievance procedure exists, use that

procedure. In government departments, there will

usually be an employee assistance officer, an equity

unit, or sexual harassment officer, workplace health

and safety officer or medical unit that you can

approach.

• If you are not a member of a union, you may consider

becoming a member in order to seek advice and

support. Remember that you are entitled to join a





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





Union as an individual and that membership is

confidential.



Workplace bullying may be a Workplace Health and

Safety matter as employers have an obligation to provide

a healthy and safe workplace. The problem faced by the

Division of Workplace Health and Safety relates to the

ability to prove that bullying has occurred to such an

extent that it has become a workplace hazard. Unlike a

faulty machine that may put employees at risk, an

investigation officer quite often has difficulty gathering

evidence of workplace bullying.



If you are very definitely suffering from work related

stress which has resulted in a medical condition, make

application for workers‟ compensation. If previous

employees have suffered from similar incidents, you can

use their experience as evidence.



If you are being bullied, take comprehensive notes on

everything that has occurred. This is especially useful

when trying to prove a claim for workers‟ compensation

or even unfair dismissal. In certain circumstances, diary

notes are admissible as evidence.



If the bullying is of a sexual nature, or you believe that it is

due to your sex, race, religion or other attribute, you may

have recourse under the Anti-Discrimination Act or the

Sex Discrimination Act. In these cases you should contact

the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in

your area.







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The Queensland Working Womens Service Bullying Support Program





The Alternative Dispute Resolution Program is a free

service that will provide a mediator in an attempt to talk

through and resolve a situation. However, this process

requires the voluntary participation of both parties which

may not be possible in some circumstances.



Where assault or a criminal offence is involved, the matter

should be reported to the police immediately.



In some cases a family member or other support person

approaching the aggressor has met with some success in

alleviating the situation.



Quite often, it is unlikely that the bullying behaviour will

cease. It may be an option to seek counselling or

undertake personal development courses in order to

modify your reactions to the situation.



The QWWS provides a counselling service to specifically

assist people experiencing workplace bullying.



Finally, workplace bullying must be considered as

unacceptable behaviour. QWWS is working

collaboratively with Government and other organisations

to raise awareness of the issue and to develop a model

industry Code of Practice.



An important factor standing on the side of those

experiencing bullying is that the extent of costs associated

with bullying add impetus for action to be taken to

address the problem.







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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





What Are The Hidden Costs of Bullying For an

Organisation?



Workplace bullying can have a tremendous impact on the

overall success of an organisation. An environment of

humiliation does not entice anyone to work with the

commitment required in a highly competitive market.

Such a work environment would almost certainly have a

negative impact on staff morale. This may result in a very

high absenteeism rate which could be measured in terms

of lost productivity. High staff turnover is also an issue as

it involves re-training of staff and recruitment of

replacement staff which can be very time consuming and

costly.



Furthermore, the incidence of staff claiming Workers‟

Compensation may increase where stress and anxiety

levels are high. While some employees may gain

compensation specifically for work related stress, there is

another element where stress has contributed to poor

concentration resulting in unnecessary mistakes or

accidents in the workplace. Where this is occurring,

premiums may rise considerably.



Public image is also an important factor in the success of

an organisation. If people employed in legitimate

positions of authority abuse or harass staff in front of

clients, one could reasonably expect a detrimental impact

on an organisation. Given the extent of costs associated

with bullying, QWWS advises employers to consider the

following recommendations.







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The Queensland Working Womens Service Bullying Support Program





Handling Incidents of Workplace Bullying As an

Employer



QWWS advisers recommend employers implement and

monitor a range of workplace practices to produce

harmony and therefore productivity by reducing incidents

of bullying and harassment at work. These include:

• Grievance procedures to ensure that employees have a

process for dealing with any issues which may arise.

These procedures should have the full endorsement of

management and may even be an extension of any

discrimination or sexual harassment policy already in

existence.

• A stress audit giving employees an opportunity to

identify problem areas anonymously.

• Regular agenda-free staff meetings which could

provide a platform for troubled staff.

• Procedures ensuring that people employed in

managerial positions have adequate people skills or

formal training to enable them to bring out the best in

people. If this is not the case, the person may need

some training in effective management practices.

• Exit interviews which include questions such as „Have

you experienced harassment in this organisation?‟ If

problems are identified, they should be investigated.

• Recognition that loyal, committed staff are one of the

most important assets to any organisation. This being

the case, employers should be aware of the workplace

dynamics (where possible) so that they are able to

recognise and deal with, a „situation‟ that may be

arising. The indicators may be sudden changes in

atmosphere amongst staff, where cheerfulness is





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





replaced by sullen behaviour, increased absenteeism

and / or decreased productivity.



To Access The QWWS Support Program



The Queensland Working Women‟s Service Inc. is making

every effort to have the issue fully recognised and to assist

in developing some procedures to combat the problem. If

you need assistance in any way, please don‟t hesitate to

contact our service.



You can contact our service for:

• advice and assistance

• access to the QWWS Counselling Service which is

available to people affected by workplace bullying.



Contact numbers: (07) 3224 6115; Tollfree number: 1800

621 458; Fax: (07) 3224 61 1 1.









138

Chapter Eleven



Bullying - Female Workers’

Experience

by Janice Mayes and Chris Whiting



On 1 April 1996 the Australian Services Union ran one of

the first phone Hotlines in Australia on the issue of

Workplace Bullying. The response to the Hotline was

overwhelming. The ASU received calls from all over

Australia from Perth to Cairns and Darwin, and over a

hundred calls eventually came in. Each caller had a long

and at times a saddening tale to tell. All too often, we

could see that there existed solutions or avenues for

resolutions for these problems.



The Hotline exercise came from a decision to use

Secretary‟s Day to publicise a serious issue. Workplace

bullying is of particular concern to us as we cover

administrative and clerical workers, who seem to be

bearing the brunt of this behaviour. And just as

important, our Union membership is nearly 80% female,

and we have a definite interest in publicly addressing and

exposing gender based work issues.



We found workplace bullying was much more

widespread than we had suspected, and the costs -

personal and economic were much higher than anyone

could have anticipated.

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







Who Are The Victims, The Targets, The Sufferers?



The largest category of bullying targets are employees

with small amounts of power - those who feel they have to

endure the bullying through a large fear of losing their

job. These people generally are those with less power,

economic and personal, in society. They include older

workers (usually females in lesser skilled jobs), and in

particular, lower level workers.



The sufferers are predominantly female - 79% of the

complainants were female workers, and in most of the

cases, it was a male bullying a female. In the age

breakdown of the respondents, it is significant that the

largest group were people over 45 (38%),and a

surprisingly small number of complaints were received

from younger workers.



In a rapidly changing workforce that emphasises

„portability‟ of skills, it is the older workers that we find

have less marketable skills and less occupational options

open to them. In one case, it was the club doorman (aged

near 70 and with a heart condition) being bullied and

physically intimidated by the manager. It was the last job

he had before retirement.



The age and gender breakdown gives a strong signpost to

the issue of Workplace Bullying - it is an issue of power,

much the same as sexual harassment. The workplace

bullies are constantly focusing on the workers with less

power.





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In most cases, the respondents are from non-unionised

workplaces with no history of collective action, or are

from a workplace which has a weak or decaying union

structure.



Furthermore, in most cases, the sufferers came from larger

workplaces, not smaller ones. It is much more likely that

they be one of a larger workpool of people (79%), instead

of being one (and therefore an indispensable part) of a

small workforce (21%). This goes back to the issue of

power: if the employee is in a position where their tasks

and duties could be carried out by another worker, they

are in a much less powerful position.



Also, a quite significant category of people targeted (29%

of the respondents) are the workplace activists. More

correctly, they are the protoactivists. Typical of people in

this category are those who „speak their mind‟ but do not

have the network of workers behind them, or they are

inexperienced in engineering workplace negotiations.

These are the people who stick their head up to complain,

and are then regarded and targeted as troublemakers.



Who Are The Bullies?



The bullies are predominantly managers (80%) and, to a

lesser extent, supervisors (20%). In only 2 cases were the

bullies co-workers. Anecdotally, nearly all were middle-

level managers.



Worryingly, in just under half of the cases, the





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complainant said that the bullying was carried on with the

knowledge or without intervention or resolution by

higher management. These cases therefore have higher

management either ignoring, implicitly condoning or

encouraging the bullying. It begs the question - do many

managers see bullying as just another tolerable

management technique?



