Jana Billington
Unit 2 Reading Notes
Reading Notes 8: The communication consequences of downsizing trust, loyalty,
and commitment.
Reading: “The Communication Consequences of Downsizing Trust, Loyalty, and
Commitment” by Dennis Tourish & Owen Hargie in D. Tourish & O. Hargie Key
Issues in Organizational Communication (2003)
Much of mainstream management practice is characterized by the enthusiastic adoption
of fads, and downsizing is a fad.
Anytime a radical program is implemented within an organization the organization is
thrown into turmoil.
Often these initiatives do not result in what is predicted. In fact many inflict severe
damage.
Destructive organizational initiatives can be salvaged through the use of strategic
communication.
Communication is regarded as an integral part of the entire organizational operation—it
both reflects and shapes the way business is done.
- One conceptualization of communication is that it is largely a mediating device
between management intentions on the one hand and their execution in the other.
- The emphasis is on how particular ends will be reached, while the ends
themselves are unquestioned and assumed to be value free.
1: Downsizing: An intentional reduction in the number of people in an organization.
- It is accomplished via a set of managerial actions, which may include the use of
hiring freezes, layoffs, and normal or induced attrition.
- Its aim has been to promote organizational efficiency, productivity, and/or
competitiveness.
2: Economic impact of downsizing:
- Literature has disclosed a gap between the avowed goals of downsizing and what
has actually been achieved.
- It found that reduction of assets (ROA) in companies that downsized declined in
the downsizing year and the first year subsequent to the downsizing.
- Organizations that embrace downsizing in the pursuit of economic gain
overwhelmingly find their profits in decline.
What downsizing doesn’t do (on average):
- Produces no improvement in firms’ performance related to their industry or their
own prior performance (except for a short term gain in productivity).
- Downsizing organizations that show no sustained improvement in financial
performance is those in which there is a managerial force focused only on cost
cutting.
- Downsizing organizations that show improvement have a managerial focus on
increasing productivity, or reorganizing and restructuring.
3: The psychological impact of downsizing:
- Reduced cross-unit and cross level knowledge from interpersonal interactions.
- Loss of personal relationships between employees and customers, and the
disruption of predictable relationships.
- Increased interpersonal conflict.
- Greater resistance to change.
- More centralization in decision-making.
- Decreased employee morale.
a.
-
Survivors of downsizing experience:
Denial
Job insecurity
Feelings of unfairness
Depression
Stress and fatigue
Reduced risk taking and motivation
Distrust and betrayal
Lack of reciprocal commitment
Wanting it to be over
Dissatisfaction with planning and communication
Anger at the layoff process
Lack of strategic direction
Lack of management credibility
Short term profit focus
Sense of permanent change…some optimism
A lot of blaming others
Thirst for information
b. Reduced Loyalty:
- Survivors expected that there would be further restructuring
- Organizational change would be pushed through with a lack of communication,
consultation, resources, and training.
- The idea that if an organization does not show loyalty, then there we be none
given in return.
- When job security grows there are feelings of bitterness, anxiety,
disenfranchisement and concern for the future.
- Decline in loyalty happens across the board (employees, middle managers, etc.)
- Downsizing increases work pressures on managers who remain and are faced with
a more alienated workforce.
- Morale and loyalty of managers’ declines (expected to do more with less
resources).
- Employees want to feel wanted by people/group. However, the expectation is this
will be reciprocal. When it’s not, loyalty suffers.
- Remaining employees seek other employment opportunities.
c.
Decreased satisfaction:
-
Companies that downsize are more likely to report lower employee satisfaction.
Results in a feeling of helplessness because of being let go even when a good job
was done.
- Cutbacks lead employees to believe it doesn’t really matter what they do.
- Learned helplessness: employees who survive the downsizing may believe they
have no real say in their futures.
- Creativity and innovation decrease.
d. Increased uncertainty:
- Rises for both survivors and those terminated.
- Does not ease even after the announcement of who lost their job.
- Endures for a considerable time
- People focus their anxiety on immediate issue of termination rather than
restructuring.
- Staff perceives large gaps between the amount of information they receive and the
amount of information they need.
- Downsizing even for justified reasons is traumatic.
e. The loss of social capital:
- Social capital: the ability of people to work together for common purposes in
groups and organizations. Two main components: associability (group objectives
given priority) and trust (willingness of people to work together even when they
don’t know each other but have some direct contact and positive attitude towards
their reputation. Central to organizational success.
- Downsizing is most noted to erode trust within organizations.
- Disassociation and reduction in trust can also be destructive of the culture of the
organization.
- Cynicism and a feeling of betrayal replace trust.
- Downsizing can cause survivor’s guilt for being left behind while others have
suffered.
- Less guilt if downsizing is due to internal causes.
- If an external attribution is made then guilt and anger are more likely.
- The guilt can become dysfunctional for survivors.
- Employees feel the employer has made promises only to break them.
- A sense of valued corporate history is vital for the workforce.
