Mobbing—Degradation of a Subordinate

Occupational pathology

Mobbing has long been a rarity.

Mobbing can only be used by a supervisor against a victim if it is to some extent accepted by other employees. It is difficult to imagine today a situation where a supervisor in the presence of other employees treats his subordinate brutally. Such behavior is now unacceptable and socially stigmatized.

The brutal, repeated behavior of the superior would lead to a collapse in the morale of the team and a permanent loss of confidence, and so the bullying phenomenon has taken on a new, dangerous form that appears to be much milder, but in reality can cause deeper wounds and scars on the psyche of the victim.

People have always worked together to form teams throughout their evolution, and being a member of a team gave them great psychological strength and peace of mind, and the expulsion of a person from a group was usually the inevitable death.

Many people do not understand why they feel uncomfortable when leaving their job means improving their quality of life or moving to a better job.

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A new form of bullying

Any wrongdoing in the workplace, theft, sabotage or bullying can be done in two ways: either in secret from others or with the partial acceptance of other employees.

Mobbing is an offence against another person, so it is not possible to commit it in secret.

The most popular form of bullying today is employee alienation, in other words, mentally excluding an employee from the team, separating them from others, and knowingly reducing their importance in the group.

An indication of exclusion may be the absence of an employee's invitation to important meetings and, when the employee shows up, the simplicity or debasement of the employee's importance by jokes or by ignoring (sometimes ostentatiously) his activity at the meeting.

A victim of bullying may also be physically separated from other co-workers by pointing out another remote workplace.

What are the motives for bullying?

There are a number of reasons why employers are bullied: it is commonly believed that the bully is simply despotic, that he derives satisfaction from domination; and that other employees may join the bully out of fear or to improve their rating.

Nowadays, people with despotic tendencies do not gain sympathy and are often eliminated from corporate communities.

Many researchers believe that jealousy is the most common cause of bullying today, especially in professional settings where all qualifications are acquired

Mobbing degradation of subordinates

Most managers think that bullying is basically harassing employees, using verbal persuasion and coercing them into some degrading behavior.

The leader, being jealous of the attributes of his subordinate, tries to take him out of his team.

In this case, the bully must act very gently and cleverly so that the other employees do not know his intentions.

It's much easier to bully someone whose level of competence or effectiveness is well below the average team, and it's much easier for a supervisor to gain acceptance and understanding from his subordinates when bullying an incompetent co-worker, but that doesn't reduce liability for the offence against another person.

Selection of the target

The target of bullying can be a person who is distinctive, such as their skin color, religion or sexual orientation, or a person who is not a member of the group and who cooperates well with the group.

Such individuals often limit the authority of the official leader, making themselves an obvious target.

Negative effects of mobbing

The effects of bullying can be both devastating to the victims and damaging to the morale of other employees and, as a result, damaging the reputation and profitability of the company. An employee who is subjected to team removal and depression loses faith in himself and his competencies.

The worker's value system is distorted and productivity decreases significantly, and if the worker has experience and well-founded principles, he begins to read the situation correctly after a while.

Liability of the mobber

Primitive bullying involving physical violence or public defilement of subordinates is unacceptable and widely condemned, and is therefore relatively rare.

And the kind of bullying that involves alienation is hard to identify, and we don't know if the manager deliberately didn't invite an employee to a meeting, or if that person deliberately left the meeting to demonstrate something to everyone.

Often, in the eyes of other workers, this situation is identified as a relationship between two equal persons, so this type of bullying is socially acceptable in a sense, and there is a possible lack of awareness among subordinates and supervisors that the activities carried out are de facto bullying.

Mobbing involving the removal of an employee from the team is a severely punishable offence, an act of abuse of power that directly leads to the suffering of another person, and is therefore highly immoral and destructive of the team.

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Wojciech Moszczyński — graduate of the Department of Econometrics and Statistics of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń; specialist in econometrics, finance, data science, and management accounting. He specializes in the optimization of production and logistics processes. He conducts research in the area of the development and application of artificial intelligence. For years he has been engaged in the popularization of machine learning and data science in business environments.