Enero-Junio 2022

Vol. 12 No. 1

Interacción y Perspectiva. Revista de Trabajo Social Vol. 12 No 1 / enero-junio, 2022

Interacción y Perspectiva Dep. Legal pp 201002Z43506

Revista de Trabajo Social ISSN 2244-808X

enero-junio

ARTÍCULO DE INVESTIGACIÓN

Temas de actualidad del estudio aplicado del mobbing

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6555367

Mikhail Vladimirovich Karmanov *, Irina Petrovna Gladilina **, Anatoly Vladimirovich

Zavrazhin ***, Irina Vladimirovna Shubina ****, Svetlana Alexandrovna

Sergeeva*****

En la etapa actual de desarrollo de la sociedad, los fenómenos y procesos sociales que

solían considerarse indeseables, negativos e incluso obscenos en fechas tan recientes

como el siglo pasado, están cada vez más extendidos. El mobbing, que implica el acoso

psicológico de empleados, debe reconocerse sin duda como uno de esos fenómenos. El

mobbing ha alcanzado tal magnitud en muchos países del mundo que ya no puede ser

ignorado. Mientras tanto, hay que admitir que la sociedad aún no ha desarrollado una

visión universal del mobbing como un fenómeno o proceso puramente adverso. En este

sentido, los estudios destinados a la evaluación cuantitativa y estadística de los

principales parámetros del mobbing, en un momento en que la ciencia aplicada está

clara y notablemente retrasada con respecto a las necesidades reales de la sociedad,

son de gran interés científico y aplicado. En consecuencia, todavía no existe un sistema

de indicadores de mobbing lógicamente justificado, que permita su caracterización

integral, así como responder a preguntas complejas sobre la posición y el papel real de

dicho fenómeno social. El estudio analiza las características específicas de una evaluación

cuantitativa del mobbing, explora los posibles enfoques para la creación de un sistema

de indicadores de mobbing y ofrece propuestas para la sistematización de indicadores

de mobbing que permitan evaluar no sólo la escala sino también las consecuencias

socioeconómicas del mobbing.

Palabras clave: Mobbing, Evaluación del mobbing, Sistema de indicadores de mobbing,

Acoso psicológico.

Abstract

Topical issues of the applied study of mobbing

At the present stage of societal development, the social phenomena and processes that

used to be considered undesirable, negative, and even obscene as recently as in the last

century are, unfortunately, becoming increasingly widespread. Mobbing, which implies

psychological harassment of individual members of the workforce, undoubtedly must be

recognized as one of such phenomena. Mobbing has reached such a great scale in many

countries of the world that it can no longer be ignored. Meanwhile, it has to be admitted

that society has not yet developed a universal view of mobbing as a purely adverse

phenomenon or process. In this regard, studies aimed at the quantitative assessment

and statistical evaluation of the main parameters of mobbing at a time when applied

science is clearly and noticeably lagging behind the actual needs of society are of great

scientific and applied interest. As a result, there is still no logically justified system of

indicators of mobbing, which would allow its comprehensive characterization, as well as

answering complex questions about the actual position and role of such a social

phenomenon. The study analyzes the specific features of a quantitative assessment of

Vladimirovich, Petrovna, Vladimirovich, Vladimirovna, Sergeeva / Temas de actualidad del estudio aplicado

del mobbing

mobbing, explores the possible approaches to creating a system of mobbing indicators,

and provides proposals for the systematization of mobbing indicators allowing to assess

not only the scale but also the socio-economic consequences of mobbing.

Keywords: Mobbing, Assessment of mobbing, System of indicators of mobbing,

psychological harassment.

