Bullying Boss

Every working adult has known one -- a boss who loves making subordinates squirm, whose moods radiate through the office, sending workers scurrying for cover, whose very voice causes stomach muscles to clench and pulses to quicken. It is not long before dissatisfaction spreads, rivalries simmer, sycophants flourish. Normally self-confident professionals can dissolve into quivering bundles of neuroses. ''It got to where I was twitching, literally, on the way into work,'' said Carrie Clark, 52, a former teacher and school administrator in Sacramento, Calif., who said her boss of several years ago baited and insulted her for 10 months before she left the job. ''I had to take care of my health.'' Researchers have long been interested in the bullies of the playground, exploring what drives them and what effects they have on their victims. Only recently have investigators turned their attention to the bullies of the workplace. Around the country, psychologists who study the dynamics of groups and organizations are discovering why cruel bosses thrive, how employees end up covering for managers they despise and under what conditions workers are most likely to confront and expose a bullying boss. Next week, researchers and policy makers from many nations will convene in Bergen, Norway, to discuss the issue. ''What we're finding,'' said Dr. Calvin Morrill of the University of California at Irvine, who studies corporate culture, ''is that some of the behaviors that we think most protect us are what in fact allow the behavior to continue. Workers become desensitized, tacitly complicit and don't always act rationally.'' Bullying bosses, studies find, differ in significant ways from the Blutos of childhood. In the schoolyard, particularly among elementary school boys, bullies tend to pick on smaller or weaker children, often to assert control in an uncertain social environment in which they feel vulnerable. But adult bullies in positions of power are already dominant, and they...