The gender breakdown of the bullies was interesting. The

majority of cases included bullying being done by a male,

but in a significant number of cases, the bullies were

female. In a few cases, the bullying was by more than one

person, including both male and female bullies.



As from which areas of industry the bullies come, the

spread of industries and workplaces seems fairly even,

with bullies coming from both the public and private

sectors. 66% of the respondents came from white collar

areas or offices. The major industries included

universities, law and accounting firms, hospitality &

tourism, and hospitals.



Components Of Bullying



What specifically constituted the bullying acts or

campaigns was always a combination of factors. Listed

here are the variety of behaviours, in order from the most

to the least prevalent, that respondents have specifically

mentioned in their calls to the Hotline:

• Verbal abuse (the most common)

• Acts of humiliation, abusing or demeaning a person by

taking them to task in front of meetings of workers, in





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front of clients

• Obsessive criticism & criticism for minor things,

referred to as „picking on them‟, where all parts of a

person‟s performance is constantly and unfairly

criticised

• Acts of intimidation, such as monitoring phone calls -

In one case, casual staff were told to take a couple of

days off to consider the workplace problem they had

complained about.

• Acts of retribution, such as lessening work hours,

changing rosters, changing work location to a worse

one

• Threats of dismissal; specific ones, though they may

also form part of above categories

• Acts of duplicity, giving false information to the

worker, or about the worker to co-workers and other

managers - in one case the manager told the worker

they were not invited to a work social event, as the

others did not want them there. In another, secret

performance reports were lodged in a worker‟s

personnel file, and then used against them.

• Isolation, singling-out; no-one sitting with them at

lunch; being left out of activities and tasks



Very few respondents mentioned incidents of sexual

harassment or sexual innuendos, though they did not

identify innuendos as sexual harassment. Less than a

quarter of the respondents mentioned inappropriate

comments.



Official Procedures - Bullying With Impunity







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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





A worrying trend was the use of official procedures as

part of a pattern of bullying. Bullies would use

inadequate performance procedures, performance

appraisals or reviews, warning letters and steps in the

dismissal procedure. The complainants reported these as

being unwarranted, inaccurate and part of active

campaigns against them. These procedures, which are

meant to protect workers, have in fact proved to be a

particularly effective weapon against them, as they can be

used by managers with relative impunity (no checks and

balances). As they are 'official‟, the employee does not

have a leg to stand on.



Upon analysing the cases, there were different generalised

characteristics between bullying in the public and private

sectors. In the public sector, there was the use of more

subtle techniques in workplace bullying. Specifically,

official procedures, described previously, are utilised by

bullies. In one case, an official Performance Appraisal was

launched early, the employee did not agree with it and got

a new one implemented, but it was as bad and inaccurate

as the first. The person was sent to the staff counsellor

and asked to sign an Inadequate Performance Appraisal

against their will.



In the private sector, there were more intense examples of

more overt bullying. For instance, complaints from law or

accounting firms featured incidents of sexual harassment,

physical incidents, temper tantrums - the horror bosses.

In a law firm, one of the partners focused his bullying on

the youngest female employee. The victim had stationery

or files thrown across the office at her, while the partner





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Bullying - Female Workers‟ Experience





would jab his finger into her back to emphasise a point.

He would also touch her, stand over her, and obsessively

criticise her. This manager/partner has had eight

secretaries in five years.



Common Subtle, Covert Threads In Bullying



There were common threads in the make-up of the

bullying. The components mostly were not violent,

physical, or overt. Incidents of sexual harassment are not

major parts of the bullying, and in most cases, sexual

harassment and workplace bullying are similar but

separate workplace problems. Most of the components

are acts of humiliation, intimidation, criticism and

retribution which have an almost subtle and covert aspect

to them, and a sense of premeditation. Often the bullying

has a very public dimension. The intimidation and

humiliation are strengthened by being carried out in a

public fashion. And often the bullying has been hidden or

built into the managerial procedures.



Effects Of Bullying



Illness due to stress caused by bullying is a major

component of the effects of workplace bullying, and the

statistics from the Hotline point towards the size of the

problem.



• Over half (54%) reported having days off (sick leave)

due to the stress

• Just under 30% reported having leave periods due to

stress-induced illness





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





• A full one third (33%) reported visiting a medical

specialist or practitioner, including a portion visiting

psychologists or psychiatrists

• Worryingly, 29% were on medication - 9% as a direct

result of the bullying and for the other 20%, bullying

contributed to or exacerbated the need for medication.

One woman of 23 was on medication due to the effects

of her workplace bullying case

• And 17.5% reported breakdowns as a result of the

bullying



These consequences suggest a real monetary cost to

workplace bullying. There must be a huge cost in

working hours lost, and a large medical cost to the

community, due to workplace bullying. Other personal

costs are difficult to quantify, but we can get indications

from some reported effects, listed here in order of

prevalence.



• Over half of the respondents specifically mentioned

feelings of nervousness and fear at work.

• A quarter reported crying bouts, at work, or just as

commonly on the way to work.

• Nearly a quarter mentioned suffering feelings of

depression.

• A portion said it had affected in some way their

personal relationships.

• And not surprisingly, most of the respondents

reported a loss of confidence. Nearly one in five cases

were in fact reported by someone else close to the

person being bullied







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Bullying - Female Workers‟ Experience





The costs to businesses are obviously substantial,

particularly in regard to the loss of staff and the selection

and training of new staff. For example, 42% of

respondents said they had actually left the job in question,

and nearly 18% apart from those were looking for new

jobs. Also, 29% reported a high staff turnover at the

organisations due to the bullying.



Workplace bullying cases covered by the Hotline are not

isolated incidents of personality; they represent whole

organisational problems. The cases are often recurrent or

persistent, and they are all too often consented to, ignored

or condoned by higher managers. Often it is poor

managerial practices and workplace culture which need to

be addressed, not personality clash. And we suspect that

workplace bullying is seen by a percentage of managers as

being a legitimate tool of management.



An overview such as this can only hint at the huge

medical costs of workplace bullying, which many people

would find surprising and shocking. The costs are

probably the most powerful arguments supporting the

need for wider recognition of workplace bullying as a

legitimate workplace problem. Workplace bullying has to

be seen as being as important as sexual harassment. As

the union covering office and clerical workers (who seem

to bear the brunt of workplace bullying), the ASU is

prepared to take an active role in publicising it.



Throughout this exercise, we realised that we may already

have a strong remedy. There is no doubt building a

workplace organisation on the ground level, such as a





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





union, is the best inoculation against the problem.

Workplace bullying is all about power, and the workers

we talked to were vulnerable and powerless because they

stood only as individuals. The basis of unionism within

the ASU is of employees taking collective actions and

positions as the only effective way to solve workplace

issues.



Our experience has shown that the best solutions to

workplace bullying are generated from the actions of the

collective body of empowered workers who live with and

experience the problem. Specifically, what we see as some

of the best remedies are

(1) to unionise problematic workplaces, fully and

comprehensively,

(2) educate employees about the problem and about the

benefits of collective action, and

(3) elect workplace delegates and what is called a

Workplace Organising Committee (WOC). In many

workplaces, the WOC is the body or the mechanism which

effectively addresses industrial problems.



Finally, as a consequence of this exercise, the ASU now

regards workplace bullying as a workplace issue as

serious as sexual harassment. The Hotline has given all

ASU members a real definition of what we are up against

and how we can take action against it in the future. We

hope we have also helped people suffering this problem

know they are not alone. They are not the only ones being

affected, and they do not have to suffer the problem alone.

Workplace Bullying is an issue of personal health and

dignity to millions of ordinary working Australians, and I





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Bullying - Female Workers‟ Experience





hope we have given it some recognition and a voice.



We call upon governments to officially recognise the

problem, if they have not already done so, and to take

legislative action, as they have done with sexual

harassment, workplace health and safety, and all kinds of

discrimination. And I also call on the trade union

movement to recognise and take up this issue.









149

Chapter Twelve



Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus

Reality

by Michael Sheehan



Many organisations today are undergoing restructuring,

and experiencing difficulties preparing their workforce for

rapid change. Organisations are offered a range of

strategies including downsizing, self-directed teams and

systemic change. Continuous improvement, total quality

management, and employee education and learning are

also suggested.



Meanwhile it is not clear what will be the effects on

individuals of these suggested restructuring strategies,

particularly in relation to inappropriately coercive

behaviours. It is apparent that such behaviours exist in

contemporary organisations, impacting adversely on

individuals‟ health and well-being, but bullying by

managers has not been researched.



