Bullying Targets as Social Performers in the Public Administration Workplace

Abstract

This article argues that workers in public administration (PA) who are targets of bullying engage in social performances in an attempt to maintain control over their situation. The article considers the literature on social performances, including Hochschild's concept of emotional labor and its emergence in the PA arena. A case study is then presented that includes a nonfiction narrative describing the bullying of a library worker followed by a constructed (fictional) vignette vivifying the target's experience of being bullied and her possible social performances in response to that. The vignette depicting social performances is then analyzed via various social performance theories: surface and deep acting, emotional self-management, organizational display rules, impression management, and self-monitoring. The article concludes by returning to LaBier's notions of the working wounded and modern madness. Comparing the responses of targets of bullying to the troubled careerists studied by LaBier offers many points of intersection. Most notably, people who are being bullied within the context of the modern PA workplace might appear perfectly normal in their responses to being bullied but may, instead, be exhibiting on-the-job behavior that is quite "sick."A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances.-Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society Erving Goffman (1959) was perhaps the first to address the notion of workers managing their feelings and outward expressions and to speak of the necessity

Does competency matter? Competency as a factor in workplace bullying

“…It is likely that the links between selfesteem, self-determination, and bullying might be a related stream of research. The idea of social performance might be a good avenue to explore as well (c.f., Vickers, 2011). Another stream of research might be the relationship between competency and perceptions of power (c.f., Clegg, 1990;Hodson, Roscigno, & Lopez, 2006;Yamada, 2000), which gives rise to some interesting questions:…”

“…The idea of social performance might be a good avenue to explore as well (cf. Vickers, 2011). Another stream of research might be the relationship between competency and perceptions of power (cf.…”

Bullying in the Library Workplace

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