Corrosive Leadership (Or Bullying by Another Name): A Corollary of the Corporatised Academy?

...While the bullying phenomenon does not lend itself to ‘robust conclusions with regard to causality’, I have postulated that the reason why the incidence of bullying in universities is becoming more pronounced may be correlated with the move to corporatisation. The perception on the part of managers that they are the new elite whose role is to increase productivity and maximise limited resources through constant surveillance and auditing has contributed to the normalisation of a corrosive form of leadership.

Di Martino suggests that we tackle the causes, rather than the effects of violence at work by developing a preventive, systemic and targeted approach. This is all very well in theory, but it would require rolling back the corporatist phenomenon and reinstating principles of collegiality to allow a range of voices to be heard. I am sceptical about such a rollback, at least in the short term. Not only is it apparent that governments are expecting universities themselves to assume greater responsibility for their operating costs, the new managerialism has created a class of powerful players with a substantial investment in its retention.

Thus, while initiatives, such as the development of codes of practice by occupational health and safety bodies and unions, are contributing to the emergence of a new public discourse, such codes are incapable of addressing the factors that have contributed to the political economy of the corporatist university. Educative and prophylactic measures are highly desirable, but they can go only so far in an unstable and uncertain climate, where students are customers and academics are productive units, whose value is assessed primarily in terms of the competitive dollars they generate. Powerful line managers, whose role it is to exhort greater productivity from these unruly units, have made themselves indispensable in the transformation of universities as producers and facilitators of the new economy. Hence, the corporatised university, with its over-zealous managerialism, competition for resources and eviscerated notion of academic freedom, is likely to represent an ongoing source of grievance about workplace aggression.

A formal avenue of redress will have to be devised to placate this dissonance. However, rather than relying on a traditional model of linear causality, which focuses on linking ‘victim’ and wrongdoer, a new remedial model would be better off addressing the political environment that has engendered the harm. A single-minded focus on psychopathic managers absolves corporations, including universities, from responsibility for the fear, the insecurity and the relentless pressure to be evermore productive that the market message induces.

From: Corrosive Leadership (Or Bullying by Another Name): A Corollary of the Corporatised Academy? By Margaret Thornton, La Trobe University, Australia.

Not offering mediation...

Anonymous said...

My former employer encouraged my wife to accept mediation with her line manager who'd wrongly written a defamatory job reference for her, while refusing to afford me the courtesy of mediation with my line manager who had severely bullied and harrassed me to the point where I became ill with PTSD. Just goes to show the double standards that can be employed by academic institutions when it comes to trying to get employees in conflict to work out their differences.

It's good to see that Tribunals are wise to this nonsense and that they are starting to hold accountable employers who fail to take bona fide actions to bring employees together in a spirit of reconcilliation and cooperation.

My former employer is going to have some tall explaining to do about why they refused to afford mediation to me and instead sacked me.

Unfairly dismissed after bullying claim

Thornett v. Scope: unfairly dismissed after bullying claim
10 January 2007 - case report

Thornett v. Scope: [2006] EWCA Civ 1600

CA: Pill, Laws and Gage LJJ: 27 November 2006

The claimant worked for the employers in a managerial capacity. Following a complaint by a colleague who alleged that the claimant had been bullying and harassing him, the employers made a finding of unsatisfactory conduct against the claimant and gave her a final written warning. The claimant, who did not accept that the finding was correct, made it clear that she thought it would be very difficult for her to continue to work with the colleague who had made the complaint. The difficulties between the claimant and her colleague were not resolved and ultimately the claimant was dismissed.

The claimant's complaint of unfair dismissal was upheld by the Employment Tribunal which found that a reasonable employer would have taken further steps to encourage the parties to work together.

In assessing the amount of the compensatory award under section 123(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 the tribunal considered how long the employment relationship would have lasted if the employers had encouraged the parties to work together. The tribunal acknowledged that without hearing evidence from the claimant's colleague it was a highly speculative matter but found that the best assessment it could make was that the claimant's employment would only have lasted a further six months. It accordingly held that the loss suffered by the claimant as a result of the employers' fault was limited to her earnings during that period.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal allowed the claimant's appeal against the amount of the award, finding that there had been insufficient evidence to entitle the tribunal to speculate as to the duration of the employment relationship and that it should not, therefore, have placed any limitation on her lost earnings.

