Emotional Workplace Abuse: A New Research Approach [1st ed.] 978-3-030-19992-0;978-3-030-19993-7

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xii
Emotional Workplace Abuse Matters (Elina Penttinen, Marjut Jyrkinen, Elisabeth Wide)....Pages 1-16
The Relevance of Identifying and Naming Emotional Workplace Abuse (Elina Penttinen, Marjut Jyrkinen, Elisabeth Wide)....Pages 17-39
Experiences of Emotional Workplace Abuse (Elina Penttinen, Marjut Jyrkinen, Elisabeth Wide)....Pages 41-61
Methods to Prevent and Tackle Emotional Workplace Abuse (Elina Penttinen, Marjut Jyrkinen, Elisabeth Wide)....Pages 63-74
Back Matter ....Pages 75-80

Citation preview

Emotional Workplace Abuse A New Research Approach

Elina Penttinen Marjut Jyrkinen Elisabeth Wide

Emotional Workplace Abuse

Elina Penttinen • Marjut Jyrkinen Elisabeth Wide

Emotional Workplace Abuse A New Research Approach

Elina Penttinen Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

Marjut Jyrkinen Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

Elisabeth Wide Faculty of Social Sciences University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-19992-0    ISBN 978-3-030-19993-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19993-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book emerges from research collaboration and joint publications between Elina Penttinen and Marjut Jyrkinen, from which we developed the pilot project on emotional workplace abuse. We had both worked with questions on gendered violence in  local and global contexts; Elina had worked on experiences of violence and Marjut on gender in organization and management. Elisabeth Wide joined us as research assistant, and has started her own PhD research that relates to working life and the organizing of care. This collaborative work grew from the interest in joining our diverse expertise on feminist research on violence with the interest in working life settings and work well-being. Our inspiration took a more concrete step after we came to know of Kathy Sanderson’s work on workplace ostracism, and we could recognize how her work resonated with our intentions for this project. We wrote this book as feminist scholars with an interest in building on research in organizational and management studies and research on workplace violence and violations. One of the most critical insights during the research process was to identify the connecting links between emotional workplace abuse and intimate partner abuse. As we began to connect how the abuse followed similar patterns, we realized that the same dichotomies which produce distinctions between the workplace and the home, the public and private spheres, structure our thinking about emotional workplace abuse. It is still common to perceive this phenomenon as work-­ related stress that should be ‘left in the office’ and as such separate from other areas of life. In contrast to this, we began to see how the experiences of emotional workplace abuse were overwhelming and totalizing for the v

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targets and changed their sense of self as competent workers and value as human beings. Thus, workplace abuse spilled over into areas to which it had no apparent connection, yet again blurring boundaries between work and personal life. Thus, our objective in writing this book was partly to show how feminist research on violence could allow for new insight on understanding the experiences of emotional workplace abuse. To connect these two fields of research could increase our knowledge on the phenomenon, and ultimately, help to prevent such forms of abuse in organizations. Throughout the research process, we became aware of how difficult it is to identify and name emotional workplace abuse as it is so insidious and difficult to pinpoint into distinguishable acts of harm. This question emerged as a central topic for concern during our work process. When we conducted the research interviews, our informants brought to our attention various difficulties and obstacles they had faced in trying to address the abusive behaviours at work. Often the problem was projected onto the target so that they were made to feel responsible for the abuse, or they were accused of being overly sensitive. Similarly, several accounts in the narrative data pointed out how futile it had been to hold the abusers accountable for their abusive behaviours, as the organization and the abuser deflected any responsibility. Interestingly, while there is ample research on workplace bullying that examines distinct markers of abuse, there is little discussion on why naming, identifying and speaking about abuse remains so difficult in the organizations where it takes place. Throughout this book, we discuss why it is challenging to identify emotionally abusive practices and why naming them continues to be difficult, and offer our considerations on what implications this might have. A central conclusion is that to name and identify emotionally abusive practices and behaviours is one of the most central aspects in breaking the cyclical process of abuse. We hope that these considerations will offer novel insights on emotionally abusive practices to our readers. With this book, we wish to propose a new approach to researching emotional workplace abuse based on feminist research on violence. This is an approach that takes seriously the subtle and indirect forms of abusive behaviours, and recognizes how these are part and parcel of a wider continuum of violence. We apply the term emotional workplace abuse to emphasize how abusive behaviours and patterns are normalized in the culture of the workplace and are not reducible to particular workplace relationships or individual psychopathologies of the perpetrator or the victim. Thus, we argue for the urgency of holding organizations, rather than

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i­ndividual targets, responsible for the abuse, as research shows that the abuse continues even when individual targets leave the organization. A similar pattern was also evident in our research data. Emotional workplace abuse remains a major problem in workplaces all around the world. In the European Union, an average of 5% of workers experience emotional abuse at work (ILO 2009). In addition, previous research identifies that women, women with disabilities, individuals from a migrant background and members of the LGBTQI community are more likely to be targets of emotional workplace abuse (FRA 2914; ILO 2009). It is also important to note that this phenomenon intersects with power relations within the organization, as the abuser is often in a superior position to the target. We also strongly believe that it is necessary to centralize the experiences of emotional workplace abuse recounted to us by our informants. This forms a key methodological underpinning for our writing. The semi-­ structured interviews we conducted, and the open-access narrative dataset on workplace abuse, have been immeasurably vital in shedding light on the practices and behaviours embedded in the organizations in which abuse takes place. Moreover, these accounts show in detail what emotional abuse entails for the target and how difficult it is to cope with the fact that one has experienced abuse at a place where it is the least expected and where it should never happen. Our informants also perceived that it is highly important to tackle this issue, and hoped that research such as this can bring about some change. Nevertheless, it was simultaneously challenging to address. We recognized that many found it difficult to return to past situations of emotional abuse, as this often meant reliving the traumatic events. Therefore, throughout this book, we hope to correctly account for, as well as honour and respect, the important contributions of our informants. We assert that emotional workplace abuse remains an important question to tackle. This book was motivated by a desire to find solutions to this ongoing pressing issue. We learned that the majority of our informants did not perceive leaving their workplace as a preferable option to end the experienced abuse. There were various reasons behind this. Some informants regarded the work content as highly interesting and motivating. Concurrently, their work area might be characterized by a high level of competition and a high level of unemployment. This applies to individuals in knowledge work areas, which our research focused on. If it is difficult to obtain work in the field in which one specializes, few feel that they have

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a realistic option to leave an abusive workplace. Many of our informants found themselves in such an untenable situation, where the work content is motivating but the abusive practices make work unbearable. At the same time, however, we noticed that many of our informants decided to leave their workplace, as this option appeared to be the only possibility to end the abuse. Being able to leave and easily find other employment is also a form of privilege that few of us can obtain. Looking into the future, we believe that questions concerning the psychological and emotional well-being of personnel will become even more important for organizations. For this reason we want to develop methods of interrogation on emotional workplace abuse, and on how to name, identify and define abusive practices and behaviours. We contend that organizations can benefit from applying insights from feminist studies to their structures, in order to better prevent destructive patterns from becoming the norm. As our knowledge increases on issues such as work-­ related stress and burnout and the damaging effects of emotional workplace abuse, individuals will expect more of their employers in the future. After arduous research on questions relating to emotional workplace abuse, we are more convinced than ever that there exists an urgent need for organizations to develop tools for ethical leadership and management. As a solution to the pressing concerns raised by the informants in our research, we offer the model of caring organizational culture as a way to challenge present notions of leadership. We do not wish to put the blame on individuals. Rather, we emphasize that organizations carry the main responsibility for tackling emotionally abusive practices and behaviours. We need to expand our understanding of emotional workplace abuse, to encompass not only individuals, but also organizational structures, power relations and work life as a whole, which often enable and reproduce emotional workplace abuse. Only by creating caring policies and practices within the organizational culture can we form everyday working practices based on co-operation and mutual respect. Helsinki, Finland April  15, 2019 

Elina Penttinen Marjut Jyrkinen Elisabeth Wide

Acknowledgements

We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to Madeline Holder from Palgrave Macmillan, who approached us at the European Business Ethics Network conference in Jyväskylä, Finland, in the summer 2017. She suggested to us the idea to write a book on the basis of our pilot project on emotional workplace abuse that we presented as a workshop and paper at the conference. Warm thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for important comments and encouragement that emotional abuse is an important area of study. We wish to thank Liz Barlow, Lucy Kidwell and the copy-­ editors for advice and practical help in the last stages of the production of this book. This research has been done within the frameworks of two research projects, namely Incorporating Vulnerability, led by Elina Penttinen and funded by the University of Helsinki (three-year grants), and the research consortium Social and Economic Sustainability of Future Working Life, funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland 2015–2021 (No. 292883, weallfinland.fi), directed by Marjut Jyrkinen, in collaboration with Professor Anna-Maija Lämsä (Jyväskylä University Business School). We are grateful for these important research fundings as well as for the support from many colleagues in these projects. We want to express our gratitude to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Hanna Snellman, University of Helsinki, for the starting grant for new professors (2017–2018). Through this funding for Jyrkinen it was possible to employ research assistance and collect the pilot interview data. Our warmest acknowledgements are addressed to all the interviewees who accepted our invitation to participate in our pilot research project. ix

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This was not necessarily an easy task, as it is understandable that recounting current and even past experiences of abuse can be a heavy process. We appreciate the courage and willingness to participate, and the use of your time and energy that hopefully will turn into the seeds to help others in similar situations. We wish all our research participants success in your future endeavours. Obviously, the interviewers, Elisabeth Wide and Kerttu Willamo, deserve a big thank you for all the careful work with such a sensitive topic. Special thanks to Professor Johanna Kujala, the School of Management, University of Tampere, for the suggestion to use the FEAR-data that was available in the Finnish Social Science Archive (https://www.fsd.uta.fi/ en/). Thereby, another thank you to the Academy of Finland. We address our heartfelt thanks to Associate Professor Laura Traavik and Associate Professor Kathy Sanderson for your kind and encouraging endorsements for our book, but also for all the support you have given us from early on. It is truly important to have an international network of colleagues who tackle similar questions and who are interested in creating sustainable solutions for emotional workplace abuse through research in different national but also international contexts in the coming future. We look forward to future collaborations! We also wish to express our gratitude to colleagues in Gender Studies at the Helsinki University. Many thanks to our colleague Ada Schwanck for helpful comments and reflections on trauma-informed methodology. We warmly thank all WeAll colleagues, including Professors Albert Mills and Jean Helms Mills, St. Mary’s University, Canada, who introduced the qualitative approach to study ostracism, and Professor Linda McKie, University of Edinburgh, and Professor Jeff Hearn, Hanken School of Economics and Örebro University for invaluable work on gendered violence over many years, even decades. Many thanks to Professor Denise Salin, Hanken School of Economics, for advice and reflections on mobbing literature and definitions. We appreciate all your support and the many conversations about research which have been helpful in developing the ideas presented in this book. Last but not least, we are grateful for the support from our significant others who have been invaluable during the process, and thanks in particular for your patience for the intensive writing during the finalizing weeks of the book.

Contents

1 Emotional Workplace Abuse Matters 1 Our Feminist Approach to Emotional Workplace Abuse  6 Data and Methods 10 References 14 2 The Relevance of Identifying and Naming Emotional Workplace Abuse17 Building on Previous Research on Workplace Violence 19 Obstacles to Identifying and Naming the Emotional Abuse at Work 23 Conclusions 34 References 35 3 Experiences of Emotional Workplace Abuse41 From Disbelief to Anxiety and Depression: Target’s Experiences during the Abusive Cycle 43 Living and Coping with Abuse at Work 48 Ending the Abuse 52 Concluding Words 57 References 58

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4 Methods to Prevent and Tackle Emotional Workplace Abuse63 Ethical Leadership and Caring Organizational Culture as Keys to Tackle Emotional Workplace Abuse 65 The Role of Middle Management in the Configuration of Workplace Abuse 68 Future Research and Development 71 References 72 Index75

CHAPTER 1

Emotional Workplace Abuse Matters

Abstract  This chapter introduces a feminist research approach on violence as a valuable framework to explore the complexities of abusive practices and behaviours in gendered organizations. The chapter presents the concept of emotional workplace abuse. In addition, the chapter outlines the key themes from feminist research on violence that are adopted in this book: the continuum of violations, the breach of the public–private distinction, and the lack of recognition and validation that the target faces. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of the study. Keywords  Feminist research • Experience of abuse • Violence and violations • Organizations • Public–private • Continuum I started as an early-career post-doc in a new research project. I was an experienced researcher and felt that I had a lot to give to the team. It seemed to me [at the time] that the rest of the team did not see it exactly the same way and I felt I really had to make an effort to become a member of the team. At first, it seemed that our supervisor wanted us to work together, but in hindsight, I realized that he fed into the animosity and hostility between me and the rest of the team. For example, he would come to me and warn me that the others were talking negatively about me behind my back and he warned me not to befriend any of the team members. (…) © The Author(s) 2019 E. Penttinen et al., Emotional Workplace Abuse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19993-7_1

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Then the behaviour of the supervisor changed considerably. He became controlling, all of us had to report our hours more carefully, we had to ask for permission for the smallest things we were about to do. He also started using finances to control us and created an atmosphere of uncertainty in terms of whether someone’s work contract could be extended, or whether someone could go to a conference or not. At that time, it also became clear that one of the team members was having an affair with him. He would openly woo some of the team members and then act unpleasantly towards some of the others. The whole situation was weird and it affected the entire working atmosphere. Most of us became physically and emotionally unwell. More information about sexual harassment, extortion with money, reputation and other forms of emotional abuse started to appear. I and a couple of the team members took this to the occupational safety and the upper management. It was at that point that the supervisor started blaming me for everything that was going wrong. He rallied a few of the team members, who still believed in him, to attack me at a workplace meeting and to continue to do all kinds of hostile things towards me. I was losing my strength. I could not sleep anymore. I felt ill all the time and could barely eat anything, I would cry easily, I became depressed and I was constantly afraid. After one of these weird workplace meetings, I had a breakdown. I just cried and cried and I decided I could not help anyone else there anymore. I had to leave this workplace and I had to take care of myself first. I went to an occupational psychologist and with their advice and support, I was able to recover and break free from the manipulative game. But what did the upper management do? Nothing! All they did was to organize a workplace survey in which there were a couple of questions concerning working environment and safety. We responded truthfully and I knew that there were some very serious allegations towards the supervisor in the survey results. The upper management decided to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Moreover, some of the replies were read out loud at a public meeting for the whole organization, even though they had ensured that the individual replies would not be made public. Moreover, there was no analysis of the survey data and no further action was taken. Since I left, what I have heard is that the same project continues only with a smaller research team and less funding. The manipulation also continues. It is only covered up much better than before. After this experience, I have decided I will never submit to such behaviour at any workplace and will not be afraid to speak up when I see and hear wrongdoings. (Jenny)

What is at stake when workplaces become abusive and harmful to employees? Why is it that emotionally destructive patterns and behaviours are allowed to continue and escalate in an organization, even though these

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are harmful for the targets and the organizations? The opening narrative of this chapter represents this problematic very well. The story shows how the abusive cycle begins and how it develops over time. Moreover, it shows the inability of upper management to hold the abuser accountable for his behaviours even though these were harmful for the target and the organization. Jenny noticed already in the beginning that something was wrong as the supervisor had asked Jenny not to associate with her team members. However, she could not foresee that the behaviours would develop into serious forms of emotional abuse such as controlling behaviours and later sexual harassment. The situation escalated when Jenny confronted her abuser. However, what was significant in this case was that confronting her abuser escalated the situation further. Her supervisor manipulated the team members to join and continuously attack her and this had enduring effects on her physical and mental health. Jenny lost her ability to sleep, to eat and to enjoy life due to this abusive working environment. In this book, we focus on emotional workplace abuse (EWA) and discuss why naming and identifying workplace abuse is difficult, how targets of abuse make sense of their experiences and try to cope with abuse, and how to build sustainable organizations. We build on feminist research on violence with research findings on workplace bullying in order to gain new insight on the processes and cycles of violence and understanding of the target’s experience. We address how emotional abuse breaks professional and personal boundaries, and how these processes place the target in an impossible situation in which the only option is to leave the organization to end the abuse. We use the term EWA to refer to abusive practices and behaviours which are enabled and fostered in toxic working environments. EWA refers to patterned maltreatment of the target, which can be work-task related (withholding information, ostracism, exclusion, belittlement of achievements) or personal (gossiping, violent outbursts, ridiculing the target in front of others), and which affects personal integrity and the sense of self as being a competent worker (Lutgen-Sandvik 2008; Keashley and Jagatic 2011). Emotional abuse can be direct psychological aggression towards the target in the form of incivility and inappropriate behaviour in the workplace, or it can be indirect and subtle forms of exclusion of one person, or derogatory facial expressions and body language, or abuse can be carried out by proxy. Two integral elements of emotional abuse at work are that it is repeated and that the abuser deflects the responsibility for their behaviour and projects it onto the target. The target of abuse is made

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to feel responsible for the abuse (Koonin and Green 2007) by the abuser and bystanders in the organization. It is common for the abuser to have the support and protection of management or co-workers, or for the abuser to be the manager or leader. The target may be isolated from any support system in the immediate work environment. We use the term abuse interchangeably with workplace violence and violations in order to emphasize that emotional abuse is actual violence and not a precursor to ‘real’ physical violence. We recognize that the effects of violence, whether physical or non-physical, are similar for the target. These are discussed in more detail in Chaps. 2 and 3. As shown by Sanderson (2017), we argue that workplace relationships often follow a similar pattern to violence in close relationships, and that the negative response by the close community and family to the disclosure of violence can be similar. The similarities between intimate partner violence and abusive workplace relationships are, for example, non-action by outsiders and bystanders, manipulative grip of the perpetrator and the cyclic pattern of violence, which intensifies over time. When disclosing the violence to family members or close friends the response may not be positive for the target. Instead, the target may be accused of disrupting the family dynamics by outing the abuser, or they can be blamed for their own abuse or told to just ‘get over it’. Similarly, in workplace situations, the employee who reports the abuse may not receive the response they expect or need from their superiors or co-workers. As we will show in the following chapters, the abusive behaviours escalate after the target has reported the abuse and taken it to upper management. Thus, retaliating against EWA might be counterproductive for the targets. Abusive relationships at work challenge professional and personal boundaries that are supposed to regulate workplace relationships. Abusive workplace relationships blur the boundaries between the institutional and intimate, and can have wide consequences for the organization and the target’s health and well-being. We suggest that the prevention of emotional abuse at work begins with the identification and naming of the problem, and emphasize the risk for the organizations in cases where EWA is ‘tolerated’ or even disguised as part of the organizational culture. The meso-level of the working organizations is the main level of interest in this book. Work organizations often consist of multifarious people, many of whom spend a considerable part of their life in workplaces, and need to collaborate with colleagues and superiors who they have not had a chance to choose by themselves. Workplaces have many

