Cyberbullying: A Workplace Virus.

This paper explores workplace cyberbullying in an education institution in the south of England, in which declarations of zero tolerance towards bullying masked the reality that it was silently condoned as a means of controlling staff. As with face-to-face bullying, cyberbullying is a matter of impact and not necessarily of intent; and here we contemplate the role of the bully and the role of the victim, while viewing an example through a lens of control theory. The following questions - Is there a need for bullying in the workplace? Does it serve a function? Does bullying help contain workplace anxiety as well as create it? - are posed. The case of a man in his mid-thirties, who was systematically bullied by his manager for eighteen months, is presented. Here I examine the social structures that the bullying enforced (and destroyed) and examine what the subject learned from the manager's behaviour. In my commentary on this case study I refer to Wilfred Bion's work on workgroup anxiety. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud explores group formation and the giving up of individual ideals for the group ideal. I argue that something analogous happens in a workplace environment in which bullying is rife and in which a scapegoat must be found, even if there is no corresponding misdemeanor for which he must be punished. I examine the need for homogeneity when it comes to bullying, as well as the issues of power; transference; the defence against paranoid anxieties; and what happens when a manager is troubled by others' intelligence. Finally, in the second half of the paper, I extrapolate a future of cyberbullying. The name of the company in question has been made anonymous and throughout this paper is referred to only as 'the Institution'. Similarly, the name given to the victim - Rob - has been invented for the sake of anonymity, at his request. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]