1. The document discusses workplace mobbing, which refers to psychological harassment or bullying of an employee by coworkers or managers. 2. It provides context on the origins and definitions of mobbing, noting it is a phenomenon seen in both developed and developing countries. 3. Key points made include that mobbing can cause serious health consequences for victims, including stress, depression, and even suicide. Preventative measures discussed include establishing clear mobbing policies and codes of conduct within organizations.

1. International Conference: “Economies in transition – during and after”
4 December 2009
Workplace Mobbing and Albanian Workplace
Dr.Ilirjan Lipi, University of Vlora “Ismail Qemali”
MSc.Rudina Ramaj , Crystal University
Mobbing is an actual phenomenon present in developed and developing countries. Mobbing
is a social pathology that flow from a destructive slow process of the employee by hostile
communication and behaviors that will be tacit or expressive behaviors. Mobbing is definite like:
“psychological terrorism” in labor relationships. In developing countries like Albania, mobbing
behaviors are more tangible even in excessive shapes like psychological violence and pressure,
workplace discrimination, unfair discharge of mobbing victim. Also developed countries are
affected by mobbing, but they attempt to attend this problems and to enrich labor legislation for
their disposition by low-court e.g. just in Italy there are 1,500,000 employees “mobbing victims”.
The number of mobbing victims is also more in United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Ireland.
Obvious Mobbing Cases are also calumnies and attacks versus employees/their families, untrue
diffusion of employees’ information, performance sabotage of employees’ work, insult toward
employees, employee observation on punishment purpose, unauthorized sanctions toward
employees, barriers for employees training and obligation of employees to work overtime.
Key words: Mobbing, workplace, labor relationships

2. I. STARTING POINT OF DEFINITON OF WORKPLACE MOBBING
The concept of Mobbing is mentioned since 1996 by Konrad Lorenz (Nobel Laureate) in his study
of animal behavior. He based his work in the Darwinian Survival and studied the animal instincts
in their venture to survive. He decribes that humans being too are naturally impulsive.In the
1970 the physician Peter Paul Heinemann practised Lorenz’s conception to the children collective
aggression against a child victim. In the 1980 Heinz Leyman used this term to describe worklace
intimidation. According to Heinz Leymann mobbing is defined like “ psychological terrorism”
owing to antagonistic and unethical communication, that is regularly conducted by one or more
persons, mainly against an only person, which, due to mobbing, is driven in a vulnerable position
and held there by frequent mobbing activities. ".
The scientific definition of “mobbing” describe the social interact, by which a person (rarely more
than one) is assaulted by one ore more (rarely more than four persons) persons usually daily
and for many months, coercioning the person usually into an indifensible position and attaining
the expulsion from work. "Mobbing is usually performed by a dominant person who intend to
humiliate, confuse and discomfit his target.
A number of state governments have introduced policies to address the issue of workplace
bullying. For example here in Queensland, the Government established a Workplace Bullying
Task Force in 2002. In its report, the Taskforce suggested policies and procedures for dealing
with ‘bullying’ behaviors in the public sector. In addition, a Draft Advisory Standard for the
Prevention of Workplace Harassment (2003) has been distributed for public comment before
being finalized. However, mention is not made of the ‘mobbing’ syndrome or that abusive and
destructive behaviors can be perpetrated upwards towards managers.
The most widely held perception is that managers ‘bully’ and that the people they supervise are the
‘victims’. This stereotype is perpetuated in the media where emotive language is used to describe
the ‘boss’ as ‘evil’, ‘crazy’, and as ‘inflictors of misery’ (Lewis, 2003). The language used to
describe ‘bully bosses’, and the descriptions of their proposed punishment, suggests a culture