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unique features that have been elaborated by wide research on organizational cultures during previous decades. Organizational culture can be defined as a system of shared meanings held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations (Robbins and Judge 2010). It refers to the organization’s underlying values, beliefs and principles that guide and shape its members’ behaviour at work. According to Edgar Schein (2010), organizational culture is a pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed to cope with internal integration issues as well as external adaptation and interaction. Organizational culture functions as a structure and a system of control that generates behavioural standards for the members (Rashid et al. 2003). It is a learning process through which shared values are passed on to an organization’s new members as the correct way to think and feel in relation to questions and problems that arise in a particular working life context. Literature on organizational culture covers multiple approaches. Schein (2010) identifies three distinct levels in organizational cultures, namely artefacts and behaviours, espoused values, and shared assumptions. Robbins and Judge (2010: 255) claim that there are seven main characteristics that valorize the organizational culture: degree of innovation and risk taking; attention to detail; outcome orientation; people orientation; team orientation; aggressiveness and stability. Bowditch et  al. (2008) divide organizational culture into subjective (e.g. shared pattern of beliefs, assumption and expectations, managerial culture) and objective organizational culture (e.g. artefacts created by a company). Organizational cultures are also analysed as being strong or weak (Sorensen 2002), and notions on the subcultures have enlightened the underlying processes and group mechanisms in organizations (Martin 2002). However, in mainstream management and organization research, gender is mainly lacking in the research setting and analysis, and many other aspects that affect organizational culture such as power relations, exploitation and control are seldom analysed in-depth from gender or intersectionality perspectives. Joan Acker (1990: 146–147) has exposed how organizations, their structures and practices are by no means gender-neutral. Instead, the organizations are gendered in multiple and complex ways. The first is divisions of labour, allowed behaviour, locations in physical space, power, and the institutionalized arrangements that support the working life ­organizations such as family and care. Second, symbols and images that support the structures are gendered. Third, the patterns of interaction between organizational members are gendered. Fourth, these processes

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and practices impact on individual identity and thereby choice of work, clothing, language and mannerisms. Fifth, gender is a constitutive element of organizational logic, and gendered substructures are reproduced in everyday practical work activities and academic analysis. Organizations are by no means gender-neutral as assumed in major theorizations on bureaucracy, management and leadership (Acker 1990). Thus, the organizational settings are important to valorize the violations. We recognize that despite the vast amount of science-based evidence on the scale, severity and effects of workplace bullying, mobbing and emotional abuse (see, e.g., Einarsen and Raknes 1991; Einarsen et al. 2003; Salin 2001, 2003), there is still discrepancy in organizations on how these problems are recognized and responded to. We argue that workplace bullying guidelines are not nearly adequate, and emphasize the need for more thorough change in organizations towards more socially sustainable and caring ways to work.

Our Feminist Approach to Emotional Workplace Abuse Our methodological and theoretical contribution to the study of workplace violations and violence(s) is to propose a feminist research approach on violence as a useful framework to study the complexity of abusive practices and behaviours in organizations. This enables us to tackle the complexity of the problem of violations and violence(s) as this approach focuses on how violence is configured in culture and society, as well as in organizations. The key themes from feminist research on violence which we adopt in this book are as follows: the concept of a continuum of violence, awareness of public–private distinction in terms of how the severity of different manifestations is valorized, and recognition of how targets’ experiences are not taken seriously, in particular in ever-tightening working life situations. There are parallels to gendered violence in intimate partner relationships. In the following we discuss the ways in which we put these into an organizational perspective. To clarify, the argumentation on the effects and functions of emotional abuse is simplified as follows: 1. Public–private: There is breach of institutional and intimate spheres. Abuse takes place in the public sphere, but is projected onto the target as a personal issue. The target is left to ruminate on the EWA

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at home and with friends. The results can be stress, worry and losing self-confidence. 2. The continuum of violations and violence(s): Emotional abuse manifests on a continuum and forms a pattern escalating from indirect violations to direct and severe forms. Even when the person (target) leaves the organization or is laid off, the violations continue in the organization with a new target. . The experience: The targets’ points of view are very seldom heard 3 and believed to be true. One of the key elements of feminist research on violence is the focus on how public–private distinction is configured in the hierarchic distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable forms of violence at societal level. McKie (2005: 17) exemplifies this by emphasizing that even though one in four women in Britain experiences violence during their lifetime by men known to them, this does not raise as much public discussion as the violence perpetrated by strangers in public places. Thus, the distinction between public and private spheres reflects the implicit assumptions on what kinds of violence are considered ‘unacceptable’ at societal level, and what kinds of violence are seen as being up to partners in adult relationships to figure out on their own. The public–private distinction is also configured at the level of individual responsibility placed on the target of violence (Penttinen 2018). For example, a partner who is abused in an adult relationship can be seen as responsible for ending the abuse and the relationship, whereas targets of violence in the public sphere, such as parks or other public places, may not be seen to have such possibilities or responsibilities. This also relates to organizations and to the logic by which upper management or HR may deflect from taking organizational responsibility to intervene or end abusive behaviours. The power relations between employer and employee may be downplayed and the conflict can be reduced to  personality clashes or interpersonal conflict, which the individuals should be able to work out on their own. The second key concept of feminist research on violence is the continuum of violence developed by Liz Kelly (1987). This refers to acceleration and intensification of violent behaviour and practices from subtle to direct and deadly. These different forms of violence are understood as ­manifestations of gendered violence at different degrees and not as different categories of violence as such. All the degrees of violence are regarded as serious, instead of separating non-physical forms of violence and direct

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physical forms of violence as ontologically different and separate. Moreover, abusive behaviours form a pattern between abusive and nonabusive cycles. Therefore, during a time in which there are no direct violent outbursts, the target also knows and can be aware of violence to come. During these times the abuser can be loving and apologetic or the abuse can take non-­physical forms such as coercive control. The threat of violence is always present. Outsiders or close friends might not recognize what is happening as the abuser can appear amicable and the violence is kept secret by the target because of the induced shame and guilt. The target is made to feel that they did something to deserve the abuse and that if they changed their behaviour they could avoid future abuse. The same pattern can be identified at the organizational levels. Calm phases are followed by more active violations, and thus the calm phases should be seen as part of the pattern of violence. It is because of the calm phases that the target is manipulated into staying in the relationship and submitting to abuse, as they are given the false hope of better times to come. In workplace settings, the abuse can be projected onto the target as being their own fault. On the other hand, abusive behaviours in close relationships can be framed as a problem of personal psychopathologies such as narcissism or continuation of violence from family of origin (Elmquist et al. 2016). In organization psychology studies, research on narcissism and psychopathy has shown how individuals with such personality disorders are destructive for the organization (Smith and Lilienfeld 2013). Therefore, it is understandable that violence prevention in organizations may focus on screening for narcissism and psychopathy as a means to prevent violence in the workplace (Braverman 2004). However, this may not be effective alone as research also shows how workplace aggression can be tied to uncivil and inappropriate leadership styles and how behavioural aggression is part of organizational culture (Deery et al. 2011). For the target of violence, the public–private distinction may be irrelevant, as the experienced violence will affect the person’s whole life. Similarly, as the increased stress due to intimate partner violence will negatively affect the person’s capacity to endure stress in the workplace (Koistinen and Holma 2015; Braverman 2004), workplace violence seeps into the person’s private life and often puts a strain on close relationships and family (Sanderson 2017; Keashley 1998). Thus, the experience of abuse at work is something that cannot be ‘left at the office’, but seeps into and spills over into other areas of the target’s life.

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The third aspect of feminist research on violence that we apply in our approach is a focus on the challenges the targets of violence face when they disclose the experiences of violence and seek justice and care. The research in this area studies, for example, the attitudes and capacities of police, the justice system and health sector in responding appropriately to victims of violence (Kainulainen and Kaittila 2019) as it pertains to their role. This research shows that the appropriate victim-centred response is accidental, and police or doctors may not be able to take seriously the interpersonal violence that takes place. For example, medical doctors may rather treat specific symptoms such as anxiety or depression and not address the underlying cause (Poutiainen and Holma 2013), or police may downplay interpersonal violence as not serious enough to be a police issue, or may induce more harm to the victim in the process of questioning or by asking the target to settle and not press charges. Moreover, research on the experiences of disclosing, for example, sexualized violence and reporting it to the police (Carretta et al. 2016) concluded that family members did not express support for the sexual violence victim, but rather blamed her for creating more trouble for the family and close relationships This research shows that seeking help and justice may not always be viewed positively, but rather the target’s disclosure can be seen as tainting the family’s honour and image. Therefore, it is crucial to recognize that even though there are systems in place for targets of violence to seek help and justice, if the people representing the police, health sector or other sectors are not able to recognize and validate the victim’s experience, the process of seeking help can be more harmful than helpful. In organizational contexts, we emphasize that it is necessary to pay attention to how HR and upper management respond to reports on abusive practices and behaviours. If the people involved are not able to recognize and respond to the target appropriately, workplace violence guidelines or processes are of little help. This was also evident in the opening narrative of this chapter. With these three tools from feminist research on violence, we continue in this book to investigate and unravel what is at stake for organizations and employees who are caught up in the continuing processes of malicious and toxic organizational behaviours. In the following chapters, we address the relevance of building on a socially sustainable working life and work conditions, in order to appropriately recognize, identify and prevent workplace abuse. In the following section, we introduce our data and methods.

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Data and Methods We base our analysis on two different datasets, namely thematic semi-­ structured interviews and narrative-based open access research material. First, we collected six semi-structured thematic interviews in Finland between 2017 and 2019 with individuals who felt that they had experienced differing forms of emotional abuse at work. The interviewed participants were between 29 and 33 years old, and five of them were female and one male. The participants were employed in various knowledge work fields. We found the participants through professional networks. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in Finnish, English and Swedish, and the focus was on experiences of emotional abuse at work, forms of the abuse and coping mechanisms. With all the interviewees, a written research agreement was made and signed to agree to terms of the research and use of data. In the phase of the transcription, all the personal and organizational references were removed. After the interview transcripts were created, the actual recordings were deleted to guarantee the safety and confidentiality of the interviewees. In all the phases of data collection, we carefully followed the regulations set by the TENK, The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (https://www.tenk.fi/en). Second, our analysis draws from a sample of the open access research material ‘Stories about Fear and Intimidation at Work 2008–2009’, collected by a project funded by the Academy of Finland in 2011, as a part of the research project Leadership, Power and Fear. The qualitative dataset consists of 102 narrative accounts of people’s experiences of fear and coercion at work. The accounts were written in Finnish by the participants themselves and submitted through an online form. Of the 102 accounts, we selected a sample of 16 narratives based on a theory-driven reading of the material from the perspectives of our specific theoretical definition of emotional abuse at work, and feminist violence research perspectives. The selection criteria entailed the following characteristics in the narratives: the continuous and long-lasting forms of emotional abuse; difficult situations for individuals experiencing the abuse; power relations present in the abusive situations; and demonstrations of the long-term effects of emotional abuse that affected one’s personal life, health and well-being. In our final sample of sixteen narratives, fourteen accounts were written by individuals who identified as female and two were by individuals who identified as male. The details of the participants are listed in Table 1.1.

Female Male, female

Male

Female Female

Female Female

Male

Male

Female Unknown

Female Male

Female Unknown

Female Male

Linda

Simon

Julia

Maria

Michael

Thomas

Emma

Jenny

Juliette

Vilma

Unknown

Unknown

Female

Female Male, female

Ellen

38

57

31

35

30

31

30

30

29

30

33

29

Female Female

Hanna

Master’s degree Master’s degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Master’s degree Doctoral degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree

Agea Education

Pseudonym Gender Gender of the abuser

Teaching and pedagogy

Industry and mining

Teaching and pedagogy Science and research

Construction

Technology and IT

Culture, pedagogy

Science and research

Science and research

Technology and IT

Culture

Culture

Field of activity

Position

Type of data

(continued)

Executive secretary Personal interview Medium Project manager Personal interview Large Human resource Personal manager interview Large Marketing Personal employee interview Large Administrative Personal employee interview Large, medium Production Personal assistant interview Medium Expert position Narrative data Small Expert position Narrative data Large Expert position Narrative data Large Employee Narrative data Small Employee Narrative data Large Employee Narrative data

Small

Size of organization

Table 1.1  List of research participants and narrative accounts of emotional workplace abuse

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Female Male

Female Male, female

Female Male

Female Male

Female Male

Female Female

Female Female

Female Unknown

Petra

Annika

Susanna

Laura

Heidi

Jennifer

Elin

Amanda

a

At the time of the event(s)

Female Male

Johanna

53

33

38

32

43

36

30

42

52

37

Female Male

Anna

Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Basic education Master’s degree Master’s degree Doctoral degree Master’s degree Doctoral degree Master’s degree Master’s degree

Agea Education

Pseudonym Gender Gender of the abuser

Table 1.1 (continued)

Medium

Large

Large

Large

Medium

Medium

Medium

Large

Size of organization

Administration and Large office work Health care and social Medium services

Science and research

Administration and office work Technology and IT

Science and research

Commercial sector

Administration and office work Service sector

Technology and IT

Field of activity

Expert position

Employee

Employee

Manager

Manager

Expert position

Expert position

Manager

Manager

Manager

Position Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data Narrative data

Type of data

12  E. PENTTINEN ET AL.

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We analysed the interviews and the narratives using theory-driven thematic content analysis. We categorized the material according to themes that are relevant for our theoretical approach. After we read the interviews and the narratives, we formed analytical slots to analyse the data. Thereby the thematic categories of public–private, continuum of violence and the lack of validation of the targets’ experience were informed by the analysis of the research material. We did not push the data to correspond to these thematic categories, however the interview and narrative data fit into these. We use the term target to refer to the person who is the subject of or indeed targeted by the abuser, instead of the term victim of abuse. The purpose of using the term target is to emphasize that the person who is abused has not caused their abuse, nor are they responsible for the behaviour they are subjected to. Being a target does not refer to an identity of a person, but instead it implies that the person was targeted by the abuser. The use of the word target is also intended to communicate that anyone could be the target of abuse. There is nothing inherent in the victim/target that has brought the abuse on them. In other words, anyone could be victimized by the abuse, but it does not imply that they have become victims or are determined by the experience. Thus, personality traits or personal history of the target of abuse is not the cause or determining factor of why they have been abused. The use of the term target also allows us to emphasize the responsibility of the abuser for their behaviour. This is in line with our feminist approach to research on violence, which we discuss further in the following section. At the same time, we discussed how to name the people who have been the actors in the violations or violence(s) that our participants have encountered. We decided to call them abusers. It is relevant to note that in the narrative data the gender of the abuser is often unidentified, as Finnish language does not include gendered pronouns such as he or she. Thus, we have adopted the gender-neutral term ‘they’ to refer to the abuser when their gender is not explicitly given in the narrative. In the cases in which the gender of the abuser is reported in the material, we use the pronoun ‘he’ or ‘she’ accordingly. In the data that we collected and analysed, in most of the cases the abuser can be understood to be male, based on the description in the narratives. In four cases of the narrative data the abuser was only referred to as ‘them’. The majority of the narrators in the fear data and our interview participants were female. However, our research data does not allow us to make generalizations on the gender of the abusers and targets. Nevertheless, our data correlates with broader

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trends in gender-based violence in which women are disproportionately the targets of violence (FRA 2014) whereas abusers are often gendered as men. In the organizations, men tend to be in the more powerful positions, which might enable abuse because of the power position. In the narratives, the participants did not name the perpetrator on the basis of their assumed gender. Instead, they would address the perpetrator of the abuse by their organizational title and give them other names that had masculine connotations. The names used to refer to the perpetrator/s were: the management, the chief, the manager, the superior (which can be of any gender), the supervisor, the CEO, the owner, the director, the partners and the shareholders. Moreover, and very interestingly, the participants described the leadership methods used by the abusers as follows: a dictatorial spirit, a Donald Trump-like grip, old boys’ or old girls’ club, a chauvinist divide-and-conquer method, a Hitler-like behaviour, an authoritative leadership culture. We did not analyse the names the respondents gave to their abusers in more depth, but these were related to negative leadership style and abuse of power. In our research data, although it is difficult to identify the gender of the abuser, the abuse itself took different forms according to the gender of the abuser. Based on this data, we cannot make generalizations about the gender of the abuser or targets. Instead our focus is on the patterns of abuse and how this impacted the targets’ lives in complex and often overwhelming ways. In Chap. 2 we specify why naming and identifying is so difficult, and explore the obstacles that make reporting EWA challenging through our feminist approach and the three intertwined levels. In Chap. 3 we focus on how the targets of abuse make sense of their experiences. In the last chapter, we introduce our suggestion as to how to prevent emotional abuses at work and focus on ethical leadership and caring organizational practices.

References Acker, Joan. 1990. Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. Gender & Society 4 (2): 139–158. Bowditch, James L., Anthony F. Bueno, and Marcus M. Stewart. 2008. A Primer on Organizational Behaviour. New Caledonia: John Wiley & Sons. Braverman, Mark. 2004. Abuse and Violence in the Workplace and School: Toward a Systems-Based Model. In Aggression in Organizations: Violence, Abuse, and Harassment at Work and in Schools, ed. Robert Gefner, Mark Braverman, Joseph Galasso, and Janessa Marsh, 1–11. Binghamton, NY: Hayworth Maltreatment and Trauma Press.