- Another problem of downsizing is if people leave they take their knowledge with
them.
- Personal favors and informal processes will disappear through the loss of
personnel and changes in the structure of the organization.
- Knowledge networks grow organically and are dependent upon social interaction.
- The disruption of teams, company structure and the reduction in trust in the
organization damages these knowledge networks.
- Those left behind can lose access to their knowledge network through
reorganization.
- Loss of trust and relationships often occur because most firms that engage in
downsizing are not in a straightforward financial crisis.
- Counterproductive in terms of quality.
f. Reasons for downsizing:
- Most often companies downsize to improve profits.
- Finance driven agenda has been found to be the least successful basis for
downsizing.
- Research indicates downsizing delivers the opposite of what is promised.
1. What gets rewarded, gets done:
- Evidence is that managers who downsize are rewarded even though the
practice does not genuinely improve profitability and effectiveness.
- It is increasingly the case that top managers who fail to raise the value of
shares in their company will actually lose legitimacy, and with it, their
jobs.
- Downsizing may therefore be conceived as a short cut to legitimacy, and
hence to heightened prestige, remuneration and job security for the
managers who embrace it.
2. Illusions in leadership:
- The business press routinely depicts leaders as all-powerful, all
knowing and the controller of the organization’s destiny in a complex
environment.
- The corollary is in the expectation that leaders will rapidly diagnose
strengths and weaknesses, articulate compelling new strategies,
propose plans for restructuring and generally shows they are in control.
- The task of building and maintaining relationships requires mastery of
a large repertoire of complex communication skills.
- Building partnerships with a workforce, however, can take years.
3. Downsizing a system of self-persuasive narratives:
- Organizations depends on metaphors and stories to rationalize their
actions.
- Such narratives are used to sell what is happening internally and
achieve legitimacy.
- Constant repetition helps people to inoculate themselves against doubt.
- Process can be defined as self-persuasion—by focusing communication
efforts on the positive reasons, we nevertheless wind up re-convincing
ourselves.
- Main narratives to downsizing are as follows.
o The lean and mean story.
o The strategic flexibility story.
o The learning organization story.
o The mystical management story.
o The we’re out of money story
o The eye on the prize story
- Sense making is often driven by plausibility rather than accuracy.
4: The absence of critical feedback:
-
-
There is critical evidence indicating that managers tend to over
estimate the gains from downsizing while underestimating its negative
consequences.
Few people are willing to tell their superiors if they disagree.
5. The priority of short-term relationships:
- Downsizing as a fad originated in the US—a country that doesn’t have
a regulatory tradition of job property rights.
- New psychological contract stresses personal responsibility for career
development, commitment to certain kinds of work rather than given
organization, constant change, acceptance of job insecurity, and the
abandonment of the idea that career can be built within one
organization.
- The winners: Workers are treated as important contributors rather than
as hired hands.
- In top companies employees felt the company cared.
- Downsizing is also consistent with external short-term relationships.
- Both internal and external relationships like this are destructive in the
longer term.
6: Irrationality and the principle of social proof:
- Downsizing suggests a belief that human decision-making is inherently
rational.
- However, a great deal of evidence suggests that much human thought is
irrational.
- We are inclined to decide whether something is rational and desirable
on the extent to which we see other people either doing it or wanting it.
g. The role of communication:
- An obvious issue is therefore whether management communication
strategies may be able to eliminate or at least reduce the destructive
consequences.
- Rosenblatt and Shaeffer: Whatever the destructive impact of
downsizing on people and businesses, communication may be enlisted
in some attempt to enable managers to implement it, while evading the
psychological levies.
- Communication can be most usefully conceptualized as a dialogic
facilitator of longer-term relationships in which downsizing is
noticeable by its absence.
1: What communication accomplishes and what it doesn’t:
- Various studies have investigated, whether communication can
mitigate some of the negative impacts of downsizing.
- Perceived fairness had a significant impact on levels of absenteeism
and professional efficacy.
- Mere presence of an organizational vision was unrelated to more
positive outcomes.
- Active communication seemed to be a key factor.
-
-
Other research has found that when criteria or procedures applied in
layoffs are seen as fair employee commitment and performance are less
likely to decrease.
Organizational members are likely to feel deprived when they think
they do not know what is going on.
Communication reduces some of the worst trauma, much as does a
pressure dressing on a wound.
Enormous attention to communication processes is still required, in
order to minimize the harmful psychological consequences.
Literature suggests that organizational members feel deprived when
they think they do not know what is going on.
This is likely to impact on organizational performance.
Conclusion:
-
-
-
Downsizing has failed to deliver wider economic benefits and has also
exacted an enormous psychic toll on the millions of people it has
affected.
It is debatable whether communication can or should serve the
instrumental role of merely transmitting information about the
inherently unpalatable.
A primary role of communication is to ensure consistency between
different management messages and between management rhetoric and
behavior.
Reading Notes 9: Teamwork and Organizations
Reading: “Communication that damages teamwork: The dark side of teams” by D.
