Participants had to meet three criteria, identifying with having been a target of bullying for about six months; having responsibility for staff and being proficient in Swedish or English. 

The bullying definition used in the study was “situations in which an individual is harassed, offended, or socially excluded and in which their work is negatively affected”. The bullying must also occur repeatedly, regularly, over a period of time and be an escalating process. Power disparity was also noted as an important characteristic of bullying between the perpetrator and target. 

Factors contributing to bullying

“The bullying of managers is part of a complex social exchange relationship” the study showed. Employees can voice dissatisfaction with workplace issues against management in a way that undermines a manager’s position. Managers were bullied by non-managerial employees, a senior colleague, a senior manager, multiple parties and directly or indirectly. 

The early stages of bullying involved an “escalating occurrence” of “active and passive incidents” such as “exclusion” and “less open threats” targeting the individual or their work.

Common factors that contributed to the bullying were: 

  • being new in the managerial position or recently returning from parental or sick leave
  • having unclear roles and responsibilities creating ambiguity
  • taking over work groups with pre-existing interpersonal conflicts
  • being involved in a workplace reorganisation such as two work areas merging, the introduction of a new level of management, high staff turnover, downsizing and redundancies causing uncertainty.

Factors that enabled the bullying to continue

The first factor, bystander behaviour, was “described as taking part by means of subtle behaviours such as spreading gossip or rumours about the manager who was being bullied”. 

Higher-level management supporting the perpetrators, bystanders and scapegoating was the second factor. In some cases, higher-level managers started to “act differently towards the interviewees and supported those employees who were doing the bullying” or became bystanders as they didn’t act at all and some “participated in the scapegoating of the vulnerable managers”. 

The interviewees also described occasions in which their superior managers, the management team, the HR department and union representatives blamed them for pre-existing workplace problems before they became the manager of the team. A scapegoat was a way for higher-level managers to do “something” about a work-environment problem without addressing the psychosocial workplace issues that were likely to require greater effort”.

Strategies to cope with workplace bullying

The two key strategies used to cope with workplace bullying were problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies as well as leaving the organisation.

Problem-focused coping strategies

The problem-focused coping strategies identified in the interviews were social coping, confrontation, and “using the manager mandate”.  

Social coping – seeking support from the organisation by telling their manager, and involving human resources. Not all managers received support from their higher-level managers and a few instances of the bullying ceased with a lot of support from the immediate or higher-level management.

Social coping – seeking support from colleagues, which the interviewees stressed was crucial for improving the situation. One interviewee “described how colleagues stood up for her, which resulted in the perpetrator having to leave and the bullying ceasing”.

Confrontation – in some cases, a planned meeting with the interviewee, perpetrator and other parties, sharing specific occurrences had a positive result. 

The power/mandate – the interviewees leveraged their role as managers to form new employee working groups to “create a better work climate” as well as “develop a written action plan to deal with the bullying and other problems at the workplace”.

Emotion-focused coping

Social coping – seeking support from family, friends or social networks seemed to be a positive strategy that helped identify the underlying patterns of the bullying as well as reflecting that it did not relate to them as individuals.

Solitary coping – using work as a distraction to cope with negative emotions and avoidance coping; ceasing work social interactions with the bully and bystanders were two other strategies, however, both can expose the individual to isolation. 

Leaving the organisation

Leaving the organisation because of workplace bullying was a very common coping mechanism. At the time of the interviews, only four of the interviewees remained in their managerial positions. Some of the interviewees had been on stress-related sick leave before leaving the company and some were offered a financial incentive to leave the organisation which appealed as it “was impossible to resolve the situation in any other way”.

How to prevent bullying of managers

The study found the consequences of bullying "may be especially severe when the target is a manager".

Recommendations to prevent workplace bullying of managers included:

  • understanding how the work environment can be used to bully another person
  • providing managers with the training and development they need to perform their roles
  • ensuring managers were aware of how to build a positive culture
  • senior management responding to the needs of their direct reports when they seek help. 

Finally, ensuring the company grievance process works for managers, not just employees. The grievance process can be maintained through continual evaluation, process improvement and ensuring all grievances are investigated fairly. 

The study was reported in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Seventeen women and five men participated in the study, with the average age being 54.