Changes in the university associated with the reform of higher professional education are exacerbating the socio-psychological situation in departments. Changing working conditions require teachers to exert their adaptive capacity to maintain their usual quality of life. Adaptation can occur in a destructive form of behavior, known as “mobbing”. There are two types of mobbing: vertical — “bossing”, when psychological pressure comes from the boss; horizontal — when psychological terror comes from colleagues. Bossing is accompanied by creating groups at the department and engaging in psychological pressure on employees and other team members. The organizational and personal causes of origin and development, as well as possible ways to stop mobbing, are analyzed.
Russia is reforming higher professional education (VPO) and is moving to a two-tier training system. The need for reform is dictated by changes in the socio-economic reality, the labor market, the demand for university graduates, and new requirements for their professional competencies [Druzhilov, 2010a]. The reform of the VPO that has begun coincided, on the one hand, with the economic crisis in the country, and, on the other hand, with a demographic “hole” that is leading to a decrease in the number of applicants in the coming years. The upcoming changes associated with changes in the status of an educational institution and its financing, the upcoming structural changes and, as a result, the threat of reducing teachers are all objective prerequisites for the aggravation of the socio-psychological situation in departments.
The subject of the article is the problem of mental pressure on the staff of the university department. We believe that the department has traditionally been the basic unit of Russian higher education as the main unit of educational and research activities.
In the context of the VPO reform, some department teachers are afraid of losing their jobs and are trying to hold on and even make a career in any way, including by ousting colleagues. Attacks and harassment by management and colleagues have been known as a phenomenon for a long time, but they were identified as a psychological problem at the end of the last century and are called “mobbing”.
Due to objective circumstances, most departments have a situation where there is an older generation, usually “reserved” teachers, there is a younger generation where the percentage of “graduation” is much lower, and there is practically no middle generation [Druzhilov, 2010c]. According to statistics provided by D.R. Yusipova [Yusipova, 2008], in the departments of Russian universities, every second associate professor (53.3%) is over 50 years old; and every second professor (56.8%) is over 60 years old. We know of graduating departments where the average age of teachers with an academic degree is 66 years; “non-graduate” teachers with more than 20 years of experience are 64 years; the younger generation of teachers without a degree (about 30%) has an average age of 28 years.
Changing working conditions at the department require teachers to exert their adaptive potential to maintain their usual quality of life [Medvedev, 2003]. A destructive form of such adaptation is mobbing — psychological violence (or, as some researchers call it [Leymann, 1997; Romanova, 2006; Kolodey, 2007; Solovyov, 2009], psychoterror), which targets work colleagues. Mobbing appears in the form of various forms of aggressive behavior. Researchers note that the increase in aggressive behavior, violence and terror (including psychological) is due to major and drastic social changes and related violations of the traditional organization of society [Enikolopov, 2004]. In a workforce that is going through such changes as a crisis, employees are experiencing social and psychological differentiation and the emergence of polar-motivated subgroups. These negative processes are aggravated by the unfavorable organization of work, the insufficient managerial competence of the head of the department and the low efficiency of university management.
The term “mobbing” is used when it comes to harassment, humiliation and harassment of a person in a work team. Mobbing (from the English verb to mob — to be rude, attack in a crowd, in a flock, to poison) is a form of psychological violence in the form of bullying an employee in a team with a view to his subsequent dismissal. Mobbing appears in the form of psychological harassment of an employee that occurs for a long time and includes negative statements, unreasonable criticism of the employee, social isolation, dissemination of deliberately false information about the employee, etc. [Kolodey, 2007]. The goal of mobbing is to bring the employee out of psychological balance. In the ordinary mind, this is called “rotting” a person.