R. Seibold, P. Kang, B. M. Gailliard, & J. Jahn, in P. Lutgen-Sandvik & P. Sypher
Destructive organizational communication: Processes, consequences, and constructive
ways of organizing (2009)
Teams: Small groups of organizational members who possess complementary
characteristics, share a common goal, and are mutually accountable for their
performance.
Organizational teams: Range from intact work units, through cross-functional
groups, to ad hoc aggregates.
-
Over one-half of organizations use teams
Most teams are cross-functional, and teams were most prevalent in nonprofit
organizations.
Even though teams are implemented often, American workers are disinclined to
collaborate with others in team structures.
Organization-wide structural problems undermine team efficacy and frustrate team
members, including lack of goal clarify, inadequate resources, insufficient training,
-
misaligned reward systems, coordination demands, and leaders who fail to model
effective teamwork.
Also a host of negative individual, relational, and sub-group relational dynamics.
Result can be “group-hate.”
Teams with Teamwork: The Bright Side:
-
Teams with teamwork are those in which members share and can articulate a team
vision that transcends short-term goals.
Set high standards for themselves
Self disciplined
Team members share leadership
Have a formal team leader
High levels of teamwork are often reflected in the quality of member interactions.
Freely share information, acknowledge others’ contributions and support and
convey and display respect and trust for one another.
Teams with strong teamwork tend to experience greater productivity, more
innovation and creativity, and higher levels of member satisfaction.
Conceptualizing the Dark Side:
-
The dark side of teams includes both intentional and unintentional forces and
behaviors that impede effective, constructive teamwork and have the potential to
harm organizations.
The dark side is about the dysfunctional, distorted, distressing and destructive
aspects of human behavior.
The dark side associated with deviance, betrayal, transgression, and violation.
The dark side delves into the direct and indirect implications of human exploitation.
The dark side seeks to shed light on the unfulfilled, un-potentiated, underestimated,
and unappreciated domains of human endeavor.
The dark side studies the unattractive, the unwanted the distasteful and the
repulsive.
The dark side seeks to understand the process of objectification—of symbolically
and interactionally reducing humans to mere objects.
The dark side is drawn to the paradoxical, dialectical aspects of life.
Multilevel Approach:
- Ten conceptual distinctions between dyads and groups of three or more
persons. In groups:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Leadership is more pronounced
Formation of subgroups is possible
Power and authority is less constrained
Messages of disagreement are more frequent
Activity and involvement is both less intense and unequal
Satisfaction with other members is lower
Behavior is more predictable
Communication networks are possible
Feedback contains less self disclosure and intimacy
Unequal participation is more likely.
The Dark Side of Teams:
Subordinate levels: At the individual, dyad, and subgroup levels, the dark side
involves motives, predispositions, and behaviors created at each strata that either
intentionally or unintentionally hurt, distract, or disrupt teamwork.
a. Individual level: Individuals may have certain predispositions that contribute to
destructive team interactions.
o Individual level dynamics that can harm group processes include aggressive
communication, communication apprehension, multiple identities and role strain,
withholding information and social loafing.
o Aggressive communication is linked to four individual traits: assertiveness,
argumentativeness, hostility, and verbal aggressiveness.
o Verbal aggressiveness is negatively related to team members’ satisfaction and group
consensus.
b. Dyad level: Teamwork dysfunction can emerge from two-person relationships that
negatively affect the team.
o Examples of dysfunctional dyads: close ore deteriorating friendships, romantic
relationships, face threatening supervisor-subordinate relationships, harmful
mentor-colleague relationships, and difficult co-workers.
o Negative work relationships are associated with reduced job satisfaction,
diminished commitment and workplace cynicism.
o When friendships/relationships deteriorate, it can be extremely uncomfortable
for team members.
o Often the people involved and team members must suppress their emotions
within the work environment. Leads to distancing behaviors: expressing
detachment, avoiding involvement, or displaying antagonism.
c. Subgroup Level: The shared understanding of group identity and group
norms bind together team members, but often in sub-part rather than in whole.
When team members think of themselves in terms of the sub-group instead of
the team, they are likely to act in the interest of the sub-group over that of the
team.
o
d.
Potentially dysfunctional dynamic occurring at the subgroup level includes: tag
team influence, majority-minority dynamics and inappropriate humor.
Group level: The dark side is often caused or manifested primarily at the group
level.
o Emerges from team processes such as groupthink, speed traps, associated with
members’ false perceptions of time urgency, group farrago, and concerted
control among others.
o Farrago: Figuratively refers to confused, dysfunctional group fed by a
dysfunctional individual member but whom group members enable and
reinforce their own behaviors. Has the potential to destroy teamwork at the
group level not only because of the characteristics of a focal, problematic
o
individual, but also due to specific structural properties that sustain a farrago’s
existence at the group level.