Recibido: 18/12/2021 Aceptado: 15/03/2021

* Doctor en Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Rusa de Economía lleva el nombre de GV Plekhanov, Moscú,

Rusia. E-mail: karmanov.mv@rea.ru

** Doctor en Ciencias Pedagógicas, Universidad de Gestión de la Ciudad de Moscú lleva el nombre de YuM

Luzhkov, Moscú, Rusia. E-mail: shtazi87@mail.ru

*** Doctor en Ciencias Históricas, Universidad Estatal Rusa de Gas y Petróleo lleva el nombre de IM Gubkin,

Moscú, Rusia. E-mail: zavan51@mail.ru

**** Candidato de Ciencias Pedagógicas, Instituto Social y Pedagógico de Moscú, Moscú, Rusia. E-mail:

shubina73@bk.ru

***** Candidato en Economía, Universidad de Gestión de la Ciudad de Moscú lleva el nombre de YuM Luzhkov,

Moscú, Rusia. E-mail: ugmzmag@yandex.ru

1.- Introduction

Practice demonstrates that the organization and conduct of production activity

objectively presuppose the formation and development of labor collectives of employees.

Said collectives can vary greatly in size but necessarily involve a certain relationship

between participants in the production process, which can be both positive and negative.

Regrettably, the life of any labor collective reproduces certain phenomena that are

not to the pleasure of its members. For example, generally, workers who do not fit into

the orbit of normal industrial relations, for a variety of reasons, have suffered

harassment. A young person, a newcomer, a migrant, a representative of another

nationality, a person with an unusual hairstyle, etc. very easily becomes an outcast, the

object of psychological harassment by other members of the work collective.

This circumstance gave rise to a special concept or term of “mobbing”. In English,

mobbing means harassment, which is practically regarded as psychological violence

against specific members of the workforce.

2. Materials and methods

Applied study of mobbing unequivocally involves the clarification of

methodological approaches to the quantitative assessment of the phenomenon in

question. Electronic encyclopedia of labor law defines personnel mobbing as

“Psychological harassment, mostly group harassment, of an employee by the

employer or other employees, which involves constant negative statements and criticism

of the employee, their social isolation within the organization, elimination of social

contacts from their job activities, spreading knowingly false information about the

employee, etc.” (Entsiklopediia trudovogo prava, n.d.).

The study of specialized literature shows that while the understanding of the

concept of mobbing is more or less uniform or similar in content, its place and role in

Interacción y Perspectiva. Revista de Trabajo Social Vol. 12 No 1 / enero-junio, 2022

the lives of both a specific labor collective and society as a whole is interpreted

differently:

• mobbing is a socio-psychological phenomenon that has become

widespread in many organizations and labor collectives (Siabaev, 2017);

• mobbing is a psychological result of “soft” corruption in an organization

(Kiselev & Ognev, 2018);

• mobbing is a negative phenomenon for any work collective without

exception (Zaripova et al., 2016);

• mobbing is a fairway that leads to easily predictable destruction of the

labor collective (Novikova & Novikova, 2017);

• mobbing is hazing in civilian life (Zagrafova, 2017);

• mobbing is a specific form of deviant behavior in the labor market

(Kovalchuk, 2017);

• mobbing is pronounced and pure “psychological harassment” in an

organization (Muzhaeva, 2013);

• mobbing is a distinctive element of social conflict (Solovev, 2007);

• mobbing is a real reason driving an employee to suicide (Tiurina, 2011);

• mobbing is a possible marker of systemic disadvantage in modern society

(Koshenova, 2017).

Summarizing the methodological approaches presented above, mobbing is

admittedly considered a social phenomenon of a very broad spectrum. Its negative

consequences are identified not only in relation to a specific person (the object of

psychological harassment), but also to a collective, organization, and even society as a

whole. Moreover, the multitude of potential dysfunctional aspects (deviation,

harassment, corruption, conflict, destruction, etc.) suggests that mobbing is an

extremely complex, multi-layered social phenomenon, all facets of which are not yet

accessible for understanding at the attained level of scientific knowledge.

