Daphne Project: “Raising awareness on women victims of mobbing”

The Italian contribution

Raising Awareness On Women Victims Of Mobbing

The Italian Contribution

Elena Ferrari

July 2004

DAPHNE PROGRAMME

EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Preventive Measures to Fight Violence Against Children,

Young People and Women

The Italian contribution

INTRODUCTION

1. DEFINITIONS REVIEW

2. DIFFERENT KINDS OF MOBBING

3. PHASES OF MOBBING

4. THE CAUSES OF MOBBING

4.1 Subjective causes

4.1.1 Stress

4.1.2 The conflict

4.2 Objective causes

4.2.1 Cultural approach (Harald Ege)

4.2.2 “Organisational violence” approach (McCarthy 1995)

5. EFFECTS OF MOBBING

5.1 On the victim

Mood alteration

Somatic disease

5.2 For the organisation

6. MOBBING IN ITALY

6.1 The sex of the victim

6.2 The age of the victim

7. THE ITALIAN LEGISLATION

7.1 Protection for the Court of Cassation

7.2 Protection for the Penal Court

7.3 Sentences on mobbing

8. LEGISLATION AND BILLS ON MOBBING

Conclusions......

Bibliografia

INTRODUCTION

Psychological violence is an ancient phenomenon that can be found in several working contexts; it happens because of critic interpersonal relationships or organisational disorders; it occurs all over the world, in every working context, even if it is a phenomenon strictly linked to the culture of every single country; consequently, the characteristics and the level of awareness can vary from country to country.

The final end is to make the victim harmless, to isolate or even expel or better compel him to resign; sometimes the pressure to oblige the person to resign is so strong as to have tragic consequences, even suicide.

This behaviour is linked to several factors including not only socio-economic reasons, but also discrimination based on gender, religion, race, age, nationality, disability, culture, sexual orientation and other forms of diversity. It is an aggression towards people that, for different reasons cannot be integrated because considered not homogeneous with the environment and the working climate. In the book “Sexual harassment”, Marie-France Hirigoyen has written that groups tend to level individuals and do not accept differences such as, for example, a woman in a group of men, a serious, intelligent and skilful person in a group of less endowed people, a person belonging to a different race, religion or working ethics, or with a diverse sexual orientation.

1. DEFINITIONS REVIEW

Etymologically, the term mobbing takes its origin from the Latin expression “mobile vulgus”, meaning “mob movement, plebeian fire”; in fact, the English noun mob indicates “crowd, disordered, tumultuous and violent multitude, rabble…..”, while the verb to mob means “to attack, assault, mistreat, assail”. The ethologist Konrad Lorenz added the suffix –ing in order to indicate a certain kind of animal behaviour (when a group of small birds attack a bigger bird to keep it away from their territory), so that the term has acquired an important metaphorical value to express, through the strong image of group assault and encirclement, the situation of psychological terror due to the victim isolation caused by general hostility.

In the 80s, the term has been adopted by the labour psychologist Heinz Leymann who applied it to a new disorder observed in some Swedish workers and employees who, while at work, were constantly submitted to a series of psychological diseases. From that moment on, mobbing is used to refer to any kind of violent behaviour occurring at work through actions, words, deeds, harassing texts, persecuting, intentional and prejudicial to the dignity values of human and professional personality, offending both the dignity and the mental and physical integrity of a person so much that the person risks to abandon the job, while the climate within the organisation worsens. However, since this is a recent phenomenon, there is not yet a universal terminology accepted all over the world. For example, in Norway, Japan and Anglo-Saxon countries, the word bullying is still used, while in France the most common expression is moral harassment.

There are still some difficulties in trying to find a definition for the word mobbing; in fact, in July 2001, Jan Andersonn, the speaker of the EU Commission for Employment and Social Affairs, declared: “It seems that there is not a generally accepted definition of mobbing, but there is a series of definitions established by sole researchers, organisations, national authorities, etc. Although they are often used to indicate the same phenomenon, these terms have peculiar aspects and show the cultural differences of the countries where they have been introduced”.