Teams evidencing concerted control risk eroding teamwork. Characterized
concerted control systems as those where rules and regulations are enactments
of the member’s collective understanding of the values, mission, and goals of
their organization and team.
e. Superordinate levels: The dark side of teamwork also emerges due to forces
from levels that transcend and encompass teams—the organization which
teams are situated and organizations’ external environments.
o
o
o
o
Factors such as philosophical, cultural, economic, and technological forces
can influence teams in a way that hurts, distracts, or disrupts teamwork,
At an organizational level, contextual factors can influence the roles,
processes, and relationships dimensions of teamwork.
Can lead to intragroup role competition with existing team members.
At the environmental level, larger contextual factors directly or indirectly
affect group processes.
e. Organization level: the dark side of teamwork is greatly influenced by the
performance of administrators and managers who often serve as organizational
level representatives.
o Organizations have the responsibility to provide teams with the time,
goals, guidelines, and resources required to complete their tasks
effectively.
o The absence of these negatively affects team processes and performance.
o The misappropriation of time, ambiguous goals or guidelines, and
inadequate resources often lead to team dysfunction.
f. Environment level: The increase in global commerce and global organizations
presents new challenges to work teams whose members may be located across
different time zones, operate in different countries or interact and coordinate work
via communication technologies.
o Spatial distance: The physical distance between or among team
members.
o Temporal dimension: The degree to which team members’ work
schedules overlap.
o Configuration: the development of dominant subgroups, power
imbalances, and poor coordination with other groups.
o All four components have an impact on the performance of the team.
g. Crossing levels: The dark side of teams emerges as a complex function of
multilevel dynamics that obstruct effective teamwork.
o
o
o
Contributing dynamics at subordinate, group, and superordinate levels
do not simply operate within these levels but among them.
Two of the most important situational aspects that team experience
and that may encourage individual and collective evil behaviors are the
pressure to conform and obedience to authority.
Conformity becomes dysfunctional.
o
o
o
When power differences exist within teams individuals may become
evil in exercising that power or conversely allow them to be subject to
that power and be complicit in its illegitimate ends.
Evils of inaction and extreme obedience are tangible examples of dark
side behavior and neither is necessarily rooted in an individual’s
personality or disposition.
Pressure to conform or the attribution of power at the group level
jointly and across levels shed light on the dark side of teams with
respect to their perpetration of despicable deeds.
Dark side and Bright Side Communication:
Constructive Organizing: Enabling the Bright Side, Dis (en) abling the Dark Side:
Members interactions comprise both constructive and destructive organizing.
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Research has uncovered many dark side components.
To be successful as a team, the team must avoid these implied
problems.
How do they do that?
Must vigilantly examine various proposals to ensure proper
evaluation before deciding on the best one (bright and dark side).
Failing to exert such effort may result in groupthink like symptoms.
If a member questions everything other members may see him as a
farrago.
The dark side of team interactions then can also be seen as
teamwork that is ill fitting, given certain contexts and goals.
Prescription or intervention, in the forms of communicative
strategies includes: prevent potential dark side components, deal
with or manage enactments of the dark side, and effectively cope
with the aftermath of the dark side.
It is essential that both the bright and dark sides of organizational
work groups be at the forefront.
Enabling the Bright Side, Dis(en)abling the Dark Side: Examine ways that
dynamics at the individual, dyad, organizational, and environmental levels can
contribute to constructive, bright-side teamwork.
Group Level Organizing: Must overcome challenges at the collective level
along four dimensions: Vision, roles, processes, and relationships.
Multi Level Organizing: Numerous factors at multiple levels have the potential
to darken team interactions. Teams must therefore counteract them by
disabling them or at least not enabling them..
o
o
o
Team members must communicatively organize to foster teamwork
on each of the four underlying dimensions.
Tams mediate individual, subgroup and organizational influences.
Communicative organizing can disable the dark side forces.
o
o
Many things can be done on behalf of the team by management or
human resources representatives, or by the team itself, and by
outside members’ efforts to develop teamwork.
Careful screening and selection of members for entry to the team
and socialization of them thereafter can inoculate against
Reading Notes 10: Workplace Incivility & Bullying
Reading: “What is Workplace Bullying?” by T. A. Daniels in Stop Bullying at Work:
Strategies and Tools for HR and Legal Professionals (2009)
1: There are many dramatic terms used in literature for workplace bullying.
2: In North America, workplace bullying has been studied under a different set of
names, such as the following:
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Workplace harassment
Abusive disrespect
Employee abuse
Generalized workplace abuse
Workplace aggression
Victimization
Counterproductive-deviant workplace behavior
Social undermining
Petty tyranny and
Workplace incivility
3: Researchers have struggled to establish a single agreed upon definition of
workplace bullying. As a result, many different terms and definitions offered by
researchers who study workplace bullying and its effects.
**The Workplace Bullying Institute defined the phenomenon of bullying as:
“…Repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (targets) by one
or more perpetrators that takes o0ne or more of the following forms: verbal abuse,
offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal), which are threatening,
humiliating, or intimidating; or work interference—sabotage---which prevents
work from being done.”
