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Overcoming Mobbing
Book

Overcoming Mobbing

A Recovery Guide for Workplace Aggression and Bullying

Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry
Oxford UP, 2013
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Today, workplace aggression and abuse are increasingly common. This includes bullying, in which one or a few individuals – usually a boss – torment an employee. A more insidious attack is mobbing, in which a workplace group – often with the support of management – harass and terrorize an employee, to force him or her to leave or to create cause for dismissal. Mobbing can result in debilitating physical and emotional stress and illness, even suicide. Mental health professionals Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry detail mobbing, where and why it occurs, the effects on its victims and what companies can do to eliminate it. getAbstract recommends their insights to executives, HR professionals and to employees at all levels. The more executives and employees understand and recognize mobbing, the more they can do to eradicate it.

Summary

Let’s Ruin Dwayne’s Life, Get Him Fired and Run Him Out of Town!

Dwayne was a football coach with extensive experience, including coaching an overseas semipro team. He was a graduate of the rural southwestern high school that hired him to coach its varsity squad. That could have made him an insider at the school, but he was not. In small but significant ways, Dwayne differed from the people around him.

Specifically, Dwayne was an attractive man in great shape; his assistant coaches were fat. Dwayne came from a wealthy family; most people in the town did not. Dwayne was not from the same branch of Christianity as the majority of people in his area, and some local residents believed Dwayne’s overseas experience gave him “‘foreign’ ways.”

Many people in his little town regarded Dwayne as a suspicious “other.” Dwayne was in trouble even before his first day at work. Some of his assistant coaches thought they should have won the head-coaching job. They resented him from the start and began to undermine him right away.

The assistant coaches complained about Dwayne’s coaching style and play selections. They put Dwayne down behind his back. The backbiting and ...

About the Authors

Maureen Duffy is a family therapist and consultant on workplace and school bullying issues. Len Sperry teaches mental health counseling at Florida Atlantic University.

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