Anecdotal reports suggest unreasonably coercive

behaviours used by many managers. This chapter reports

some of the findings from a recent study which

investigated these behaviours and their effects.

(McCarthy, Sheehan and Kearns, 1995). Funding for the

project was provided by Worksafe Australia.

Participants in the study came from organisations that had

Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus Reality





undergone restructuring in the past three to five years.

Many of those organisations were still being restructured.

Restructuring, for the purposes of this study, includes

alterations to the shape of the organisation for reasons of

complexity, formalisation or centralisation (Robbins and

Barnwell, 1994). It also includes organisational

restructuring as a result of mergers.



Data was collected using interviews and questionnaires.

The interview guidelines and a questionnaire format were

developed from pilot studies. 62 useable interviews and

373 questionnaires were collected. Interviews and

questionnaires were organised and completed outside

participants‟ workplaces.



59% of the sample were men, 41% women.

72% were public sector workplaces, 26% private sector, 2%

other.

Age Groups 15-19 20-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+

percentage 1% 5% 25% 33% 27% 8% 1%



Common Themes Extracted From The Interviews



Discourse of restructuring: Managements‟ language

under the categories of „restructuring‟ and „justification for

the change‟ suggests the existence of a discourse of

restructuring. The discourse is evidenced in participants‟

reports of management‟s intentions to: flatten

organisational hierarchies, amalgamate, multi-skill, cut

costs, regionalise, achieve quality and downsize.

Justification for the change is offered in terms of:

efficiency, improving customer service, improving service





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





quality, and improving communication. Some of the

common words and phrases used included:

• will allow us to better deliver services to our clients

• more efficient, faster communication



Demands: The experienced realities of the change

program include demands leading to work intensification

and role overload, as illustrated in the following

comments.

• we have to be more skilled; we are required to do the

same work with less than half of the staff

• I would come in here on Saturdays and Sundays and

half the staff would be here trying to finish work - it

went on for two years.



Organisational culture: social and cultural values were

seen to change during the restructuring. Participants

perceived changes in the areas of ethics, loyalty, trust,

support, caring, communication, morale and job security.

While some participants saw positive outcomes from

these changes, most experienced a degrading of the

existing culture. Comments included:

• we didn‟t know what was going to happen, they

weren‟t concerned about us and we didn‟t trust them.

• there was a general fear for what was coming.



Managerial Styles: Positive experiences of managerial

styles included: open communication; team building;

support; and explanation of role changes. Negative

experiences, however, predominated, encompassing

confusing and ambiguous information from management,

authoritarian behaviour, lack of communication,; bullying





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Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus Reality





and vindictiveness, related in comments such as:

• would come in a room and threaten me

• go and look at the lines at the CES if you don‟t like the

restructure.



Organisational Effects of Managerial Style: Managerial

styles were seen to affect both the individual and the

organisation. At an individual level, effects included: role

ambiguity, increased workload, fear, stress, taking days

off work, confusion, and frustration. Typical comments

included:

• Each person had to learn the skills of seven other

people; we went through a lot of training; productivity

was pathetic at this time.

• lots of confusion and disorientation

• Effects at the organisational level encompassed

absenteeism, lost productivity, increased conflict,

disorganised communication processes and power

struggles.

• People are resigning because of the stress, others take

six weeks off at a time.

• all you need is to be able to lie and swindle and

bullshit your way through a lot of other lying,

swindling and bullshitting.



Contradictions: A majority of interviewees expressed

experiences of managerial behaviours which depart from

both the program aims and their perceptions of good

managerial styles.

They commonly stated concerns about poor team-building

skills, lack of communication and training, a clumsy

brutality in implementing programs, power games and





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





work intensification.



Interviewees often commented in ironic terms on

departures from what they discern as better managerial

practices, for example:

• He sets out to demolish the team even though he talks

about team spirit.

• We were told to ignore the rumours, but in the end it

was the rumours that were true.



Hidden Agendas: Perceptions of hidden agendas also

point to experiences which belie the rhetoric of

restructuring. Indications from the interviews suggest

that more than half the participants felt hidden agendas

were driving the restructuring.



The underlying intent of management was often cast as

seeking profit and control from work intensification and

forcing employees out of the organisation. The following

extracts from the interviews are notable for their cynicism.

• Deliberately reducing staff morale so that staff will

want to leave.

• Offering people with family commitments transfers

they can't take, compelling them to resign, I felt gender

victimisation...



Resistance: Rather than participants in restructuring

programs behaving entirely as hapless victims, significant

evidence of resistance emerged. Employees worked more

to rule, took days off, and sought mutual support from

their colleagues.

• He tried bullying us - but we said NO we are not going





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Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus Reality





to do this.

• I kept going, I was not willing to give in. One of my

co-workers told me that my strength kept her going.



Compliance: Many comply with unreasonable managerial

directives, even if grudgingly, as indicated in the

following extracts.

• I went to hospital for major surgery and there were

messages from the boss - I rang him back on each.

• If you say its not fair that I don't get higher duties

allowance - they say you don't do the work. You end

up with a dissatisfying job. Its a lose/lose - you take

on the extra duties without the pay.



Coercion: Managerial styles in restructuring are

predominantly experienced as coercive. One participant

attributes the basis of coercive styles to the career

aspirations of managers. Others reflect manifestations of a

predisposition to violence at various levels.

• Management for the last 30 years has believed that you

get work out of beating people...

• When things went wrong he would bring everyone

together, give them shit and tell them he would make

their lives miserable.



Marginalisation and Alienation: The greater majority of

participants reported experiences of managerial practices

which marginalise certain individuals and groups in the

organisation. Feelings of injustice and resentment are

evoked by these behaviours. Some find a gender bias in

the marginalising effects of managers' actions, as shown in

the following examples.





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





• She has been harassed over the last 6 months

particularly because she is a female with brains.

• Men got the tenured jobs, women did not.



Sadism/Cruelty: Evidence of managerial behaviours

surpassing coercion, and moving into the realms of

sadism, were revealed in the majority of interviews. For

example:

• shaking the fist and saying „you will do it or else‟.

• I felt assaulted every day of the week - they were

sadistic.

• I had all these doctors certificates and showed her but

she kept yelling at me `but why are you sick?'



Physical Violence: In several cases the intensities of

violence took a physical turn, with examples similar to

those reported in cases of domestic violence (Rathus,

1996).

• She .. threw a phone at me, swore and called me a

filthy bitch.

• he'd be swearing at them - throwing things around in

abuse...



Effects on Well-being: Most of the interviews contain

evidence of debilitating effects on a range of health and

well-being indicators, including: self-esteem; security;

stress; psychosomatic balance; and feelings of fear.

Physical and psychological symptoms of stress were often

reported. Feelings of helplessness, loss of value as an

employee, and burnout were also common. A number of

participants reported taking days off on sick leave. Some

accessed medical help and psychiatric counselling.





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Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus Reality







Comments from the interviews describe the effects of the

restructure at the individual level and range from feelings

of discomfort, threat and stress, to more traumatic

outcomes as listed below.

• constant headaches, forgetting things where in the past

I prided myself on my memory.

• because of my personality I blamed myself for the first

six months then I went to counselling.

• stressed because none knew when the sacking would

occur.

• I spent three months on Serepax to stop myself going

insane.

• feeling of terror...they did not accept any of my

recommendations - I became depressed for years

afterwards - I felt that I was worse than useless.

• I felt a tight chest - I thought I was going to have a

heart attack every day - I had to get medical help - I

just feel stressed-out inside.

• terror - not knowing what you're facing at the end of

the restructure...it was an extremely stressful period.

• I was experiencing major burnout.

• I have problems with sleeping.

• I used to get in my car and cry all the way home on the

freeway.

• my friend was depressed and worried about his large

amount of sick leave - after two weeks on sick leave an

account of his record of sick leave was mailed to him

and he was told to see the Government Medic - two

days later he hanged himself.

• stressed...very depressed...useless with unwanted

skills...suicidal...saw psychiatrist...





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures







While some themes overlap, they nonetheless suggest that

the introduction and management of organisational

restructuring is limited by the way managers attempt to

justify it. Many participants‟ responses indicate

experiences of poor communication, duplicity, confusion,

work intensification, coercion, power struggles, sadism

and physical violence. Moreover, it is apparent that levels

of inappropriate coercion exist which diminish the health

and well-being of participants in restructuring programs.