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Carretta, Carrie M., Ann W. Burgess, and Rosanna DeMarco. 2016. To Tell or Not to Tell. Violence against Women 22 (13): 1499–1518. Deery, Stephen, Janet Walsh, and David Guest. 2011. Workplace Aggression: The Effects of Harassment on Job Burnout and Turnover Intentions. Work, Employment & Society 25: 742–759. Einarsen, Ståle, and Bjørn I.  Raknes. 1991. Mobbing i arbeidslivet [Bullying at Work]. Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety; University of Bergen. Einarsen, Ståle, Helge Hoel, Dieter Zapf, and Cary Cooper. 2003. The Concept of Bullying at Work. The European Tradition. In Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace. International Perspectives in Research and Practice, ed. Ståle Einarsen, Helge Hoel, and Cary Cooper, 3–30. London: Taylor & Francis. Elmquist, Joanna, Ryan C.  Shorey, Lindsay Labrecque, Andrew Ninnemann, Heather Zapor, Jeniimarie Febres, Caitlin Wolford-Clevenger, Maribel Plasencia, Jeff R.  Temple, and Gregory L.  Stuart. 2016. The Relationship between Family-of-Origin Violence, Hostility, and Intimate Partner Violence in Men Arrested for Domestic Violence: Testing a Mediational Model. Violence against Women 22 (10): 1243–1258. FRA. 2014. Violence against Women: An EU-wide Survey. Main Results Report. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Accessed April 12, 2019. https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-against-women-eu-widesurvey-main-results-report. Kainulainen, Heini, and Anniina Kaittila. 2019. Pelolla kahlitut. Parisuhdeväkivaltaa kokeneiden naisten hauras toimijuus esitutkinnassa (Käsikirjoitus 11.1.2019). Keashley, Loraleigh. 1998. Emotional Abuse in the Workplace: Conceptual and Empirical Issues. Journal of Emotional Abuse 1 (1): 85–117. Keashley, Loraleigh, and Karen Jagatic. 2011. By Any Other Name: American Perspectives on Workplace Bullying. In Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace. International Perspectives in Research and Practice, ed. Ståle Einarsen, Helge Hoel, and Cary Cooper, 75–105. London: Taylor & Francis. Kelly, Liz. 1987. Sexual Violence as a Continuum. In Women, Violence and Social Control, ed. Jalna Hanmer and Mary Maynard, 46–60. London: Macmillan. Koistinen, I., and J. Holma. 2015. Finnish Health Care Professionals’ Views of Patients Who Experience Family Violence. SAGE Open 5 (1): 1–10. https:// doi.org/10.1177/2158244015570392. Open access. Koonin, Michele, and Thomas M.  Green. 2007. The Emotionally Abusive Workplace. Journal of Emotional Abuse 4 (3–4): 71–79. https://doi. org/10.1300/J135v04n03_05. Lutgen-Sandvik, Pamela. 2008. Intensive Remedial Identity Work: Responses to Workplace Bullying Trauma and Stigmatization. Organization 15 (19): 97–119. Martin, Joanne. 2002. Organizational Culture. Mapping the Terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McKie, Linda. 2005. Families, Violence and Social Change. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

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Penttinen, Elina. 2018. Gender, Agency and Violence. In Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security, ed. L. Shepherd, C. Gentry, and L. Sjoberg. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Poutiainen, M., and J. Holma. 2013. Subjectively Evaluated Effects of Domestic Violence on Well-Being in Clinical Populations. ISRN Nursing 2013 (1): 8. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/347235. Open access. Rashid, Md. Zabid Abdul, Murali Sambasivan, and Juliana Johari. 2003. The Influence of Corporate Culture and Organisational Commitment on Performance. Journal of Management Development 22 (8): 708–728. Robbins, Stephen P., and Timothy A. Judge. 2010. Essentials of Organizational Behaviour. 10th ed. Prentice Hall; Pearson. Salin, Denise. 2001. Prevalence and Forms of Bullying among Business Professionals: A Comparison of Two Different Strategies for Measuring Bullying. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 10 (4): 425–441. ———. 2003. The Significance of Gender in the Prevalence, Forms and Perceptions of Bullying. Nordiske Organisasjonsstudier 5 (3): 30–50. Sanderson, Kathy. 2017. Workplace Ostracism: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Lived Experience. PhD diss., St. Mary’s University. Accessed November 8, 2018. http://library2.smu.ca/handle/01/27039#.W-RJ99UzZ0w. Schein, Edgar H. 2010. Organisational Culture and Leadership. 4th ed. San Francisco, CA: Wiley. Smith, Sarah F., and Scott O. Lilienfeld. 2013. Psychopathy in the Workplace: The Knowns and Unknowns. Aggression and Violent Behavior 18 (2): 204–218. Sorensen, Jesper B. 2002. The Strength of Corporate Culture and the Reliability of Firm Performance. Administrative Science Quarterly 47 (1): 70–91.

CHAPTER 2

The Relevance of Identifying and Naming Emotional Workplace Abuse

Abstract  This chapter focuses on the complexity of naming and identifying emotional workplace abuse (EWA) and discusses why addressing emotional abuse is difficult for the targets. We approach these obstacles by using three levels of analysis based on feminist research on violence: ­public–private distinction, a continuum of violence and negative response to disclosing of abuse. On the basis of the interview and narrative data, it is shown that, even though there is extensive literature and policies on bullying and mobbing, targets may have difficulty recognizing indirect and subtle forms of abuse as workplace violence and violations. The chapter shows how the obstacles to identifying EWA are related to toxic organizational cultures and the reluctance of leadership to take the issue seriously. Keywords  Definitions • Emotional workplace abuse • Toxic working environment • Intimate and institutional • Patterns of violence EWA is often difficult to name and identify in organizations. Abusive behaviours and practices can be normalized as part of a competitive and individualist organizational culture or be dismissed as pertaining to particular difficult personalities or stressful times. In such situations, it is difficult to speak up against abuse. When abusive behaviours are accepted as the way things are in an organization, it may seem that it is up to the individual target to handle each situation. If the abuse continues, it may seem © The Author(s) 2019 E. Penttinen et al., Emotional Workplace Abuse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19993-7_2

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like a personal failure. One of our interviewees, Julia, reflected on this by saying: ‘It is so difficult to admit to oneself that you have been abused, because it makes you feel stupid that you have accepted all that abusive behavior, and the longer it continues the more foolish you become’. Julia’s statement shows that she would rather internalize the abuse as her own fault than hold the abuser responsible for the inappropriate behaviour. She thought that if she had acted and behaved differently, then maybe she would have been able to stop the abuse. Emotionally abusive behaviours can include multifarious direct and indirect acts, such as making fun of and publicly embarrassing someone, devaluing and degrading the target, and hostile body language such as dirty or nasty looks or aggressive facial expressions, spreading rumours about someone’s private life and attacks on personality. These are some of the characteristics that have been used in questionnaires as markers of workplace aggression and deviant behaviour (see, e.g., Bennett and Robinson 2000; Glomb 2002). We argue on the basis of our interview and narrative data that even though these behaviours are named and identified as abusive in workplace surveys, and the respondents could also identify that they have been the target(s) of abusive behaviour, it may still be difficult for them to speak up against the abuse in their own organization, and to be heard. It may also be challenging to name and identify abuse at the moment it takes place, as the realization that something was abusive can come after the situation is over. Therefore, we emphasize that the naming and identifying of abuse as unacceptable behaviour in the organization, and by the leadership, could itself be a tool to transform toxic organizational structures into ethically sustainable organizations. In this chapter, we focus on the complexity of naming and identifying EWA and discuss why addressing emotional abuse is difficult for the targets of abuse. We approach the obstacles of naming and identifying EWA by using three levels of analysis based on feminist research on violence. The first level is the institutional–intimate (public–private) distinction that is also concretized in the blurring of professional and personal boundaries. The second is the continuum of violence, which also refers to the process of abuse from subtle to direct and blatant forms. Finally, the third level is the resistance and backlash against the target by co-workers and upper management, if and when they disclose the abuse and seek justice. From the perspective of the target these three levels are intertwined. For example, the difficulty in identifying emotional abuse stems from the fact that workplace abuse by definition breaks professional and personal boundaries

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and that at first it is so subtle that the target and bystanders may brush it off as insignificant. Later, speaking up against the abuses can also be viewed negatively as it adds to an already stressful environment. We emphasize that the three-level analysis is a useful tool in gaining a deeper understanding of the complexity of workplace abuse: how it is configured in workplace culture and why organizations and targets alike find abuse difficult to identify. Our key argument in this chapter is that identifying and naming emotional abuse as serious and unacceptable in working life is crucial for the well-being of employees, as well as for the success of organizations. In Chap. 3, we develop the three levels of analysis further, and discuss how these concretize in the target’s experience. Next, we outline previous research on workplace abuse, which we draw on in building our own research approach to EWA.

Building on Previous Research on Workplace Violence EWA is part of larger and complex issues of workplace violence and violations. We draw from the wide international research on bullying and mobbing in working life, accomplished in various fields, such as working life psychology, administrative studies, and management and organization studies. We base our study on feminist research on violence and gender. Diverse research on bullying, mobbing, sexual and gender-based harassment, and physical violence also addresses the prevalence of emotional abuse in the context of workplace violence. In these studies it is apparent that different forms and levels of workplace violence often overlap and do not manifest in isolation. However, it is also possible to discern distinguishable features between different categories, levels and types of workplace violence. Our feminist approach contributes to the discussions in the areas of working life studies, management and organization, as well as in gender studies that focus on work or on violence. We apply a feminist phenomenological and trauma-informed approach in the analysis of the experiences of workplace violence in the context of toxic working environments (see Chap. 3) and thus our approach is termed emotional workplace abuse (EWA). Based on earlier research (Sanderson 2017), we emphasize the relevance of recognizing the subtle, indirect and often mundane forms of hostile behaviour at workplaces. It is important to see that these can also be deeply harmful both for the target and the organization. We respond to

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the need to investigate how abusive workplace relationships develop over time and how the abusive behaviours take place in cycles. This aspect of workplace violence is difficult to address simply through workplace surveys, which can give information on scale, scope and duration of violence. Emotional and non-physical violence is also an under-researched area in feminist research, which has focused more on physical and sexualized violence (Lammers et al. 2008). We contend that it is important to research subtle forms of emotional abuse as these are predictors of more severe violations and violence in the future, and because the indirect and subtle forms are already harmful for the targets. There is wide research on workplace bullying and mobbing since the 1980s in the Nordic countries, elsewhere in Europe and in the USA. In 1986, Heinz Leymann applied the term ‘mobbing’, which is used to refer to aggressive behaviour at schools amongst children, to workplace contexts (Einarsen et al. 2003). The phenomenon has been prevalent in public media, and among health and safety professionals and union representatives in the late 1990s, and many crucial research results have been published since then, with reference to mobbing, harassment and aggression (e.g. Björkqvist et  al. 1994; Einarsen and Raknes 1991; Matthiesen et  al. 1989; Vartia 1991; Salin 2001). In English-speaking countries, the term bullying has been more widely used to refer to destructive patterns of behaviours. Regardless which of the terms is applied for research purposes, the results are similar and show that the aggressive and hostile behaviours consist of repeated negative acts targeted at one or more subordinates or colleagues. The target may be stigmatized in the organization and seen as causing one’s own abuse and further socially ostracized. This process is also traumatizing and leads to serious physical and psychological consequences. It is common that the abuser is in a superior position to the target, and perhaps for this reason, little focus has been paid to the abusive behaviours of subordinates or clients towards their superior, in particular when the superior is a ‘non-male’, especially in traditional leaderships contexts, including boards and directorates, which usually consist of men. In bullying and mobbing research traditional quantitative methods have often been used, which has enabled, for instance, evaluations on the prevalence of the phenomenon in different national contexts and among particular sectors, as well as international comparative analysis. The ­majority of research literature on bullying and mobbing is situated in organizational psychology and occupational health. However, as Keashley

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and Jagatic (2003) mention, there is still relatively little overlap between, for example, research on workplace abuse in organization and management studies and nursing and health sciences. Moreover, research results often do not include immediate practical suggestions for prevention or intervention, and these are discussed in more popular writing and business consultancy work instead. In developing our approach to EWA, we  have found Einarsen’s et  al. (2003: 15) definition of workplace bullying useful, which is framed as follows: Bullying at work means harassing, offending, socially excluding someone or negatively affecting someone’s work tasks. In order for the label bullying (or mobbing) to be applied to a particular activity, interaction or process it has to occur repeatedly and regularly (e.g. weekly) and over a period of time (e.g. about six months). Bullying is an escalating process in the course of which the person confronted ends up in an inferior position and becomes the target of systematic negative social acts. A conflict cannot be called bullying if the incident is an isolated event or if two parties of approximately equal ‘strength’ are in conflict.

Thus, the core elements for bullying/mobbing are repetitiveness and regularity, duration, and escalation, and the acts that it covers are harassing, offending, social exclusion or negatively affecting someone’s work tasks (Einarsen et al. 2003). However, in this definition the power element is not relevant if the ‘two parties of approximately equal “strength” are in conflict’ (ibid). If the element of power relations is not incorporated into the research design it can possibly lead to biased interpretations. Another research strand approaches bullying/mobbing through more varied methodologies, including qualitative interviews, vignettes and organizational ethnography, and slightly different vocabulary in particular in the US context, such as ‘emotional abuse’ (Keashley 1997) and ‘employee emotional abuse’(Lutgen-Sandvik 2003). In addition, other terms have been used somewhat variably, such as workplace aggression, mistreatment and workplace harassment. Keashley has focused on the long-lasting suffering of the target, and emphasizes that the abusiveness of the behaviour violates the target’s individual rights, and that it is of an unwanted and unwelcome nature. She explains that the two main reasons to use the term ‘emotional abuse’ are to distinguish the behaviour from physical, sexual and racial abuse, and at the same time ‘to capture the severity of and long term effects on people that becomes apparent in written and oral accounts of people’s experiences’ (ibid.: 87). Lutgen-Sandvik

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(2003) identifies workplace bullying as a communicative cycle by more powerful members at work. Employees’ emotional abuse is repetitive, targeted and destructive and has its roots in the explicitly or implicitly supported norms of the organizational culture (ibid.: 493). A key element of hostile behaviour at workplaces according to Keashley and Jagatic (2003: 35) is that it is in most cases verbal, passive and indirect. Emotionally abusive behaviours and practices have been studied, for instance, as ‘psychological aggression’ (Barling 1996), ‘generalised workplace abuse’ (Richman et al. 1999), ‘emotional abuse’ (Keashley 1997), or ‘workplace incivility’ (Andersson and Pearson 1999; Cortina et al. 2001). Another element of psychological aggression is that it is often an escalating process both in intimate relationships and at work (Barling 1996; Glomb 2002)—the acts will accumulate over time. For the target, this means that the abuse will get worse over time and that in the organization the inappropriate behaviours were not taken seriously. In this context we ask if organizations can afford not to identify and name emotional abuse as a form of violence and violations. Are organizations more willing to bear the costs of high turnover, sick leave and loss of motivation of the employees than to hold abusers accountable for their actions and name emotional abuse as something that is not tolerated or accepted? There is very little research on violence, organizations and gender, except for Jeff Hearn and Wendy Parkin’s nominal work ‘Sex’ at ‘Work’ (1995). This research, as well as Hearn’s work on Violences by Men (1998) and his other publications, is relevant for our research on EWA. To understand workplaces as gendered places as discussed by Joan Acker also allows us to unpack the difficulties the targets face in disclosing and retaliating against abusive behaviours (Acker 1992, 2003; Acker and Van Houten 1974). At the same time, there is a wide literature on gendered violence in close relationships (Anderson 1997, 2002; Johnson 2006; Lammers et al. 2008; McKie 2005; Ronkainen 2008; Näre and Ronkainen 2008; Penttinen 2018; Velonis 2016; York 2011). Violence which takes place in the privacy of the home also affects the person’s working life as the added stress from intimate partner violence will also affect work performance (Braverman 1999). This literature is crucial for our further development with a special focus on gender, and the methodologies on how this is and should be done (Hearn et al. 2013). This research brings up how violence is also gendered in complex ways in working life contexts. As stated before, we draw from the previous research on bullying and mobbing in conceptualizing emotional abuse at work, and combine this

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with feminist research on the violence framework and its methodological and ontological viewpoints to study abusive behaviours and practices at work and in organizations. We use the term ‘emotional workplace abuse’, first, to highlight the responsibility of the organization in the process of how abusive workplace relationships develop, and second, to emphasize that emotional abuse is a form of violence and violation in itself. Thus, emotional abuse is not only a warning sign of or precursor to ‘real’ violence to come. This is in contrast to the way in which the term bullying is used, for example, in the contexts of schools where it can be normalized or downplayed as part of ‘childish’ behaviours. For instance, in the Finnish language the word ‘kiusaaminen’ that is used to refer to bullying at work or school translates in English to ‘teasing’. This word has the connotation that the behaviour is not violence or abuse in itself, but rather a normal part of growing up (Braverman 2004). We argue that downplaying emotional abuse as less than or a precursor to violence is a problem especially for the targets, as they might not understand their own traumatic stress responses that they are living with, if what they have been subjected to is just ‘teasing’. Therefore, in the rest of this chapter we illustrate the challenges around naming emotional abuse and discuss these according to our three-level feminist analysis introduced in the first chapter.