The term “mobbing” was introduced in 1963. K. Lorenz (Lorenz K.). He called mobbing the phenomenon of a group attack by several small animals against a larger enemy [Lorenz, 1963]. The term became famous among researchers after the publication in 1972 of a work by the Swedish physician P.Heinemann, who compared the violent behavior of children towards their peers with the aggressive behavior of animals and called it mobbing (quoted in [Kolodey, 2007, p. 17]). In its modern sense, the term was first used by the Swedish researcher of labor psychology H. Leymann (Leymann H.), who studied the characteristics of people's behavior in a team in the early 80s of the 20th century [Leymann, 1996]. H. Leimann called this phenomenon mobbing and described it as “psychological terror”, which involves the systematic hostile and unethical attitude of one or more people against another person. The manifestation of mobbing in society is based on the opposition between “friends” and “foes” in the struggle for various resources. Noa Davenport, professor at Iowa State University and expert in conflict management, with co-authors Rut Schwartz and Gail Elliott, in her book Mobbing: Emotional Abuse at the U.S. Workplace, examined the emergence and dynamics of this phenomenon, its consequences for participants and damage to the firm, as well as possible ways to prevent it [Davenport, Schwartz, Elliott, 1999].
In Russia, studies of this phenomenon were actually begun by geneticist V.P. Efroimson (1908—1989), who, in his works on the “pedigree of altruism”, wrote about so-called unethical competition, referring to acute relations among genetic scientists. For this, the scientist, who was not afraid to write letters to Stalin denouncing T.D. Lysenko, was persecuted by Academician N.P. Dubinin (1907—1988). According to scientific historian V.V. Babkov, only a direct instruction (“shout”) from the CPSU Central Committee [Babkov, 2008] stopped the persecution of V.P. Efroimson, and the idea of a “pedigree of altruism” became widely known abroad.
The phenomena of mobbing (and bossing) are widespread in countries with significant intellectual potential, such as Russia, the USA, France, Sweden, and Germany. Due to its relevance, the topic of studying mobbing and bossing as psychological phenomena has become widespread all over the world. In modern Russia, the first publications on mobbing appeared on the border of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries [Kryazhev, 1997; Altukhova, 1998; Rekosh, 2002; Skavitin, 2004]. In 2002, mobbing as a social phenomenon was introduced as an academic topic in the second edition of the textbook for universities “Personnel Management” [Personnel Management, 2002]. Russian readers had the opportunity to get acquainted with a more detailed analysis of the problem of mobbing after the translation into Russian of the book “Mobbing: When Work Becomes Hell” by German researchers Linda Waniorek (Linda Waniorek, Axel Waniorek), published in Munich in 1994. [Vaniorek, 1996], followed by Christa Kolodej, a book by Christa Kolodej, an Austrian specialist in work and organizational psychology, published in Vienna in 1999. [Kolodey, 2007]. In the same year, Chita University published N.P. Romanova's textbook “Mobbing”, which collected and summarized data published so far on the Russian-language Internet — Runet (more than 20 sources) [Romanova, 2007].
Not only has mobbing become a well-known word in Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, but in order to address the problem of mobbing by law, several countries have adopted new laws that prevent this phenomenon and protect and ensure the safety of employees at work, including the emotional component of health at work. For example, in 1993. The Swedish National Occupational Safety Authority has adopted a provision on workplace harassment for mobbing. Article 26 of Part I of the European Social Charter, revised in Strasbourg in 1996 and entered into force on July 1, 1999, states that “all employees have the right to protection of their dignity during their work” (quoted in [Kiselyov, 1999, p. 652]). The Council of Europe (CE) underlines the duty of CE Member States to contribute to the prevention of bullying, clearly hostile and offensive actions directed against individual employees at their workplace or in connection with their work, and to take the necessary measures to protect employees from such behaviour.
In modern Russia, this socio-psychological phenomenon is little known, as citizens who have been subjected to moral persecution try not to publicize what happened to them at their workplace. Companies or organizations of other legal forms also do not advertise cases of mobbing. Cases of mobbing in the civil service are not publicized so as not to discredit this system. This situation is partly due to the fact that there is a risk of mobbing spreading as a viral disease. But turning a blind eye to the phenomenon of mobbing does society not get rid of it; on the contrary, its spread is expanding and requires the attention of specialists. However, it can be stated that the term “mobbing” is not yet known to the legislator, as otherwise it should have been reflected in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and other federal laws that regulate social and labor relations. Therefore, we consider it necessary to further consider the socio-psychological phenomenon of “mobbing” in more detail.