Analysis of the Questionnaires



In an effort to reach a broad cross-section of the

population under study, a range of strategies were

adopted. We first contacted a number of public and

private sector organisations and attempted to gain entry

to the workplace. Our attempts were unsuccessful once

the nature of the study was discussed. Some persons

within organisations, however, expressed interest in the

study and disseminated a limited number of

questionnaires on our behalf. Our criteria was simply that

the respondent had experienced organisational

restructuring in the past three to five years.



Second, in an effort to reach people eligible for inclusion

in the study but who were no longer employed in the

organisation, we set up an information booth in the Queen

Street Mall , Brisbane , and in the centre of four regional

shopping complexes of Brisbane. Permission to do so was

received from the Brisbane City Council, in the case of the

mall, and from shopping centre management for the





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Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus Reality





regional shopping complexes.



Third, we approached a number of employee

associations, professional bodies and trade unions. These

groups were unable to help us gain workplace entry

agreements. The study was, however, promoted through

newsletters and direct dissemination of questionnaires by

some of those organisations.



A total of 1,200 questionnaires were distributed, and 373

returned questionnaires analysed, representing a return

rate of 31 percent.

Results



Despite the rhetoric of restructuring in terms of improving

quality, productivity and customer service, respondents

experiences indicate a very different scenario.

Respondents report decreases in the quality of their work,

their productivity and their customer service.



Percentage of Respondents Noting Degree of Change in

Work Effort (Total number 358)

Increase Little change

Decrease

your workload 80% 10%

10%

your quality of output 37% 35%

29%

your productivity 46% 27%

26%

your customer service 39% 39%

22%

your time spent at work 61% 30%

10%





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures



your amount of work taken home 51% 39%

10%

Respondents to the question mostly align restructuring

with work intensification. Increases in workload (80%),

time spent at work (61%) and amount of work taken home

(51%) were significant indicators of changes in work

effort. Moreover, respondents report decreases in quality

of output (29%), productivity (26%) and customer service

(22%).



Questions 8 and 9 in the questionnaire provided twenty-

two (22) categories to choose from to report bullying

behaviours by managers. Respondents were asked to

record behaviours by managers within those categories in

terms of the managers‟ perceived treatment of other

people or of the respondent themselves.



Verbal threats were witnessed least (25%), and blaming

someone‟s personality most frequently observed (59%).

Furthermore, 76% of respondents to the questionnaire

reported directly observing inappropriately coercive

managerial behaviours used against other people.



In contrast, use of verbal threats against respondents rated

slightly less (22%), as did blaming their personality (38%),

when compared to witnessed behaviours used against

others. Nonetheless, the ratios are significant indicators of

incidences of bullying managerial behaviours. Moreover,

59% of respondents personally experienced one or more of

these behaviours.



71 of the 373 respondents completing questionnaires





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Restructuring - Rhetoric Versus Reality





sought counselling or medical attention as a result of

bullying behaviours by managers. Similarly, 74

respondents took time off work as a result of the bullying

behaviours.



Question 14 asked respondents to indicate the degree to

which they personally experienced a change in well-being

as a result of the incidents. The most significant

experience of change in well-being comes as a result of

anger at managers or management because of the bullying

behaviour (57%). Experiences of a change in well-being

include feelings of fatigue (41%) and feelings of

helplessness (41%).



Of the 222 respondents who replied to the question

regarding seeking counselling or medical attention as a

result of the bullying incidents, almost one-third

responded in the affirmative. A similar number reported

taking time off work as a result of the bullying

behaviours.



Rhetoric vs Reality



Many participants identified a common rhetoric used to

communicate reasons for introducing restructuring

programs into their workplaces. Such rhetoric included

the opportunity for multi-skilling, the need to improve

productivity, a requirement to flatten hierarchies,

opportunities for participation in decision-making, and

improvement of internal communication processes.



In the face of the optimism of the rhetoric of restructuring,





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





however, many participants in the study report

experiences of a brutal reality. Reality includes the need

to work longer hours, to work harder, and to work across

more skills interfaces. Thus work is intensified. Moreover

flattened hierarchies often means having to assume

greater responsibility, in less than satisfactory resource

situations, for outcomes not fully within their control.

Furthermore, participation in planning processes often

results in time-consuming attendance at meetings



There appears to be little accountability for inappropriate

managerial behaviours and their costs, either within

organisations or the wider community. Furthermore, the

problem limits opportunities to develop a flexible, skilled

Australian workforce committed to production of quality

goods and services.



Total community involvement is necessary to eliminate

these behaviours. To these ends preliminary draft

national guidelines, including anti-bullying programs in

the workplace, have been suggested (McCarthy, Sheehan

and Kearns 1995; McCarthy, Sheehan and Wilkie 1996).

The findings also suggest managers may need to upgrade

their skills in a number of areas to be able to plan and

introduce restructuring programs in an effective and

socially responsible way.









162

Chapter Thirteen



Consulting-Violence

In City Revitalisation

by Paul McCarthy



Livability is a concept of civic pride and environmental

sensibility, public transport, safe neighbourhoods, and

property values on a rising curve. This concept is

promoted in mail-outs from the Brisbane City Council

(1996) as a sort of transcendental civic force. A more

livable city would have traffic calming, streets with trees,

benches, cafe-society footpaths protruding into traffic

lanes, bikeways, neighbourhood watch, and garbage

recycling.



Revitalising the inner city as an urban village with cafe-

society ambience is a very popular idea, capable of

recruiting an extensive network of residents, business

people, developers, planners, investors, contractors,

restaurateurs, entertainers, retailers, and bureaucrats.

Being in this network offers improvements in professional

status, income and property values. Yet for many, the

gloss of enhanced livability scarcely compensates for the

ongoing experience of brutality in renewal processes.



Restructure and Renew



City revitalisation involves restructuring the ways in

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





which information, labour, goods and services are

provided. In parallel with restructuring taking place in

organisations, there is a similar desire to achieve flatter

hierarchies, flexible teams and organisational networks,

giving rise to concepts such as the „mixed use urban

village‟, the „neighbourhood hub‟, and the „living suburb‟.



Meanwhile the downsizing of organisations undergoing

restructuring is associated with down-shifting in the

broader society. People whose jobs are uncertain look for

more packaged and economical lifestyles. Down-shifters

who move into rental accommodation in the new inner-

city villages are often those working longer hours for less

pay and security, who have little time for cleaning house,

mowing lawns, or driving long distances to work.



The management philosopher Chris Handy depicts the

new, ever-restructuring organisation as a half by two by

three machine, employing half the number of people,

paying them twice as much, working them twice as hard,

and making three times the profit. Handy‟s metaphor

may also be applied to the revitalised urban villages - half

the number of people per domicile earning twice as much,

and selling for three times the price.

Space-Wars



To live or do business in Brisbane‟s inner-northern

suburbs one must fight for one‟s place on the block. Local

businesses competing for customers lobby intensively for

resources to widen and vegetate footpaths for cafe-society,

traffic-calm the streets, and erect neo-Victorian street

lamps and iron railings.





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Consulting-Violence in City Revitalisation







Park Road‟s cafe-society footpaths and plazas provide a

refuge from the gangs and groups and impossible parking

conditions around the Queen Street Mall. Nearby Caxton

Street, Paddington fights for patrons as restaurateurs

convert a long term loan from the Council into footpaths

for tables bounded by period iron railings. Now more

competition looms as the nearby sleepy 1950s-style

Rosalie shopping centre is constructed into a mixed-use

urban village, with Naughty Noodles and more, to „take

on Park Road‟. Notably, the closures of the butcher‟s shop

due to rising rents and of the service station for re-

development, have left locals having to drive further

afield for goods and services, threatening the fragile tissue

of the remaining high street shops.



The Dark Underside Of Livability



Beneath the gloss of city revitalisation we begin to glimpse

a dark underside of livability. Looking through the

security gates of condominiums we note they have been

cleansed of the blue collar workers, poorer renters, the

disabled, and their old cottages and boarding-houses. We

also notice that people living in these protected

environments are tending to become increasingly anxious

„about dangerous social groups‟. Fear is beginning to

shape cities as people become preoccupied with

inequality, separateness, and violence. (Caldeira 1996).



The devising of new developmental control planning

(DCP) laws in urban renewal areas means „modifying

organisational and legal structures‟ and offering „special





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privileges‟ to those investing their money. (Holston and

Appadurai 1996). Development planning in Brisbane‟s

inner-northern suburbs is supposed to involve public

consultation, and yet public objection is blocked where

authorities deem the project falls within the DCP

guidelines.