First of all, the term is confused with many other kinds of behaviour occurring in an office:

-Bullying: it refers to forms of psychological terrorism carried out not only at work, but also at school, at home, in prisons and in barracks; it means “to command on the subordinates by force and tyranny”; it is not necessarily intentional, it can be provoked by conflicts of personality and uncontrollable emotions and can also cause material violence on the victim resulting in physical damage, aggression and vandalism.

-Job harassment: term introduced by the French Marie-France Hirigoyen referring to a unique episode of sexual harassment or racial discrimination (actions punished by the law) at work committed on a single person, weak or at risk.

-Work abuse, bossing: it refers to a single action done by the organisation itself, the General or Human Resources Management, towards one or more employees, almost always trying to compel them to resign.

-Chronic Workplace Hostilities and Corporate Aggression (CWHCA), horizontal violence, macho management, victimisation, soft violence.

The word mobbing can be confused with many other terms indicating an offending behaviour towards weaker individuals.

According to Harald Ege, the word mobbing refers to a kind of psychological terror exerted at work by colleagues or superiors through an aggressive and offending behaviour. Casilli (2000) underlines the aim of such a behaviour and believes that mobbing is “a system of productive organisation of the human activity, characterised by a sequence of traumatic episodes connected with each other and aiming at weakening the psychological resistance and mental manipulation of the mobbed person”.

A definition strictly linked with the Italian situation has been formulated by a study group of the Italian Society for Labour Medicine and published as a “Consensus Document” (1, 2000) signed by the most important Labour Hospitals and many Italian doctors and academics. The definition they give is the following one: “Mobbing is commonly defined as a sort of harassment or psychological violence exerted almost always with damaging intentions, constantly repeated, in polymorphous ways; the persecuting action is carried out for a given period, lasting at least six months, on the basis of the first Swedish studies, but largely ranging in accordance with the kind of damage carried out and the individuals’ personality, the purpose or the consequence of the individual expulsion from his job. Concerning this, it seems more appropriate to talk about “individual threshold of resistance to psychological violence”, capable of inducing a condition of mobbing that can be explained with reference to:

  • violence intensity
  • time of exposition
  • personality traits

(R. Gigioni, M. Adinolfi, A. Bagaglio, D. Boccaletti, M. Cassetti, B. Della Pietra, C. Fanelli, E. Fattorini, D. Figlioli, A. Greco, A. Guizzaro, A. Labella, D. Mattei, M. Menegozzo, S. Menegozzo, R. Molinini, D. Musto, A. Paletti, F. Papalia, M. Quagliolo, F. Vinci, 2001).

In the definition and identification of mobbing, among the essential requisites (such as, for example, the occurrence of the episode within the working context), the duration of persecutions is the one that has undergone the greatest transformation, as shown in scientific studies.

Although essays on mobbing constantly refer to the temporal factor (a six month duration and a weekly frequency), defined by Leymann as the date phenomenon, it has gradually lost its scientific value and now it is no longer considered as an objectively valid parameter, but only a starting point for the studies on reiteration of the actions of mobbing. It is true that time can modify the mood and motivations of the person that could become the aggressor; nonetheless, this factor will always play a secondary role. Even if the situation can take on different facets (wrath, hatred, harassment, envy, violent persecution), this happens only because suddenly something changes in the executor’s mind so that the feelings and reasons at the origin of the quarrel change as well. And so the time of mobbing will be the time of the persecutory dynamics, including both the collection of proofs and the desire to stop as soon as possible such a tragic event for its psycho-physical consequences.

The moral violence is exerted through attacks against the worker, the work he has done, the position held and, finally, the worker status, by a single person, generally a superior, or, more rarely, by a group of colleagues.

The worker is constantly humiliated, offended, isolated and ridiculed, also for what concerns his private life, his work is depreciated, repeatedly criticised or even sabotaged, his role is degraded and his work deprived of contents and instruments (empty desk syndrome), his capacities questioned. Finally, he undergoes continuous sanctions, often pretexts, such as numerous checks on sick leaves, disciplinary punishments, transfers to distant offices, denial of permissions and/or holidays and transfers” (R. Gigioni, M. Adinolfi, A. Bagaglio, D. Boccaletti, M. Cassetti, B. Della Pietra, C. Fanelli, E. Fattorini, D. Figlioli, A. Greco, A. Guizzaro, A. Labella, D. Mattei, M. Menegozzo, S. Menegozzo, R. Molinini, D. Musto, A. Paletti, F. Papalia, M. Quagliolo, F. Vinci, 2001).