Traditionally, there are two types of mobbing: 1) vertical — “bossing” (from English boss — boss), when psychological terror against an employee comes from the boss; 2) horizontal — when psychological terror comes from colleagues. In the Anglo-Saxon dialect, this concept is referred to as bullying (from English bullying — tyrant, mock, harass). It is noted that bossing aimed at one of the employees is accompanied by the creation of groups in the organization and the involvement of psychological pressure on the employee and other members of the organization [Kolodey, 2007].
Russian practice shows that in addition to the vertical and horizontal mobbing mentioned above, so-called institutional mobbing also takes place, which means moral harassment of employees using institutions such as personnel certification, qualification exams, and the consideration of official disputes [Solovyov, 2009]. With regard to the activities of department staff, potentially institutional mobbing may include primarily the competitive selection of teachers determined by the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, prior to the conclusion of a fixed-term employment contract with them.
In a situation of institutional reform carried out against the background of an economic crisis, enterprise administration often, independently or through loyal employees or heads of structural units, unleashes (or “does not notice”) psychological pressure against specific employees when there are insufficient legal grounds for their dismissal. For reforming universities, for which the economic crisis is exacerbated by the demographic “hole” and the problem of employing scientific and pedagogical personnel is becoming more acute, the institutional type of mobbing is becoming a reality.
An analysis of such situations suggests that here we can talk about instrumental aggression [Zaitsev, 2000] against employees, and at the same time this type of aggression is a means to achieve the goal pursued by the administration of an organization or institution. And the goal is to “squeeze” employees out of a specific structural unit or organization in which they work.
The seriousness of the mobbing problem is confirmed not only by its extent, but also by the severity of its consequences for humans. It is no coincidence that in the book Violence at Work, written by Duncan Chappell and Vittorio Di Martino and published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1998. (first edition of the book), mobbing is mentioned in the same way as murder, rape or robbery. The authors of the book argue that individual and group bullying and similar behaviors can cause just as serious harm as direct physical abuse. It is noted that the current instability of many types of jobs creates great tension at work, and therefore the use of such forms of violence is increasingly common [Chappell, Di Martino, 2006].
A study conducted in 2000 in the European Union (at that time, it included 15 countries) showed that harassment and intimidation had become common in this region. In 2002, researchers estimate that 800,000 employees in Germany became victims of group bullying (this is targeted psychological pressure on an employee by a group of colleagues). It is estimated that 22% of public administration employees in Spain are victims of this form of violence. In France, the number of acts of aggression against transport workers, including taxi drivers, increased to 3,051 in 2001 and to 3,185 in 2002 [Recosh, 2002; Skavitin, 2004; Romanova, 2007].
N. Davenport writes that “although mobbing and bossing may seem quite harmless compared to rape or other forms of physical abuse, the effect they have on the victim, especially if it lasts long enough, is so destructive that some people consider committing suicide” [Davenport, 2009].
Now, in the face of acute social and economic problems and continuous reformations in the organization and society, mobbing is becoming widespread in the post-Soviet space — in firm offices, libraries, etc.; relevant studies are being published [Yurik, 2009]. As N.P. Romanova notes, “domestic” mobbing differs from foreign mobbing. While in foreign companies, the most common form of psychological terror follows the scenario where the team finds a scapegoat and begins to “peck” at a colleague together, in Russia, on the contrary, vertical mobbing is much more common. The main reason for psychological pressure is the desire to fire an employee when there are no legal grounds for this [Romanova, 2007].
According to studies by the Swedish psychologist H. Leyman, mentioned above, mobbing is more common in education than in other areas of professional activity [Leyman, 1996]. Based on an analysis of publications related to the study of mobbing abroad, K.H. Recosh notes a number of its significant characteristics [Recosh, 2002]:
a) The duration of mobbing is from one to five years;
b) 30-50% of employees become victims of mobbing;
c) The prevalence of mobbing in education is twice as high as in other areas of activity;
d) in 90% of cases, moral harassment is initiated by the boss.