Critics like Balibar (1996) might view the DCP laws as a

way of turning government over to business, giving

privatisation official license to prosper. Furthermore,

DCPs may also zone out forms of residence, industry,

trading, and commerce not popular with developers, such

as the service-demanding low-income and renting

populations, as Mike Davis (1990) observes happening in

Los Angeles. He says the desire to improve personal

security and increase property values has been

incorporated into a deliberate 'socio-spatial' strategy.



Holston and Appadurai note how the high security

„residential enclaves‟, and „abandoned public spaces‟

reveal the violence in a city. People use „violence to make

claims upon the city and use the city to make violent

claims‟. Groups manoeuvre by variously appropriating „a

space to which they then declare they belong‟, and in so

doing, they violate a space which others claim.



Revitalisation programmes may take away space which is

used by the public, incorporating it in new corridors and

enclosures. Also, the privatising of public space and

services incorporates new systems of electronic and

private policing to keep undesirables out (Holston &

Appardurai 1996). In these conditions, the notion of the





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public sphere as one constituted by a „social contract

among equal and free people‟ is challenged by recognising

„inequality and exclusion‟ in constructing public life

(Caldeira 1996).



Ritual Sacrificial Violence



The natives of New Caledonia are said to believe that all

evils are caused by a powerful and malignant spirit; hence

in order to rid themselves of him they will from time to

time dig a great pit, round which the whole tribe gathers.

After cursing the demon, they fill up the pit with earth,

and trample on the top with loud shouts. This they call

burying the evil spirit. (Fraser 1922)



Girard (1977) notes that through the ritual of sacrifice,

fears of bad violence are converted into communal well-

being by victimisation justified as violence for the greater

good. Ritual sacrifice „purifies‟ the violence, ie, tricks

violence into „spending itself on victims whose death will

provoke no reprisals‟. Furthermore, in the fine grain of

sacrificial ceremony, „the celebrants do not and must not

comprehend the true role of the sacrificial act.‟



Girard‟s implication is that violence is deeply rooted in

social order and culture, and that „violence belongs to all

men and thus to no one in particular‟. Significantly, „the

choice of the victim is arbitrary‟. In the sacrificial crisis,

each individual seems at war with the other, and the

violence circulates until it „mysteriously‟ settles on a

scapegoat, or surrogate sacrificial victim. Then, in a

psycho-socio-religio change of state, „the community‟s





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sense of unity, destroyed by the sacrificial crisis is

suddenly, almost miraculously restored.‟



However, sacrificial ritual tends to devolve on politically

weaker classes of victims, ie, those „we can strike down

without fear of reprisal, since he lacks a champion‟. The

ritual victim generally comes from outside the mainstream

of the community, „otherwise the community might find it

difficult to unite against it.‟

Sacrificial Violence In Revitalising The City



The rhetoric of livability in documents celebrating the new

city-scape paints an attractive veneer over violence to the

existing social landscape . The living suburb is imagined

through the use of such terms as: „rehabilitate‟; „street life‟;

„affordable‟; „accessibility‟; „vegetation‟; „bicycle paths‟;

„mixed-use‟; „heritage‟; and „traffic calming‟ (McCarthy

1994).



Appeals to livability in community consultation are aimed

at creating a sense of community and in motivating

groups competing for resources towards common urban

futures. However, the ways in which consultation

publicly settles the costs of dislocation, displacement, and

anxiety onto less powerful groups demonstrates sacrificial

violence at work.



Older buildings not considered of heritage value are

commonly scapegoated as „obsolete‟, „derelict‟,

„industrial‟, and associated with „social problems‟

(Brisbane City Council 1991). Poisonous objects are the

poorer renters, the aged, unemployed and disabled, older





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buildings housing manufacturing, newer migrants, street

kids, and prostitutes. In the medico-religio model that is

renewal, these sick elements of the built environment

receive their last rites in the rituals of consultation,

legitimising publicly the construction of the new urban

villages.



A study of several streets in the Newstead area in 1992

found a diversity of small businesses, the majority of

whom engaged in active business and social interaction,

and enjoyed reasonable rents in the older premises. A

number were serviced by resident-tradespeople who lived

in the area (McCarthy 1992). A colourful local character,

„Cyril‟, a home handyman repairing houses and

commercial premises who had converted his old rented

cottage into several flats housing poorer tenants for

nominal rentals, has since been forced out of the area due

to the property being acquired for a revitalisation project.



Consulting-Violence



Consulting-violence is defined as recurrent offensive,

reprehensible and unethical actions directed at members

of a community subject to consultation processes in ways

which exclude and marginalise.



Type 1: Manipulation & duplicity

For example, conducting community consultation under

the banner of participation, but using the consultative

process to manipulate acceptance of the plan.



Type 2: Exclusion





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Includes overt and covert behaviour leading to the

exclusion of members of the public:

• from information in the consultation process

• from participation in setting terms of reference

• from selection of consultants

• from having a say in decision making

Also, exclusion may feature in the promotion of the

participation of more compliant groups over those

opposing a project. For example, a common response to

opposition is, „you don‟t represent the area‟, and „another

group we are talking to has different attitudes‟.



Rather than viewing exclusion as unusual, we need to

trace its central role in the formation of communities and

their politics and beliefs throughout the ages (Balibar

1996). Also, an analysis of individual instances of

exclusion reveal how power operates in steering

mechanisms governing our everyday lives. (Wieviorka

1996)



Type 3: Blaming, labelling, sarcasm, verbal abuse, and

bad-mouthing

These bubbles of abuse burst on the surface of

consultation processes, often from the clash of deeper

socio-economic and cultural differences. Specific

examples include the labelling of members of one

community group as „dogs‟; and another as „recalcitrant‟

due to their determined advocacy of more community-

friendly planning approaches.

Also, along the road to the living suburb, the labelling of

particular areas as „obsolete‟, „derelict‟, and „social

problem‟ also evidences scapegoating.





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Type 4: Threats and intimidation

Members of a community group enthusiastically engaged

in developing a better plan than that imposed on them in

the consultation process were alarmed to hear of

„retribution‟ towards them from a public official. The

threats induced enduring feelings of trauma in the group -

all of whom believed they were acting out of genuine

concern for the vitality and viability of their suburb.

Those whose businesses and professional futures hinge on

gaining various government approvals from time to time

were particularly concerned.



In another case, an older migrant (with less developed

English skills) inquired about the impact of an

indeterminate proposal for the inner-city bypass, to be

informed by a public official „you might as well sell out or

you could end up living under a concrete fly-over‟. To

this date the bypass plans remain shelved, yet the legacy

of the fear generated by the advice lives on - the migrant

sold his house at less than reasonable market value and

purchased another on mortgage.



Type 5: Unethical behaviours

Prescriptions for ethical behaviours in public consultation

may be found in the Criminal Justice Commission‟s

Corruption Prevention Manual (1993), and the Code of

Conduct for Officers of the Queensland Public Service

(1994).

Ethical behaviour in consultation requires clear

procedures for dealing with conflicts of interest between

the public and private interests of government officials





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and contractors. An apparent lack of procedures bringing

potential conflicts of interest to public scrutiny continues

to raise ethical concerns about the conduct of consultation

in urban revitalisation programmes. Furthermore, the

practice of hiring engineering consultants who earn a

significant proportion of their income from major

developments proceeding, as community consultants

(Sanders 1989), adds to these concerns.



Ethical questions also arise when the conduct of

consultation confers partisan advantage, with the effect of

doing violence to less powerful groups in the planning

process. For example, the consultation process may

channel resources into more favoured politically powerful

areas, effectively increasing property values there, yet

dumping the costs in less powerful areas.



Type 6: Injurious affection

Consultation processes may victimise less powerful

groups through „democratically‟ settling the costs of major

projects in their areas in the interests of livability for the

greater good, without consideration of compensation for

degrading effects.



Type 7: Selecting victim-geographies

Power-plays between groups and individuals in

community consultation processes reflect those in the

wider society. In the politics of consultation, scapegoating

may set up less politically powerful „dustbin‟ areas to be

sacrificed in the interests of social consolidation. The

consultation forum also offers opportunities to identify

people strenuously proposing more community-sensitive





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plans to those favoured by powerful networks of

planners, developers, and bureaucrats. These people may

become targets for sacrificial violence in consultation

processes.



