Although it is unfortunate, academia fosters a culture where workplace bullying can occur among organisational members. Workplace bullying refers to “repeated actions and practices that are directed against one or more workers, that are unwanted by the target, that may be carried out deliberately or unconsciously, but clearly cause humiliation, offence and distress, and that may interfere with work performance and/or cause an unpleasant working environment”…directed against one or more workers, that are unwanted by the target, that may be carried out deliberately or unconsciously, but clearly cause humiliation, offence and distress, and that may interfere with work performance and/or cause an unpleasant working environment”…
…bullying in academia (often out of jealousy for academic accomplishments) includes attacks on professional identity with terse conversations, harsh feedback, awkward looks, and avoidance and/or exclusion. These incidents make it more difficult to be a productive faculty member…
…bullying directed toward professional identity includes undermining professional competence, increasing administrative and teaching duties, reducing research and teaching resources, and excluding faculty from conversations or activities, among other forms…
bullying in academia most commonly involves threats to professional status and obstruction of job duties… academics bully through professional undermining by demeaning academic achievements and purposefully making academic work more difficult…
…faculty members are different than employees in other organizations because they may have academic freedom and thought (to say controversial things), are evaluated by their peers (who hold power over each other during peer review), and have more self-regulated job duties (that are not always structured in terms how teaching, research, and service requirements are met). All these factors change the potential power dynamics involved in workplace bullying…
The faculty’s unique organizational citizen status as free-thinking, autonomous actors with leadership of knowledge production as well as the research and education mission of the university, their power as evaluators, and their positioning and training as critics shapes faculty expression, what is considered by faculty (but perhaps not others!) as appropriate (normative or “reasonable”) conduct (and thus, what is not) and also the management of faculty conduct…
…the issue of academic bullying can be offset to some degree by a chairperson’s managerial decisions and communication practices with faculty. However, we recognise that chairpersons and other academic leaders are frequently cited by faculty as the sources of bullying themselves…
…our results indicated that for professors in departments where a chairperson provides less social support to faculty, having autonomous control over how job duties are completed also buffered against workplace bullying due to stress. It is important to note that even with low social support from a chair, as long as professors had high decision authority in completing their job duties, there were no indirect effects of job demands on bullying due to stress. But it is also important to note that for faculty with restricted decision authority and low supervisor social support, the indirect effect on bullying was present and strongest.
Although we would argue that supervisor social support is paramount, some chairs might not have the interpersonal disposition to be highly supportive. Other chairs may face legitimate time constraints that prevent them from providing each individual faculty member with the necessary immediate social support. Although the chair may be unable to provide the necessary support, chairs could likely improve faculty members’ well-being by allowing them to be more autonomous in their work…