The Top 10 Explanations for Mobbing

Originally Submitted on 10/25/2002.

Mobbing means bullying or picking on an employee using such means as intimidation, ostracism, denigration, and innuendo either for its own sake, or to drive the worker from the workplace. The Mobber is the Bully on the playground, grown up. Why do they do this? The personality of mobbers has been described as cowardly, neurotic, power-hungry, excessively controlling, jealous, envious, insecure and afraid. Dr. Heinz Leymann, the Mobbing expert, maintains Mobbers are acting to cover their own deficiencies. Mobbing relies on group mentality, but there's always a ringleader. Here are some other explanations.

1. To force someone to adapt to a group norm.

This may be 'hell week' extended and intensified. Some groups have a need for everyone to be the same.

VICTIM: "All I can figure is that I wasn't cynical like the rest of them. When they discovered I wouldn't complain and gossip, they came after me." [personal communication]

2. To revel in animosity.

It's an attempt to "eliminate" people they don't like and the reason can be something like 'because they wear suspenders.' This isn't a rational behavior, and has much more to do with the Mobber's need to harm others, than the exact nature, qualities or competence of the Victim. Victims are often among the best workers.

VICTIM: "The color of my hair? The way I walked? I have no idea. This had never happened to me before. I was always well liked." [personal communication]

3. To gain pleasure.

One of the hardest things to accept is that some people enjoy torturing others and seeing them suffer, psychologically as well as physically. The aim for the Mobber in this case is not to get rid of the other person, but to keep them around and make them miserable.

VICTIM: "I have never seen anyone look the way he did when he was screaming or demeaning staff. I will always believe his abusive tactics were sadistic and that he received some sort of sexual gratification from them." ["Mobbing"]

4. Out of boredom.

Mobbers are schoolyard bullies grown up, and one of the explanations for bullying is a stimulus-seeking extravert (bully) comes upon a self-supervising introvert (victim) who makes a ready target for someone who doesn't know what to do with himself or herself in an unmanaged environment.

VICTIM: "His job was a featherbed. He really had nothing to do all day so he found people to play with like a cat plays with a mouse. The others just went along." [personal communication]

5. To reinforce prejudices.

Mobbing is sometimes perpetrated because the victim is a member of a social, racial or ethnic group.

VICTIM: "No matter who you are, everything goes back to this intolerance of anybody who is different." ["Mobbing"]

6. "Divine right."

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." [Machiavelli] Some people consider having a position of power gives them the right to do as they please with others. Whoever reports to them is seen as automatically inferior, even an object to be used and abused at will.

VICTIM: "Why did he do it? Because he could. He was sick to begin with. He handpicked the Board. After awhile there was no one he was answerable to and no one we could go to."

7. Compensating for weakness.

Sometimes an individual who is miserable can't stand to see someone alive and joyful, and tries to stamp out what he or she can't have.

VICTIM: "I may have been the only one there who had a happy life. It was like I reminded them of something they couldn't have. They had to get me out of there." [personal communication]

8. Threatened egotism.

Some people who's ego is threatened turn the anger outward rather than having to revise their self-concept downward.

VICTIM: "The Board thanked me at the banquet for all the money I'd raised. I knew with his personality that would be the end." [personal communication]

9. Narcissistic personalities.

The clinical definition of Narcissism ("Work Abuse," Wyatt and Hare) is "a socially dysfunctional person who feels entitled to use power to control others he is afraid of, who lives in pretentious fantasy rather than reality, and who consistently views himself as superior and craves being told so."

VICTIM: "He didn't see people as human beings. I honestly don't think he had a real relationship in his life." [personal communication]

10. A misguided social instinct.

According to Brodsky, in "The Harassed Worker," Mobbing could be a misguided social instinct, since competition is ubiquitous in all cultures. He compares it to the way an animal trained to hunt rodents will go through the entire ritual even though there are no rodents around. We also see this when animals try to drive a weakened member from the pack. Humans harass even when there seems no rational objective.

VICTIM'S FRIEND: "Have you seen chickens peck at one another? It's barnyard."

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