The employers appealed.

The Court of Appeal held:

An Employment Tribunal's task, when deciding under section 123(1) of the 1996 Act what compensation was just and equitable for future loss of earnings, would almost inevitably involve a consideration of uncertainties and the presence of a need to speculate did not disqualify a tribunal from carrying out its duty under that section.

Although there might be cases in which evidence to the contrary was so sparse that a tribunal should approach the question on the basis that loss of earnings in the employment would have continued indefinitely, where there was evidence that it might not have been so, that evidence must be taken into account. There had been evidence before the Employment Tribunal which created a risk that the employment would not have continued indefinitely and the tribunal had been right to take that evidence into account, but the reasons for the tribunal's finding that the employment would have continued for six months had not been sufficiently stated in its determination. Accordingly, the case would be remitted to the tribunal for the compensatory award to be reassessed.

The appeal was allowed.

Stress is...

Stress is not the employee's inability to cope with excessive workload or the unwelcome attentions of bullying co-workers and managers; stress is a consequence of the employer's failure to provide a safe system of work as required by the UK Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

From: http://www.bullyonline.org/stress/index.htm

The Institute of Education - University of London, is awarded 'Divestors of People' standard

The Institute of Education - University of London, is awarded 'Divestors of People' standard. For more info check the Hall of Shame.

Some of the criteria the Institute meets, are: Staff are demorilised, de-skilled or demoted. The working environment is toxic. The working environment shows high levels of work-related stress. Staff report high levels of bullying and harassment by managers. Fear prevails among the silent majority.

Do you see the problem?

The 2004 Guide for Members of Higher Education Governing Bodies, produced by the Committee of University Chairmen, states that:

The Visitor

Most pre-1992 HEIs have a Visitor. The office is usually referred to specifically in the charter and statutes, stipulating who is to hold the office, but if the charter and statutes are silent, then the Visitor is the Crown. The Crown has various legal manifestations (such as the Queen in Council, the Sovereign acting through the Lord President of the Council, or simply the Queen), and the procedures to be adopted will vary with the formulation. Other Visitors may, for example, be judicial or ecclesiastical office holders.

The role of the Visitor is now restricted largely to carrying the ultimate responsibility for determining the institution's internal legislative provisions, i.e. the charter and statutes. The jurisdiction of the Visitor is laid down by common law and by Act of Parliament. The jurisdiction no longer extends to employment matters; but where there is jurisdiction it is exclusive, that is the ordinary courts have nojurisdiction (except by way of judicial review if the Visitor acts unlawfully). The jurisdiction of the Visitor in respect of determining complaints from students and other members of the HEI (excluding those relating to employment matters) was removed formally in the Higher Education Act 2004. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) has been granted authority to act in this respect. These arrangements also apply to the post-1992 HEIs, subject to the final approval of the governing body.
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The question: OK so the Visitor is replaced by The Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) for Higher Education. However, when one visits the web page for the OIA it only describes how students can complain and not staff. Everybody knows this.

A phone call to Universities UK confirmed that post 1992 HEIs only have in place their own internal procedures and no independent external review body or mechanism such as the Visitor. Do you see the problem?

Henry Kessinger

Anonymous said...

A head of division at a less than reputable welsh university wrote the following about an Arab member of staff;

"There is not enough body armour on e-bay!" The head of division then signs as "Henry Kessinger".

An example of what one can obtain via a subject access request.

Anonymous said...

That head of division is Malcom Thomas.

Exploits of a Welsh UCU officer

Anonymous said:

Exploits of a Welsh UCU officer, whom I contacted for 'help', 'support', and 'advice'.