It is known that work for a person can be a source of satisfaction, self-esteem, social contacts, intellectual and emotional uplift caused by the result and process of work, as well as the social contacts that accompany it. But the same job can mean alienation, oppression, a constant struggle for existence; it can lead to frustration, illness, and even physical and mental illness. A synonym for all this is mobbing in its various forms (bossing, bullying).
Moreover, work and work not only provide a person with employment and a means of living, but also largely give meaning to life. Work is directly related to reality; it gives people confidence in the future. It determines social contacts outside the family circle, structures a person's work schedule, provides an opportunity to participate in achieving collective goals, and contributes to achieving status and personal identity.
Groups of people united in organizational structures have their own traditions, needs and values. Non-compliance with these elements causes conflicts and also creates systemic problems in the team, which are exacerbated by the reformations carried out in the organization.
Traditionally, after the published studies by H. Leyman, it is generally accepted that workers most often become victims of mobbing at the beginning of their professional career (young) and at the end of their professional career (over 60 years old) [Leymann, 1990].
A feature of mobbing at a university department is that a highly qualified teacher who shows his independence and “subjectivity” often becomes an object of mobbing. It is known that the independence of a labor subject is reflected not in performing activities, but in the creative way of carrying out activities, in the active manifestation by a person of their professional competence [Zeer, 2003; Yermolayeva, 2008]. An independent person in a team is self-sufficient, but they have more problems and find it more difficult to work successfully and live in the context of the expectations of the environment. Such a specialist is primarily subject to mobbing; he always has the first chance to be fired as an inconvenient, objectionable employee. Such a person is not without drawbacks, but unlike an “adaptable”, he is constantly developing and improving himself; he is extraordinary and differs from the “average” majority of employees in the production unit.
“Don't get out” (in front of the team), “don't be important” (more important than us), “don't think” (more than we are), “don't be smarter” (for example, a manager), “don't be better (all of us)” — such existential messages program an individual, group, or unit to choose an unproductive path of development.
For example, the department, whose corporate culture is characterized by these messages, has a teacher who is unusual in presenting material to students, has scientific or methodological activity, which is expressed in a greater number of scientific articles, textbooks, monographs, and public recognition than others, including the head. When the unit works steadily, the emerging hostility on the part of the department's management and teachers towards a highly productive colleague is latent, because it does not pose a real danger. At the same time, in a “stagnant” team, where the “psychological swamp” reigns, mobbing is very likely to occur in relation to this employee. At a critical stage in the organization's development, the department's management and colleagues begin to consider this employee “dangerous”, and such an employee may become the object of psychological harassment.
We will consider the situation common in universities when mobbing at the department is the result of bossing. In other words, mental pressure from the head of the department in relation to one (and then another, etc.) member acts as a trigger for horizontal mobbing and makes the department inoperable.
There are three main personal reasons for bossing [Kirilenko, 2008].
1. Bossing as a life style. For the sake of his ambitions, the manager sacrifices not only valuable employees, but also the interests of the university. Playing with subordinates like pawns is one of the oldest, most immoral and, unfortunately, the most fun. For such a boss, it's a matter of life to rule, to discord, to clash the interests of employees.
2. Bossing as compensation for your own insufficiency. Self-doubt, pathological suspicion that makes the boss see everyone as “enemies”, the habit of asserting themselves at the expense of subordinates. In this case, pressure from his side becomes the reason for horizontal mobbing.
3. Incompetence in the management field, in particular, an inefficient mechanism for communication with employees, the lack of a proven mechanism for resolving conflicts, the lack of skills in setting professional goals and correctly assessing their implementation.
The main goals of psychological pressure during bossing are the desire to fire an employee or, as N.P. Romanova figuratively put it, “organize “greyhound racing” between subordinates [Romanova, 2007, pp. 14—15]. In fact, this is producing a state of internal competition at the department with a struggle for “survival” by replacing the “victim” intended by the boss as a potentially dangerous competitor for many members of the department.
No matter how well-meaning the bossing boss may have in words, the only reason for this phenomenon lies within himself. Often this is a person with destructive changes and professional deformations. The boss develops a syndrome of “permissiveness”, which is expressed in violation of professional and ethical standards and in an attempt to manipulate the professional and sometimes personal lives of subordinates.