This kind of psychological terror is usually exerted through repeated attacks and can have various aspects: from the simple isolation to the diffusion of slanders, from continuous criticism to systematic persecutions, from the assignment of disqualifying tasks to unbearable tasks, from the constraint to actions and behaviour contrary to the subject’s ethics and beliefs, to the compromission of his reputation with clients and superiors; and, in worst cases, work sabotage and illegal actions.

Such violence aims at eliminating a person who is no longer necessary through psychological and social destruction, so that he is finally dismissed or induced to resign, as it happens in some business strategies carried out with this end.

Some definitions on mobbing appeared in recent Italian bills seem to be very interesting; in the regional law July 11th 2002, n. 16, for which the Constitutional Court has declared the constitutional illegitimacy, “mobbing refers to discriminatory or oppressive actions and behaviour prolonged for a long time, exerted towards public or private employees on behalf of the employer or of the superior or of other colleagues, characterised by a real sort of psychological persecution or moral violence”. Such actions and behaviour can consist of: “psychological pressures or harassment; repeated slanders; verbal ill-treatment and personal offences; threats or attitudes aiming at unjustly frightening or mortifying, even in a hidden or indirect way; unmotivated criticism or hostile attitudes; image delegitimation, even towards people not working within the same organisation; exclusion or unmotivated marginalization of the working activity or task emptying; assignment of exorbitant or excessive tasks, apt to provoke serious uneasiness for the worker’s physical and psychological conditions; assignment of degrading tasks if compared to the professional level owned; repeated and unmotivated hindrance to have access to news and information concerning training, qualification and follow-up initiatives; exasperated and excessive practise of control towards the worker apt to cause damage and uneasiness, oppressive actions connected with the worker’s private sphere represented by sexual, racial, linguistic and religious discrimination”.

The Ministry for the Civil Service Franco Frattini has constituted, by a ministerial Decree, a commission of experts in charge of identifying solutions to vexations at work. During the session of November 20th 2002, the Commission has unanimously approved the following definition of mobbing: “Actions, attitudes or behaviour of moral or psychological violence at work, systematically and regularly prolonged for a long time, causing a degrade in working conditions, apt to compromise the worker’s health, profession or dignity”.

2. DIFFERENT KINDS OF MOBBING

There are different kinds of mobbing (Ege 1997), depending on the manner of occurrence and on the intentionality.

Based on the manner of occurrence are:

  1. Vertical mobbing, exerted by superiors on an employee or, more rarely, by the employees on their superior. These two kinds of mobbing are generally referred to as down-up mobbing and up-down mobbing.
  2. In the down-up mobbing the mobber is in a lower position than the victim. This happens when the boss authority is not recognised by one or more employees. The victim is in total and devastating isolation and, since his opposers are numerous, he hardly succeeds in justifying himself. This kind of mobbing has very similar origins in various cultures. However, down-up mobbing rarely takes place; in Italy they represent less than 10%; in fact, if antipathy for the boss is a common phenomenon, anyway it is hardly shown.
  3. In the up-down mobbing the mobber is in an upper position than the victim: a manager, a shopwalker, a head clerk, and older colleague or with superior tasks. This kind of mobbing includes attitudes and actions referable to power abuse, that is excessive, arbitrary or illicit use of the power a particular role implies.
  4. Peer or horizontal mobbing: colleagues aggressions against a colleague. The mobber and the victim are at the same level: two colleagues with equal tasks and possibilities. Normally, envy, gossips, conflicts, rivalries and personal antipathies among colleagues are more aggressive and emotionally involving than those between superiors and employees. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that the stake is represented by informal rather than formal power and this implies a series of factors linked to sensibility and personal perception. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider the national context too, where not only is it difficult to find a job, but there is also a lack of transparency in the access to work and career development, so that competition rises, the relationships among colleagues become difficult and mobbing is likely to happen.

