Mobbing is a phenomenon which has treatments of personal and economical sequels. This chapter aims to present traditional legal reflections of mobbing and educational responsibilities in this situation. Mobbing, which has been a subject of study in education, organizational treatment, the world of business and management, psychology, nursing and more, found its way in international legal documents especially after the 1990s. Mentioned laws foresee employers to have more responsibilites in terms of work conditions. It is also imperative to mention that national level of interferences has started lately. Some assumptions of Chaos Theory such as loyalty for beginning conditions and turbulance call it ambiguity to mobbing attitude, unpredictability and making a point of small situations are also discussed in this chapter.
TopIntroduction
Mobbing is an institutional phenomenon which is faced by every organization more than cultures. But this was not a subject to be discussed in terms of organizations till the 1990s (Lutgen-Sandvik, Tracy, & Alberts, 2007; Namie, 2007). However it has a wide range of descriptions, generally it can be evaluated as a trigger which aims to harm, unesteem staff and even make them resign (Elibol, Gokdeniz, & Gungo, 2008; Sperry & Duffy, 2009). For this situation which contains hostile attitudes, different descriptions are used in different countries. While this situation is referred to as “mobbing” in most European countries, it is described as “bullying” in English speaking countries. Other terms used within the context of this concept are spiritual harassment and psychological terror. Besides, the one or more target oriented actions which are repeated negatively leading to groundless humiliation and embarrassment, mostly preventing employees from defending themselves as well as lower job performance. On the other hand, effects or costs incured due to the deterrent attitudes are nationally being seen as an important problem area of budgets of countries. It is reported that in USA nearly 2 million employees resigned due to mobbing and it resulted into a financial loss of 64 billion dollars (Query & Hanley, 2010). Additionally, according to the report of International Labour Organization published in October, 2000; leave of absence on account of psychological health problems cost 2,2 million dollars in Germany (Ministy of Labour and Social Security, 2013).
In terms of organization, it is revealed by various researches that the Mobbing process has long-term individual and organizational harms. Additionally in researches, there is a decrease of a percentage of 50% in job performances of employees who experience mobbing, in six months (Özturk et al., 2008). First of all, this study aims to investigate traditional legal reflections and educational responsibilities of the term “mobbing” which is being discussed in terms of literature. In this context, the conceptual framework of this study is presented in Figure 1.
Evolutionarily, it is being stated that mobbing studies began as a result of observations performed on animals. The research on animals done by Konrad Lorenz who kept his studies on Ethology provided him with the opportunity to observe the threat of a small group of animals on a single and big one. These attitudes have been observed on children in the following years and used to describe despotism, harassment and destruction of children’s attitudes (Ozturk et al., 2008). The mentioned term was first used to show similar aggressive behaviour in labour life of the 1980s by a Swedish psychiatrist named Heinz Leymann who was born in Germany (Leymann, 1996; Leymann & Gustafsson, 1996). Conception of the same has taken place in most study subjects such as education, organizational behaviour, labour life and management, psychology and nursing and more (Leymann, 1996; Blase & Blase, 1999; Wornham, 2003). This term describes non-physical exploitation: Force and vicious domination, misapplication, psychological terror, despotism and office grievance.