4: 2007 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey revealed the typical actions of the
workplace bully most typically include the following:




Verbal abuse
Behaviors/actions public or private
Abuse of authority
Interference with work performance

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Destruction of workplace relationships
Other
Not sure
The majority of the mistreatment that occurs is overt (openly in front of others) at
54%. Men tend to mistreat in public.
32% occurred behind closed doors. Women tend to mistreat in private.
5: Eight daily sins of bullying bosses (according to Hornstein):
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Deceit
Constraint
Coercion
Selfishness
Inequity
Cruelty
Disregard
Deification
6: Most behaviors involved in workplace bullying are mainly of a psychological
rather than a physical nature.
7: The key difference between the kind of “normal” conflict that occurs with some
frequency in most work environments and bullying is not necessarily what is done
and how it is done, but rather the frequency and duration of what is done.
8: Bullying as a process: Bullying may follow an escalatory pattern over time—
moving from less to more severe behavior. It is a gradually evolving process with
aggressive indirect and discreet behaviors in early stages, and more aggressive acts
occurring later in the cycle.
A: One model suggests there are Four Stages of Development:
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
Aggressive behaviors
Bullying
Stigmatization
Severe Trauma
B: Another model suggests five different phases:
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
Phase 1:
Phase 2:
Phase 3:
Phase 4:
Phase 5:
Conflict
Aggressive Acts
Management Involvement
Branding the Target
Expulsion
9: A Systemic Perspective of Workplace Bullying: A Higher Level View: Allows you
to step back from the problem to obtain a more abstract and higher-level
understanding of the particular “pivot points” that create a workplace situation that
enables individuals to misuse and abuse their power at work.
- HR practitioners must look at five key factors that are inextricably linked:
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The personality of the bully
The organizational culture
The personality of the target
External factors that may impact the organization
The triggering event that begins the conflict
10: Degrees of Workplace Bullying: The severity and intensity of the hostile
workplace behaviors have bearing on whether or not an issue is viewed as bullying.
A: It has been suggested that bullying can be identified according to degrees, based
on the different effects that bullying has on an individual.
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

First degree bullying: The individual manages to resist, escapes at an early stage, or
is fully rehabilitated in the same workplace or somewhere else.
Second degree bullying: The individual cannot resist, nor escape immediately, and
suffers temporary or prolonged mental and/or physical disability, and has difficulty
re-entering the work force.
Third degree bullying: The affected person is unable to re-enter the work force.
They physical and mental injuries are so severe that rehabilitation seems unlikely.
11: Workplace bullying has similarities to domestic violence.
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The abuser (the bully) inflicts pain, keeps the victim (target) off balance with the
knowledge that violence can happen.
The target is kept close to the abuser by the nature of the relationship between
them.
The victim of the abuse frequently doubts himself/herself often engaging in selfblame.
Witnesses and bystanders evolve from denial to acknowledgement that the abuse is
real.
Organizations often fail to stop bullying out of fear or a desire not to interfere with a
situation that is viewed as a private, interpersonal conflict that parties should work
out between themselves.
12: Conclusion: Understanding the overview of how bullies operate and the
process that occurs with bullying, we will be better prepared to identify those
situations requiring our attention and intervention.
Reading Notes 11: Workplace Incivility and Bullying (continued)
Reading: “Responding to Workplace Bullying” by T.A. Daniels in Stop Bullying at
Work: Strategies and Tools for HR and Legal Professionals (2009)
Introduction:
a. It takes time and energy to build strong relationships between managers and
employees.
b: Culture of Respect: Only type of environment that will lead to motivated,
loyal, and high performing employees.
c. Culture or Fear: Created when bullying runs rampant and results in
decreased in employee morale and productivity; increases in absenteeism/sick
leave, turnover, and litigation expenses; higher stress related health costs; and
increased workers’ compensation claims and costs.
d. Without critical resources (employees) a business cannot be successful.
-
Supervisors and managers who do not nurture employees may result in
conflicts, a negative workplace climate, an increase in bullying, and other forms
of interpersonal conflict.
Confronting Bullying:
Strategists agree the only way to deal with bullies is to “stand up” to them.
a.
b.
Sam Horn Strategy:
- Recommends the use of aggression to deal with a workplace bully.
- Encourages targets to be “verbal samurais” to take control of the situation
and stop the attack.
- Targets must be confident, courageous, wise, and proactive to rescue
themselves.
- Targets must also take care to properly handle their anger, and be prepared
financially and professionally.
- Problem: There is generally a power differential between the bully and the
target.
Gary and Ruth Namie Strategy:
- Not proponents for using a company’s internal grievance system.
- Three steps to topple tyrants:
a. Solicit support from family and friends
b. Consult a physician or therapist
c. Solicit witness statements from those who may have seen the bullying
occur
d. Confront the bully
e. File an internal complaint
f. Prepare the case against the bully in terms of evidence, financial
resources, and mental/emotional readiness
g. Present the case to senior managers, the internal tribunal, and other
parties
h. Take the case public.