Living in Victim-Geographies



Particular effects observed amongst those living in victim-

geographies include fears of and loss of domicile, income,

property, and businesses. Many experience a sense of

powerlessness in the face of large impermeable,

incommunicative public instrumentalities. Outcomes

associated with prolonged stress are also observable, for

example: loss of confidence, helplessness, anxiety,

emotional upset, nightmares, sleeplessness, tiredness,

depression, burnout, withdrawal, and worsening

relationships.



Rather than the civilising dynamic of city revitalisation

reducing the potential for violence, „violence finds new or

renewed spaces and to signify in its own way considerable

changes‟. Nor should we accord violence the status of

being „inevitable for change‟, rather, we may study it as „a

special type of action‟ with a sociological dimension.

(Wieviorka 1996)



To allow the conduct of community consultation without

ethical constraints opens up the politics of city

revitalisation to the type of democratic corruption

observed in New York‟s Tammanay politics - that which

„rests on the corruption of the people...districts, precincts,

neighbourhoods...their sovereign power in the form of





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votes is bought by kindness or petty privileges‟

(Parameshwar Gaonkar & Kamrath 1996).



Consultation needs to be consistent with a definition of

civic community rooted in „a principle of

openness....defining citizenship in terms of non-exclusive

membership‟ (Balibar, p.362). Sensitivity to ways

„counterpublics emerge in response to exclusions within

dominant publics‟ and „help expand discursive space‟ can

be engendered (Fraser 1995, p.291). To foster these

understandings, planning agencies of three tiers of

government and private consultants could recognise

community consultation as a new form for „collective

living‟, (Wieviorka 1996, p.335), and a site for building

social capital. They need to work from the ground up,

valuing subjective and personal expressions of diverse

persons and groups. Fear, prejudice and ignorance

projected into exclusion and xenophobia needs to be

painstakingly unravelled and reconnected with notions of

differential relations as vital to the texture of the social

fabric.



The consultation forum is a good one in which to „develop

new ways of thinking about the capacity of democracy for

generating new modes of integration of cultural

differences‟ of concern to Wieviorka (1996, p.347).

Establishing community consultation as a forum to build

social capital in these terms requires clear codes of

conduct, ethical protections, and avenues of appeal to

independent arbiters - from setting terms of reference to

the incorporation of information in decision-making

processes.





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A recent suggestion by Gorman (1997) raising the

possibility of legal liabilities by public officials for

unethical behaviours should be of concern to public

officials involved in planning and implementing public

consultation processes. Gorman suggests that those

public sector organisations which fail to establish and

implement procedures for Ethical Codes of Conduct

within the requirements of Public Sector Ethics Acts may

render both an organisation and/or individual officials

liable for legal action and damages. The damages may

arise as the result of behaviours by public officials judged

to be unprofessional and to treat members of the public

unfairly, without integrity or respect for their dignity.









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Chapter Fourteen



Bullying - An Historical,

Philosophical Reflection

by John Maguire



As the early Greeks laid the foundations for our culture,

they decided their world should be built from the rock of

mathematical certainty and definitions. „Atoms‟ were the

ultimate, unchangeable building blocks of the material

world. Precise definition of the nature of any particular

thing could determine clearly its purpose and its function.

Men were rational animals; one of the roles of ethics was

to delineate the correct relationship of the body to the

mind of man. Once a man had defined rationally what

was right and what was wrong, then it was merely a

matter of self-discipline, cold showers, a little asceticism:

an honourable man did what was rationally defined as

right or wrong, not necessarily what one might judge

intuitively as morally right or wrong in a given situation.



This cultural evolution took a long time, the course of its

progress not smooth. At first its original „rational‟

thinking took place within a context which kept it in a

certain balance with that other wild, Dionysian, irrational

world - Zorba‟s world. Plato‟s Socrates may have scoffed

at the imaginings of the poets, but he was equally scathing

about the sophists‟ misuse of words and the specious

arguments they employed. But after Plato came Aristotle

Bullying - An Historical, Philosophical Reflection





and his less poetic, more „realistic‟ methodology, arriving

at definition by way of observation.



Aristotle became the dominant force in our culture. Only

a society which accepted and justified the slavery of

another human being could have created the philosophy

of Aristotle. It owed much to the way many males

inherently seek to control their environment. But the

culture built on that foundation became very great - its

power even greater since the scientific revolution and the

philosophers of the so-called age of enlightenment broke

our culture‟s final links with the metaphysical bases of its

past.



From the beginning, this defining process had immense

advantages. Careful ethical argument allowed us to see

clearly the correct relationship between people and classes

in society: women were by nature inferior - incomplete

men. The sexual organs were intended by nature only for

reproduction; so any act of intercourse that was not

directly intended for procreation was in some way sinful.

At least Augustine of Hippo said so.



Cicero saw some groups, such as all who engaged in

manual work, carpenters, cooks, barbers etc, as by

definition inferior; farmers, ie gentleman farmers, were

seen as one rung up the ladder. It was right that manual

workers should be subject to the rule of „rational‟ men and

the definitions they created. On a more universal level,

this attitude evolved to the point where it was evident

how some races were innately superior, intended by

nature, to rule; others to obey.





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Christianity



The fourth century of our era saw Christianity accepted as

the religion of the Roman Empire. Overnight as it were,

the insights of Jesus of Nazareth were quickly fitted into

thought and ethical patterns that fitted the thought

structures of the graeco-roman world. What is that old

philosophical axiom? Quidquid recipitur, per modum

recipientis recipitur - milk takes the shape of the jug into

which it is poured - „anything that is received by another

is received according to the shape/depth/measure of the

receiving subject.‟



Suddenly, the whole emphasis changed. The bastard son

of an unmarried mother, scorned by his neighbours in

Nazareth, the young man who had died a criminal‟s death

outside the city walls, the everlasting outsider from

conception to the grave, instead became the risen Jesus,

the infallibly declared Christ, the second Son of the

Trinity, a fitting icon behind whom the powerful of this

world - following Constantine - could build their empires.



One of Jesus' greatest gifts to humanity had been his

extraordinary, subtle, poetic insight into all ethical

questions. But with his subsumption into the Empire, all

that was gradually equated with the „rational‟, natural-law

principles of the stoics. The Hebrew intuitive openness to

God at the heart of every value judgment became more or

less equated with a man-made intellectual and legal

system.







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The “Sin Of Paternalism”



Within this overall context, we were expected to share the

gifts of our cultural and religious values with others. In

fact our inbuilt belief in the superiority of those values, as

a necessary corollary, more or less demanded some form

of cultural imperialism. Over the centuries, how many

have travelled the world being „kind‟ to people who were

„different‟ - working as teachers or nurses with the „blacks‟

in the outback, caring for the outcasts and the dying in the

slums of Calcutta, baptising the heathen in Africa - often

at great personal self-sacrifice - „giving their bodies to be

burnt‟ - but always from within the certainty that their

belief was superior culturally and religiously, often with

little insight into the demands of real charity, with little

attempt to identify with, perhaps to learn from the person

so determinedly being „helped‟. In 1957, the Cardinal

Archbishop of Venice, soon to become Pope John XXIII,

spoke of this „sin of paternalism‟:



Paternalism is another, if more subtle, form of the

bullying.



If only our cultural bullying had stopped there. But

eventually good Catholic theologians were asking

whether negroes were really fully human? their

enslavement surely justifiable. The native inhabitants of

other places, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Abyssinia,

colonised, civilised, christianised - murdered. We would

have done the same to China and to India if they had not

been the powerful cultures they are. And all the time we

were making the Jews scapegoats for much that happened





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





in our world which might have challenged our ideas of

our own perfectibility.



This „Christ killers‟ charge is an example of how a value

judgment can be so totally inculturated that it can become

an unconscious predeterminant of all future judgments

about anyone who might fall within the bounds of its

original categorisation. In the case of the Jews, that was to

occur at the deepest and most dangerous depths of the

western and Christian psyche - at that point where one

identifies one‟s judgments with our inner infinite void

wherein we find the reality we call „God‟. From the act of

a few people - most of whom were not Jews - in one

moment in history, a religious value judgment about a

whole race was internalised and universalised. „His blood

be upon us and upon our children‟ would be repeated

century after century as the prophetic revelation and

judgment of God. Year after year, every Good Friday,

every devout Catholic would be called to „pray for the

perfidious Jews‟ - internalising a judgment as applicable to

all Jews - something not to be questioned.