Obstacles to Identifying and Naming the Emotional Abuse at Work The first step in identifying and naming emotional abuse is to acknowledge that it is difficult to do. Emotional abuse is insidious as it is not as clearly identifiable, or discernible, in separate acts of violence as physical violence is. Emotional abuse does not leave marks on the body, such as bruises that could be photographed as evidence. These behaviours may also be difficult to understand as violence, as each incident may seem minor in and of itself. An additional problem for the identification of emotional abuse is that it may be difficult to notice and comprehend that one person is turning others against the target as this can be concealed or denied by the abuser if they are confronted. Some forms of abusive behaviours can be difficult to explain to others, such as when a person is making faces at a meeting but does not vocally express dissatisfaction with them in a way that could be, for instance, codified in the minutes of the meeting. Or, it may be difficult for those who are not the targets of abusive behaviour at a workplace meeting to recog-

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nize how stressful the subtle forms can be for the target. In this way the target may feel isolated and unsupported and indeed have difficulty naming and identifying the behaviour as abusive as there is a risk that they are not believed or taken seriously. We do not claim that isolated incidences of hostile behaviour constitute emotional abuse—we are all human beings at work with our good and bad days and behaviours. The distinguishing factor is that it forms a consistent pattern of abusive behaviours and practices that are repeated and directed at a specific employee (see also Koonin and Green 2004). In the case of EWA, the bystanders may also make a deliberate choice to not intervene or acknowledge how harmful the way they are treated in the organization is for the target. Intervening can also pose a risk for bystanders as they will most likely become the next target. Another factor that plays into the difficulty of naming and identifying EWA is that a target may only realize in hindsight that what happened was abusive. As Annika in the narrative data explains, she had recognized early on that her supervisor was manipulative towards other employees in the organization and that something was wrong, and yet ‘despite this [awareness of manipulation] I only recognized after the fact that I had been manipulated as well’. Thus, even though she was aware that the supervisor behaved inappropriately towards others, it was difficult for her to notice the abusive behaviour at the moment it was happening to others and then later on also to herself. She realized only afterwards that she had been manipulated as well. On the basis of our data, we claim that many of the abusive and hostile practices and behaviours at workplaces go unidentified and unrecognized as they are not considered as harmful as overt physical aggression. The severity of emotional violence is (still) seldom recognized. For instance, Siltala et al. (2014), who have studied gendered violence in intimate relationships through a survey, found that emotional violence had the strongest impact on the victims’ long-term well-being as it affected their self-image and sense of value as a person. Emotional violence is an essential and inseparable part of intimate partner violence. However, its elements, such as coercive control (Johnson 2006); manipulation; blame-shifting; gaslighting; constant criticism; threats of violence to the target, their family members and pets; and threats of suicide if the target does not submit (Velonis 2016), are often ignored by officials who instead focus on physical violence, which can be more easily detected (Kainulainen and Kaittila 2019). Both in private spheres and in working life contexts hate speech and digital harassment have increased tremendously. For

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instance, according to the Gender Equality Barometer survey (N = 1,682) in 2017, 9% of women had experienced gender-based hate speech related to working life during the last 12 months in Finland, and 8% of women had encountered it on social media or via emails. The respective figures for men were 3% and 2% (Attila et al. 2018). Organizations and their leadership can be reluctant to admit that harmful behaviours take place, as this could cause damage to the image of the company as an attractive employer and to the organization’s stakeholder relations. Tackling abusive behaviours may seem difficult, as the phenomenon is difficult to identify. Leadership and managerial personnel may also be those who themselves are the perpetrators—previous research indicates that managers and supervisors who are in higher positions in the organizational hierarchy compared to their subordinates are often the main perpetrators of systematic and ongoing inappropriate behaviours (Rayner et al. 2002; Zapf et al. 2011). Abusive behaviours are often gendered in many ways. For instance, a managerial position may not protect women from being the subject of bullying (Hoel et al. 2001; Salin 2003) or other inappropriate behaviours (Jyrkinen 2014; McKie and Jyrkinen 2017). Informal power, which can originate from personal and social capital (such as knowledge, experience and access to influential people) can create a position where abusive behaviour is carried out, and where it is even more difficult to detect (Hoel and Cooper 2000). Another aspect which plays into the difficulty of naming and speaking up against abuse at work is the question of gender. In our research data, there were some indicators that female respondents with female supervisors were especially reluctant to call out the abusive behaviour of their boss. We can only speculate as to why this was so, as our research data does not allow for in-depth analysis. One reason could be that in Finland, employees, especially women, report being more satisfied with female superiors than with male superiors. Thus, it may be difficult to admit that a female boss is behaving abusively. According to the Finnish Quality of Work Life Survey in 2008, employees were somewhat more satisfied with female than male superiors: 31% of men and 25% of women were very satisfied with female superiors; 19% of women were very satisfied working with male superiors, compared with 23% of men (Lehto 2009). Among the European Union member states, Finland had the largest share of employees with a female boss, at 39% in comparison to the EU average of 24% (Parent-Thirion et al. 2007; Lehto 2009). It may thus be difficult to speak up against female bosses if the general assumption is that they lead

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in a constructive way and are at the forefront of transformational leadership style, in other words keen to inspire, stimulate and energize their employees, which is connected to motivation and psychological empowerment (Bass 1990; Luoma-aho et al. 2012). This may also play into why targets would at first rationalize, minimize or deny abuses rather than admit they are real, as they do not want to believe that a female leader would be abusive. In our data, the superiors who were abusive were both men and women, but the respondents were mainly women. In our data, the participants seldom construed the initial, subtle phases as abuse. Instead, the early stages of abuse were framed in terms of feeling that something was strange that was difficult to pinpoint. Afterwards, when the abusive practices had escalated and intensified, the participants could also identify the initial events as abusive, and recognized that these formed a part of a continuum of emotional abuse that they experienced. In some cases, the participants identified the negative behaviours as a lack of respect, rather than abuse. Others analysed their experiences as being part of an organizational logic that hierarchizes employees according to those who are more useful for the organization, favouring those at the top while more easily dismissing others in lower positions. It may thus be easier to name abuse as disrespect of hierarchical organizational structure than to say ‘I was abused at work’. Next, we discuss difficulties in naming and retaliating against abuse through three levels of analysis based on feminist research on violence. 1. Public–private In this section, we outline how the distinction between public and private, institutional and intimate was configured in the obstacles the targets faced in reporting the abuse they had endured in the organization. The key challenge which the respondents reported was, indeed, the blurring of the boundaries between professional and personal life (Niemistö et  al. 2017; Heikkinen and Lämsä 2017). On one hand, abusive behaviour could be rationalized as pertaining to difficult personalities, such as the character traits of an artistic director or new organizational culture brought by a new demanding leader. On the other hand, being affected by abuse could also be projected as a problem of the target being ‘oversensitive’. Therefore, even though the abusive behaviour took place in an organization, this problem was externalized as a personal issue, and thus the institution could avoid taking steps to change the situation.

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For example, in Hanna’s case this obstacle concretized in the process in which she tried to make the board of the company take the abusive behaviour of the manager seriously and do something to make the situation better for all the employees. Hanna explained in her interview that her manager’s communication style had been passive-aggressive from the beginning, and the behaviour in the relatively small organization spread across the team so that, according to Hanna’s interpretation, everyone was stressed out. The negative effects of the superior’s behaviour had been noticed by the international stakeholders and by the board members, who had started to pay attention to the situation. However, the board of the company tried to avoid the topic of the manager’s inappropriate behaviour. In her interview, Hanna described the situation as follows: At first the board was alarmed by the situation and thought that this [inappropriate behaviour] should not take place. But then, the manager never came to these meetings, probably as she did not want to encounter me. (…) After that there were signals [from the board members] that perhaps your chemistries do not match, or are you oversensitive and are these real problems at all.

One year passed and the situation did not change for Hanna or for her colleagues, as the board continued to place the blame on the employees themselves for being ‘oversensitive’. The hierarchic power positions between the board, the manager(s) and the workers played a major role, and for the board members it might have been easier or more convenient to ignore the (well-founded) claims brought up by the workers. The non-­ actions by the board members relates to the ‘inconvenience’ of having to respond to reports of emotionally abusive behaviours. In this case, it seemed that it was easier for the board to avoid responsibility than to act. It takes time, energy and effort to intervene in a situation such as that described above, and the board would have had to confront the manager, who they had trusted to lead the projects. It also takes competence to handle conflicts in constructive ways and to confront someone about their abusive behaviour in such a manner that real change takes place. It is also quite common for the leadership—in this case the board—responsible for the recruitment to have difficulty admitting that their recruitment was not successful. The board may be defensive about the accusations as this may be interpreted as indirect criticism against them as well. In other words, the board or leadership is often keen to believe the version of the manage-

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ment, instead of that of the workers. Dismissing the problem as a personal issue of the employees can be a strategy that allows the leadership to avoid responsibility and take on the difficult task of holding the abuser accountable. As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, employees who have been subjected to emotional abuse may have difficulty in identifying and naming what took place as abusive. The abusive behaviours are rather interpreted as peculiarities of a particular manager or CEO that the employees should just adjust to. Moreover, in our data the behaviour was not named as abuse, but rather referred to as ‘it’ or as ‘something odd’. Another interviewee, Ellen, would not name abusive behaviours that were apparent in the organization, but rather talked around them by making a reference to something weird happening at meetings, which others also identified. She explained: Immediately in the first staff meeting for us new personnel, when we all sat down, the way they talked about the CEO who was not present, the kind of comments that the vice-CEO made or what other colleagues said showed that there was something [odd]. And also the way other workers took up some issues during that meeting [hinted that] there was a rather detrimental way to communicate. This seemed to be true afterwards.

In Ellen’s case, as in many others’, the obstacle of naming subtle forms of abuse is, indeed, difficult, because these were so indirect and ingrained in the organizational culture that everyone was trying to cope with them. Ellen came to realize that the organizational culture was filled with back-­ stabbing and bad management, which was difficult to tackle, in particular as a new worker. She was also concerned that if she spoke up against the abusive behaviours and contacted a health and safety representative, she would be labelled as ‘a whining person’ and thus be viewed as a troublemaker in the organization (see also Frost 2003). She also noticed that her colleagues hesitated to take up the issue, and Ellen had to consider whether it was worth it to place the burden on herself alone. A similar situation had resulted in another employee receiving a written warning after the ­person had complained about the abusive behaviour. Thus, the organizational culture did not allow for retaliating against abuse. The role of bystanders is important in terms of whether the obstacle of projecting abuse as a personal issue can be overcome. Bystanders can either be helpful if they are willing to validate the target’s experience or

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they can escalate the situation further if they decide to side with the abuser. In some cases in our data, there were colleagues who offered emotional support to the target of abuse by listening to them. In some situations, this became costly as the bystander then became the target of abuse. In most cases in our data, the respondents felt isolated and alone, and they received very little assistance from the organization, as Linda explained in her interview about her experience of abuse and how the lack of support played into her decision to leave the organization: And he [the manager] wanted me out. That was it. And that was his way of (…) he cancelled my business trips, sitting behind the door basically in an open office area and he didn’t tell me, he screamed at me in front of the whole team, he basically diminished me in any way he could. And nobody helped me, there was nobody to support me. And that’s when I left. So I really don’t think it depends on the position, and [it] really depends on does somebody feel you like a threat for whatever reason. (Emphasis added)

Thus, co-workers’ reactions and collegial support and respect can be crucial. In the case of Linda, it was the lack of support from her colleagues that finalized her decision to leave the organization, and not only the blatantly abusive behaviour she was subjected to by her manager. However, the decision to leave proved to be detrimental for her career. Linda explained: My career, the way it could have been, came to an end then [when she quit] because my colleagues who have the same education as I have, they are all directors, vice presidents. So I let him destroy my career because I didn’t know better. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have let that happen. But I just wanted peace to myself. And I think a lot of people will do that, they will find an easy way out.

To summarize, the challenge in naming and identifying emotional abuse in the context of toxic working environments is that it is projected as a personal rather than a professional problem. Thus, in line with the public–private distinction discussed in the previous section, dismissing violence as a personal problem can be a means for the organization to avoid taking responsibility for the abusive behaviours. As discussed briefly in the first chapter, when violence is regarded as a problem pertaining to particular intimate partner relationships instead of as a societal problem, the responsibility to end the abuse also lies with the individuals in the

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­ articular relationship (McKie 2005; Penttinen 2018). In the context of p EWA, the target may also be held responsible for dealing with the situation either by tolerating and accepting the workplace culture (Frost 2003) or by leaving the organization. As we will discuss in more detail in Chap. 3, those who were not willing to put up with the environment either resigned or were let go, but this did not end the abuse at work. 2. The process of violence as an obstacle to identifying emotional abuse In this section we address how the cyclical process (Kelly 1987) of EWA is one key obstacle in naming and identifying abusive behaviours and practices. As already mentioned, the abuses, violations and violence that surfaced from our datasets were by no means single events. Instead, they intensified over time. The problem was, however, that the pattern was never direct. The common denominator for the unpatterned pattern—as is often seen in intimate partner violence—is that at first it is difficult for the target to make sense of what is happening and why, before the situation escalates (Velonis 2016). This poses the problem of ascertaining at which point it is appropriate to speak up against abuse. The first instances of an abusive behaviour can be felt as so unexpected and so outrageous that it is difficult to believe that it would continue and be actually part of the organizational culture. Petra explained in the FEAR-data as follows: I got a new job in 2005. At first I was happy, even though I had very little work. After a few months, I noticed that everything I said was turned against me, my computer was searched, my emails were searched and so on. Soon after, I was accused of being rude to the clients, rude to my team members, and then other issues—you just name it. I got the most unbelievable accusations and inappropriate messages concerning my personal life.

Petra wrote in her narrative that regardless of the extreme behaviour on the part of her supervisor, she decided to stay strong as she found out that she was not the only one who suffered from the inappropriate behaviour. Others in the organization expected these things to happen and thus ­incidents as blatant as surveillance of emails, unfounded accusations and attacks on personality were not identified as abusive, but rather as just the way the supervisor did their job. Such processes were normalized, even though these were presumably even illegal. However, Petra soon realized that her colleagues turned towards her for help with the situation, and

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discussed with her how to deal with the conflicts with the supervisor. Thus, as she did not accept the supervisor’s behaviour as normal or permissible, others in the organization also started to  see that it was not appropriate. What is important to note in Petra’s case is that before her arrival, the supervisor had had the freedom to operate as he wished. The other employees had accepted and tolerated the situation for quite some time. Petra explained that the firm hired mostly incompetent workers who did not have the appropriate education or skills for the particular field or competence in dealing with the abusive environment. Petra, on the other hand, had twenty years of experience, was a highly respected expert in her field and would not put up with the abuse. She left the organization after three years of trying to cope. However, she reported that some of her co-­ workers were so deeply traumatized that they were not able to return to the workforce even after a sick leave. In Petra’s case, as was obvious in the data more widely, the abusive behaviours and practices were complex and intertwined. Petra described that employees were controlled and oppressed, and that her supervisor was openly racist against foreign workers, as well as ageist and sexist towards women in the office. In this case, EWA was not only a pattern, but a practice of (inappropriate) leadership. In our interview and narrative data, the respondents would not refer to isolated acts or events to name and identify abuse. Rather, these were identified, for example, as aggressive or passive-aggressive communication styles, withholding information, malicious workplace environment, instilling fear in the employees, and threats to end employment. For the target, it can be difficult to identify what the beginning of the abuse was or describe abusive behaviours as isolated acts. On the other hand, in order to seek justice the abuse has to be named and identified in some way. Therefore, it is crucial to pinpoint the indirect and subtle abuses. The more the situation escalates, the more challenging it is for the target to report and retaliate against the abuse, and conversely, the more the upper management may be ready to ‘fight back’. In Ellen’s case the situation had escalated to sexual harassment in the workplace, and the leadership—mainly consisting of a tight group of male colleagues—took action against those who had dared to raise the issue. Ellen describes the situation as follows: ‘There was a case of sexual harassment. (…) The formal discussion was about spreading a negative atmosphere [not on sexual harassment]. But then, this was drawn back after protests. But the harassment was silenced. All the criticisms were

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Suggestion to seek help from e.g. occupational health

Self-doubt; spill over to family, friends and nonwork area of life

Approaching the superior or other formal authority for help and clarification

A strange feeling; uncertainty over what takes place; seek for advice from colleagues

Rumours, silent treatment, unpleasant behaviour

Fig. 2.1  Example of a process of emotional workplace abuse

silenced’. In Fig. 2.1 we exemplify how the process of EWA develops and illustrate the non-productive and all-consuming cycle that the target is caught up in. Concluding the analysis on how cycles of abuse form obstacles to naming and identifying abuse, we would like to note that it is also the tolerance of subtle forms of violations that makes it difficult to report on the more direct forms of abuse. If abusive behaviours are accepted as ‘the way things are’, then more direct and blatant abuse start to make sense as a part of the normal and accepted organizational culture. Moreover, as Ellen’s and Petra’s cases show, the upper management may not be willing to hear and take seriously reports on abusive behaviours, but will instead attack or silence the employees. In the next section we discuss how the difficulty of naming EWA affects the target.

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3. Emotional workplace abuse: The effects on the target The last challenge, which makes the identification and reporting of EWA difficult, is that it is demanding to report on something that is in flux, indirect and is tricky to prove. In our research material, there were mentions of how the abusive behaviours took place when the superior and the employee were alone. In order to raise a case against abuse, there has to be recorded evidence. Such evidence is hard to find in the case of indirect abuses, and especially if bystanders are not willing to validate the target’s experience. In some other examples, ostracism took place, as well as inappropriate behaviours that were not coded in the minutes of a meeting. We argue that the phenomenon of the Emperor’s new clothes is present often in these situations—nobody sees and nobody reacts, even though everyone knows the situation is abusive. This was a significant obstacle, even though the target wanted to report and seek justice during the early stages of abuse. Once the abuse becomes more severe, as in the form of open threats against employees or demoting the target, the case may be, paradoxically, easier to prove. In Laura’s case in our narrative data, she reported the abuse to the administrator, which led to an internal investigation into workplace bullying. According to Laura, the survey showed that workplace bullying and sexual harassment was a serious problem in the organization. The upper management did not react to the survey results. Instead, the solution was to ‘monitor’ the situation—in other words, to do nothing. Laura explained that she was asked by HR to report the number of instances of harassment and if these reached a high enough number monthly, say 3–4 times per month, then perhaps they would have to respond in some way. In Laura’s case, the significant number of instances kept changing, and the administration and upper management did not take any responsibility. Laura’s experiences are discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Our data strongly indicates that the impacts on those who dare to raise the issue of emotionally abusive behaviours and practices can be detrimental for the target, as the previous research on bullying/mobbing shows (see Salin 2001). Anna reports in the narrative data that firing and ­demoting employees who had been critical towards the abusive leadership was a common tactic to instil fear in employees. During the financial crisis of 2008, threatening employees with the uncertain future of their employment was an efficient tactic to silence critical voices.