Surviving as the Target:
Self-Adjustment Strategies: Several strategies targets can use to respond to
workplace bullying.
a.
Hornstein: Change the victims approach.
Limit physical contact with the bully
- Emotion focused therapy
- Self-adjustment
- Accessing support from family, friends, union (if available), colleagues, and
employee assistance programs.
b. Drs Namie:
Target must assess the bully’s impact
- Establish and protect individual boundaries
- Stop self-blaming
- Start controlling destructive emotions and anger
- Affirmatively make requests about the satisfaction of his/her needs and
wants.
c. Emotional Intelligence Strategies:
Targets are encouraged to stay out of the bully’s way
- Encouraged to remain as calm and unperturbed as possible while under
attack.
- Identify patterns of the aggressive behavior
- Avoid the bully during times of outbursts
- Encouraged to seek allies among colleagues
- Foster a relationship with a powerful mentor internally
d. Exit Strategies
Leave the job and seek new opportunities
Organizational Strategies:
Organizations can play a larger role in preventing and dealing with workplace
bullying. The following strategies are offered:
a. Focus attention on the abusive manager:
-
Talk directly to the bully about the consequences of his/her actions.
Train bullies about how to treat others fairly in the workplace.
Implement performance evaluation and appraisal mechanisms to discourage
bullying behaviors.
b. Senior Management Commitment to a Bully-Free Environment:
Organizations need to demonstrate enough will and credibility to fight
against bullying through the implementation of a variety of concrete actions
that support and work together to create a bully free culture. These include:

The development of an anti-bullying policy: Makes a clear statement of the
organizations expectations about its culture and working relations among its
employees.
o One of the first measures that should be done.
o An internal group should be formed to address the issue
o The group should create policy and an action plan. Policy will
outline what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
Note: Only a handful of U.S. companies have publicly reported the
implementation of a specific anti-bullying policy. The lack of
implementation may stem from the fact that a number of management
attorneys simply recommend updating a company’s harassment policy to
address workplace bullying.

The establishment of a policy implementation and monitoring mechanism:
o A specific internal group must be identified as being responsible for
receiving complaints and educating employees. Usually HR.
o Monitoring the policy and the complaints received as well as
periodic training is a necessary component of continuing whether or
not the policy is effective.
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A system to investigate complaints and take immediate action to correct the
situation, including discipline and/or termination of the bullying manager:
o The organization must set clear ground rules that clarify how
investigations will be conducted, and by whom.
o The rules must include confidentiality information (who can access
notes, interviews, etc.)
o Protections for the investigator
o Retention of relevant files
o Those who are conducting investigations must be properly trained.
o Following an investigation all facts involved in the situation must
be considered, and a decision made, followed by appropriate
action within a short time frame.
o It is imperative HR and senior management are responsive to the
early warning signals of bullying so they can assess the problem
and intervene at the earliest stages.
o All complaint resolution systems must include an effective
disciplinary procedure that spells out the consequences for failure
to abide by company policy.
Training to set clear expectations about acceptable behavior at work and the
consequences for failing to observe these expectations about acceptable
behavior at work and the consequences for failing to observe these
expectations at all levels: Enhancing the awareness of employees about
bullying is a significant action that results in the prevention of its
occurrence.
o Periodic training of employees must be conducted to ensure
a culture of respect and accountability.
o Must reiterate the consequences for failing to observe
requirements.
o Must encourage employees to raise their concerns and
confirm all employee voices and opinions are valued,
regardless of the rank of the employee.
o Training on a regular basis helps employees feel they are
trusted and respected, and that they have some control over
their work life.
A critical self-evaluation by HR and the rest of management about the
respective past roles they have each played in dealing with this problem and
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how they might partner together in the future to eradicate the issue from the
organization.
**Common HR Mistakes
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Not taking the conflict seriously or failing to deal with it in its earliest stages.
Failing to realize bullying is taking place
Taking sides with the alleged bully
Ignoring the problem
Refusing to conduct an objective investigation
HR Musts:
o
o
o
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Critical Self Evaluation by HR: Must critically self-evaluate our
attitudes and actions in order to really make a difference in
eradicating the problem from our organizations.
Organizational measures to counteract bullying are related to the
following three factors: A companies adoption of sophisticated or
high performance HR practices, previous negative publicity about
bullying in the companies work place, and the presence of a young
HR manager.
HR department is seldom portrayed as a center of support for
bullying. To show HR is a center of support HR must keep detailed
absence and turnover records to keep track of developing patterns.
They must also conduct exit interviews to identify problematic
managers.
Research suggests that bullies operate with confidence that they are
not likely to be punished because they frequently enjoy support from
higher-ranking company officials.
**Ask the following questions:
o
o
o
o
o
Have we adopted the kind of high performance HR practices that will
help create a positive culture for our organization and its
employees?
Do employees seem reluctant to come to HR?
Does our group maintain monthly statistics related to turnover?