We consider bossing and mobbing as manifestations of professional destruction. Professional destructive activity is characterized by a focus on obtaining a result that is harmful from the point of view of society. This is the case when a person focuses on distorted (destructive) professional values. Accordingly, he sets destructive, socially unacceptable goals and uses destructive means to achieve them [Druzhilov, 2010b]. It is driven by a destructive orientation, examples of which include egocentrism, money-grubbing, nonconformism, focusing on immediate benefits, etc. Abraham H. Maslow refers to such deformations of the personal and semantic sphere as metapathologies, which in turn cause dysregulation of activity and lead to a “decrease in humanity” [Maslow, 1999].
The bossing organizer is guided by the principle: “The one we don't like should disappear” [Kolodey, 2007, p. 23]. In addition to eliminating potential competitors, particularly sophisticated methods of intimidating subordinates can be used to increase their authority. The employee's professional conditions are artificially changing, he is completely monitored in order to “catch” him, and he is forced to perform adaptive protective actions.
A.V. Solovyov cites an extensive list of well-known forms of vertical mobbing (bossing), let's name the main ones [Solovyov, 2009]:
— verbal aggression (provocative questions; false statements; doubts expressed about the employee's level of professionalism and competence; emotional attacks and threats; distrust of his arguments; baseless accusations of something, etc.). );
— constant discussion with the employee in order to demonstrate his superiority (rude and arrogant interruption of a subordinate; expressing disagreement before the employee has time to express his own idea, express a point of view, make an argument; perceiving only what can be used in any way against the employee; ignoring objective and reasonable arguments, etc.). );
— outbursts of anger accompanied by rude language that humiliate the employee's personality, provoke him to make mistakes or respond with incorrect behavior;
— a demonstrative refusal to continue discussing the problem together with the employee or in his presence;
— shortening the time required to complete assignments or deliberate slowness in making decisions related to tasks completed;
— intentional failure to provide the employee with complete and accurate information necessary to complete the assigned task;
— unjustified change in the employee's salary;
— moving the workplace in order to morally oppress the employee;
— deliberate dissemination of false information and rumors about the employee;
— illegitimate collegial review of employee behavior;
— consideration of fabricated complaints and reports that, for objective reasons, cannot lead to the imposition of a disciplinary sanction on an employee, etc.
To these forms of bossing, you can add a number of others that are typical for a higher education institution: scrupulous, nit-picking checking the completion of current reporting forms (the teacher's journal, individual plan, etc.), constant monitoring of classes in an attempt to “catch” the teacher if he leaves students a little earlier, etc.
During bossing, the “attacking” side seeks social support, so the team is stratified into groups on the grounds “like attracts like”. In the process of uniting into groups, employees are subjected to psychological pressure, blackmail, and are given distorted or false information about the problems and contradictions that have arisen. One group includes employees who currently support pressure on the victim. As a rule, these employees are “fed” by their boss from extra-budgetary funds at his disposal and receive other preferences in the form of “profitable” study load, internal part-time jobs, etc. They begin to engage in horizontal mobbing, i.e. psychologically “bullying” their colleague. These people have their own subjective reasons to consider the employee under pressure to be an “outsider” (even if he has worked with them for decades). The second group consists of employees who are targets (victims) of bossing and expanding mobbing. The third group includes employees who hold neutral positions.
For the boss, the point of confronting employees in intrigues is to separate them, prevent them from becoming a team of like-minded people, because this threatens the head of the department himself. While struggling with each other, the staff do not notice many of the department's problems. Sooner or later, even employees who are loyal to the victim get involved in the bullying started by the “boss”.
The boss sees constant pressure and accusations against subordinates as a means to maintain the so-called order in the department. The manager consciously chooses a “victim” for himself, while other employees, usually afraid of losing their jobs, become just tools in the hands of the boss. Researchers note that in such a situation, anyone who takes the victim's side (or simply tries to help her overcome the situation) puts himself at risk [Bazarov, 2006]. It is not surprising that no one is in a hurry to protect bossing victims.
