Bullying at Workplace

Abstract

Nowadays, workplace bullying becomes one of the major unethical issues in organizations. Workplace bullying expressed as unethical behavior or unethical business practice in organizations. Bullying in workplace is unhealthy, mistreatment and unfair supervision for one employee, by one or more employees and employers. The unhealthy, mistreatment and unfair supervision is form as violence that prevents somebody or employee to perform in his / her works. This issues being popular and serious problem among researcher. In addition, it will demonstrate negative impact to categories such as individual, team and organizations as well as to country. In this study, the problem of workplace bullying will be explored by using several of review papers / articles. The purpose of the study is to determine the potential factor or causes of workplace bullying on employees. Other than that, this study also wants to explore what is workplace bullying and unethical behavior as well as its consequences or the effect to individual and organization. Furthermore, the relationship or correlations between workplace bullying and unethical behavior will be identify. The review papers / articles taken between year 2010 and 2015. The conclusion and recommendation for this study are provided as purpose to further study and research.

Keywords: Workplace Bullying, Unethical Behaviors

1. Introduction

This study includes two sections which are background of the study that will explain the unethical behavior and workplace bullying. Meanwhile, research questions as a proof to show the relationship between unethical behavior and workplace bullying.

1.1 Background of the Study

Employee performance can be occurring when the culture or environment of the organizations is healthy or ethical. However, unethical behavior in organization become one of the major reason that increase workplace bullying and reducing the performance of employee, as well as tend to increase the turnover rate of employees in organizations. According to (Hoel et al., 2003; Quine, 1999), bullying is one of the reason for decreasing the employee and organizational performance, meanwhile is a factor that increasing the high turnover among employees.

In many scholars, bullying can be found as a main factor that contributing high turnover (Mobley et al., 1979; Bluedom. 1982; Horner, Mobley & Hollingworth, 1978; Steel & Ovalle, 1984). For instances, based on The Workplace Bullying Institutes (U.S Workplace Bullying Survey), it is shows that huge percentage (37 percent) of U.S workers being impacted by workplace bullies. As the result, many workers or employees have low performance, lose trust on organizations and leave their company.

Thus, to avoid workplace bullying and high turnover, the organizations should implement ethical environment and ethical behavior among the employees. According to (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf & Cooper, 2003), organizations have big responsibility in term of preventing the workplace bullying occur and make their employees feeling safe and able to work without any circumstances. In addition, (Keashly & Jagatic, 2003) state that, the workplace bullying have negative impact towards company performance and profits, the top management have to emphasize method to avoid unethical behavior that also related to workplace bullying.

As we know, workplace bullying gives problem to employees and negative impact to organizations, based on (Einarsen et al. 2011; Rayner et al. 2002; Schat et al. 2004) workplace bullying becomes a common problem in organizations. This shows, workplace bullying always happened in organizations whether organizations is for-profit, non-profit, not-for-profit, and even in government. Currently, workplace bullying becomes unidentified because of circumstances as perspective of managerial attributes, (Namie & Namie 2003).

1.2 Research Questions

The research questions for this article stated as below:

• How unethical behavior and workplace bullying related?
• Why is workplace bullying a complicated problem that need to be monitor in current organizations?

There are many questions and research towards the workplace bullying. The answer for the problem provides further understanding on this issue or unethical behavior as well as solutions to prevent the problem.

By reducing the workplace bullying in organizations, it will enhance the performance of employee as well as productivity of the company. Other than that, it will help the company to decrease turnover rate and increase profitability (Alexia Georgakopoulos, La Vena Wilkin, Brianna Kent; 2011).

1. Literature Review

This study contains four sections which are explanations of unethical behavior in term of causes, background of workplace bullying, consequences of workplace bullying and relationship between unethical behavior and workplace bullying.

2.1 Unethical Behavior

From (Franziska Zubir, Muel Kaptein; 2013), meaning of unethical behavior is a unacceptable behavior in the organizations or larger community.  

According to (Hasan M. Aleassa & Omar D. Megdadi, 2014), unethical behavior is one significant factor bullying happened in workplace. It can be reviewed that, becomes victim in workplace bullying make the workers or employees have less motivation in doing their works. Based on (Hasan M. Aleassa & Omar D. Megdadi, 2014), if worker or employees have less motivation they might be connect to unethical behavior or deviant behavior.