WHAT IS MOBBING?
Mobbing is an English term that does not exist in Turkish but the mobbing term is adopted as “Yıldırma” in Turkish. It includes any types of outbreaks of violence which are psychological violence, financial violence, social violence, bullying, physical violence, verbal violence, sexual harassment, threats, tracking offline, and stalking online. At least a few of these series of violence are conducted in an organized and well-planned way for six months minimum.
We can only import the term and frame of “Mobbing” into Turkish work culture from others who produce scientific facts about the topic. In that subject, there are not enough academic, scientific, and juridical studies in Turkey. That is why we use an adopted term “Yıldırma”. In a culture, such exported terms and frames may not solve the problem efficiently.
Mobbing is rather about business ethics and values. The term and frame of “Mobbing” are adopted but the mobbing cases are not exported. They are real here in Turkey, too. It exists over there wherever you work at or at your office. It is like a huge elephant in the room. It is known by everyone and experienced by everyone at least once.
In Anatolian history, we could see some regulations about business ethics such as the guild organization in Byzantine or the “Ahi-order” as its Islamic adaptation. Business ethics and the Ahi order were mostly developed by Alleviates in Turkey. For example; Ahi Evran and Hacı Bektaşi Veli worked on Ahi order. The misalignment of the theories and their practices exists in business ethics as it exists in many things in general. The origin of the terms that are adopted or invented is not important. The important things are the approaches and the solutions to the mobbing problems.
Principally, mobbing is a real problem. It is a crime. It disposes efficiency. To be a productive society, a work-life with strong business ethics must be built. The inspiration point might be the Byzantine Guild System, The Ahi-Order, the Turkish law of obligations, the Turkish penal code, moral values, and religious rules. Otherwise, it would be a vicious circle like non-producing societies with inefficient solutions and imported terms in business ethics for centuries.
Some societies emphasize moral values more and these societies practice those morals in real life; therefore, those societies have better business ethics and work cultures. As a result, people might be mobbed at work less, or these mobbed people could fight for their rights in the courts better. Not only the culture of the country in which you live but also the company culture in which you work is a main determinant of toxicism and mobbing.
In terms of mobbing, one of the biggest decisive factors is the personal development of your boss and manager. Bosses’ personal development affects the development of the company culture. In building a good organizational culture at the company, the top responsible people are bosses. In non-toxic company cultures, a boss with good leadership skills does not utilize mobbing as a management tool. The bosses find effective and real solutions for the mobbing problems at their companies. They also have proactive behavior against mobbing. They don’t tolerate mobbers at work and do not hiddenly permit mobbing.
Some human resource people might accept that the conflicts are manipulative and increase productivity at work. In this case, managing conflicts may require strong game-player and game-changer skills. The conflicts and the frame of conflicts could differ from the expected results, especially according to the legal issues. The misconceptions of fair competition among workers and acceptable conflicts may risk the company. The cost of this risky behavior might not be foreseen. Especially, when the risk factor is the human factor which is highly unpredictable, the human resource people must be ready for all the unwanted results. Hiring a manager or human resource person who can manage conflicts expertly, could be hard at companies. The number of qualified managers couldn’t be large. Therefore, building company culture over conflicts and mobbing might not be as profitable and productive as it is supposed to be.
For instance, the cost of the wrong and toxic company culture may increase the turnover cost. As a result, people don’t want to work in toxic workplaces and quit their jobs.
Many bosses believe that the most weighty source is capital in a company. Human capital has a significant role in maintaining, operating, and growing the capital source. Everyone who has some money can be a boss. However, everyone could not be a good boss, could not found a productive company, and could not build a non-toxic company culture with productive employees. In a non-polite tone “I am the one who is vulgar, but I have the money and power”. Unfortunately, this rule is not always valid. As everything has a cost, mobbing and toxic company culture have a cost too. This cost must be paid in the short term or the long term.
A toxic work culture can be seen even in a job interview. The word selection, the tone, and the presentation in the interview have some clues about the toxicity of the company culture. If the interviewed candidates can not pick the mobbing signals in that phase, they will probably get the toxicity signals in the trial period. When interviewees have some mobbing experience, they will detect the toxicity of the company culture faster and better.
Mobbing is a disgusting action. Especially in terms of morals, it is too inferior. The mobber makes the work of the targeted worker worthless. He or she disrespects humans. Moobbers get benefits from ambiguous communication. They use immoral jokes to humiliate the mobbing victim. Their feedback for the work done by the victim is sarcastic. They don’t appreciate your work and see it as simple. Mobbing victims may feel humiliated. The direction of the mobbing is from upper to subordinates, but sometimes it might be in the opposite direction or mobbing might be done by the same level colleagues. Some evidence of the mobbing are e-mails at work, security camera records, task assignments, day-off or vacation procedures, and feedback for tasks.
Rarely professional mobbing action may cause productivity. Mobbing’s main goal is to make the unwanted person quit the job. Bosses target to harm their employees. They hit the employee with the social security codes for quitting the job. Bosses care about the lower compensation. Mobber would have a higher status at the office after this mafia and bullying attitude against others. Bulliers are the second most powerful person after bosses in the companies. Mobbers do not hesitate to use this power on other colleagues. Dare and courage are different, and morality and immorality are different too.
The phenomenon of mobbing in Turkish work-life and its frame have been told in the article. The more specific and explanatory cases could be mentioned. Mobbing can be discussed in legal aspects. Mobbing’s morality, results, reasons, and effects on work-life have been explained in the article. Hopefully, the readers could increase their awareness of mobbing at work after reading the article. I wish you a good and productive work life without mobbing…