The public danger of mobbing boils down to the fact that it is a double-edged

blade of relations in the workplace (Kim, 2012). On the one hand, mobbing is reduced

to psychological influence on a specific worker leading to their moral defeat and

departure from the organization and, in extreme cases, to physical self-elimination when

it comes to suicide. On the other hand, however, the same mobbing also destroys the

work collective that allowed a particular employee to be harassed, damaging it on a

subconscious level as an organization engaged in self-destruction.

From the historical point of view, the term “mobbing” is believed to have emerged

in the early 1980s first being coined by medical scientist and psychologist Dr. H.

Leymann, who conducted a special study of psychological harassment of workplace

members in Sweden (Ponomareva, 2008). Over the next few decades (which is

objectively a rather short chronological period), mobbing has quickly enough developed

Vladimirovich, Petrovna, Vladimirovich, Vladimirovna, Sergeeva / Temas de actualidad del estudio aplicado

del mobbing

into a social phenomenon with several characteristic and interrelated features. These

include (Ganshina, 2021):

▪ targeted joint actions (deliberately focused on one specific person, an

undesirable employee);

▪ the orderliness of actions which are coordinated, complemented, and

interconnected;

▪ pronounced moral nature of actions causing deep psychological harm;

▪ the place of action is the workplace of the pre-selected victim;

▪ the end goal is to force the employee to quit their job.

3. Results

The aforementioned specifics of the study of mobbing result in the fact that various

publicly available statistical data characterizing various aspects of social and

psychological harassment of workers in labor collectives are, unfortunately, limited and

fragmentary.

For instance, Russian and foreign specialized literature provides the following quite

general and superficial assessments of mobbing:

⮚ in modern Russia, from 5 to 20% of workers become victims of office harassment

(Bryntseva, 2010);

⮚ according to a sociological survey conducted in Germany with 4,500 employees

of different sectors, almost two-thirds of the workers (61%) were subjected to mobbing

in the workplace (in 34% of cases by coworkers and in the remaining cases by

supervisors) (Abashkina, 2009).

The indicated statistics paint an ambiguous picture. First of all, they give reason to

state that socio-psychological harassment of employees in the workplace is international

and quite widespread. At the same time, the vagueness of assessments of mobbing is

very apparent. The range from 5 to 20% must be admitted to be too large to assert the

real scale of mobbing more or less accurately. In addition, even when the upper limit of

the interval is used, the Russian reality still appears much more benign compared to

Germany.

In this regard, the share of persons who were subjected to socio-psychological

harassment at work, including their structure by the direction of the outgoing negative

impact is clearly not enough to derive a comprehensive characteristic of mobbing to

make sense of the factually present situation. Solving such a problem is only possible by

using a system of indicators which, as we believe, has to comprise the following

indicators:

● the number of cases of mobbing recorded in the workplace;

● the average number of recorded cases of mobbing per company;

● the average number of recorded cases of mobbing per labor collective;

Interacción y Perspectiva. Revista de Trabajo Social Vol. 12 No 1 / enero-junio, 2022

● the number of recorded cases of mobbing per 1,000 employees;

● the number of workers subjected to mobbing;

● the average number of workers involved in mobbing;

● the share of workers subjected to mobbing;

● the share of workers involved in mobbing;

● distribution of the number of recorded cases of mobbing by different

characteristics (form, direction, etc.);

● distribution of workers subjected to mobbing by various characteristics (gender,

age, education, nationality, place of residence, etc.);

● distribution of workers involved in mobbing by various characteristics (gender,

age, education, nationality, place of residence, etc.);

● the number of employees who left the company due to mobbing;

● the share of employees who left the company due to mobbing;

● the number of employees who took suicidal actions as a result of mobbing;

● the share of employees who took suicidal actions as a result of mobbing, etc.

To summarize the semantic content of the indicators presented above, it is possible

to construct the following two-link system (Figure 1).

