Workplace Bullying: Temporal Patterns

As noted last time, the behavior patterns that comprise part of the signature of bullying activity among children include (a) an actual and perceived power imbalance between perpetrator and target that favors the perpetrator, and (b) a pattern of bullying incidents repeated over a period of time. School bullying is far better understood than workplace bullying, in part, because school bullying is so much more open and visible. As one might expect, then, approaches to managing workplace bullying are often based on what we know about school bullying.

And that's where things get complicated, because school bullying and workplace bullying do differ. Last time I briefly explored their differences with respect to actual and perceived power imbalances between perpetrator and target. I now turn to temporal patterns. In what follows, I focus on workplaces that are engaged in what we broadly call knowledge work. Minor adjustments are necessary for other fields, such as construction, retail, agriculture, health care, food service, and more, but the observations here survive those adjustments.

Temporal patterns

Most definitions of school bullying, or more generally, bullying among children, require that incidents of bullying occur repeatedly over time. Such a requirement excludes much workplace bullying because of differences between the structures of school and workplace operations.

Differences in population stability

From the perspective of the aspiring school bully, the population of candidate targets is relatively stable. Within windows of time, subject to change only at defined intervals known as semesters or quarters, the pool of possible targets doesn't change much. Children are assigned to particular teachers and classes for periods ranging from a half year to a year or longer. And they attend the same school for one year to a half-dozen years or more. Moreover, changes of unit assignment tend to occur in synchrony across the entire school. The perpetrator who settles on a set of targets can be reasonably assured of access to those targets for a while.

Compared to children in schools, the population of candidate targets in the knowledge workplace changes relatively slowly, but continuously. There are fewer temporal boundaries that are observed organization-wide, and which serve as release dates when new people join, veterans move on, or people are transferred from unit to unit. Organization-wide vacation weeks, for the most part, do not exist. Perpetrators in search of candidate targets must search constantly. Nor can they be certain that the targets they have acquired will remain targets for long. This continuous "light churn" makes for difficulties as bullies seek to engage in repeated bullying of the same set of targets.

Differences in daily access to members of the population

Definitions of bullying that require that
it be repeated over time exclude much
workplace bullying because of differences
between the structures of school
operations and workplace operations

As if perpetrators of school bullying needed any further assistance, students in schools move from class to class in synchrony, giving perpetrators opportunities to locate targets easily for repeat incidents of bullying. The school day consists of periods of close supervision of children (class time) alternating with unstructured periods of almost zero supervision of children (time between classes or "recess"). School bullying tends to occur in these unstructured periods or before or after the school day. [CHOP 2025]

By comparison to school bullying, the population of potential targets for workplace bullies is more fluid. People join and leave the population at almost any time. This fluidity increases the difficulty bullies have when searching for new targets, because they can't easily separate the portions of the population they've already examined. Even worse for perpetrators, in most workplaces, periods of unstructured time are poorly defined. Although workplace meetings do generally start and end on the hour, many attend meetings virtually without leaving their own offices. Or they might attend meetings from elsewhere. Locating targets for repeat bullying sessions is thus more difficult for workplace bullies than it is for school bullies.

Last words

Maintaining a pattern of repetition of bullying incidents is easier for the school bully than it might be for the workplace bully. To require maintaining a pattern of repetition over a period of time as a critical element of the definition of workplace bullying is to exclude from the definition much behavior that is actually bullying. This doesn't make bullying less effective, but it does make bullying more difficult to measure accurately.

Definitions of workplace bullying that require a pattern of repeated incidents of bullying over a period of time are likely to exclude much of the actual bullying that occurs.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

Is a workplace bully targeting you? Do you know what to do to end the bullying? Workplace bullying is so widespread that a 2014 survey indicated that 27% of American workers have experienced bullying firsthand, that 21% have witnessed it, and that 72% are aware that bullying happens. Yet, there are few laws to protect workers from bullies, and bullying is not a crime in most jurisdictions. 101 Tips for Targets of Workplace Bullies is filled with the insights targets of bullying need to find a way to survive, and then to finally end the bullying. Also available at Apple's iTunes store! Just . Order Now!

Footnotes

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More articles on Workplace Bullying:

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The Costs of Threats

Threatening as a way of influencing others might work in the short term. But a pattern of using threats to gain compliance has long-term effects that can undermine your own efforts, corrode your relationships, and create an atmosphere of fear.

Responding to Threats: III

Workplace threats come in a variety of flavors. One class of threats is indirect. Threateners who use the indirect threats aim to evoke fear of consequences brought about not by the threatener, but by other parties. Indirect threats are indeed warnings, but not in the way you might think.

See No Bully, Hear No Bully

Supervisors of bullies sometimes are unaware of bullying activity in their organizations. Here's a collection of indicators for supervisors who suspect bullying but who haven't witnessed it directly.

See also Workplace Bullying and Workplace Bullying for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming April 30: On Planning in Plan-Hostile Environments: II

When we finally execute plans, we encounter obstacles. So we find workarounds or adjust the plans. But there are times when nothing we try gets us back on track. When this happens for nearly every plan, we might be working in a plan-hostile environment. Available here and by RSS on April 30.

And on May 7: Subject Matter Bullying

Most workplace bullying tactics have analogs in the schoolyard — isolation, physical attacks, name-calling, and rumor-mongering are common examples. Subject matter bullying might be an exception, because it requires expertise in a sophisticated knowledge domain. And that's where trouble begins. Available here and by RSS on May 7.

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