Dr. Leah Hollis Of Patricia Berkly LLC Announces Findings Of Workplace Bullying In Higher Education Study

Online, October 15, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Dr. Leah Hollis of Patricia Berkly LLC has compiled the results of her independent study on workplace bullying in American Higher education. While Namie and Namie reported that 37% of the general population dealt with workplace bullying sometime in a career, the Hollis study revealed that 62% of respondents had experienced or witnessed workplace bullying in the last 18 months. This statistic is 58% higher than the bullying occurrence in the general population.

Hollis also coined a term for the study, vicarious bullying, where a leader sends a colleague or henchman in to a target to apply coercive power. With primary and vicarious bullying occurring in higher education, 16% of respondents have actually left a job because of a bully.
The study used a mixed methods approach with both a quantitative data collection and qualitative data collection process. The open ended remarks from the survey and the remarks from the interview point to executive leadership as the architect of the culture. A leader who modeled good behavior and had minimum tolerance for bullying supported policies on anti- bullying and human resources when they were called upon to intervene. Leadership that did not address bullying, or even were bullies themselves had a stressed staff that often was looking to escape the institution. While looking for that escape, they disengaged from work as a form of protecting themselves from the toxic work environment.

The study also offers solutions at the onboarding stage, through performance evaluations and self-care. Nonetheless, the solutions for the organization again pointed to executive leadership to support and implement anti bullying policy without favoritism. When everyone is held accountable for bad behavior, a healthy environment is achievable.

Bully in the Ivory Tower: How Aggression and Incivility Erode American Higher Education will be available in fall 2012.