Richard Sigurdson - Dean of Arts Blog, February 11, 2008
I was very glad to see CAUT President Greg Allain tackle the issue of workplace bullying in his column in the January issue of the CAUT Bulletin, which also includes an article featuring the work of Angelo Soares, a sociologist at the University of Quebec in Montreal who teaches courses on organizational behaviour. Indeed, so important is this subject, that Allain intends to write about it again in February and to follow up with a column in March on workplace mental health issues related to stress, much of which is caused by the bullying behaviour of faculty members towards their own colleagues.
The image of the bully that first comes to mind is of the big kid in the schoolyard who harasses, intimidates, teases or threatens the other kids. But of course, adults can be bullies too. Basically, people who exhibit openly hostile behaviour, who threaten or intimidate others to make themselves feel powerful, or who build themselves up by tearing others down are bullies. “Whatever their approaches,” as one expert says, “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.”
The Canadian Safety Council offers this profile of a workplace bully:
Adult bullies, like their schoolyard counterparts, tend to be insecure people with poor or non-existent social skills and little empathy. They turn this insecurity outwards, finding satisfaction in their ability to attack and diminish the capable people around them.
A workplace bully subjects the target to unjustified criticism and trivial fault-finding. In addition, he or she humiliates the target, especially in front of others, and ignores, overrules, isolates and excludes the target.
A CAUT workplace survey discovered that significant numbers of respondents among Canadian faculty members (as high as 45 percent) reported being on the receiving end of just these sorts of bullying behaviours, ranging from verbal abuse (“being sworn at, yelled at, subjected to negative comments or false accusations”), to rude and disrespectful treatment, to demeaning remarks about competence and having one’s opinions dismissed.
What is most troubling, as Allain makes clear, is that such behaviour is being directed at our faculty members primarily by co-workers, rather than by students or administrators. To be sure, students can bully their professors, and Heads or Deans or other administrators can bully their academic colleagues. But it can work the other way, too - students can feel bullied and oppressed by certain faculty members, and even administrators can find themselves on the wrong end of bullying behaviour from faculty (though administrators may tend to get little sympathy when this occurs, since facing abusive faculty members is regarded by many as simply “part of the job”).
In any event, bullying by co-workers appears to be a pervasive, and some would say a growing, source of trouble on university campuses. And this pattern is consistent with findings in the workforce generally. For instance, a Canadian survey on workplace violence found that subtle yet aggressive behaviours, such as harassment and bullying, are an escalating problem in the workplace. It was also noted that “physical violence” is most often reported from outside sources, such as customers, students and patients; “psychological violence” on the other hand is more often reported from co-workers within the organization.
Indisputably, then, workplace bullying is a problem of signal importance. And universities are certainly not immune to this scourge. On the contrary, academic workplaces are rife with bullies. Hence, I am glad to see CAUT take such a strong interest in this matter. I know that it is a topic with which faculty unions have much difficulty, since they are most adept at dealing with complaints faculty members have with actions by administrators or with defending faculty members who face complaints lodged against them by students. When it is the faculty members who are the bullies, and in cases of faculty versus faculty disputes more generally, faculty associations often have a difficult time confronting such unpleasantness. Indeed, Soares quotes one participant in a CAUT workshop for grievance officers as saying simply: “It’s a nightmare for unions.”
That bullying is so common in the academic workplace can be attributed to a number of factors. For one thing, bullies thrive in conditions where there is little direct supervision, or where the organizational structure is highly decentralized. Moreover, the culture of universities lends itself to a misplaced tolerance of bad behaviour. Part of this stems from a mistaken belief that "academic freedom" allows for any sort of strong talk in defence of one's point of view. However, experts such as Soares deny that any definition of academic freedom can include or justify bullying. “The right to academic freedom doesn’t imply a right to lack of respect or lack of social skills. We have the freedom to study, teach and publish,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I can mistreat my students. I don’t have the right to slap anyone because I have academic freedom. Nor do I have the right to humiliate, or talk in a way that is inappropriate in terms of respect or politeness.”
Nevertheless, as Allain points out, there continue to be a number of myths surrounding academic workplace bullying. He discusses two of them:
One contends that it’s all simply part of our intellectual debates. Although our jobs as academics require us to analyze and criticize, we’re not talking here about rational discourse or professional differences of opinion over theories and arguments. Some bullies will target just about everybody but many will single out a particular employee, or group of employees, and constantly, systematically belittle them, berate them, make fun of them, dismiss their opinions or their work, and attempt to isolate and exclude them by circulating malicious rumours and falsehoods about them....
Another myth dismisses the problem as a question of personality: the “bullyer” is simply a strong-minded person who is direct and wants to get things done. The “bullyee” happens to be a weak individual who is incapable of being assertive and who can’t take a joke or criticism. Workplace bullying, on the contrary, is not about personality clashes, but about a power relationship whereby the “bullyer” is intent on controlling and harming a particular person. It’s not about personal conflict but about organizational deficiency.
These are important points to keep in mind when discussing academic bullies. And again, I am heartened to see the leader of our national association of university teachers confront this matter head-on. It is a welcome initiative, and one that we should all take seriously.
Following his lead, I intend to focus some attention on this issue. My next three blog entries will look at the prevalence of bullying and other manifestations of incivility in academia. First, I want to write about a particular type of bully that is especially common among academics - the so-called “victim bully”. Second, I will introduce you to the term made popular by one of the best-selling management books of 2007 - The No Asshole Rule, written by Stanford business prof Robert Sutton. Finally, I will try to set out some ideas about what might be done about the inexplicably rude and uncollegial behaviour which plagues our academic community.
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