Look at the culture of your organisation

It's important to make sure that your business, through its culture and management team, is not cultivating an environment where bullying can flourish.

Experts agree that bullying thrives where it is common behaviour across the management team. This can be particularly common in highly competitive environments, where managers may see bullying as the accepted method of motivating staff. [Or as a method/tactic to disguise their incompetence]

If you're seeing multiple cases of bullying in your business, you need to look carefully at management styles. A lack of respect and poor management skills are often a central theme in environments where bullying is common.

Look out for the following traits in management and tackle them [Tackle them? Self-policing does not work in universities]:

• An authoritarian style of management.
• Failure to address previous incidences of bullying.
• Unrealistic targets or deadlines.
• Inappropriate performance management systems.
  

From: http://www.yourpeoplemanager.com/