Is HR perceived as an ally of abusive managers?
Does HR conduct objective and fair investigations?
“Good employers purge bullies; bad ones promote them.”
Reading Notes 12: Alternatives to the Dark Side
Reading: “Responses to destructive organizational contexts: Inter-subjectively
creating resilience to foster human dignity and hope” by P. M. Buzzanell, S. Shenoy,
R. V. Remke, & K. Lucas, in Destructive organizational communication.
Resilience: Has many definitions.
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According to the authors, resilience is both a quality and a process constituted and
reconstituted through interactions and inter-subjective sense making.
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Process of reintegrating from disruptions in life and redirect attention to
communicative constructions that enable people to rebound from destructive
experiences.
The underlying processes of constructing resilience are analogous to a wide array of
contexts, individuals, and groups.
Resilience Theory and Research in Diverse Contexts: Also have different
definitions.
- Most Conceptualizations: highlight the positive nature of outcomes in
conditions perceived as adverse.
“A dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of
significant diversity;”
 “A phenomenon characterized by good outcomes in spite of serious threats
to adaptation or development.”
 “Successful outcomes under conditions of adversity.”
Other Conceptualizations: focus on strategies for dealing with potentially
destructive situations.
 “Positive adaptation in the context of significant risk or adversity.”
 “A process or phenomenon reflecting positive adjustment despite conditions
at risk.
Other References to Resilience:
 “An ongoing process of garnering resources that enables the individual to
negotiate current issues adaptively and provides a foundation for dealing
with subsequent challenges.
 Processes specify the negative triggering event or situation, mediating
processes for dealing with it including remedial identity work and positive
outcomes.
Traditionally: Focused on human development, or the nature of children’s positive
adaptations in adverse circumstances, particularly reasons why some children
emerged stronger and relatively unaffected.
Early Studies: Sought to uncover associated intrapersonal factors and
environmental factors:
 Intrapersonal Factors: optimism, intelligence, creativity, ability to construct
a cohesive life narrative, and an appreciation of one’s uniqueness.

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- Competencies included: coping strategies, social skills,
educational abilities, and memory above the average level.

Protective Factors: moderate the effects of individual vulnerabilities or
environmental hazards. Factors range from individual attributes to broader
life experiences.
- Individual factors: include person-specific differences in
cognitive abilities and self-perceptions; self-regulation skills,
relationship, and connections to pro-social, rule abiding peers
and community resources and opportunities.
Environmental Factors: Points to socio-economic status as a protective
factor. Werner’s (1995) approach suggests that multiple protective factors
exist at the individual, family, and community levels.
Developmental Psychopathology: View individuals as active agents who use various
resources to assist them in rebounding from adversity (Everall and colleagues).

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Everall and colleagues: Four domains of resilience in adolescent females
including social processes or relationships; emotional processes or the
awareness and expression of feelings; cognitive processes and feelings of
personal control over their lives; and purposeful action, the perceptions of
engaging in goal-directed behavior, hope for their futures, and positive
identities.
Constructionist Approach: “reflects ta post modern interpretation of the construct
and defines resilience as the outcome from negotiations between individuals and
their environments for the resources to define themselves as healthy amidst
conditions collectively viewed as adverse.”
Biological Approach: Some argue that biology can contribute to our understanding
of successful adaptation to adversity.
 Richardson (2002): Describes resilience as a “force within everyone that drives
them to seek self-actualization, altruism, wisdom, and harmony with a spiritual
source of strength. Draws from physics, Eastern medicine, a belief in God or a
creative force, as well as psychoneuroimmunology.
Luthar and Zelazo: view resilience as a process or phenomenon, and not an
individual personality trait because of its implication in situating blame for failure at
the individual level.
 “Resilient trajectories are enormously influenced by processes arising from the
family and the wider environment.
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Resilience in the Workplace: Workplaces are embedded in a global world marked
by constant change.
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Individuals who are able to brand themselves in a distinctive and attractive
fashion and those who have necessary career capital may survive and flourish in
this contemporary marketplace.
Workplaces may be populated with coworkers, bosses, and direct reports who
are problematic or mildly uncivil, or as abusive, bullying, harassing, and
extremely harmful.
The capacity to manage difficult people and situations depends on the degree to
which targets of undesirable behaviors can analyze or reframe their
experiences, make sense of and construct alternative narratives, and utilize
different logics in their discourse.
Those who rebound or reintegrate appear capable of learning how to turn
“disruptive changes and conflicts from potential disasters into growth
opportunities.
- Resilience can be positively related to actual career changes.
- Career Resilience: the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, even when the
circumstances are discouraging or disruptive.
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
The most resilient people are those who balance self-esteem and selfcriticism, blend confidence and doubt, and remain open to the idea that they
have weaknesses (Seibert, 1996).
Coutru (2002): Three overlapping qualities in resilient individuals and
organizations, which includes a staunch acceptance of reality, a deep belief
that life is meaningful, and the ability to improvise under pressure.