Anyone who has spent time with survivors of the

Holocaust will know how often in their childhood they

experienced the horrific insult, the chanted taunts from

other - „Christian‟ - children in their towns or villages:

„Your parents/ grand-parents killed Jesus.‟ Anyone who

has seen Shoah, that extraordinary documentary on the

Holocaust will never be able to forget what for me was its

climatic scene. Outside a Catholic Church - I think it was

in Chelmo - Polish peasants who had lived through those

years were being interviewed about the terrible events





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Bullying - An Historical, Philosophical Reflection





which had occurred in their village.



Suddenly a black-suited man - he seemed to be in his late

50s or early 60s - pushed into the group: „But we know

why it had to happen.‟ And then, in what I felt was

tantamount to blasphemy, he put into the mouth of a

rabbi what he could only have heard from a priest: „One

day in the city, as Jews were being herded into transports

to be taken away, I heard their rabbi say to them, We have

no right to complain about what is happening to us. We

killed Christ. We have to accept everything we deserve.‟

Or words to that effect.



With the foundations on which our culture and our

religion had been built, was it any wonder that so many

were prepared to cooperate with - or at least turn a blind

eye to - what was happening? Was it any wonder that

thinkers from within our tradition could seek to

rationalise genocide - what today we continue to attempt

to sanitise behind other words: „ethnic cleansing‟,

„collateral civilian deaths‟? Many Nazis pointed out at the

time: „we were doing nothing to the Jews that you - the

Christian churches - have not done before. Only we did it

more efficiently.‟



Victimising the victim



A belief in superiority is so deeply centered in our cultural

identity, that since the war, many have decided that those

who perished in the Holocaust were merely weaklings

because of their failure to resist: „If I had been there I

would have fought. They chose to be victims.‟ Only the fit





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





survive.



Such an attitude reveals an appalling lack of knowledge of

the actual events of the Holocaust. It also fails to

appreciate that at that time it was comparatively easy to

die because of some apparently heroic - or perhaps grand-

standing - action. Time and again, what took the greater

courage and wisdom was to survive despite everything.

More importantly, such an attitude reveals another

characteristic of our culture. Victims - failures - have no

place in our society. And so we tend to victimise the

victims a second time round. This mentality reveals a lack

of insight into the very nature of powerlessness as it most

often occurs in life.



The End Of The Modern World



Shortly after the end of the war, the great Austrian

philosopher and theologian, Romano Guardini, wrote his

insightful prophetic work, The End of the Modern World.

Very acutely he saw our world was dead. And he saw the

reasons why it could not be revived within any of its

ancient forms. He foresaw that the age we were entering

would be something absolutely new, not a development

of what had gone before. Our culture, since the time of

the early Greek philosophers, had built itself on its

presumed ability to define the world, and human nature

and society, with a clarity and certainty akin to the

absolute truth they believed they could experience in

mathematical thinking.

But Guardini realised that this century had seen the

foundations of that world collapse: the discoveries of





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modern science had shown that creation did not occur in

six wonder-filled days; it had evolved gradually over

billions of years. There are no absolute, static natures or

forms, no unbreakable atoms as the primary building

blocks of the world- everything is energy in flux.



Freud, Jung and Adler had shown us that our ethical

decisions are not as clear cut, nor as consciously and as

rationally chosen as we might once have thought and

articulated. Einstein‟s theories had shown us how all

judgments were relative to the position of the observer;

social and psychological judgments could not escape this

aspect of human existence any more than could the

physicists measurements in time-space.



This world and the human beings who inhabit it are not

the center of the universe as medieval men had thought;

we are merely one point of rational existence on one

planet revolving around one star among billions going we

knew not where. Chance and probability seemed to rule

where once an intelligent Providence seemed to reign

supreme. In the anonymity of mass man any single

person‟s life seemed meaningless; yet in the after-glow of

Nagasaki a single person might soon annihilate the world.



Letting Go Of One’s Identity



Letting go of one‟s „identity‟ is one of the most difficult

„deaths‟ we are ever asked to enter into. Look how

difficult it is for many alcoholics to let go of the addiction

that lies at the core of their self-image: many find it too

difficult to admit that they cannot control this aspect of





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Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





their existence; that in this central aspect of their lives they

have to die to their own pride and power. It is even worse

for a whole culture which has shaped itself on its belief

that it could control the whole of created existence.

Letting go of such a total world-view is much harder than

letting go merely of one particular addiction. In fact our

culture has to accept that at its core it had been built

around a massive addiction - the desire and determination

to control existence.



Why the bully?



Why does an apparent lust for power over others seem to

run through all creation? I approach this question from

the point of view of someone who believes in God. If one

believes in God as the source - the „singularity‟ to use the

scientists‟ jargon - out of which all this has erupted; then

what does this say to us about creation?



As far as the inner being of creation is concerned there can

be no difference whatever between creation and the inner

reality of God. Created being erupts as it were out of the

„no-thing-ness‟ that God is. The difference between God

and creation lies in the fact that creation is always an

incomplete expression of the source from which it comes.



But creation has an inner drive to be infinite like the

source from which it comes. (Another old axiom: omne

agens agit simile sibi - every agent makes in its own

likeness.) There are two ways in which such a creation

can resolve its drive towards the infinite:

• Each particular created form can seek to absorb all the





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rest of created existence into itself. That is the

metaphysical basis from which the bully grows.

• The other way in which a limited creature can seek to

satisfy its inner desire for the infinite is for it to accept

from the depths of its innermost being that it is totally

dependent on its source for all that it is; that its present

identity is a gift, a partial expression of what it might

still become.



This letting go of any exclusive attachment to one‟s

personal or defined identity into the source from which it

comes, psychologically is a „death‟ experience. „He who

finds his life will lose it; he who loses his will find it.‟ If

one takes that second road in seeking one‟s fulfilment as a

creature, one‟s desire for the infinite, then there is no need

to seek to absorb others into one‟s sphere of power in

order to enhance one‟s identity or one‟s sense of self and

one‟s craving for the infinite. In letting go of self, in some

way one knows the peace of inner completion within our

limitation. At the same time, we are open to receive from

the source all that we need to live out this moment of our

existence most fully.



All the great spiritual teachers of history in different ways

have taught this truth: the road to one‟s fulfilment as a

human being is not by way of power, but by way of

accepting one‟s essential nothingness vis a vis the source

from which we have come. The human choice: self-

centered power - or freedom in acceptance of our intrinsic

dependence. It is the central truth of the Garden of Eden

myth.







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Living by the second choice means that we commit

ourselves to accepting our obligation to seek for solutions

to life‟s problems in ways that respect the difference of

each part of creation - not the absorption into ourselves, or

the destruction, of all who are „other‟ than we are. The

need to find new, ever more and more subtle solutions to

the present tensions of our human reality is part of that

process.



But we would be fools if we were to forget that there will

always remain in all of us, a basic desire to control and to

bend others even violently to our will. Look at how often

in history persecuted minorities, once in power, have

done to others all they themselves had previously

suffered. The Christians did not take long after they left

the catacombs to insist that Caesar‟s sword should be used

to coerce others - pagans, Jews, other deviant, heretical

Christians - to their will.



The desire to be infinite manifests itself in the human

psyche in an infinite openness for knowledge. This is why

from any single experience we can create universal

concepts and universal judgments. From one painful

experience suffered at the hands of a person of another

race or culture for instance, there will be an immediate

tendency within us to say, „All people of that race will

harm me in this way.‟



Every time I harm another person, then in some way my

„sin‟ very easily will be universalised and applied to every

one of the group to which I belong. If moreover there are

already other cultural or religious traditions or groups in





186

Bullying - An Historical, Philosophical Reflection





the surrounding society who already judge my group as

dangerous or untrustworthy, then my single hurtful

action can only reinforce those prior pre-judgments.



Towards A New Mythology: Pluralism



In 1977, Raimondo Panikkar, a person uniquely at home

in the philosophies and theologies of both East and West,

argued at a symposium in his honour in California, that

the world was witnessing a new attempt to answer what

he called the central question of the human mind, one

which had preoccupied men at least since Plato in the

West and the Upanishads in the East‟, the problem of „the

one and the many‟.



For centuries philosophers had sought to explain how

many individual men exist, yet all apparently share one

human nature. Before the philosophers, there had existed

the tribe in whose terms each person found his/her

identity. But the early philosophers suggested a different

approach. Plato saw each person as an imperfect

reflection of some ideal human being existing in another

world - or in the mind of God. Many centuries later the

philosophers changed direction, arguing that there were

no such universal ideal realities; instead people were

merely separate, interchangeable units, each called „man‟

because human convention had so decided.



