Mobbing?
HOW does Mobbing work?
There have been many attempts to define and catalogue mobbing, e.g. the Esser-Wolmerath catalogue of 100 acts of mobbing.
Now, no list will ever be complete, because - let's face it, human beings - are creative, but the 100 acts of mobbing is a good place to start. Esser and Wolmerath break the 100 acts into 10 categories. The whole list is too long for this page, so I have just included what I experienced.
1. Attacks on performance particularly work performance
This categorie is all about sabotaging performance. It includes things like withholding necessary information to do the job and not being invited to important meetings. It includes assigning menial or impossible tasks, too little or too much work. It includes assigning workspaces, that are impossible to work in or far separated from colleagues. It includes revoking decision making authority. It includes It includes intellectual theft, e.g. when the boss claims he did the work you did.
2. Attacks on the employment relationship and possilbilities
This categorie is all about undermining the employment contract. It includes false allegations of wrongdoing including criminal actions. It includes blaming and shaming. It includes arbitrary far-fetchedly justified warnings and dismissals. Professional qualification is put to question and performance rated purposefully poor.
3. Destructive criticism
This category is all about baseless, humiliating, unbridled, merciless criticism. It includes gross exaggeration, criticizing actions provoked by the mobbers themselves and suppressing conflict resolution.
4. Attacks on the social intergration at work
This category is about ensuring the last category - denial of assistance. It includes the work place in the proverbial "broom closet", suppressing the victim's speech, imposing on others, so they are afraid to help, speaking poorly of the victim behind her back, backhanded comments and implications, being left out of conversations and treated like air.
5. Attacks on the professional reputation
This category is about destroying the employment relationship and prospects. It included targeted defamation; rumor mongering; insinuating the victim has malevolent intentions; provoking the victim in order to exploit the reaction; leaking personal information; actively embarassing, disgracing and undermining the integrity of the victim; demonstrative special treatment; complaints of third parties and correspondence are faked.
6. Actions to undermine self-confidence of the victim
This category is about beating down the victim. It involves targeted discrimination - embarassment, humiliation, blasphemy, vilification, the imputation of malice, insults, gruff treatment, etc.
7. Propagating fear and digust
This category is about physical intimidation. The acting parties in the Sparkasse are not the types that like to get their hands dirty.
And, when you can insidiously control and manipulate data, who needs physical intimidation?
8. Attacks on privacy
This category involves destroying the personal life and private relationships. In truth it is hard to say, if the acting parties went down this path, because so much of the actions listed are done in obscurity. Then again, when the goal is to ruin somenone's career, the personal life and health of the victim is not directly targeted, it is just considered predictable and acceptable collateral damage.
9. Attacks on the health of the victim
This category is goes beyond physical intimidation to bodily harm. Like I said, the acting parties in the Sparkasse are not the types to get their hands dirty.
10. Denial of assistance
This category is all about deflection. It includes ignoring or flat out denying the mobbing, trivialising and belittling complaints, blaming the victim, tolerating mobbing as just the way things are and denying assistance to the victim.
Sadly the worst affect of mobbing is on third parties. When the mobbers are able to convince third parties
of the righteousness of their lies and those parties are motivated to act on the lies, democracy is undermined and innocent people get hurt.
Did I mention this list is from the year 2000?
Mobbing does not take place in a vacuum. Bad things happen, when good people do nothing.
Mobbing is all about replacing truth with lies.
If we want a society based upon dignity and truth, there has to be accountability for data manipulation and lies;
and the only way to get there is through transparency.