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However, the shame around the experience of emotional abuse and fear for one’s own career and position cause feelings of incapability in tackling the problems. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, it is common for the targets to be blamed for the abuse, even by the targets themselves. This prevents the targets from reporting the abuses. Self-blame is a typical reaction to gendered violence and violations (see Hearn and Parkin 1995; Näre and Ronkainen 2008) and can be a form of self-protection. It is easier to blame oneself than to recognize that the other person is abusive. For example, Hanna also looked for reasons within herself and rationalized the abuse by saying that perhaps she had just misinterpreted things or was ‘being jealous’. The biggest obstacle for Hanna to report the abuse was that she was working on a fixed-term contract. Even though she thought that she would certainly leave after her contract ended, she found herself accepting a new contract and continuing to work in the organization. As the work itself and the topic were fascinating to her, she was tempted to continue to work there. In addition, not accepting a continuation to her contract might not be wise as it could be interpreted as ‘burning bridges’ in a small expert area, in particular during an economic downturn, amidst high unemployment levels in society. At the same time, the costs of an abusive environment are high at the individual level. As Hanna stated: ‘I woke up in the morning at five, and thought about my superior, and what I did wrong and badly. Also the trainee did the same thing [to wake up in the middle of sleep]’. The difficulty in reporting the abuse is tied to shame about how the target tries to make sense of how the abuse could happen to them, and how are they to blame for it. Sanderson (2017) calls this ruminating, which takes over one’s personal life. This sets barriers to reporting on the abuses, as the target can be—due to the inconvenience of the topic and the energy needed to react to it—left alone, to ‘ruminate’. For the target, the early stages of abuse already lead to a sense of confusion and self-­ doubt, and it is difficult to speak up against the behaviours. Therefore, it may be easier to try to cope with the situation by first changing one’s own behaviour than to demand that the abusive behaviour needs to stop. The target’s experience and the effects of abuse are discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

Conclusions The key problem in (non-)identifying EWA is that even though it is something that is ‘known’ and perhaps discussed informally in the organization, it may be difficult to pinpoint, as it cannot be reduced to separate identifi-

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able acts. There may be an overall sense that something is wrong, odd or strange in the organization, shared feelings of fear as to what will happen next, and acknowledgment of different strategies adopted by other employees to cope with and survive the situation. In a toxic organizational culture, it can be difficult to discern what exactly it is that contributes to the hostile working environment and incivility in the workplace. Moreover, in our research data, even though the emotional abuse was severe and the patterns easily discernible, our respondents largely avoided the terms ‘abuse’, ‘workplace bullying’ and ‘mobbing’. Instead they referred to the abusive workplace behaviours and practices as ‘it’, the ‘situation’ and ‘authoritarian leadership’. However, the term ‘toxic working environment’ was often used, which can also be seen as a way of not holding specific abusers responsible and recognizing the responsibility of the organization as a whole. Therefore, even though there is an abundance of literature on workplace bullying and mobbing and the surveys define in detail the markers of various and subtle forms of abuse at work, the employees might still find it difficult to name and identify what they have been subjected to as workplace abuse. Or, naming and identifying workplace abuse is done at the risk of one’s own career. In the next chapter, we focus on the effects and experiences of abusive workplaces through data examples, and discuss the intensified cycle of abuse from the perspective of the target.

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Matthiesen, Stig Berge, Bjørn Inge Raknes, and Olav Røkkum. 1989. Mobbing på arbeidsplassen [Bullying in the Workplace]. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening 26: 761–774. McKie, Linda. 2005. Families, Violence and Social Change. Maidenhead: Open University Press. McKie, Linda, and Marjut Jyrkinen. 2017. “MyManagement”: Female Managers Meet the Sexualised and Gendered Working Life. Gender in Management: An International Journal 32 (2): 98–110. Näre, Sari, and Suvi Ronkainen. 2008. Paljastettu intiimi. Sukupuolistuneen väkivallan dynamiikka [Revealed Intimacy: The Dynamics of Gendered Violence]. Tampere: University of Lapland. Niemistö, Charlotta, Mira Karjalainen, and Jeff Hearn. 2017. “Pakko painaa pitkää päivää”: Työn ja muun elämän väliset hämärtyvät rajat tietotyössä [Forced to Long Days: Work and Non-work Blurring Boundaries in Knowledge Work]. In Työaikakirja, ed. Mika Helander, Ilkka Levä, and Sanna Saksela-Bergholm, 147–170. Helsinki: Into Kustannus. Parent-Thirion, Agnès, Enrique Fernández-Macías, John Hurley, and Greet Vermeylen. 2007. Fourth European Working Conditions Survey. Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Accessed April 12, 2019. http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2006/ 98/en/2/ef0698en.pdf. Penttinen, Elina. 2018. Gender, Agency and Violence. In Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security, ed. L.  Shepherd, C.  Gentry, and L.  Sjoberg. London: Routledge. Rayner, Charlotte, Helge Hoel, and Cary L. Cooper. 2002. Workplace Bullying. What We Know, Who is to Blame, and What Can We Do? London: Taylor & Francis. Richman, Judith, Kathleen Rospenda, Stephanie Nawyn, Joseph Flaherty, Michael Fendrich, Melinda Drum, and Timothy Johnson. 1999. Sexual Harassment and Generalized Workplace Abuse among University Employees: Prevalence and Mental Health Correlates. American Journal of Public Health 89 (3): 358–363. Ronkainen, Suvi. 2008. Kenen ongelma väkivalta on? Suomalainen hyvinvointivaltio ja väkivallan toimijuus. Yhteiskuntapolitiikka 73 (4): 388–401. Salin, Denise. 2001. Prevalence and Forms of Bullying Among Business Professionals: A Comparison of Two Different Strategies for Measuring Bullying. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 10 (4): 425–441. ———. 2003. The Significance of Gender in the Prevalence, Forms and Perceptions of Bullying. Nordiske Organisasjonsstudier 5 (3): 30–50. Sanderson, Kathy. 2017. Workplace Ostracism: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Lived Experience. PhD diss., St. Mary’s University. Accessed November 8, 2018. http://library2.smu.ca/handle/01/27039#.W-RJ99UzZ0w.

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Siltala, Heli, Juha Holma, and Maria Hallman-Keiskoski. 2014. Henkisen, fyysisen ja seksuaalisen lähisyhdeväkivallan vaikutukset psykososiaaliseen hyvinvointiin [Impact of Physical and Sexual Intimate Violence on Psycho-Social Well-­ Being]. Psykologia 49 (2): 113–120. Vartia, Maarit. 1991. Bullying at Workplaces. In Towards the 21st century. Proceedings from the International Symposium on Future Trends in the Changing Working Life, ed. S. Lehtinen, J. Rantanen, P. Juuti, A. Koskela, K. Lindström, P. Rehnström, and J. Saari, 131–135. Helsinki: Institute of Occupational Health. Velonis, Alisa J. 2016. “He Never Did Anything You Typically Think of as Abuse”: Experiences With Violence in Controlling and Non-Controlling Relationships in a Non-Agency Sample of Women. Violence Against Women 22 (9): 1031–1054. York, M.R. 2011. Gender Attitudes and Violence Against Women. El Paso: LFB Scholar. Zapf, Dieter, Ståle Einarsen, Helge Hoel, and Maarit Vartia. 2011. Empirical Findings on Bullying in the Workplace. In Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace. International Perspectives in Research and Practice, ed. Ståle Einarsen, Helge Hoel, and Cary Cooper, 75–105. London: Taylor & Francis.

CHAPTER 3

Experiences of Emotional Workplace Abuse

Abstract  This chapter focuses on the configuration of emotional workplace abuse in organizational cultures from the perspective of the target. Drawing on a feminist phenomenological and trauma-informed methodology, the chapter shows how being the target of workplace abuse is a totalizing experience. Furthermore, this chapter addresses the intensified and accumulated effects of abuse on the target, and shows the different coping strategies that the targets adopted to endure the situation. In conclusion, the chapter brings forth the ways in which targets attempted to end the abuse, and discusses the harmful effects for organizations where an abusive culture is allowed to persist. Keywords  Effects on target • Trauma • Physical symptoms • Coping strategies • Exit strategies I am angry, bitter, emotionally dismantled and full of feelings of revenge towards not only my supervisor, but others in this faculty, department and officials in central administration for this below the bar HR politics and leadership. After all the years of subjugation, mistreatment, discrimination and emotional abuse I am at the edge of my sanity. (Excerpt from narrative data, Susanna’s story)

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In this chapter, we address the complexity of the experiences of emotional abuse from the perspective of the target. The opening excerpt from the narrative data tellingly describes the totalizing effects of workplace abuse. Susanna was still working in the same organization as she had not been successful in finding other employment despite her efforts. In reading her words, it is easy to feel the frustration she experiences and understand how deeply the bitterness has affected her. She writes in her narrative about feelings of revenge and how she was even afraid that she was capable of hurting someone in the organization. She was afraid that because she was under so much stress, she could do something that would sabotage her own career in the organization or in the future. The abuse that she was subjected to thus took over her whole experience and transformed her sense of self, leading her into a personal crisis that was much more than just work-related stress or being the target of inappropriate behaviour. It transformed her sense of self and experience of her environment. Her experience resonates with so many others who have been the targets of EWA (see e.g. Vartia 2001; Duffy and Sperry 2012; Pastor 2008). In this chapter, we draw on an interdisciplinary feminist phenomenological approach (Ronkainen 2008; Simms and Stawarska 2013; Shabot and Landry 2018) and trauma theory (Van der Kolk et al. 1996; Rothschild 2000) in order to draw attention to the prolonged effects of workplace violence. The feminist phenomenological approach to research on violence contends that the experience of violence cannot be contained, and is not limited to the actual moment or event of violence in itself. For an outsider it might seem that the experience of violence is or should be over when the actual abuse is over, but for the target the experience continues as the traumatizing effects of abuse transform the person’s sense of self, self-identity and how they experience the world around them (Ronkainen 2008; Crann and Barata 2016). Ronkainen (2008) explains how other people have difficulty understanding this and might tell the target to ‘just get over it’ or ‘stop thinking about it’. What is difficult for them to understand is that the experience of violence is transformative for the target and it leads to the questioning of core beliefs of justice, fairness of life and the possibility of trusting others. Also, the person has to come to terms with their own vulnerability and the fact that they have been abused and violated, which is a position that is viewed negatively in society. Thus, there is another layer of shame that is added to being abused. This approach is in line with trauma theory and research on the effects of trauma on the body (Van der Kolk et al. 1996; Rothschild 2000; Scaer 2001; Bremner 2005),

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which demonstrate how the experience of a traumatizing event is integrated into the nervous system and in the memory of the body. Thus, the experience continues in complex ways long after the traumatic event has happened, as reminders of the trauma may trigger a stress response in the body and the person may live in a constant state of hypervigilance. In the following sections we discuss the process of workplace abuse and how the targets tried to make sense of and cope with the abuse. We end this chapter with a discussion on the complexities embedded in the decision to leave or stay in the abusive workplace, and connect it to coping mechanisms, the role of family members and organizational health care, and the organization’s reluctance to tackle the abuse.

From Disbelief to Anxiety and Depression: Target’s Experiences during the Abusive Cycle The key element in this section is a focus on the gradual process of the intensified cycle of workplace violence (Leymann 1996) and its effects on the respondents in our data. As already stated in Chap. 2, the targets themselves may not be willing or able to admit to themselves that what is happening to them is abuse, or may not see that this will form a pattern instead of being a one-time event. Second, at the time when things still feel a little off or uncomfortable, the respondents do fear and worry about what is to come, but the reality of how difficult the situation will become may still come as a shock. By that time, the effects of abuse are so severe that the targets find themselves in an impossible situation of having serious physical and psychological stress-related symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks and insomnia, and having to fight for upper management and HR to hold the abusers accountable and end the abuse. Research on effects of emotional abuse at work points out how unequivocally detrimental abuse at work is to physical and mental health. Einarsen and Mikkelsen (2003) summarize the effects shown in clinical research on bullying and mobbing. These include psychosomatic, psychological and psychiatric illnesses, muscle aches and pains, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, loss of self-worth and post-traumatic stress disorder (Einarsen and Skogstad 1996; Deery et al. 2011; Leymann and Gustafsson 1996; Siltala et al. 2014). Vartia (2001) shows how targets of bullying are more likely to use sedatives and sleep-enhancing drugs than workers who are not bullied, and that witnesses of bullying also suffered from the abusive working environment. Workplace bullying also correlates with cardiovascular

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­ isease and depression (Kivimäki et al. 2003) and with the increased use d of psychotropic medicine (Lallukka et al. 2012). Moreover, indirect forms of emotional abuse such as workplace ostracism point to similar effects (Qian et al. 2017; Yan et al. 2014). Previous research indicates that workplace violations and abuse have the same negative effects on a person’s health and well-being regardless of the geographical region in which the research has been done (Einarsen and Mikkelsen 2003; Heames and Harvey 2006; Lutgen-Sandvik 2008; Zapf et al. 1996). It is also shown that employees who are not bullied directly suffer from ‘ambient bullying’ and are more likely to leave an organization in which they observe the bullying of others (Houshmand et al. 2012). In both our narrative and interview data the respondents made reference to the gradual process by which the abusive behaviour accelerated over time and how they at first either rationalized it or hoped that it would stop on its own. For example, Julia describes in her interview how she denied that the abuse was even happening and rationalized it as just a figment of her imagination. This became more and more difficult to do as people from outside her organization, who attended meetings at which she was present, would come to her and ask how she was coping with the situation. Julia’s experience was rare, as in most narratives the targets do not have anyone who would spontaneously validate their experience or show compassion. Indeed, the common response at workplaces is to stay silent about the abuse that takes place in the organization, and the way this silence is mediated is related to the cycle and pattern of violence in the workplace (Greenbaum et al. 2013; Rai and Agarwal 2018). In our data, in the majority of the cases the violations and abuse developed into severe forms of workplace abuse over time, whereas for some the abuse was already extreme from the beginning, as in Petra’s story in the previous chapter. As already mentioned, the abusive behaviours in the organizations in our research data were not isolated acts, and neither was abuse limited to non-physical forms. Also, physical abuse such as strangling the target surfaced from the material, and there were numerous mentions of sexual harassment, in addition to controlling and aggressive behaviours. In all cases, the abuse had continued over a considerably long period of time, sometimes lasting for years, depending only on how long the target remained in the organization. In the majority of the cases the abuse would begin when a person was hired as a new employee in an organization in which the supervisor had a habit of abusive leadership. Alternatively, the abuse would begin when a

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new supervisor was hired or promoted from within the organization and they would use fear and intimidation as a way to establish authority. In the latter case, the employees would immediately respond to abusive behaviours and recognize these as unacceptable and as ‘authoritarian leadership’ as there was such a stark contrast to the way the situation had been before. However, in the case when a person was hired as a new employee, it took more time for targets to realize that the behaviour was abusive, especially if the supervisor tried at first to win their trust. This is in contrast to Lutgen-Sandvik’s (2003) findings, in which she shows that employee emotional abuse began when the target did something that the supervisor perceived as unacceptable and this triggered a cycle of abuse, which would then intensify to the point that the employee would leave the organization. In our data, this similar triggering moment was only noticeable in the cases in which the respondent had confronted the supervisor directly about their abusive behaviour towards other employees and taken steps to report the abuse to upper management and HR  (see also Greenbaum et al. 2013). However, also in these cases the supervisors already showed abusive behaviours and practices to other employees in the organization. Thus, the abuse did not begin with anything significant that the employees did. What correlates with Lutgen-Sandvik’s findings is that the abuser was either a supervisor or former colleague who was promoted to a supervisor position and who then had a position of power over the target. In addition, the abuse was carried out by proxy, as in a couple of the cases the supervisor also ‘recruited’ team members to turn against the target and, for example, spread rumours about or berate the target on behalf of and under the instructions of the supervisor. In the cases where a new employee was hired into an emotionally abusive workplace, the first response was a sense of disbelief and shock at the unexpected situation. This was articulated in the narratives in terms of: How could this happen to an educated, dedicated and competent worker like me? or I am a highly respected expert in my field, why would I become the target of abuse? Or the employee would think how unbelievable it was that the supervisors were allowed to do what they did. Some respondents were surprised that the abusive behaviours continued, regardless of how much they showed dedication and loyalty to the supervisor, the team and the company. The abuse did not make any sense to them, since they were working hard and doing their absolute best yet still they were mistreated. This disbelief in the face of abuse also indirectly implies that the targets envisage themselves as being able to change the abuser’s behaviour, by

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changing their own behaviour. Furthermore, it implies that there is an assumption that abuse happens to employees who do not work hard or who are incompetent, or have some kind of predestined victim mentality. It is difficult to believe that abuse could happen to anyone, even if one is competent and performs as an ideal employee. As the abusive behaviours and practices continued and became more intense over time, the respondents’ experiences intensified accordingly. It became more and more difficult to minimize, rationalize or deny that something was seriously wrong in the way the supervisor behaved towards the employees. For example, the passive-aggressive moodiness would develop into direct aggression during meetings, where the supervisor would devalue work performance and also belittle and attack the employee’s personality. The respondents reported yelling in corridors, degrading remarks, attacks on appearance and weight, name-calling, looking for minor mistakes during meetings, or openly pitting employees against each other, making teams compete with each other under the threat that the losing team would be fired. Intensified abusive behaviour reported in the data also included scheduling meetings at times in which the respondent would not be able to attend, taking credit for someone else’s idea or work, and hiring friends or family members in superior positions who were not qualified for the job. At this stage, the respondents mention feelings of worry, anxiety and fear as the prominent experience at work and also at home (Vartia 2001; Omari and Paull 2013). ‘Going to work would make me feel anxious. I often cried at night and sometimes I would even cry at work’ (Amanda, narrative data). Julia explained that even the thought of opening emails made her feel fear and dread, because her former co-­ worker who had become her new superior would use emails and the calendar to manipulate her. Julia explains her experience as follows: She would choose a time for a meeting on the calendar, always at a time that was not available for me. In return, I would suggest a time that would work for me to which she replied that we couldn’t have a meeting at that time, because there were no rooms available for the meeting. So, I went back and checked the calendar and saw that there was plenty of space and asked why she had lied, and it is these kinds of things that made me anxious and afraid. When I would receive an email from her I felt afraid to open it.