In recent times, Panikkar saw that the question of the one

and the many demanded a new answer. While not

excluding the partially valid content of earlier answers,

the question had now taken a new turn: is each person





187

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures





unique in his and her radical, and ultimately

incommunicable individuality, and if so, how does each

relate to the whole of humankind? For Panikkar this new

perspective to the question gave explicit expression to „the

myth of pluralism‟ which he saw as the new creative myth

within which a possible world civilisation could be

evolving.



However, Panikkar saw that future political and social

systems that might carry within them any hope for lasting

stability, could not be built by force, by power, by anyone

else‟s definition of man, by some mystical/ religious

response to the question, „Who am I‟, nor from the weight

and will of the majority. The future would have to be

built on the basis of a dialogue which grew from the

question: „Who are you?‟ - a dialogue, which of its very

nature could never be completed.



Such a future will demand all our wisdom and subtlety as

we try to evolve the fluid political forms which the

incarnation of the myth of pluralism will demand.









188

References

Chapter Three Bullying in Pastoral Care by Cara Beed

with Clive Beed

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Chapter Five Bullying at school and beyond by Ken Rigby

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Chapter Six The Bully Busters A School Program In Action

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Chapter Seven Bullying - A Legal Response by Peter

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Chapter Eight Costs Of Silence - Women Bullying Women

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Chapter Nine Electronic Mail And Petty Tyranny by

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Chapter Thirteen Consulting-Violence in City Revitalisation

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198

Index

Absenteeism 34, 137 Coercive Behaviours Desire To Hurt 46

Action Learning 61 22,151 Disability Discrimination

Agenda-Free Staff Cognitive Dissonance 26 Act (1992) 75

Meetings 138 Collective Actions 149 Disability Services Act

Alternative Dispute Community Consultation (1992) 75

Resolution Program 135 174, 175 Discriminatory Practices

Anti Discrimination Community Involvement 84

Legislation 132 163 Dismissal Procedure 145

Anti-Bullying Committee Comprehensive Workplace Domestic Violence 76,77,

63 Policy 55 157

Anti-Bullying Policy 54 Condition Of Employment Down-Shifting 165

Anti-Discrimination Act 90 Downsizing 34, 151, 165

(1991) 75,135 Confidentiality 27, 92 Dysfunctional Families 46

Anxiety 137, 169, 174 Conflict Resolution 65, 73,

Artificial Community 25 114, 122

Education Act And

Assertiveness 33 Confrontation 19

Regulations 80

Authoritarian Behaviour Conspiracy To Intimidate

Electronic Mail 112

23,24,153 86

Emotional Outbursts 114

Consulting-Violence 164

Employee Education 151

Contracts 77

Behaviour Management 60 Ethical Behaviours 172

Corruption Prevention

Bullying By Landlords 81 Exit Counselling 30

Manual 172

Bullying By Mail 95 Exit Interviews 138

Cost Of Silence 108

Bullying By Managers 151

Costs To Businesses 147

Bullying By Police

Counselling 136, 162 Fatigue 162

Officers 82

Counsellors 134 Fear 147, 154, 157

Bullying In Nursing 100,

Criminal Justice Fear And Suspicion 128

106

Amendment Act (1990) 91 Fear Of Retaliation 65

Bullying Survey 69

Criminal Law 75 Feelings Of Injustice 156

Burnout 157, 174

Cults 22, 30 Flattened Hierarchies 163

Cultural Bullying 180

Care And Concern Officers Culture Of Bullying 125

Gender Breakdown 141

72

Gender Influence 98

Child Suicide 51

Declaration Of Human Genocide 182

City Revitalisation 164

Rights 75 Grievance Procedures

Civil Law 75, 77

Defamation 123 87,134

Civil Redress 75

Deference 99

Civil Sanction 81

Delinquency 52 Headaches 158

Code Of Practice 136

Democracy 175 Health And Well-Being

Codes Of Conduct 176

Depression 50, 147, 174 157

Desire To Be Infinite 187 Health Care Organisations

Bullying - Causes, Costs and Cures



97 Middle-Level Managers Predisposing

Helplessness 157,162, 174 142 Characteristics 52

Hidden Agendas 155 Mind Control 23 Premeditation 146

Human Rights And Equal Misuse Of Structural Prevention Of PTSD 19

Opportunity Commission Power 23 Problematic Workplaces

132 Multi-Skilling 162 149

Productivity 137, 154, 160

Professional Management

Implied Covenant 90 Nervous Shock 93

Styles 131

Inadequate Performance Nightmares 174

Professional Status 164

Procedures 145 No Blame Approach 65,71

Protected Environments

Inappropriate Behaviour Non-Contingent

166

133 Punishment 114, 122

Psychiatric Counselling

Infantile Omnipotence 3, Non-Unionised

157

13 Workplaces 141

Psychological Effects 107

Injurious Affection 173 Non-Violent Environment

Psychological Support 57

Intellectually Disabled 62

Psychotherapy 18

Citizens Act (1985) 75

PTSD 16

Internalisation 17

Obsessive Criticism 144 Public Consultation 167

Intervention 29, 62, 64

Occupational Options 141 Public Disclosure 27

Intimidation 75, 86, 172

Organisational Change 112 Public Sector Ethics Act

Isolation 25, 29, 129, 131,

Organisational Culture 153 (1994) 90

144

Organisational Problems Public Sector

148 Organisations 176

Job Security 153 Public Service

Pastoral Care 21 Management Act (1988) 87

Labelling 171 Patronising Behaviour 114

Lack Of Consideration, Performance Appraisals Queensland Working

114 145 Women’s Service 130

Legal Liabilities 28 Personal Development

Legal Redress 31 Plan 43

Rapid Change 151

Legality Of E-Mail 123 Personal Relationships 147

Reporting Of Bullying 65

Livability 164, 169 Personal Responses 127

Residential Enclaves 167

Loss Of Confidence 147, Personal Strategy. 127

Responsibility Of Schools

174 Petty Tyrant 114,127

79

Loss Of Dignity 88 Physical Effects Of

Restructuring 34, 151, 164

Violence 107

Restructuring

Physical Violence 157

Malicious Rumours 47 Organisations 128

Poor Managerial Practices

Managerial Styles 146,153

148

Managerial Women 99

Post Traumatic Stress Restructuring Strategies

Marketable Skills 141

Disorder 15 151

Medical Costs 148

Power Games 154 Ritual Of Sacrifice 168

Medication 147

Power Relationships 34 Role Overload 153

Medico-Legal

Powerlessness 174

Examinations 93

Precursors Of Bullying 7







200

Index



Sacrifices 22 Syndrome 76

Sacrificial Crisis 168 Thought Reform 23

Sacrificial Violence 168 Threats Of Dismissal 144

Sadism 157 Tort 77

Sadomasochistic Total Quality Management

Relationship 8 151

Self Criticism 45 Transformation Of Work

Self Doubt 45 114

Self Esteem 17 Traumatic Events 18

Self Protection 126 Troublemakers 142

Self-Aggrandisement, 114

Self-Confidence 17

Unethical Actions 170

Self-Directed Teams 151

Unfair Dismissal Laws 132

Self-Discipline 177

Union Membership

Self-Esteem 133, 157

134,140,148

Self-Harm 17

Use Of Official Procedures

Self-Sacrifice 22

144

Sex Discrimination Act

135

Sexual Harassment 134, Verbal Abuse 47, 108, 143,

141 171

Shared Concern 56 Verbal Skills 48

Shoplifting 51 Verbal Threats 161

Sick Leave 146, 157 Vicarious Liability 78

Sin Of Paternalism 179 Victim-Geographies 173

Sleeplessness 158,174

Social Capital 175 "Wagging" School 51

Social Environment 57 Warning Letters 145

Social Interactions 97 Whistleblower Legislation

Social Structure 97 93

Speaking Out 30 Whistleblowers 27,91

Stereotypical Views 110 Women’s Work 97

Stereotyping 101 Work Intensification 153

Stigma 22 Workplace Culture 148

Stress 137, 154 Workplace Delegates 149

Stress Audit 138 Workplace Hazard 135

Subordinate Roles 99 Workplace Organising

Suicide 109 Committee 149

Supervision 78,124

Systemic Change 151



Taming Process 8

Tenants Organisation 82

Terrible Twos 4

This Is Our Secret









201