Bullying at Workplace

Introduction: Political skill and the job performance of bullies and legal restrictions

Bullying can have a demotivating impact on every individual affected. The next two papers first of all analyse the relationship between bullying and personal job performance. The second paper introduced describes the legal aspects which exist to protect employees being bullied at work.

Political skill and the job performance of bullies

“Political skill and the job performance of bullies” (Treadway, Shaughnessy, Breland, Yang, Reeves, 2013) is a study explaining how bullies can successfully influence the business environment and reach higher performance ratings. The study applies theories from social information processing (SIP) and political skills and was tested in a health service organization through a questionnaire with the goal to capture the individual differences and social perception of bullies at the organizational environment (Treadway, Shaughnessy, Breland, Yang, Reeves, 2013, p. 273).

Main application used to test the outcomes of the study was the political skill theory. Political skills are personal abilities and characteristics to identify power differentials in the workplace and to influence e.g. colleagues at work in order to achieve personal or overall business goals (Harris et al, 2007; Kolodinsky et al., 2007; Treadway et al., 2007; Semadar et al., 2006). Another application which was used as background information for the study is the IP model. It indicates that politically skilled employees are more able to analyse their working environment effectively and to understand the abilities of their colleague’s within a context (Treadway, Shaughnessy, Breland, Yang, Reeves, 2013, p. 278).

The study is testing how politically skilled bullies are more aware of who and how to bully their targets in the most unpleasant psychological matter by building broad alliances to fulfil their goals (Treadway, Shaughnessy, Breland, Yang, Reeves, 2013, p. 274)....