There is an important feature of bossing at a university's academic department that makes it much more dangerous than bossing in other organizations or offices. This feature lies in the fact that students studying at the department are somehow included in the situation. And here, the forms of vertical mobbing described above are joined by discrediting persecuted teachers among students, spreading false information and rumors in their academic groups.
At the boss's suggestion, teachers are artificially divided into “evil” (demanding), who include the victim of mobbing, and “kind” (less demanding) from among the pursuers involved in mobbing. It is suggested that the latter can take tests, term papers, and exams in the academic discipline of a bossed teacher with less effort. Moreover, students are encouraged or even forced (with the involvement of administrative resources) to write complaints, memos, etc. against this teacher. As a result, students are being encouraged to do immoral things in the name of the boss's immediate benefits. It is difficult to blame the students — they are “forced” people, completely dependent on the head of the department and the dean's office, and they are well aware that their refusal to impose destructive “games” is fraught with the risk of leaving them without a diploma. But we must understand that the immorality of such student involvement will have very long-term and serious consequences both for young people and for the authority of the department and the university.
Senior and middle managers of the university often turn a blind eye to what is happening at the department. And some of the mid-level executives, “fed” by the head of the department from extra-budgetary funds, even find their own “interest” in this situation that has nothing to do with the university's tasks and use their administrative resources to support mobbers. It is no coincidence that S.A. Pakulina believes that “protracted mobbing in the teaching staff should be attributed to the professional destruction of management that is unable to reflect and focus on business, which leads to a variety of somato-occupational diseases of the parties involved” [Pakulina, B.G.].
Personal prerequisites fall into two types: prerequisites to be a victim and prerequisites to be an aggressor.
Among the factors determining the victim's position, I.V. Gulis highlights low professional competence, low level of assertiveness, silence, high level of responsibility and integrity, excessive diligence and diligence at work. The researcher emphasizes that the aggressor's behavior determines the vulnerability of self-esteem, the lack of social competence, and the prevalence of personal interests in the performance of official duties [Gulis, 2008].
There are not so many main “internal incentives” for mobbing: fear, envy, insufficiency. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions. A wary attitude appears in the team, which turns into an unconscious sense of danger posed by someone who is “not like everyone else”. This applies to both the head of the department and the staff.
A common reason for both vertical and horizontal mobbing is banal envy of a younger and more successful colleague. In many cases, the instigators of the bullying are elderly employees who are afraid of losing their jobs and therefore support the head of the department in the pressure he initiates. Envy can be seen as a form of aggression. There is always a comparison in envy: “An envious person interprets someone else's success as his own defeat, and not as a gain for the whole of which he is a part” [Muzdybayev, 1998, p. 88]. In Christianity, envy (Latin invidia) is considered one of the seven deadly sins. The ban on envy appears already in the Old Testament in the last of Moses' ten commandments.
Another reason for mobbing is idleness. This becomes possible in a “stagnant” atmosphere at the department, when the scientific and methodological activity of teachers and staff of the department is minimized. When people are busy carrying out educational, scientific, methodological and other tasks assigned to them, they do not need to waste time and effort on “undercover fuss” that results in psychological terror towards their colleague (or colleagues). And when employees are underloaded and, most importantly, are not focused on positive results in their work, they use their resources to mobbing: “If only their energy would be for peaceful purposes!”
One of the reasons that triggers the mobbing mechanism is the team's hidden internal tension for the time being. It arises for various reasons related to the organization of labor. This includes unclear strategies and goals, and the boss's different requirements for different employees, and the constant “shuffling” of the workload between teachers, and the lack of prospects for maintaining the teacher's academic discipline, and equalizing payment, regardless of scientific and pedagogical performance, etc. And as soon as one of the employees provokes some aggression against them, this one-time aggression, fueled by the accumulated general tension, overload grows into emotional bullying.
It is possible to identify the direct and indirect effects of mobbing. At the same time, the range of indirect manifestations of aggression during mobbing is broader. But in any case, mobbing, which is a manifestation of destructive behavior in the form of various types of aggression, harms both employees and organizations.