The stress response was that the target’s experience was not only limited to situations in which abuse took place directly, such as a moment

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when the supervisor would berate employees at a meeting, or when they acted manipulatively as in the case of Julia above. The stress response started to dominate the target’s experiences in the form of feelings of fear and dread about what would happen next or in what ways the supervisor would be abusive. And in most cases, the fear was also well founded as the behaviours did accelerate and the abuse became worse. In our research data the abuse would escalate considerably if the target spoke up and challenged the abusive behaviour within the organization. After this, the situation would get worse for everyone involved and the person who intervened would bear the brunt of it. These intensified behaviours included spreading rumours about the person’s private life, demoting the target from their previous position, manipulating and gaslighting co-­workers to believe that the target had a mental illness, lying about the target’s personal life, personality traits and background, or sending a warning sign by transferring the target. This happened to Heidi, whose supervisor had acted abusively towards others but had not been directly abusive to her. After some time, the supervisor also targeted Heidi with abuse, which at some point led to him blaming Heidi for a mistake he had made concerning the project’s budget. She explained that after she confronted her supervisor and told him she would not take the blame for the billing mistakes he had made, over which she had no authority, she found herself ostracized and transferred to another project. Heidi explains what happened as follows: This [confrontation] led to a situation in which I was moved to some kind of special project, in which I was practically made to sit in an office all by myself with no work duties at all, and I was not able to see anyone else. I was all by myself at the end of the corridor and when I asked others, my former co-workers about how they were doing or any information about the project, they said they are not allowed to tell me. In addition, they pointed at a camera and said that camera surveillance is so accurate nowadays that they don’t want to be seen with me and asked if I could go away. Otherwise they would get into trouble with my supervisor.

Obviously for Heidi, the situation became intolerable and she decided to quit after being ostracized for approximately two years. The effects the respondents reported as the abuse became severe at the workplace included insomnia, weight loss, crying easily, not being able to eat, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, social isolation and fatigue. In addition, the respondents reported stress-related somatic illnesses, such as increase of blood

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pressure, heart palpitations, aches, pains and prolonged sick leaves because of burnout (see also Qian et al. 2017). The effects of workplace ostracism on the target’s health have been widely researched (see, e.g., Xu et  al. 2017; Yan et al. 2014). The respondents in our data reported that they and their co-workers would go on sick leaves and many left the organization. ‘I have currently been on a sick leave now for two weeks, before I took two months’ (Laura). Linda reported in her interview that a co-­ worker had miscarried because the toxic working environment added so much stress to her life. Some respondents who were on temporary leave from the organization reported feeling uncertain whether they would ever be capable of returning to full-time work as the consequences of burnout were so severe. They also reported colleagues who had never returned to full-time work even years after leaving the abusive workplace. Some remained on disability leave, or began working in sectors that required other skills than their previous employment in knowledge work. In this section, we have detailed the types of abusive behaviours, from indirect to direct and extreme forms of workplace abuse, and how the experience of stress intensified for the targets as the abuse escalated. The stress was not limited to the actual moment of abuse, and a feeling of worry and dread became to dominate the targets’ lives and then develop into stress-related illnesses. In line with the argument in Chap. 2, the concept of the continuum of violence can be useful here as a means to discern how indirect and non-physical forms of violence are intertwined with and precede blatant and direct abuses. It has to be noted, however, that from the perspective of the target the rationalization or tolerance of less significant forms of abuse does not make any sense. These behaviours and practices already cause the target to live with added stress, and the fear and worry as to what is to happen next negatively affect their physical and mental health, as well as work motivation. In the next section, we will discuss in more detail the complexity of abuse and how overwhelming living with and coping with abuse can be.

Living and Coping with Abuse at Work In this second section, we focus in more detail on the totalizing effects of workplace abuse and on how targets tried to cope with the difficult working environment. Coping refers to a variety of cognitive and ­behavioural responses to manage stressful events or circumstances. Coping strategies have been classified as responses through avoidance versus

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approach, engagement versus disengagement, and problem-focused versus emotion-­focused (see, e.g., Ayres and Leaper 2013). In our material, all these diverse coping strategies were enacted at different phases of abuse. Workplace abuse is something which takes place in the public sphere, but it is felt deeply personally as the abuse attacks the person’s character, self-­ value and self-image as a competent worker (Keashley 2001). It breaks the boundaries between the personal and professional lives and is thus felt as unexpected and undeserved. In a way, the breach between public and private spheres is at the root of why emotional abuse is so hurtful as it breaks the boundary between professional behaviour and interpersonal relationships. This may also explain why it is so difficult to address openly and directly in the beginning, as the target does not know whether it is a professional issue or personal matter between two people. It is difficult to assess why someone becomes a target of interpersonal abuse in a professional sphere. This may also relate to why the targets aim to stay and cope with the abuse and the abusers for so long. Because abuse does not belong in the workplace, the targets may expect and hope that the abuse will end at some point when times get better or that the upper management will ensure that the abuse is not allowed to continue. Our data shows that the participants working in knowledge work generally expected workplaces to be professional spheres where employees and supervisors act professionally and according to workplace guidelines. It is thus reasonable to assume that appropriate and mutually respectful behaviour is the norm, instead of an ideal or a fantasy. Being exposed to and becoming a target of abuse challenges core beliefs of justice and fairness that the targets may have, for example that good things happen to good people, that hard work is rewarded and that other people can be trusted. Trauma produces a crisis of these core beliefs, and the target has to come to terms with the uncertainty and unpredictability of life and that they too were the target of wrongdoing (Levine 1997; Rothschild 2000; Van der Kolk et al. 1996). Traumatic events transform the person’s sense of safety and belief in the good will of other people (Germer and Neff 2015). Moreover, there is an added sense of shame that comes with trauma, as being a victim of violence is viewed negatively in society. It is almost seen as a personal weakness or a sign that a person was not able to evaluate the risks and avoid being abused (Ronkainen 2008), and thus brought it on themselves. Abuse, whether physical, sexualized or non-physical, sends a message to the target of their fundamental worthlessness. In a way, the act of abuse

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renders the target as worthy of abuse. This induces a complex emotion of shame (Mollica 2006) in the target, relating to a process in which the target internalizes the perpetrator’s view of them as unworthy and believes that the whole world will view them in the same way. In our data, this change of self-image from competent employee to unworthy human being is present in some of the cases in which the respondents had endured years of abuse. Some of the respondents included in their narrative thoughts about themselves such as perhaps they were a ‘terrible person’, ‘a lesser person’, a ‘failure’ or that ‘perhaps no else will ever higher someone like me’ (see also Mitchell and Ambrose 2007). The overwhelming experience of workplace abuse not only affected the respondents’ sense of self-image, but also how they experienced their immediate environment. Ronkainen (2008) calls this process a semiotic robbery. This semiotic robbery refers to the depriving of the meaning that the target has formerly given to specific places and other people. For example, familiar places and people that previously felt safe and trustworthy no longer do so. In the context of sexualized violence, Ronkainen explains how the meaning of a room or a specific place is robbed from the person who is violated in that space. For example, if the abuse took place in a particular room in one’s home, the meaning of that room as a place of comfort and safety converges into a place of fear and panic. In the same way, our respondents report how their experience of the workplace, the actual office building and a boardroom changed due to the abuse. What before was experienced as neutral changed into a place that aroused the feeling of fear and intense anxiety. For some, even seeing the door of the abuser’s office triggered a stress response. According to Ronkainen (2008), the targets of sexualized abuse felt that other people, even strangers, could tell just by looking at them that they had been abused—as if they had been tarnished by the abuse so that anyone could see that they had been violated. For example, it would even seem as if random people at the grocery store knew what had happened to the target. Similarly, in our data the respondents reported that they felt that other people would be able to tell just by looking at them that they had been abused. For example, Vilma explains her experience in the following way: ‘I even felt that strangers on the train on my way to work would be smirking at me knowingly. Many months went by and I was constantly in a state of panic, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat and I lost 10kg of weight in a couple of months. I went to work and did my job, but when I got home I would only lay there and cry’.

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For Vilma the workplace abuse transformed any sense of safety she had had prior to the abuse. Her experience of being abused and being ashamed of it took over her life and she became exhausted. The abuse at work had begun for her when she was a new employee at a firm and was invited out for drinks with her new supervisor and a co-worker. At the end of the evening the supervisor made a pass at her and she turned him down. This upset him and he promised to make her life a living hell. The next day at work, a period of intense abuse began, which developed into total social ostracism. Vilma was isolated, similarly to Heidi, to the degree that even other co-workers would avoid eye contact with her. In addition, she reported that a cleaning person came in once and spat into her office. Regardless of these extremely manipulative and abusive behaviours, she tried her best to concentrate on her work and do the best she could. Eventually, she found work elsewhere, only to find that the malicious rumours had followed her to the new workplace and her new supervisor also turned against her. At the time of the writing of the narrative, Vilma was on a study leave from her current employment and wrote about her continuing feelings of bitter anger and resentment towards her abusers. For Annika the experience of workplace abuse was also totalizing and overwhelming. She reports how the feelings of fear and anxiety gradually intensified until these became her dominant experience. At first, she felt anxiety arise only in the evenings and then she noticed that she was anxious during weekends, to the point of being in a state of perpetual anxiety. Annika’s experience of abuse was very complex as it involved two female co-workers who manipulated her on behalf of their supervisor. These co-­ workers would invite Annika to casual conversations during coffee breaks, during which they would ask questions about her private life and personality traits. The co-workers would then offer some kind of psychoanalysis and if Annika defended herself against the interpretation, these women would brush it off and say they were just kidding. In this way, Annika felt helpless and unable to defend herself. The co-workers also made dismissive remarks on her appearance and devalued her work performance on a daily basis during corporate meetings. Annika started to suffer from insomnia and migraine headaches; her supervisor and the two co-workers started to use this as proof of her mental instability. By that time, a trainee had also been accused of having a mental illness after announcing her decision to leave the organization after the traineeship ended. Soon afterwards Annika also left the organization, but even at the time of writing (one year after the events) she described how she would not be surprised

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if the people at the organization were to still try to attack her in some way, especially if they found out she had written her story for the purpose of research. She was still afraid of them and concerned for any outcomes telling her story might have. This element of long-term distrust was also apparent in Elin’s narrative, even though she wrote her narrative 40 years after the abuse ended. She was still concerned that the abusers would somehow find out that she had told the story of her abusive workplace and try to hurt her. Both Annika and Elin felt intense resentment towards their abusers. In this way, the abuse continued in their lived experience even though the actual events were over. In this section, we have focused on how overwhelming the experience of workplace abuse is for the target and how it affects the person’s sense of self, capacity to trust others, and physical and mental well-being. In line with the feminist phenomenological approach on violence and trauma theory, we have shown how the experience of violence is not limited to the time period of the actual abuse, but lingers in the person’s experience for a long time. In our data the capacity to trust others, the capacity to return to work and overall trust in (work) life were seriously compromised. Amanda phrases this tellingly: ‘If things had been as terrible in my private life as they were at work, I would not be alive today’. This shows how totalizing the experience of workplace abuse can be and how it poses a serious risk for personal health and well-being. The correlation between bullying and suicidal ideation has also been studied (Holt et al. 2015), and thus the prevalence of EWA should raise concerns about the ultimate consequence, the decision to end one’s life. In the next section, we focus on the turning point at which the respondents decided to leave the organization and address reasons why for some respondents leaving was not an option.

Ending the Abuse In the previous sections, we have focused on how totalizing the effects of the abuse were on the targets and given some examples of the appalling working environments the respondents had to cope with. Even still, the decision to leave was not easy to make. All of the respondents who were able to leave had to process the situation, including their own hopes and dreams of what they had thought the workplace would or could have been. Based on our data, in all the cases the final decision to leave was made only after the target had realized that nothing more could be done

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to change the situation. In other words, the targets first tried to change the situation by coping with the abuse or by taking it up with HR and upper management to deal with. The respondents made their final decision to leave after the upper management did not respond to workplace survey results or to reported abuse. Einarsen and Mikkelsen (2003: 135) show based on their research that targets leave either because the situation does not get better or because they are laid off. Hogh and Dofradottir (2001) also show based on their study in Denmark that the targets first try to cope with abuse before even considering leaving the organization. When the situation became unbearable, they first tried to change the situation by confronting the bully and finding supporting people within the organization. When these attempts failed, the respondents in their study resorted to changing themselves by putting even more time and effort into their work. As this did not work either, the respondents reported that they reverted to passively waiting for better times. For some, when enough time had passed and nothing changed, they decided to leave the organization. Our study demonstrates similarities to this pattern. In our data some respondents first tried to cope by changing themselves or by acting as if the abuse was not taking place before actually confronting the abuser. However, the similarity is that the decision to leave was not easy or straightforward. There are a number of reasons for targets of abuse to stay and try to cope with the situation before leaving. Even in the serious cases such as those of Vilma, Annika and Amanda discussed above, they all mentioned that the decision to leave was difficult. The reasons included the time and effort that they had put into getting a degree and moving ahead in their career. They had also put considerable effort into the work for the organization and wanted this work to be recognized and valued before leaving. Letting it all go by quitting the current employment was also interpreted as giving up. As the respondents held onto an ideal of an employee who is dedicated and works hard against all odds, leaving the organization was seen as reflecting poorly on their self-identity as a dedicated and career-­ driven person. However, for some the decision to leave was difficult because they still held onto the ideal of what the job could be. In theory, the position they were in was optimal in terms of career path and educational background. It was hard to let go of what they described as what could have been a ‘dream job’. For most, the work itself was exactly what they wanted to do, and leaving it because of an abusive supervisor seemed

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unfair. In this way, leaving the organization was more complex and intertwined with personal aspirations, ideals and hopes for one’s own career than a straightforward process of not putting up with abuse. Even though it is clear in the narratives and interviews that the working environments were highly toxic and the only sane option would be to leave, for the person in the situation this was not necessarily as evident. Most importantly, the uncertainty of finding another job and the shame at the thought of having to be unemployed for a while prevented some of the respondents from leaving. It is certainly true that the decision to leave was easier to make if there were other possibilities available at the same career level at the same time. This was true for respondents who were in their mid-thirties and who worked in the IT sector or in other areas of knowledge work in which there were more possibilities to find employment in other multinational corporations. For the respondents over 50 years of age in our data, changing jobs had not been possible even though they had actively applied for work elsewhere. For them, the choice was similar to Hogh and Dofradottir’s (2001) study, to cope and wait for better times and keep an eye on making it until retirement. On the other hand, participants who were at the starting of their careers and hired on a temporary contract found it difficult to seek for work elsewhere, as Hanna explains: ‘I have called my mother and asked her if I should quit’. Hanna’s situation with a passive-aggressive boss was discussed more in detail in Chap. 2. She and her co-workers tried different coping strategies: whereas Hanna decided at first to keep a low profile and concentrate on her own work, her co-worker tried to appease the abusive behaviour of their supervisor by bringing her food on the days she saw that the supervisor was in a bad mood. In some of the cases the respondents reported that they were afraid that their abusive supervisor would try to sabotage their efforts to find new employment. For Amanda, however, this fear became a reality. She explained in her narrative that after she had been demoted and given only menial tasks, she decided to do these tasks as professionally and diligently as she could and thus try to win the approval of her supervisor by showing how dedicated she was. She kept introducing new ideas even though these were constantly dismissed. After some time she realized that nothing she could do would help her situation and there were no prospects of returning to her old job in the organization. She started quietly applying for jobs in other companies in the same field. However, her efforts to leave the organization were stifled as her abuser interfered in the recruit-

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ment process. Such sabotaging efforts are not necessarily very difficult to make in specific knowledge work sectors in which the potential new employer contacts the current one. However, Amanda’s supervisor was even more proactive and called ahead to possible employers even before Amanda had submitted her application. Thus, paradoxically, even though the supervisor demoted and ostracized Amanda, they also prevented her from leaving the organization. When leaving the organization is not an option, occupational health, peers, friends and family members formed an important support system for the targets in coping with EWA. Our interviewee Simon explained how he tried to cope with the situation at work by confiding in his partner. However, he even felt guilty for asking for her help. Simon explained: ‘My poor girlfriend has needed to listen to my complaints when I complain about the situation and talk about this and that’ (Simon). In Julia’s case she got support from the occupational health department, which helped her to stay and cope somewhat with the situation. However, she mentions that for her this was a double-edge sword, as these coping strategies lengthened her stay in the organization, which in the end turned out to be a stabilized toxic organizational culture. Julia explains: ‘I got a lot of help from an organizational psychologist and a doctor. They gave me tools to cope with the situation and I was able to stay. In hindsight, I thought, maybe that was not only a good thing. For if I had not been able to cope [with the abuse], I might have left this organization and in that case I would be somewhere else right now’. Other coping strategies that the respondents in our data used included trying to control their own emotions and reactions through emotional numbing and dissociation, putting on a mask of a happy face, using humour to brush things off, concentrating on work tasks and trying to ignore the environment, and trying to take as few sick leave days as possible. Other coping strategies included, as already mentioned, talking to friends and family members and trying to find colleagues who would support and side with them. On the other hand, for some not socializing with co-workers during breaks or outside of work was also a coping strategy as they tried to avoid conflict at all costs. The experience of abuse would make the respondents sensitive to any kind of abusive behaviour. In our narrative data, those who had been able to leave the organizations and find other employment described that they would never put up with similar treatment ever again. The respondents also mentioned that now they were wiser and could recognize early w ­ arning

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signs and this time take them seriously. As Thomas explains, ‘Experience had taught me to sense the organizational culture and atmosphere already at the door, even before going to the interview. I might add that with even alarming accuracy and precision’. The experience of abuse led to disillusionment about workplace cultures and heightened awareness of potential emotionally abusive workplaces, which they would never subject themselves to. In other words, experiencing abuse led the target to draw personal and professional boundaries and defend themselves. This was demonstrated in the narrative and interview data by statements on how the respondents will never allow anyone to treat them the way the former boss did, or that they will never subjugate to abusive behaviours ever again. In the process of recognizing one’s own self-value and being able to leave the abusive environment, the role of family members and occupational health was again significant. It is notable that the validation of abusive behaviours, which had this kind of impact, only came from outside the organizations. The targets found the occupational health workers, who would affirm that the supervisor was abusive or potentially had a personality disorder and that the target would not be able to change the abuser’s behaviour or the working environment, most helpful. The medical  doctors and occupational psychologists would assure the target that stress responses to what they were living with, such as panic attacks, hypervigilance, anxiety and insomnia, were normal reactions to an abusive situation and not a sign of mental illness or a personal breakdown. This validation of the experience of violence and compassion towards the target’s experience enabled the target to see that the abuser was responsible for their behaviour and that the abuse was not their own fault (Penttinen 2016). The targets would instead focus on taking care of themselves and their own well-being, and finding work elsewhere. Unfortunately, occupational health care  was not a guarantee of support and validation of the target’s experience. In Elin’s case, the doctor did not know how to help her, as there was no diagnosis for a person who is full of rage. In Heidi’s case, the work safety department was first concerned for her, but after a while turned around and said they would only proceed if the instances of abuse reached a high enough number. What this number should have been was never made clear to her. She was supported by her co-workers, who advised her to leave and told her that they would leave too, if she just showed them the way and was brave enough to resign first. Similarly, spouses and family members were able to get through to the target and by showing compassion enabled them to see that they were worthy of a

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healthier workplace. These respondents found other employment that they were happy with, where they felt their work was appreciated and the working environment was supportive of all employees. They also recounted how sorry they were to hear more stories of abuse from their former workplaces. In our data, in only two cases out of 16 narratives and 6 interviews did the upper management intervene and either demote the supervisor who had behaved abusively or replace them. In both cases, this took place after numerous complaints, high turnover and serious costs to the organization. Thus, the burden of abuse was rather placed on the targets, since the abusers were not held responsible for their actions. In this section we have discussed the complexities in making the decision to leave an abusive environment and how the targets first tried to cope with the situation before finding other employment. It is important to note that in all the cases in our research data the abuse continued even after the abused targets left the organization.