3. where punitive, harsh, demonizing, menacing, and abusive processes are condoned as a solution
for dealing with the ‘bully’ (Einarsen et al., 2003; Lewis, 2000; McCarthy, 2003).
The International Labor Organization (ILO) in its report, When Working Becomes Hazardous:
punching, spitting, swearing, shooting: violence at work goes global (1998), identified violence
as being a labor issue of increasing world wide concern (Chappell & Di Martino, 1998). It
is particularly significant that the ILO has extended the definition of workplace violence to
include not only physical acts of aggression but also passive or psychological acts. The damage
caused includes post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), premature death, suicide, and homicide.
Similarly, studies highlight the detrimental impact on family members and bystanders who
witness the aggression and/or those who provide emotional support to those targeted. The
literature addresses two major concepts of psychological violence at work, namely ‘mobbing’ and
‘bullying’.
Those who prefer the term ‘mobbing’ suggest that ‘bullying’ primarily refers to situations of
physically aggressive acts of ‘individual harassment’ whereas ‘mobbing’ refers to situations
of subtle and less direct ‘collective harassment’ (Davenport et al., 1999). Another significant
difference is that the ‘mobbing’ specific research tends to focus on organizational risk factors and
the impact on the target, whereas the bulk of the ‘bullying’ specific research tends to focus on the
personality and the dysfunctional behavior of the ‘bully’.
II. WORKPLACE MOBBING
Mobbing is a reality in most of companies and organizations.
Mobbing can be understood as the stressor to beat all stressors. It is an impassioned, collective
campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker.
Mobbing cases have been present not only in everyday life but have been even in object and
media’s attention, e.g. the well known case of death of two girls in British Columbia, Reena
Virk, that were beaten and drowned, as well as encouraging suicide case in 2000 of Dawn Marie
Wesley, has attracted public attention to the cruel reality and collective enforcing of girls and
boys.
The stress experienced by the object of workplace mobbing, may cause serious consequences to
the physical and emotional health. In Italy during the 1990s, was paid a great attention to the
studies of mobbing. In 1998 about 4.2% or 1.5 million employees were victims of mobbing. In
an ulterior study conducted by Bocconi University in Italy about 51% of mobbing victims are
women and 49% are males. The main trigger of Mobbing is the workplace competition. There is a
distinction between private and public sectors. In public sector has many rumors, interferences in
private life and spreading of false information that will tired psychologically the employees, while
in the private sector appear more continuous attack and harassment, increasing the work load and
isolation, forcing worker to surrender.

4. Mobbing usually has no form of physical violence or sexual harassment. The chiefs are usually
the worst “mobbers” and attack the employee in the work field, while the co-workers tend to threat
most the private life of mobbing victims.
A preventive strategy is the provision in the collective agreements and even at organizational level
of every company of workplace climate.
· A comprehensive definition of Mobbing
· The composition of an ethical code to stop the insults, harassments and
persecution.
· Continuous training and informing of employees.
· Establishing a joint committee with company representatives and employees, led
by an external person chosen by the parties to discuss all cases of mobbing in the organization
and
· the responsibility of taking disciplinary measures against “mobbers”
Mobbing cases show many features, but there are several stages which distinguish cases of
mobbing in the organization:
1. Elimination and exclusion of the target.
2. Small harassment making the others lives difficult.
3. Critical incident that causes official sanctions.
4. After the incident: hearings, appeals, mediation.
5. Elimination: The target abandon the work, retires, is removed from the job,
becomes disabled, dies or is sick from stress, makes suicide.
Shallcross (2003), in an insightful analysis of the literature, suggests 12 criteria by which mobbing
may be recognized. They include: systematic collusion; malicious intent to cause harm; behavior
that is frequent and enduring; a power imbalance; passive aggressive behavior against any worker;
women at risk from other women, particularly in female dominated workplaces; those who
experience mobbing often being trusting, co-operative, conscientious, and high achievers, loyal to
the organization and identify strongly with their work; escalation of a minor conflict; management
failing to recognize what is occurring and, when they do, tending to side with the perpetrators; the
person experiencing mobbing is deemed to be at fault; the actions result in the person experiencing
mobbing leaving the workplace; and the
person who experiences mobbing is left severely traumatized, resulting in general health
problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, or sometimes in suicide
III. VICTIMS OF MOBBING IN WORKPLACE AND HEALTH DAMAGE
The victims of mobbing in the organization must be aware of health risks caused from emotional
abuse against them . Mobbing can cause post traumatic disorders as a result of the victim's
exposure to stress. Individuals who are victims of mobbing need therapy and medications to cope

