Culture in Organizations - How do organizations deal with bullying?

Is bullying an organizational culture?

How do organizations deal with it?

What is an organizational culture?

Organizational culture is not always easy to define or capture because of its diverse nature from one organization into another, however it has been defined as a “force” in an organization.

An organizational culture is made by its members shared values and beliefs, behaviours, decisions, actions, beliefs of an organization. The role of culture in an organization is considered to be a kind of direction for its organization.

The result of the above can have a very strong effect on the company’s/organization’s success.

Schein’s model defines culture in organizations such as:

·         A group phenomena

·         A patern of basic assumptions - this explains some very big failures in very powerful organizations such as schools and other companies (examples to be given below).

·         As an emergent and developmental process

·         Having a socialising role

In this week’s summary, I will focus on the “patern of basic assumptions” from the Schein’s model. I believe this explains clearly the why and how of the “beyond prescriptive culture”, the culture of bullying and the non-pleasant situations that are such a massive issue in many organizations. The below link of YouTube, is the one of Casey Heynes, the Sydney schoolboy that was all over the news last year as a result of bullying exposed on youtube by an amateur video. None of the articles online have claims from their school teacher  or anyone from the school. A few articles from The Daily Telegraph state the same paragraph “The Department of Education is already undergoing a review of its anti-bullying policy and has given all schools until December this year to "ensure anti-bullying plan complies with the updated policy", but there is not one single line from anyone from the school and how this organization dealt with this very big issue. According to an article from Frank Furedi on The Australian on the 7^th of July 2012, bullying is costing Australian businesses over 36 billion (not specified in what) when 70 per cent of employees are being bullied. Why this culture? What needs to be done in order to have effective changes? Maybe the subcultures need to be revisited and also changed with some more responsibilities. There is so much I would love to write about this.

References:

Australian Boy Defends Himself From Bully And Gets Suspended, You Tube, viewed 26 August 2012 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCBdB8nPk44 >

Furedi, F 2012, ‘Entrenched in a culture of workplace politics, or could it be you’re picking on me again?’, The Australian, viewed 25 August 2012 <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/entrenched-in-a-culture-of-workplace-politics-or-could-it-be-youre-picking-on-me-again/story-e6frgd0x-1226419327996>

McDougall, B 2011, ‘Victim of School bullying a web hero’ The Daily Telegraph, viewed 26 August 2012 <http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/bullied-boy-at-chifley-college-dunheved-campus-suspended-after-fighting-back/story-e6freuzi-1226022076411>