Concluding Words In this chapter, we have focused on the complexity of the effects of abusive workplaces. The respondents in our data had lived through damaging and outrageous abuse, of a kind that should have never been tolerated or allowed to happen. In our data, the physical and psychological effects of abuse were in line with previous research on the effects of emotional abuse at work. For most of the respondents the abuse turned into a totalizing experience, which not only severely affected their physical health, but negatively affected their self-image and their perception of how others would view them. In describing EWA from the perspective of the target, our intention has been to show what abuse feels like for the target, how it affects them, and what is it like to live and cope with an abusive working environment. In doing so, we also wanted to show how emotional abuse at work can happen to anyone, and how the effects of abuse are similar regardless of career, position or even geographical area. The target does not instigate their own abuse and the responsibility of the abusive behaviour is always on the perpetrator. However, based on earlier research, some risk factors can be identified in terms of who is a potential target for workplace abuse. These are (female) gender and ethnic background. For example, according to the wide EU-28-level study, psychological violence has been experienced by

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43% of women; in 32% of such cases of sexual harassment, where a woman knows the perpetrator, it is a colleague, boss or customer (FRA 2014). The frequency of abuse also increases for women with disabilities, from a migrant background and with non-heterosexual sexual orientations (ibid., Annex 3). Thus it may be that certain individuals are more likely to experience abuse, as this phenomenon relates to existing power relations, notably in terms of gender, racialization and power relations within the organization. For some the abuse is part of a lived experience for a long time even after the abuse has ended. For others, the abuse can lead to a sense of disillusionment about working life or to a better capacity to draw personal and professional boundaries. Throughout this book, we have emphasized that the responsibility to end emotional workplace abuse lies with the organization’s leadership. In the next chapter, we propose a framework for caring organizations and ethical leadership as an efficient means to do exactly this.

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CHAPTER 4

Methods to Prevent and Tackle Emotional Workplace Abuse

Abstract  The chapter brings forth two intertwining approaches to prevent and tackle emotional abuse at work: development of ethical leadership and management, and co-creation of policies and practices towards a caring organizational culture. This chapter emphasizes that ‘quick fixes’ are insufficient to prevent and tackle abuse. In addition, it highlights the ways in which organizations, rather than individual targets, carry the main responsibility for the prevention of emotional workplace abuse, and discusses this through the role middle management. As the abuse often relates to superior positions, formal and informal power relationships and the role of bystanders are crucial for further analysis. In future research, intersectional analysis of gendered structures and processes is called for in order to understand in-depth the mechanisms that feed the abusive behaviours and toxic organizational cultures. Keywords  Prevention • Caring organizational culture • Ethical leadership There are many reasons why EWA is an ongoing phenomenon in many organizations and why it is so difficult to transform toxic working cultures to ones that promote well-being. In this concluding chapter, we suggest that preventing and tackling emotional abuse at work requires more in-­ depth change in the organizational culture, instead of ‘quick fixes’. As © The Author(s) 2019 E. Penttinen et al., Emotional Workplace Abuse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19993-7_4

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shown in the previous chapters, even though protocols and formal policies are available for the prevention of workplace abuses, there is still a discrepancy in how these are put into practice. In some cases, in our data, there was no follow-up on workplace surveys which showed the prevalence of abuse and harassment. In other cases, the supervisor never showed up to meetings in which the alleged bullying was to be discussed, and after a while the upper management gave up on calling these meetings. Thus we suggest that there is a need for a more thorough change towards sustainable organizational culture, which is based on ethical leadership and a caring model of organizing, managing and behaviours, including communication and respect between co-workers and managers. In order to prevent and tackle EWA it is crucial to critically examine organizational conditions, including organizational culture, management and leadership that may either foster well-being or tolerate and enable violence and violations in the workplace. We argue that the implementation of ethical leadership and caring in organizations is key to the development of non-abusive, non-violent workplace culture. Thus we introduce feminist ethical leadership and management with a caring organization approach as a practice for the prevention of emotional abuses. We highlight that organizations carry the main responsibility for naming, preventing and responding to emotional abuse, instead of the individual targets. Projection of the abuse as the problem of the target needs to be avoided. The first reason for this is that the target does not cause the behaviour of the abuser, and the experienced abuse causes severe psychological and physical consequences for the target. Second, the abusive behaviour does not disappear when the target leaves the organization, as abusiveness is often tied into the organizational culture and the abuser will not change their behaviour even if a particular target leaves. Many work organizations are currently—as well as in future—undergoing major transformations, for instance because of intensified globalization, new information and communication technologies, and tightening competition that leads to outsourcing, downsizing, restructuring and mergers. The negative impacts of the increased competition and stress are mentioned in our data as one aspect that enhances various kinds of incivility, aggression and EWA. Organizational cultures of companies are in flux as new distances—physical and hierarchical—between leadership, management and workers are created in globalizing work and distance work. In many knowledge work sectors there is an increasing demand for flexibility with regard to the time and place when and where work is to be done. The

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boundaries between work and ‘non-work’ are simultaneously blurring  (Sturges 2008). These complex processes and changes can foster manifold abusive practices and violations at work, which impact negatively on an individual’s well-being and performance and the productivity of the corporation (Hoel et al. 2003; Hearn et al. 2017). Alternatively, new ways to organize work could—if the leadership is organized with care, compassion for the workers’ knowledge and well-being, and ethical principles— offer a basis for a non-abusive working life environment. Concern for employees’ well-being is—or should be—at the core of HR functions, but is seldom included in organizational strategies that would be a strong tool to reformulate organizational culture. We call for two intertwining approaches to prevent and tackle EWA, namely development of ethical leadership and management, and co-creation of policies and practices towards a caring organizational culture of everyday practices. We argue that ethically aware leadership with a caring organizational culture enhances the social sustainability of work organizations and thereby well-being and productivity. Therefore, a toxic organizational culture, including unethical and negligent leadership, as has been presented in our data, is at the root of emotionally abusive behaviours and practices. As an antidote to a toxic organizational culture, we suggest the development of ethical leadership and a caring organizational culture.

Ethical Leadership and Caring Organizational Culture as Keys to Tackle Emotional Workplace Abuse As our previous chapters have exemplified, EWA is by no means reducible to a problem of individual psychopathologies, or to an issue between two people’s conflicting personalities or a ‘mismatch of chemistries’. Instead, the abusive behaviours and practices are more complex processes, and involve, in addition to the target, the co-workers as bystanders or supporters of the abuse, the organization as a whole, and even the organization’s stakeholders. Abusive workplaces also involve and affect the lives of family members and friends of the target and thus spill over to the target’s private life and to other personal relationships. Trevino et al. (1998) claim that an organization’s ethical climate gives signals as to what is appropriate behaviour in the organization and reinforces its members towards what is perceived as acceptable. A crucial part

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of the creation of an ethical organizational climate and culture lies in the top management: leaders need to act as role models and ethical examples; to treat other people (employees, colleagues, stakeholders) fairly and with respect; and to actively manage morality, that is, to encourage ethical and discourage unethical behaviour through, for instance, open communication. Ethical leadership can be defined as ‘the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making’ (Brown et al. 2005: 120). In addition to leaders, managers, including HR management, play a crucial role in creating an ethical working life culture. Neubert et al. (2009: 165) state on the basis of their empirical study that ‘when managers behave in a fair, honest, trustworthy, and considerate manner these virtuous behaviours seem to create a virtuous cycle in which ethical leadership behaviour perpetuates an ethical work climate that allows subordinates to flourish’. Feminist ethics scholar Robin Derry argues (1996) that the existent view on business ethics is gender-biased, and builds on traditional ethical thinking developed by male researchers, philosophers, managers and leaders. The masculinist ethics emphasizes principles of rationality, universality, rules and impartiality over ‘feminine’ ways of thinking such as relationships, particularity and partiality (Derry 1997; Machold et al. 2008). Ethics of care developed by Carol Gilligan (1982) is based on care and responsibility for others, and on the continuity of interdependent relationships. A question that is often raised is whether organizations can care. We echo Machold et al. (2008: 673), who claim that ‘organisations are not just abstract entities, they are made up of individuals with degrees of care orientation’. A caring organization consists of caring individuals and a caring organizational culture where caring ethics are embedded in the organization’s goals, systems, strategies and values (Liedtka 1996). Fuqua and Newman (2002: 134) define a caring organization as a ‘system where personal concern of the welfare of others and self is a norm’. The idea is based on each member’s responsibility for contributions to a positivity-laden organizational culture and thereby workplace well-being. Fuqua and Newman (2002) list the core elements of a caring organization as follows: gratitude (focusing a reasonable amount of energy on the positive circumstances of the organization and constructive attitudes that are contagious); forgiveness (offences are not always intended, and forgiveness as a social norm is relevant for all organizations); encouragement

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(vertical and horizontal, i.e. peer encouragement); sensitivity (to attend to experiences of others); compassion (alleviation of suffering); community (good balance between individual and collective organizational interests and contribution to the latter); tolerance (as a cognitive and behavioural choice, based on respect for the worth and dignity of others); inclusion (strategies that increase sense of community and talent, skills, knowledge and perspectives of different people); and charity (benevolence and communication of appreciation to others for their contribution) (Fuqua and Newman 2002: 135–137). A caring organization includes the values and goals of care in its internal and external systems and procedures, policies and practices (Machold et al. 2008). Indeed, ‘caring is not limited to a select group of individuals, such as management. Caring does not take place at the cost of replacing justice considerations, rather the obligation to care is in tandem with the duty not to harm individual stakeholders and a duty not to exploit or take advantage of unequal relationships’ (ibid.: 674, emphasis ours). Care and caring at home and at work, including unpaid care, are strongly gendered in public debate, everyday life and organizational practices, which impacts not only the segregation of caring work to be understood as a ‘women’s work area’ but also women’s private life, use of time and energy, and career development (Tronto 1993; Bowlby et al. 2010; McKie et al. 2013). A feminist ethics of care addresses the relationships and responsibilities, the situational, concrete circumstances, and the actual activities of care (Gilligan 1982; Hiekkataipale and Lämsä 2017). According to Tronto (1993: 102), care implies reaching out to something other than oneself, and it also includes an element of action. In this definition, the other person’s needs are at the core. Thus, care is a crucial part of everyday human life, and we believe that this is a relevant aspect of future ethical leadership and caring forms of organizing for all genders. We call for professional compassionate management and collaboration at work, where the boundaries of work and non-work are respected and the situations are not escalated with micro-management or ongoing reflections with colleagues in ad hoc groups. These may also turn from well-­ meaning support to cliques. The solution to structural problems requires that this is done on the structural level and the responsibility is not placed on the individual employees who have been the targets of abuse or their loyal colleagues who want to help (see Karjalainen 2018). We argue for professionalism in the way care and compassion are shown to the targets of abuse at work. Caring in organization does not imply

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fusion of personal and professional boundaries in the form of care. Thus, overly empathetic reflections among a group of employees over abuses at work are not necessarily caring practices that lead to sustainable change. Similarly, as Sanderson (2017) talks about how the targets of abuse become preoccupied by the abuse they have experienced so much so that it takes over their thought process as they rehash the experienced injustices over and over again in their minds. Also small group of employees at work can get caught up in a similar counterproductive process of rumination. The endless reflection on the situation at work drains energy from the target and co-workers and takes time away from work-related tasks. To our understanding, the process of overly empathetic reflections, even though well intended, does not necessarily improve the actual situation, nor does it create a healthy working life culture. In our data, which focused on the experiences of fear and EWA, the respondents also reflected on what they would have needed or hoped for in terms of response from leadership or organizational culture more generally. Topics that arose in our research material included elements of the caring organizational practices outlined above. The suggestions that the respondents made were quite reasonable and practical. These included, for example, better communication during times of organizational restructuring as well as information strategies to reach organizational goals, accountability and responsible leadership. Many respondents mentioned that all they really needed was for good manners and civil behaviour to prevail at the workplace. In other words, at the core was the need for respect, especially respect for personal and professional boundaries, and for personal integrity, in addition to appreciation for the contribution that they brought to the organization. In this way, caring organizational practices do not have to be unattainable or difficult to implement in practice.

The Role of Middle Management in the Configuration of Workplace Abuse In this section we discuss some of the suggestions that the respondents in our research data made in terms of what they would have needed from the organization and leadership to counter the emotionally abusive workplace culture that was prevalent in their organizations. The suggestions that were brought up in the data on how to prevent workplace abuse often emphasized the responsible and respectful behaviour and communication

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of superiors, in particular of middle managers, but also of the leadership of the organization, including the boards. According to our data a major problem was that many of the superiors had not received any professional training on managerial tasks and leadership. Based on our data, the middle management lacked competence with regard to legislation and organizational procedures, and this was reported as one core problem underlying the abusive workplace culture. It was mentioned by many participants that superior people’s skills were inadequate, and often there was a complete lack of communication, or the work hierarchy did not allow for open and genuinely interactive discussion. As discussed in Chap. 3, the leadership and management lacked even basic good manners, as supervisors were rude and inappropriate to employees. In most organizations the management and leadership were accomplished through fear rather than ways that would respect the competence of the employees and trust in them. Promotion to middle managerial roles sometimes takes place from inside the organization instead of through well-planned and transparent recruitment processes. The suitability of a candidate for managerial tasks should be carefully considered. For example, if a professional expert is nominated to a manager position and they do not have the HR skills or enthusiasm to act as a superior, this may cause more problems for the organization. This was the case, for instance, in Amanda’s organization, as she reports that her supervisor was promoted from within the organization to a new position without an open recruitment process. This person (gender unknown) was able to convince the upper management based solely on their arguments that they were the best person for the new position that was created in the process of organizational restructuring. This person did not have any managerial experience or any leadership training prior to their promotion. In time, promoting this person proved to be a grave mistake. The new superior reportedly rationalized decisions based solely on their ‘gut feelings’ and did not bother to take into account any background information about issues that the decisions were made on. The new superior would also act inappropriately and demean the team members in meetings. In her narrative, Amanda summarized common viewpoints on some basic principles of managerial behaviour, such as that ‘[a] good superior never embarrasses the employee in front of others! Not even if they have made a mistake. A good superior does not boast about their position over the employee and has the capability to deliver the work tasks in a reasonable way’. These are quite basic skills than can be expected from anyone in a middle management role to have. Thus, it does not

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­ ecessarily take much for a middle manager to have a positive effect on the n work community and prevent abuses. The role of the middle management superiors is also complex in organizations: on one hand, their positions can be more secure compared to employees’ and even top management’s, and their role in organizational development may be understood as crucial—middle management has a good knowledge of the workers’ needs and everyday aspects of the actual work. On the other hand, middle management is in particular, during increasing competition and tightening economic situations, under pressure and stress, as they have to accomplish negative tasks, such as giving notice to personnel and reorganizing the tasks according to the decisions by the leadership (Huy 2001, see also Lämsä and Hiillos 2008). Thus middle managers are ‘the shoulder’ for the personnel, but at the same time they are expected to reorganize and downsize in times of austerity (Ekonen 2014)—or when the company is searching for higher revenues for stakeholders. In our data the role of human resource units was also highlighted as crucial. Often in small companies or in NGOs, there were no separate HR units, but instead these tasks were delivered to middle managers or taken care of by the owners or leaders. In Finland, 89% of all companies are those with under five employees, and altogether 97% have under 20 employees (Statistics Finland 2019), and therefore the HR functions are often taken care of by the nearest superiors. In bigger organizations HR personnel are responsible for the development of work well-being, but the competence and willingness to tackle unpleasant or difficult issues seemed to be lacking according to our participants. This was exemplified by Laura, who brought up that the HR sector ignored workplace abuse—the acts taken were restricted to administering a survey, but no further actions were taken even though this was needed: ‘The administration and HR unit should have adhered to agreed-upon processes on workplace abuse and taken care that some activities after the survey were done. Now the [work well-being] surveys do reveal the existence of workplace abuse and the atmosphere of fear, but no actions are made to follow up according to these results’. In our data the respondents reported that many basic HR tasks and issues were lacking, for example, the follow-up of long sick leaves of personnel that might reveal organizational-level problems, and self-­ reflective review of the reasons behind these, or exit interviews. These could reveal the need for rethinking of workplace well-being, as well as the role of management and HR in the prevention of abuses. In line with

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these hopes, many workers brought up the role of occupational health care, which was often interpreted as being quite useless. In some cases the participants explained that the medical doctors were sympathetic, and even mentioned that the superior could be a psychopath. However, occupational health does not have the authority or capacity to intervene. In the current business world, but also in competition for the best workers in the public and the third sector, the reputation and image of the organization are important issues. People tend to apply for jobs in organizations which are aware of ecological sustainability but also increasingly of social sustainability. Non-abusiveness and reputation as a healthy working environment are factors in attracting and retaining competent personnel. On the other hand, we are also aware that humanitarian and human rights organizations do not necessarily guarantee non-abusiveness inside the organization. This was the case with Amnesty International (Ratcliffe 2019), in which a severe workplace bullying culture was reported after two employees committed suicide. The case of Amnesty reveals the possibility that even in organizations that aim to do good internationally, the leadership may not follow the organization’s values, but lead using fear and intimidation. Even though the bullying culture within Amnesty was discussed in the media in early 2019, it has to be noted that the majority of organizations, such as multinational companies, are not under the radar of the media on how the leadership and HR are managed in the organizations. The problem of EWA is a common one in many organizations. However, we also claim that abusive workplace culture does not have to be the norm, or something that is normalized and accepted as just the way things are in contemporary competitive working environments. We believe that in the future, the organizations that truly focus on the well-being of their personnel will be at the forefront in the competition for knowledgeable, competent and committed personnel that will also ensure success in multifarious gains and revenue.