5. with depression. Mobbing exercised in the workplace can causes to the victims diseases such
as: migraine, chest pain, vomiting, muscle pain, chronic headaches, chronic stomach problems,
etc. Employees or mobbing victims in the workplace will exhibit signs of depression, insomnia,
anxiety etc. Another characteristic of the victim of mobbing is their aggressive behavior. Their
tolerance level is very low and associated with anxiety.
The Mobbing Signs
Essentially, there are five phases of the ‘mobbing syndrome’ commencing with a ‘conflict’ (first
phase), followed by ‘aggressive acts’ and ‘psychological assaults’ (second phase), after which
management becomes involved to the detriment of the target (third phase), the target is ‘branded
as difficult’ or ‘mentally ill’ (fourth phase), and the final and fifth phase is termed the ‘expulsion’
where the target is forced to leave their position (Leymann & Gustaffson, 1996). In addition,
mobbing is described according to degrees, using the analogy of the degrees of damage caused by
burns to the body, that is first, second and third degree ‘mobbing’ (Davenport et al.).
IV.RECOMMENDATIONS
Despite efforts to improve the culture, such as workforce diversity, equal employment
opportunity, and family friendly policies, and more recently the introduction of workplace
bullying policies, this research highlights that practice does not match the public sector policy
expectations. In this study, workplace mobbing was attributed to a toxic and dysfunctional
workplace culture where staff believed they were not valued or respected, where people were
appointed without a merit process, and where there was a culture of blame and scapegoating.
People who did not conform to the values of the dominant culture were targeted for psychological
abuse and eliminated. This problem is not unique to the public sector and in many ways reflects
the global violence of the times in which we live.
While this area of my research is still being constructed I can offer some comments based on
considerations so far. One option is to simply re-invent the workforce diversity, equal employment
opportunity, and work and family programs of the past. However, after nearly twenty years these
programs have not been sufficient to introduce the significant level of organizational cultural
change required if workplace mobbing and passive aggressive violence is to be prevented.
Professional development programs and constructive incentives for staff are also required if
change is to be achieved. However, the instability of public sector culture, where there is a
high level of staff turnover, ongoing departmental restructuring and job insecurity, appear to be
debilitating in terms of achieving cultural change. While ongoing efforts are made to improve
the culture, strategies are also required to encourage prevention of ‘workplace mobbing’ as well
as the development of fair and just processes for dealing with complaints. A commitment to

6. not only ‘value’ diversity but to rejoice in diversity, along with a culture approaching gender
equity and respect for all workers whatever their impairment, their culture, religion, politics,
sexual orientation or marital status, is essential to improve workplace culture and thereby assist
with the reduction of conflict and mobbing behaviors. A renewal of commitment to policies, and
more importantly to practices that ensure merit and equity in selection processes, and justice and
fairness in employment conditions, are necessary if conflict and mobbing behaviors are to be
addressed in the workplace.
Bibliography
1. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D., & Cooper, C. (2003), ‘The concept of bullying at
work: the European tradition’, in S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf & C.L Cooper, (Eds.)
2. Einarsen, S. & Matthiesen, S. B. (2002), ‘Workplace bullying: learning from a
decade
of research’, in C. Thomson, (Ed.), ‘Skills for survival, solutions and strategies’,
Paper presented at the 2002 Adelaide International Workplace Bullying Conference,
20-22 February, Adelaide, SA.
3. Lorenz, K., (1996),” On Aggresion”
4. Leymann, H. (1990), ‘Mobbing and psychological terror at workplaces’, Violence
and
Victims, 5(2), pp.119-26.
5. Sheehan, M., (2004), “Workplace Mobbing: a proactive response”,Paper presented
at the Workplace Mobbing Conference Brisbane, Australia 14th – 15th October 2004

7. Sitography
1. http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/mobbing.htm
2. http://www.overcomebullying.org/mobbing.html
3. http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/dublin.htm
4. http://www.allconferences.com/conferences/2004/20040924211407/
5. http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2004/02/feature/it0402104f.htm
6. http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091027/Victims-of-mobbing-show-
behavioral-and-social-inhibition3b-less-skilled-to-face-environmental-challenges.aspx
7. http://community.lawyers.com/forums/t/31684.aspx
8. http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Dunn15.html
9. http://www.members.shaw.ca/mobbing/mobbingCA/mobsyndrome-1.htm
10. http://www.babyboomercaretaker.com/senior-health/health-risks/Victim-Of-
Mobbing-In-Workplace-And-Health-Risks.html