Workplace bullying and harassment in higher education institutions: A scoping review

...Competition, once one element of academic life, now interlaces with every aspect of the work environment as staff compete for funding, titles, recognition, resources, and citations... in the pursuit of the chimera of ‘excellence’. This ignores the fact that, as excellence is relative, most will not attain it, and being gendered, many will find it harder, even impossible, to prevail... Metrification and performativity are seen to have changed the academic labour process. Staff are now heavily dependent on the evaluation of their peers for promotion or academic management roles...which have proliferated in the service of managerialism. 

Such evaluations, claiming meritocratic processes, employ performance criteria that involve ‘subjective, often ambiguous, criteria, as evident in reviews of scholarly/intellectual contributions, department- and college-wide service, continuing growth, and community service. Few institutions have clear standards for judging such contributions and, instead, rely on general guidelines or descriptive criteria... Such judgments often lead to perceptions of distributive injustice, unfair treatment associated with outcomes and procedural injustice, and unfair treatment associated with the decision-making’ 

...The articulation and acceptance of the robust critique of ideas is acknowledged as an essential aspect of academic life, but one where the managerial, monetised environment driven by neoliberal values has raised the stakes considerably for ‘winners’ in the game of metrics and prestige indicators. This was seen to contribute to an increasingly harsh and punitive climate, where person-related belittlement and professional undermining are commonplace... incivility is tacitly accepted, assessment can be weaponised, fear can be employed in a way that can easily segue into bullying, and where ‘demonstrations of power are seen as reasonable and warranted if an individual is to succeed’... 

Indeed, a push against anti-incivility policies was identified in the interests of open criticism and the name of academic freedom... In this view, the critique of staff in the service of excellence and performativity should be permitted, even if uncivil. They observe a deliberate fuzzing of the boundaries between the vigorous criticism of output, intellectual work, or theoretical propositions, and abrasive behaviour, mockery, and humiliation...

Hodgins, M., Kane, R., Itzkovich, Y., & Fahie, D. (2024). Workplace bullying and harassment in higher education institutions: A scoping review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 21(9), 1173.