Future Research and Development In our pilot project we have used data from two types of sources, namely the narratives of 16 writers who replied to an invitation to share their stories on fear in the workplace, and 6 personal interviews which focused on EWA. This data has obvious limitations, as most of the participants were white and relatively well-educated employees mainly in knowledge work

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in a Nordic country. An additional issue, which we were not able to address thoroughly, was the gender-specificity of targets and perpetrators. This needs more analysis in future research, and how the other intersections, such as age, ethnicity and sexuality, are configured in abusive workplace practices and behaviours also needs to be analysed. However, we emphasize that the gendered structures and processes in working life (Acker 1990) are at the core of understanding abusive behaviours and practices at work, as this enables abuse of power to be highlighted, which is integral to abusive workplaces. On the other hand, there is a need for further qualitative analysis of the abuses and violations at work in order to understand in-depth the mechanisms that feed the abuse and toxic organizational cultures. In future research the roles of the other members of the organization—those who actively support the abuse, those who are ‘neutral’ bystanders and thereby at least partially responsible for the abusive mechanisms, and those trying to make an intervention—are important to study.

References Acker, Joan. 1990. Hiearchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. Gender & Society 4 (2): 139–158. Bowlby, Sophia, Linda McKie, Susan Gregory, and Isobel MacPherson. 2010. Interdependency and Care over the Lifecourse. London: Routledge. Brown, Michael E., Linda K.  Trevino, and David A.  Harrison. 2005. Ethical Leadership: A Social Learning Perspective for Construct Development and Testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 97 (2): 117–134. Derry, Robbin. 1996. Toward a Feminist Firm: Comments on John Dobson and Judith White. Business Ethics Quarterly 6 (1): 101–109. ———. 1997. Ethics of Care. In Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics, ed. Patricia H. Werhane and Edward Freeman, 254–257. Massachusetts: Blackwell. Ekonen, Marianne. 2014. Keskijohdossa toimivien naisten ja miesten tarinat uristaan korkean teknologian alalla [Women and Men Middle Managers’ Career Narratives in the High Technology Sector]. Jyväskylä Studies on Business and Economics 148. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Fuqua, Dale R., and Jody L.  Newman. 2002. Creating Caring Organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 54 (2): 131–140. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Hearn, Jeff, Marjut Jyrkinen, Charlotta Niemistö, Mira Karjalainen, and Rebecca Piekkari. 2017. Top Men in Transnational Companies. In Gender in Transnational Knowledge Work, ed. Helene Peterson, 99–118. Cham: Springer. Hiekkataipale, Minna, and Anna-Maija Lämsä. 2017. What should a Manager like Me do in a Situation like This? Strategies for Handling Ethical Problems from the Viewpoint of the Logic of Appropriateness. Journal of Business Ethics 145 (3): 457–479. Hoel, Helge, Ståle Einarsen, and Cary L. Cooper. 2003. Organizational Effects of Bullying. In Bullying and Emotional Abuse in the Workplace. International Perspectives in Research and Practice, ed. Ståle Einarsen, Helge Hoel, and Cary Cooper, 145–160. London: Taylor & Francis. Huy, Quy Nguyen. 2001. In Praise of Middle Managers. Harvard Business Review, September 2001, 72–79. Karjalainen, Mira. 2018. Uushenkinen työ: mindfulness jälkimaallistumisen, uusliberalismin ja työn hämärtyvien rajojen risteyksessä [New Spiritual Labour: Mindfulness in the Intersections of Post-secularization, Neoliberalism and Blurring Boundaries of Work]. Elore, January 2018. Accessed April 9, 2019. https://journal.fi/elore/article/view/72818/34599. Lämsä, Anna-Maija, and Minna Hiillos. 2008. Career Counselling for Women Managers at Mid-Career. Developing an Autobiographical Approach. Gender in Management: An International Journal 23 (6): 395–408. Liedtka, Jeanne M. 1996. Feminist Morality and Competitive Reality: A Role For an Ethic of Care? Business Ethics Quarterly 6 (2): 179–200. Machold, Silke, Pervaiz K.  Ahmed, and Stuard S.  Farquhar. 2008. Corporate Governance and Ethics: A Feminist Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics 81 (3): 665–678. McKie, Linda, Ingrid Biese, and Marjut Jyrkinen. 2013. “The Best Time Is Now!”: The Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of Women Opting in to Self-Employment. Special Issue “Frayed Careers: Rhythms of Working Lives”. Gender Work and Organisation 20 (2): 194–196. Neubert, Mitchell J., Dawn S. Carlson, K. Michele Kacmar, James A. Roberts, and Lawrence B.  Chonko. 2009. The Virtuous Influence of Ethical Leadership Behavior: Evidence from the Field. Journal of Business Ethics 90 (2): 157–170. Ratcliffe, Rebecca. 2019. Amnesty International Leaders Offer to Resign over Bullying Culture. The Guardian, February 22. Accessed April 4, 2019. https:// www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/22/amnesty-international-leaders-offer-to-resign-over-bullying-workplace-culture. Sanderson, Kathy. 2017. Workplace Ostracism: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Lived Experience. PhD diss., St. Mary’s University. Accessed November 8, 2018. http://library2.smu.ca/handle/01/27039#.W-RJ99UzZ0w. Statistics Finland. (2019). Yritykset [Companies]. Accessed April 9, 2019. https:// www.tilastokeskus.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_yritykset.html.

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Sturges, Jane. 2008. All in a Day’s Work? Career Self‐management and the Management of the Boundary Between Work and Non-work. Human Resource Management Journal 18 (2): 118–134. Trevino, Linda K., Kenneth D. Butterfield, and Donald L. McCabe. 1998. The Ethical Context in Organizations: Influences on Employee Attitudes and Behaviors. Business Ethics Quarterly 8 (3): 447–476. Tronto, Joan. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.

Index

A Abuse, 35 Abusive behaviours and practices, 45, 46, 48, 51, 54, 56 Abusive environment, 56 Abusive leadership, 44 Abusive working environment, 57 Abusive workplaces, 43, 48, 57 Accelerate/accelerated, 44, 47 Accountability, 68 Acker, Joan, 22, 72 Address, 49 Agarwal, Upasna A., 44 Age, 72 Aggression, 20 Aggressive behaviours, 44 Ambient bullying, 44 Amnesty International, 71 Anderson, Kristin L., 22 Andersson, Lynne, 22 Anxiety, 43 Attila, Henna, 25 Authoritarian leadership, 45 Authority, 45 Ayres, Melanie M., 49

B Barata, Paula C., 42 Barling, Julian, 22 Bass, Bernard. M., 26 Bennett, Rebecca, 18 Better communication, 68 Björkqvist, Kaj, 20 Blame-shifting, 24 Blatant abuse, 48 Board members, 27 Bowlby, Sophia, 67 Braverman, Mark, 22, 23 Bremner, J.D., 42 Brown, Michael E., 66 Bullying, 43, 52 Burnout, 48 Business ethics, 66 C Caring organizational culture, 65 Caring organizations, 58, 66, 67 CEO, 28 Challenged the abusive behaviour, 47 Charity, 67

© The Author(s) 2019 E. Penttinen et al., Emotional Workplace Abuse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19993-7

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INDEX

Civil behaviour, 68 Coercive control, 24 Colleagues, 55 Collegial support, 29 Communication, 64 Community, 67 Comparative analysis, 20 Compassion, 56, 65, 67 Compassionate management, 67 Competence, 69 Competition, 70 Complexity of abuse, 48 Confrontation, 47 Confronted, 45, 47 Confronting, 53 Constant criticism, 24 Continuum of violence, 48 Controlling, 44 Cooper, Cary L, 25 Cope, 43, 48, 49, 53–55 Coping, 44, 48 with abuse, 48 with abuse at work, 48–52 mechanisms, 43 strategies, 48, 49, 54, 55 Cortina, Lilia, 22 Co-workers, 18, 51, 54–56 Crann, Sara E., 42 Cycle of abuse, 45 Cycle of workplace violence, 43, 44 Cyclical process, 30 D Decision to leave, 29 Deery, Stephen, 43 Demoting the target, 33, 47 Denmark, 53 Deny, 46 Depression, 43 Derry, Robbin, 66 Direct abuse, 48 Disabilities, 58

Disability leave, 48 Dofradottir, Andrea, 53, 54 Duffy, Maureen, 42 E Early warning signs, 55–56 Effects of emotional abuse, 43 Effects of trauma on the body, 42 Einarsen, Ståle, 20, 21, 43, 44, 53 Ekonen, Marianne, 70 Emotional abuse, 21 Emotionally abusive workplace, 45, 56 Employee emotional abuse, 45 Encouragement, 66 Environment, 48 Escalate, 47 Escalated, 48 Ethical leadership, 58, 64 Ethics of care, 66 Ethnic background, 57 Ethnicity, 72 Europe, 20 Everyday practices, 65 Exit interviews, 70 F Family, 56 Family members, 43, 55, 56, 65 Fear, 45, 54, 69 Fear and dread, 47 Feelings of fear and anxiety, 51 Feelings of revenge, 42 Female superiors, 25 Feminist approach, 19 Feminist ethical leadership, 64 Feminist ethics of care, 67 Feminist phenomenological approach, 42, 52 Feminist research on violence, 19 Financial crisis of 2008, 33 Finland, 25

 INDEX 

Finnish, 23 Finnish Quality of Work Life Survey, 25 Fixed-term contract, 34 Forgiveness, 66 FRA, 58 Friends, 55 Frost, Peter J., 28, 30 Fuqua, Dale R., 66, 67 G Gaslighting, 24, 47 Gender, 57, 58 Gender Equality Barometer survey, 25 Gender studies, 19 Germer, Christopher. K., 49 Gilligan, Carol, 66, 67 Glomb, T. M., 18, 22 Gratitude, 66 Green, Thomas M., 24 Gustafsson, Annelie, 43 H Harassment, 20 Harvey, Mike, 44 Heames, Joyce, 44 Hearn, Jeff, 22, 34, 65 Heikkinen, Suvi, 26 Hiillos, Minna, 70 Hoel, Helge, 25, 65 Hogh, Annie, 53, 54 Holt Melissa K., 52 Houshmand, H., 44 HR, 33, 53 Huy, Quy Nguyen, 70 Hypervigilance, 43 I Ideal employee, 46 Illegal, 30

77

Inappropriate behaviours, 33 Inclusion, 67 In-depth change, 63 Indirect, 48 Insomnia, 43 Institutional and intimate boundaries, 18, 26 Intensified abusive behaviour, 46 Intensified behaviours, 47 Interdisciplinary feminist phenomenological approach, 42 Internalize, 50 International stakeholders, 27 Interpersonal, 49 Interpersonal abuse, 49 Interviews, 18, 54, 56, 57 Intimate partner violence, 24 Intimidation, 45 Isolated acts, 31 IT sector, 54 J Jagatic, Karen, 22 Johnson, Michael P, 22 Jyrkinen, Marjut, 25 K Karjalainen, Mira, 67 Keashley, Loraleigh, 20, 22, 49 Kelly, Liz, 30 Kivimäki, M., 44 Knowledge work, 54, 55 Koonin, Michele, 24 L Lallukka, T., 44 Lammers, Marianne, 20, 22 Lämsä, Anna-Maija, 70 Landry, Christinia, 42 Leadership, 25

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INDEX

Leaper, Campbell, 49 Lehto, Anna-Maija, 25 Levine, P.A., 49 Leymann, Heinz, 20, 43 Liedtka, Jeanne M., 66 Luoma-aho, Vilma, 26 Lutgen-Sandvik, Pamela, 21, 44, 45 M Machold, Silke, 66, 67 Management, 19 Manipulating, 47 Manipulation, 24 Manipulative behaviour, 51 Matthiesen, Stig Berge, 20 McKie, Linda, 22, 25, 30, 67 Members, 56 Mental health, 43 Middle management, 69 Migrant background, 58 Mikkelsen, Eva Gemzøe, 43, 44, 53 Mistreatment, 21 Mobbing, 20, 43 N Näre, Sari, 22, 34 Narrative data, 18, 55 Narratives, 54, 56, 57 Neff, Kristin D., 49 Nervous system, 43 Neubert, Mitchell J., 66 Newman, Jody L., 66, 67 NGO, 70 Niemistö, Charlotta, 26 Non-abusiveness, 71 Non-heterosexual sexual orientations, 58 Non-identifying, 34 Non-physical violence, 20, 48 Non-work, 65 Normalized, 30

O Occupational health, 55, 56 Occupational health care, 71 Omari, Maryam, 46 Open threats, 33 Organization, 19 Organizational culture, 56 Organizational health care, 43 Organizational strategies, 65 Ostracism, 33 Ostracized, 47, 55 Oversensitive, 27 P Panic attacks, 43 Parent-Thirion, Agnès, 25 Parkin, Wendy, 22, 34 Passive-aggressive, 27 Pattern, 43, 53 Pattern of violence, 44 Paull, Megan, 46 Pearson, Christine, 22 Peers, 55 Penttinen, Elina, 22, 30, 56 People’s skills, 69 Personal, 49 Personal boundaries, 18, 56 Physical effects of abuse, 57 Physical consequences, 64 Physical health, 43 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 43 Power positions, 27 Power relations, 58 Private, 18, 26 Private spheres, 49 Productivity, 65 Professional, 49, 67 Professional boundaries, 18, 56 Professional sphere, 49 Promotion, 69 Psychological aggression, 22

 INDEX 

Psychological consequences, 64 Psychological effects of abuse, 57 Public, 18, 26 Public sphere, 49 Q Qian, J., 44, 48 Qualitative analysis, 72 Quantitative methods, 20 R Racialization, 58 Rai, Arpana, 44 Raknes, Bjørn Inge, 20 Ratcliffe, Rebecca, 71 Rationalization, 48 Rationalize, 46 Rationalized, 44 Rayner, Charlotte, 25 Respect, 64 Respectful, 49 Responsible leadership, 68 Richman, Judith, 22 Robinson, L, 18 Ronkainen, Suvi, 22, 34, 42, 49, 50 Rothschild, B., 42, 49 S Salin, Denise, 20, 25, 33 Sanderson, Kathy, 19, 34, 68 Scaer, R.C., 42 Self-blame, 34 Self-image, 49, 50 Self-value, 49 Semiotic robbery, 50 Sexual harassment, 44, 58 Sexuality, 72 Sexualized, 50

79

Sexualized abuse, 50 Shabot, Sara Cohen, 42 Shame, 34, 42, 49, 54 Siltala, Heli, 24, 43 Simms, Eva, 42 Skogstad, Anders, 43 Social ostracism, 51 Sperry, Len, 42 Spouses, 56 Staff meeting, 28 Stages of abuse, 34 Stakeholder, 25 Statistics Finland, 70 Stawarska, Beata, 42 Stress-related somatic illnesses, 47 Suicidal ideation, 52 Sustainability of work organizations, 65 Sustainable organizational culture, 64 T Temporary leave, 48 Threats of violence, 24 Tolerance, 48, 67 Totalizing effects, 42, 48 Toxic, 54 Toxic organizational culture, 55 Toxic working environments, 29, 48 Trauma theory, 42, 52 Traumatic events, 49 Traumatic stress, 23 Traumatizing event, 43 Tronto, Joan, 67 U Unequal relationships, 67 Unethical and negligent leadership, 65 Upper management, 18, 49, 53, 57 US/USA, 20, 21

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INDEX

V Validated, 44 Validation, 56 Van der Kolk, B., 42, 49 Van Houten, Donald R, 22 Vartia, Maarit, 20, 42–44, 46 Velonis, Alisa J., 22, 30 Victim mentality, 46 Violence, 42, 49, 50, 52, 56 Vulnerability, 42 W Warning sign, 47 Well-being, 64, 65 Women, 58 Working life studies, 19 Workplace abuse, 48, 49, 51, 52 Workplace bullying and mobbing, 35 Workplace guidelines, 49

Workplace harassment, 21 Workplace incivility, 22 Workplace ostracism, 48 Workplace relationships, 20 Workplace violations, 19 Workplace violence, 19 Work well-being, 70 X Xu, E., 48 Y Yan, Y., 44, 48 York, M. R., 22 Z Zapf, Dieter, 25