After submitting my resignation due to repeated violations of my rights at work, this Welsh UCU officer sent an e-mail to the head of the human resources raising doubts about the quality of the work that I was to deliver in the remaining period of my employment "Can we guarantee that the work that he will submit will be as good as...? " Note how the Welsh UCU officer refers to himself and the HR manager by "We".

In another email, he discloses confidential information about my complaint to an external organisation. He tells the head of human resources in a surprised tone, "he already contacted someone external!" and "the last thing we want is another race discrimination case in the press".

Is there a possibility of closing the Welsh UCU offices or of preventing UCU from scamming members again.

The University of London is awarded 'Divestors of People' standard

The University of London is awarded 'Divestors of People' standard. For more info check the Hall of Shame.

Information on workplace bullying at University of London is at this stage confidential due to pending action and reaction... but the award is well-deserved. Despite a stated zero tolerance policy towards workplace bullying, the latter is well-entrenched across a number of departments and is exercised by a number of senior personnel.

Dealing With Bullies

...Some difficult people are merely minor irritants: Others learn to avoid them as much as possible, and the overall working environment is not badly compromised. But a person who targets others, makes threats (direct or indirect), insists on his or her own way all the time, or has such a hair-trigger temper that colleagues walk on eggshells to avoid setting it off, can paralyze a department. In the worst cases, this conduct can create massive dysfunction as the department finds itself unable to hold meetings, make hiring decisions, recruit new members, or retain valued ones. When I first got involved in helping department heads cope with such people, my colleagues and I used concepts and approaches we gleaned from studies of bullies.

The bullies I have encountered in the academic environment come in many forms, from those who present themselves as victims, all the way to classic aggressors who rely on physical intimidation. In academe and other settings populated by “knowledge workers,” one often encounters other kinds of bullies as well, including “memo bullies” (who send regular missives to a long mailing list) and “insult bullies” (destructive verbal aggressors).

Whatever their approaches, bullies are people who are willing to cross the boundaries of civilized behavior that inhibit others. They value the rewards brought by aggression and generally lack guilt, believing their victims provoked the attacks and deserve the consequences. Their behavior prompts others to avoid them, which means that, in the workplace, bullies are likely to become effectively unsupervised. I’ve seen secretaries, faculty members, and businesspeople who were so unpleasant to deal with that they were neither given the same duties as others in their environment nor held accountable for the duties they did hold.

Aggressor bullies fit the usual idea of a bully: They threaten to beat you up if you don’t give them your lunch money. Victim bullies, in contrast, demand your lunch money because of some harm they claim you’ve done to them.

While many workplaces have bullies, institutions of higher education may be especially vulnerable to them because of some of the distinctive characteristics of academe. First, bullies flourish in the decentralized structure of universities: the isolation of so many microclimates, from laboratories to small departments, creates many opportunities for a bully to run roughshod over colleagues. Then too, the bullies of academe typically manipulate the concepts of academic freedom and collegiality with flair. The propensity of bullies to misuse these central academic concepts only adds to the importance of being well grounded in those concepts yourself. If you have a firm understanding of what academic freedom is and what it is not, you’ll be better prepared to cope with those who try to distort the concept for their own ends.

Another reason people in academe are generally unprepared to deal with bullies is that bullies are relatively rare. They are what is known as “low-incidence, high-severity” problems: one in which the problems don’t arise very often, but when they do they are so serious that they can threaten the integrity of the environment.

For prevention of bullying, creating and maintaining an environment in which respectful professional interactions are expected and reinforced is the most powerful approach.

When unprofessional or uncivil conduct occurs in the work-place, it’s important to nip it in the bud. The tone of your response should be nonconfrontational: “Oh, I’m sorry, maybe we forgot to tell you that we don’t act that way here.” Dealing with the problem head-on and promptly is critical. If someone is verbally abusive to staff or threatens physical violence, the appropriate penalty must be imposed. Any other response only erodes the trust of those who work hard to do the right thing. Similarly, ignoring or tolerating inappropriate conduct in the workplace sends the message that the way to prosper is to misbehave...

By C.K. Gunsalus, from: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/30/gunsalus