Mobbing Behaviors Encountered by Health Science Faculties Staff and Their Responses to Them

Abstract

Objective: Workplace physiological violence defined as antagonistic behaviors with unethical communication directed systematically at one individual by one or more individuals in the workplace. This cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted for the purpose of determining the workplace physiological violence behaviors encountered by academic personnel working in universities, and their effect on them. Material and Methods: Conducted as web based study, 880 academic people participated in the research and many of them (70%) worked in health science departments of the universities. To prevent the participants from sending in a second survey an electronic code was used. Research data were collected between April and June 2006. A four-part questionnaire was used in the data collection. In the first section, the participants' demographic information was requested (gender, age, education, academic title, experience and area of specialty). In the second section, the participants were asked about mobbing behaviors; in the third section about the emotional, physiologic and organization behaviors they experienced in response to mobbing; and in the fourth section about what the participants did to escape from mobbing. Results: A large percentage (90%) of the employees in the participating university reported that they encountered physiological violence behaviors, and 17% stated that they were directly exposed to physiological violence behaviors in the workplace. The academic staff who encountered mobbing behavior had various physiologic, emotional and social reactions. The participants were most frequently doing the following to escape mobbing: "I am trying to rectify the injustice I faced by talking face to face with the person "and" I am reporting the negative behaviors I experienced to my superiors". In addition, 7% of the participants stated that they "thought about suicide occasionally". Conclusion: The findings in our research show that, regardless of gender, title or educational level, one may face mobbing behavior in every academic workplace.