Figure 1

System of statistical indicators of mobbing

4. Discussion

The analysis of scientific and methodological literature on the studied problem has

shown When creating a system of indicators of mobbing, it is crucial to account for

several aspects, among which is continuous development. Social and psychological

harassment in the workplace is not static but constantly develops taking on more and

more new guises.

Vladimirovich, Petrovna, Vladimirovich, Vladimirovna, Sergeeva / Temas de actualidad del estudio aplicado

del mobbing

Scientific literature customarily examines the types of mobbing from the point of two

bases that have to be quantified (Ivanova, 2017):

1) by direction: horizontal and vertical;

2) by the form of manifestation: open and latent.

The need for using direction as an indicator for the classification of mobbing is due

to the fact that psychological harassment of a worker can follow a variety of scenarios.

In horizontal mobbing, the danger comes from colleagues and is directed toward a

specific employee or victim. Essentially, production peers at the same level join forces,

but not in a positive direction, for example, to improve work results, but in a negative

one – to get rid of a member of the workforce like themselves. In vertical mobbing, the

picture is completely different. Here the danger comes from above or it is directed from

the supervisor to the subordinate. From the point of subordination, such influence is

both easier and more difficult to counter: easier in the sense that the victim is confronted

by a single adversary, and more difficult because they are the boss and have many

levers of influence on the unwanted employee.

The form of manifestation of mobbing is of interest in the sense that socio-

psychological harassment of an employee can be carried out in explicit and implicit ways.

Open mobbing is considered an extreme form of the social phenomenon in question.

However, in this case, the victim really sees the person opposing them. Things get much

more complicated when the mobbing is carried out in a hidden form or “behind the

scenes”, because, in face-to-face interaction, the employee may perceive their

opponents as normal colleagues or even decent friends. This circumstance seriously

aggravates the consequences of mobbing, especially when it shifts from the latent to the

open form.

It is worth noting separately that, according to foreign and Russian studies, such

specific forms of mobbing as institutional and virtual have recently started to surface

more and more often (Skavitin, 2004), which also should not be left without proper

quantitative characterization. The former type of mobbing is associated with the use of

quite legal and official instruments such as various personnel attestation algorithms,

qualification exam procedures, etc. to target individual members of the work collective.

In this case, the above-mentioned institutions are used for unrighteous reasons to obtain

seemingly “objective” arguments for the dismissal of the victim employee due to their

non-compliance with the held position.

Virtual mobbing, or Internet mobbing, or cyber mobbing involves the social and

psychological harassment of an employee through all available information channels

(email, social networks, etc.). Its emergence is associated with the opportunity to use

any technological tools provided for society by scientific progress to achieve outdated

and not always positive goals.

Moreover, some researchers studying mobbing emphasize the peculiar characteristic

of it that socio-psychological harassment of an employee in the workplace can take any

possible and not always obvious directions. For example, in seemingly ordinary vertical

Interacción y Perspectiva. Revista de Trabajo Social Vol. 12 No 1 / enero-junio, 2022

mobbing, the direction of the malevolent influence may be different and even directly

opposite (Troshina, n.d.):

• from the superior (boss) to the subordinate (employee);

• from the subordinates (employees) to the superior (boss).

The specified circumstance qualitatively changes the configuration of directions for

possible applied analysis and the system of indicators of mobbing, because it demands

collecting more detailed information accounting for the peculiarities of the object under

study (Durakova, 2017).

5. Conclusion

In general, it is objectively necessary to recognize that the methodology of the

applied study of mobbing has not yet reached a high level of scientific development.

Quantitative assessment of the scale and consequences of social and psychological

harassment of employees in work collectives is admittedly not paid due attention and

therefore, the actual situation in practice seems to be very far from the theoretical ideas

about mobbing, which can be found in numerous educational and scientific publications

on the management of organizations. The correction of the achieved status quo is most

likely possible only based on a purposeful and deeply conscious development of mobbing

statistics as a special direction of modern statistics.

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