Intentional mobbing is characterised by:

  1. Bossing or strategic mobbing: it is an organised psychological persecution. The organisation, or part of the management devises a behaviour aiming at compelling the person to resign (almost always towards managers or workers occupying an elevated or specific position). It is a kind of mobbing strategically used by organisations in order to dismiss undesirable subjects. They can be subjects belonging to the previous management or assigned to a department that is to be eliminated, or they are too expensive (a senior costs more than two newly employed people) or no longer corresponding to the expectations of the organisation. It often takes place in those enterprises whose staff, after a restructuring, a merger or a change, is redundant and needs to be partially dismissed. Thus, mobbing becomes a real business strategy, with normality and ineluctability traits. The strategy of expulsion takes shape in the intention of the direct superior and aims at throwing the individual out of the working process. The purpose is that of isolating the person considered as a threat or a danger, hinder his career, deprive him of the power he owns, make him harmless. In bossing, the mobber and the victim’s social competence and personality traits play a decisively important role.
  2. Emotional or relational mobbing: it is linked to interpersonal relationships and to the rise, within these relationships, of feelings of envy, jealousy, competition, hatred, resentment, etc.

A very peculiar kind of mobbing is the sexual one. Women can often have to face cases of sexual harassment caused by the mobber. Sexual harassment itself is not a category of mobbing; it becomes mobbing when the denials of the victims are followed by threats (Serena De Mari and Alessandra Mattiola, Researcher for SICIS). Sexual harassment is only partially considered as mobbing when the aggressor, after being refused, threatens the victim, thus becoming a mobber (Ege 1997). This is sexual mobbing.

Sexual harassment can work as the preparatory phase to sexual mobbing, where mobbing is the retort, the revenge of the person refused. Sexual mobbing can also take place without a preceding harassing situation; in fact, a mobber can decide to use sexual strategies even if he does not feel any sexual attraction for the victim: slander, gossips on the victim’s sexual habits. For the victim, sexual mobbing is devastating because sexual identity has a fundamental importance in defining a person’s social image.

An Italian phenomenon is the so-called doublemobbing, where the role of the traditional Italian family in our society emerges. Indeed, in Italy there is a strong link between the individual and the family that actively participates in the social definition of its members. This link, typical of the Mediterranean area, is not to be found in Northern European countries.

Double mobbing, which takes place when the destructive energy the victim has poured on the family reaches such a level as to saturate the family’s reserves. The Latin family, protective and generous, suddenly changes its attitude, stops supporting the victim and starts protecting itself against the destructive force of mobbing. In fact, the victim has become a threat to the integrity and health of the family that now thinks first of protecting itself and then of counter-attacking. This is double mobbing: the mobbed person loses the support of the family and is completely isolated. This is the worst moment because the victim feels absolutely abandoned by everybody.

This process can often cause separations or divorces within the families of the “mobbed”; there are families in which the person who loses his job, also loses the possibility of a relationship outside the family.

Another strategy of mobbing existing in Italy, but not in other cultures, is “indirect” mobbing, that is the use, on the part of the mobber, of tools to annoy the victim. There are no scientific data to show the diffusion of the phenomenon in Italy that only emerges from the experience of Harald Ege in our country. The mobber uses something, sometimes a habit, sometimes an instrument for attacking the victim. In this way, his action appears as less straightforward, but can cause serious damage to the victim’s health.

The mobber’s advantage is that he does not appear in his role of aggressor and so he can pretend he is extraneous. The victim cannot identified the origin of the aggression, in some cases he is not even able to perceive that it is an intentional action. The Italian mobber is likely to use the indirect method to keep a good level of clearness. In fact, in Mediterranean cultures, disputes are characterised by a high level of emotional involvement. Probably, in order to avoid an open fight, the Italian mobber uses an instrument of mobbing so that he can keep the situation under control. When the victim understands who the real culprit is, it often is too late to find allies or take measures. The most frequently used instruments to make working conditions unbearable are: smoke, stereo and air conditioning.