Workplace Effects In The Workplace

Toxic work environments are often created and reinforced by hiring, promoting, and tolerating bullies-- defined by some behavioral scientists as psychological abusers that inflict sustained “hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors” (Sutton 2004, 19) on their coworkers, thus increasing the level of toxicity within an institution, and often leading to more bullies. This vicious Ouroboros can hemorrhage an organization’s valuable personnel, hard-earned money, and long-term value; costs which are not always apparent to organizations and their managers.

Strangely, this problem is infrequently discussed when assessing the shortcomings of a troubled library system or other similar organization, in favor of a focus on improving “the bottom line” and

Even if salary was satisfactory and removed from the equation, the combined negative impact of all other factors affected in a toxic work environment handily overcomes salary as a priority in the minds of employees. This is supported by the “Hawthorne effect,” a term coined by Henry A. Landsberger, which allowed George Elton Mayo, an organizational theorist, to recognize that workers have a psychological need to belong to a group and believe that their work organizations care about them (Jones 2014). Allowing a bully to undermine their victims’ sense of belonging damages their relationship with the organization, and the organization

This willingness to overlook bullying behaviors is demonstrative of weak management, not only because it fails to adhere to ethical standards, but it is wrongheaded in its assumption that the net sum is a positive for the organization because it fails to make a proper accounting of the seen and unseen costs of bullying in the workplace. It also fails to account for bullying behavior as a contagion, wherein a “civility vacuum” is created (Sutton 2007, 95) because cooperation between employees breaks down, and everyone is out to protect themselves and their positions. According to Sutton, a hospital worker study conducted by Dr. Michelle Duffy on the effects of “morally disengaged” bosses on their workers found that after 6 months, many of the workers demonstrated many of the same traits as their hostile bosses: teasing, put-downs, and coldness (2007,