AN ASSESSMENT OF WORKPLACE BULLYING PRACTICE AND ITS EFFECTS TO TEACHER PERFORMANCE IN KWARA STATE, NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

There had been many definitions of bullying and it comes in many forms, shapes and sizes. It is commonly defined as an adverse behavior towards another with the deliberate intent to harm, putting the targeted victim in a situation that is hard for him to defend himself. Though bullying in schools and universities is a widespread phenomenon, the common subject is student-student bullying or teacher bullying a student. Much has been researched about bullying in schools but it only focuses on students and their rights. No attention is given to teachers, that they themselves could be victims of bullying too (Field 2018). Targeted teachers who experience rigid public scrutiny and taunting from workplace bullies may possibly cause them a sense of humiliation, making them lose their self-confidence, doubt their capacity, thereby creating an abnormal fear to do their functions in school and maintain relationships with learners and colleagues. Whilst most researchers seemed to agree that the repeated nature of workplace conflict or harassment qualified it as workplace bullying.

Olsen (2010) further noted that workplace bullying had four elements; (i) unwanted, (ii) unwarranted,(iii) repeated (iv) detrimental behaviour. Thus, as Hor (2012) conceded, where behaviour was neither serious nor repeated, it was unlikely to be found to constitute an occurrence of workplace bullying. Olsen (2010) also noted that some people were oended by the term ‘workplace bullying’ but he argued that the practice was more oensive and a disgrace to the notion of a civilised society. Other terms for workplace bullying as revealed by Einarsen et al (2011) were ‘mobbing at work,’ a term used in the Scandinavian and German countries and, ‘bullying at work,’ as it was referred to in English speaking countries. Pinkos -Cobb (2012) further pointed out that another term for workplace bullying was ‘status blind harassment.’ However, some authors distinguish workplace bullying from mobbing. According to the Workplace Bullying Institute (2012), workplace bullying was one on one mistreatment while mobbing had multiple perpetrators who ganged up on a single target. Synthesizing the various definitions that were explored, the working definition for this research is that workplace bullying is a serious and repeated mistreatment of an employee or employees in the workplace which could cause harm to the recipient.

Needham (2003) argues that workplace bullying is difficult to contain because the harassment usually takes place covertly, many times out of sight of supervisors and coworkers. Bullying and general harassment are far more prevalent than other destructive behaviors covered by legislation, such as sexual harassment and racial discrimination (Namie, 2006). Bullies are costly to employers. The inefficiency, dysfunction, and conflict that surround serial bullies can spread through entire organizations. Workplace bullying is a problem and is an important organizational and social concern. Workplace bullying behavior can aect a target’s faculties to perform his or her job, which can impact the financial performances of an organization. There are types of mistreatment targets were subjected to by bullies and whether targets were able to receive help from company representatives to alleviate or stop the aggressive bullying behavior. The relationship between a bullying situation and a positive outcome has not been previously investigated (Oade, 2009). Although the bullying of adults in the workplace is a phenomenon that has existed for many years, it has recently been recognized as a significant problem. With this recognition comes an awareness of the prevalence and seriousness of the problem (Kitt, 2004). Human resource managers are realizing the costs to productivity related to this type of aggressive behavior (Sutton, 2007).

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Workplace bullying constitutes a problem to many organizations today, irrespective of size and sector. This antisocial behavior confronts organizations operating in developed and developing countries alike with the consequences well documented in the scholarly literature. At the individual level, bullying may lead to suicide tendency, loss of self-respect, and self-image (Djukorvik et al., 2004), high stress, post traumatic stress disorder, phobias, sleep disturbances, and increased depression (Salin, 2003), unhappiness, anxiety, withdrawal, and undue cautiousness, thereby affecting performance of an employee (Hoel & Cooper, 2003). At the organizational level, it adversely affects employee commitment, job satisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover (Oghojafor, et al., 2012).

Though difficult to define, workplace bullying could be seen as “all situations in which one or more persons over a period of time feels subjected to negative acts that one cannot defend oneself against” Workplace bullying is widespread and has the potential to have devastating effects on an employee’s performance. Employees who are bullied, and those who work with bullies, take sick leave more oen than those who are not bullied on the job. Although bullying has become a popular subject of study since the mid-1990s, the relationship between bullying in the workplace and job performance are not well known, this research therefore studies the eects of workplace bully and the eect it has on teacher performance