Bullying and single cases of harassment in higher education organizations: managerial solutions to eliminate the problem

Abstract

Relevance of the research. Education is the sphere in which the occurrence of bullying is one of the most intense form of harassment (Vveinhardt 2009). Although bullying and harassment are often analyzed in the psychological aspect, it is also a management problem, the decision of which is a complex part of personnel and human resource management system. Normally, psychologists can offer victims of bullying a few options as the solution: treatment or leaving the organization, as without the intervention of the management of the organization, it is difficult to define real help to the victim. The withdrawal from the organization is one of the solutions to the assaulted victim, but not to the organization, as it does not help to solve the problem of destructive employee relationships. Bullying and harassment signalize that the organizational culture is going through a crisis, which is determined by a variety of factors of different types— value, structural, psychological, communication factors, and so on. This research contributes to the analysis of the phenomenon, revealing latent actions of bullying in higher education organizations. Not all of the previous studies highlight the same actions. This is influenced by the fact that researchers in different countries use different diagnostic tools and have different research aims. In this part, bullying is analyzed only in the case of individual higher education institutions of Lithuania, highlighting the problem aspects; however, it is not generalization of the whole situation in the system of higher education. In future, the research could be expanded by comparison with other countries.[...]