The mobbing team is slowly “rotting”. Employees are “losing their conscience”; against the background of deteriorating performance, self-esteem is critically rising. Mobbing does not unite the workforce, but the crowd; it helps people create the illusion of a sense of security. A team that does not reward the success of subordinates, creates unbearable conditions for their work, and does not develop. The team freezes in place, which causes talented and promising employees to leave and closes the way for possible innovations.
Possible consequences for objects (victims) of mobbing occur in the form of a nervous breakdown, mental trauma, physical illnesses due to prolonged stress, decreased self-esteem, and an inferiority complex. The moments spent by a full-time scapegoat in the office “whistle like bullets to his temple.” Every minute, the victim of bossing is waiting for a catch, a setup, an attack: from his immediate supervisor or from colleagues who are actively involved in “horizontal” mobbing.
According to foreign studies provided by I.V. Gulis, the direct impact of mobbing on its victims is reflected in the form of active and passive forms of behavior. Active forms of altered behavior include anger, rage, and irritation. Passive behaviors of a mobbing victim include the anxiety and depressive mood of the mobbing victim. Cognitive disorders, which are reflected in impaired concentration, stand out [Gulis, 2008].
The indirect (indirect) effect of mobbing on its victim is due to the deterioration of her mental and psychosomatic state. The deterioration of the psychological state is reflected in a decrease in self-esteem, life satisfaction, depression, and a decrease in emotional tone. At the psychosomatic level, the negative impact of mobbing is reflected in poor health and the onset of bodily diseases affecting various vital organs.
Due to the emergence of a mobbing situation (including one initiated by the boss), the department's problems will not be solved, but will worsen. As a result, not only the victim of mobbing, but also its initiators (pursuers) develop stress, depression, and poor health (and an attack requires a lot of mental and physical energy).
The consequences of mobbing are predictable, and not only for the target of bullying. It is well known that psychological harassment at work causes significant changes in work behavior, as it affects the health of employees. The organization itself is also suffering losses, because for the participants in the intrigue, work as such fades into the background.
At the level of professional activity of the scientific and pedagogical staff of the department, the following negative manifestations are noted: a decrease in work efficiency; a change in activities and values; evasion from duty or formal performance; the desire and intention to resign; increasing absenteeism and absenteeism (avoidance) from work without a valid reason; a decrease in commitment to the organization.
Once mobbing, which has been allowed to develop successfully, will metastasize. Mobbing is a sign of a sick body, a destructive attitude towards work and qualified personnel. This approach is doomed to fail. The value of any organization is human resources, and a university teacher can realize his potential only on favorable grounds when he “goes to work with pleasure”, and when he returns home, he is happy to develop teaching and program materials and write scientific articles. Ignoring the problems of bossing and the resulting mobbing is dangerous for the department (and for the university as a whole) because it develops a bad reputation: it's like a house with cockroaches when they're no longer out, so it's a shame to invite guests — and “it's time to start a fire”.
The scientific and pedagogical staff of the department is part of the university's scientific and pedagogical staff, and all activities in mobbing are evaluated by people not included in it. Thus, “others” are indirectly involved, and the real situation in the department is discussed in the broader professional environment of the entire university.
According to A.V. Skavitin, “if the workforce faces mobbing, this is a definite diagnosis with regard to personnel management” [Skavitin, 2004, p. 126]. And if mobbing is provoked and encouraged by the head of the department, who decides his own personal bossing, then the employer should think about the effectiveness of the organization's personnel policy.
Noah Davenport emphasizes that mobbing can only continue to exist as long as it is allowed. This means that industrial conflicts, which have taken the form of bossing and mobbing, should be resolved with the direct participation of the head of the organization. Management consulting specialists identify three possible options for the development of the management situation [Personnel Management, 2002]:
1) management ignores the existence of bossing and mobbing in university departments. Such ignoring is likely to lead to the last stage in the development of the workforce, referred to by L.I. Umansky as “spiders in the bank” [Umansky, 1975], when everyone wants to achieve their goal at the expense of everyone else. This is already a threatening stage in the breakup of the team; apart from “annoying” work, the members of such a team have nothing in common;
2) the university administration, while maintaining the “honor of the uniform”, supports the destructive behavior of the head of the department, which contributes to the further development of mobbing. Inadequate management actions will inevitably lead to a deterioration in the climate at the department, which does not contribute to the success of the university. In addition, the boss will feel “on horseback”, in the spotlight. Mobbing could become his second, if not his main, profession. A retrospective analysis of this boss's activities — when he headed other departments, usually shows that he has been bossing for many years;
3) the organization's management takes all measures to relieve and protect employees from bossing and the emergence of mobbing. Experts admit that this is quite a difficult task, as the “instigator” finds many arguments in favor. Nevertheless, there are a number of recommendations that allow the head of the university to prevent the situation, improve the moral and psychological climate and achieve a positive result (see, for example, [Bazarov, 2006]).