Communicative Constructions of Resilience: Job loss, day-to-day coping, and
intersections of work and non-work life.
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Job loss Study: The consequences of job loss are “generally detrimental to
individuals by virtually any criteria a researcher chooses to examine.
Emotion: Individuals and their families collectively worked toward talking about
and performing positive feelings about their situations.
 The difficulty of emotion and identity work can be characterized in the
process of sense-making, discursive framing, and performance.
 Three interrelated themes: Foregrounding/back-grounding of emotions,
normalcy, and reinstituting of traditional masculinities. **These themes
suggest that people inter-subjectively create conditions for building on their
capabilities for resilience and engaging in discourses of resiliency.
a. Foregrounding/Back-grounding of emotions: Families deliberately
foregrounded the positive and back grounded the negative of their
situation.
b. Normalcy: Creating a sense of familiarity and ordinariness was
pivotal to families’ inter-subjective construction of resilience. They
worked at talking normalcy into being when their words were chaotic
and unpredictable.
- Things that were symbolically important to the family were
retained, although the locations may have been different.
c. The reinstituting of traditional masculinities: Explaining to
themselves and others who they are and want to be. Managerial,
professional and masculine identities intersected to enhance
formation of particular masculinities (the head of the house, decision
maker, the breadwinner, not being a loser).
Irrationalities: Organizational irrationalities are everyday practices that pull
organizational members in different directions.
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Not necessarily negative
May actually be “the stuff of organizing.”
Workers who face irrationalities create intricate processes of working around the
contradictions embedded in the structures, policies, and practices, while still
adhering to central values and goals.
Example: Head Start:
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Often presents members with contradictory, ironic, and seemingly nonsensical ways
of organizing (like many government funded bureaucracies).
Head Start teachers:
 Work within numerous irrationalities.
 They do so by navigating ideological and political systems and daily work
practices that hinder and create opportunities for client changes and societal
reform.
 Teachers reported subscribing to Head Start’s rules and policies because they
deferred to the expertise of the government officials, but they routinely
operated by “meta rules” that superseded all else. These prioritized children’s
safety, developed parental expertise, and maintained Head Start’s presence in
the community.
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Teachers rationalized their adaptations to strict rules—this is a form of
resilience because they were able to work within the rules by applying a sub-set
of their own rules to allow the system to work better. These rationalizations
were not used to replace the rules rather they were developed to co-exist within
the rules.
Teachers, staff and administrators claimed that they adhered to the basic rules
because these were the rules.
 Rules sometimes prohibited those who really needed the help from
obtaining assistance.
 Rules may require things from parents that interfere with their work/life
schedules, which can result in a child being removed from the Head Start
program.
Long-Term Work-Life Tensions: Work life negotiations are a challenge for almost
everyone at some point in their lives. These challenges can be more difficult in cases
in which a longer-term disease or disability occurs.
Case Study: Examined families who were facing long-term illness, disease, etc.
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Families constructed resilience in order to reintegrate, fashion new normalcies, and
utilize networks of support to help them “bounce back.”
Bouncing back requires considerable physical and psychological resilience.
Difficulties do not only affect the family, but also career and employment
consequences.
Two interrelated processes dominated the way families built resilience: accepting
and adapting. Both are necessary, and do not generally work without the other (on
a long-term basis).
 Acceptance: Facing down of reality. Accepting focuses on holding realistic
expectations and responding accordingly. Strategies included: coming to
terms with the condition, and family-member talk abut their specific healthrelated problems.
 Adapting: The process of making adjustments to respond productively to
and rebound successfully from new life circumstances brought about by
disruptions, tragedies, and crisis. Strategies included: working intensive
care-giving into their daily routines, making strategic career choices, and
integrated health care negotiations into their work-life priorities.
“Families produced and performed a resilience that faced realities, socially constructed
what those realities were, adapted to the situation while resisting unproductive
commentary and policies by others, and found something worthwhile in their
experiences, such as their ability to do something that brought joy to the person with
the disability and his/her family.”
Conclusion:
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Human actors inter-subjectively construct resilience.
Individuals and collectivities literally talk and enact resiliency into being.
Resilience is a collaborative effort, and exchange that encourages and requires
participation of family, workplace, and community members.
The co-crafting of narratives, identities, emotions, organizing logics, and other
aspects relies on an acceptance of new realities.
Ordinary people create resilience through discourse and practices.
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Applications of the analyses suggest that members engage in sense making
processes to uncover that which they value most in their individual, familial, and
organizational identities, routines, norms, values, or missions.
Communication and resilience are anchored around these features.
Acceptance of reality provides foundations for collaboratively crafting new
procedures, practices, identity stories, and work-life negotiations.
There can never be a return to the previous situation after debilitation and
destructive episodes have occurred.
Human resilience relies upon communication to develop capacities and strategies
that enable people to bounce back or reintegrate from destructive situations.
Communication facilitates acceptance of realities and construction of new
normalcies that preserve that which participants hold dear to lend dignity and hope
to human existence.