Some executives believe that mobbing is the same competition that only strengthens the team. They're very wrong. The consequences of mobbing are predictable, and not only for the target of bullying. It is well known that psychological harassment at work causes significant changes in work behavior, as it affects the health of employees. The organization itself is also suffering losses, because for the participants in the intrigue, work as such fades into the background. It is primarily the responsibility of managers to understand the importance of a healthy moral and psychological climate for the effective work of library staff. Therefore, their participation in resolving industrial conflicts is necessary — a competent manager will do everything possible to restore peace and stop unhealthy relations between employees.
At the same time, it is impossible not to take into account the ability of a professional to resist mobbing. We proceed from an understanding of professionalism as a systemic human quality [Druzhilov, 2011], considered as an individual, an individual, a subject of activity and an individuality. Professionalism as an integral feature that ensures high-quality and effective performance of activities in various conditions, including unfavorable ones, helps a person who has been the object of mobbing to overcome this situation with dignity. For a true professional working in any field of activity, including at a university department, the inner nature of his conscious activity always prevails over the outside. Researchers recognize that “the moral and psychological aspect of professionalism ensures the employee's willingness to take responsibility for their actions without referring to other people, circumstances, instructions, etc. The moral position of a professional as a psychological regulator acts almost automatically, at the level of a reflex that directly affects the quality of everyday professional decisions” [Psychology of Adaptation..., 2007, p. 384].
S.A. Pakulina, who is developing the concept of overcoming adaptation in her scientific works [Pakulina, 2010], comes to the conclusion that the success of overcoming adaptation is determined not so much by the availability of adaptive abilities as by the degree of productivity in their use and the activity of the individual as a subject of work and life in general. This is consistent with our developments related to an individual resource for human professional development [Druzhilov, 2006]. The individual resources available to a professional are used both to overcome the adverse effects of the professional environment “here and now” and to move to a new level of adaptability that contributes to further personal and professional development.
S.A. Pakulina also comes to a similar conclusion, considering overcoming adaptation in a mobbing environment as a process of self-realization in professional activities, regardless of the “hyper-pretentious” environment, in accordance with her views and beliefs. The researcher notes that “the more alive” the object of professional influence, the more difficult it is for a manager to impose sanctions on him, therefore, he survives mobbing and maintains his personal integrity under its influence” [Pakulina, b.g.].
Thus, the psychological terror carried out at the university department in the form of mobbing will not have the effectiveness of the “coercive party” that it expects if the maturity of a person who has undergone mobbing is determined by such an integrative characteristic as professionalism. It is professionalism, as a core human quality, that can ensure the preservation of personal stability in the face of the harmful effects of the environment [Druzhilov, 2005], including mobbing. And for a true professional, his further progressive development is realized in any case: both if mobbing in an educational institution stops, with the intervention of the head of the university; and if a mobbed specialist is forced to leave the department, in the absence of the necessary measures from the manager. Well, they said that the consequences are predictable and of the same type, but it turns out that a real type of professional doesn't care. Obviously, the organization's losses will be higher in the second case.
The reform of the higher professional education system may trigger the emergence of mobbing in university departments. Preventing and minimizing the negative consequences of mobbing at the department is a complex task that requires both psychological support and timely and constructive management decisions. A person's professionalism as a systemic quality increases personal stability in a mobbing environment.
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English version: Druzhilov S.A. Psychological terror (mobbing) at a higher education institution department as a form of professional destruction
Siberian State Industrial University, Novokuznetsk, Russia
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