Assessment of Mobbing Behaviors Exposed by the Academic Personnel Working in a University, in Turkey

Objective: To determine psychological violence behaviors (mobbing) exposed by academic personnel working in Erciyes University, Turkey. Methods: A questionnaire-based cross sectional study was performed in June 2010 in Erciyes University. No sampling methods were used, questionnaires were delivered by mail to all academicians and 450 of 850 (53.0%) questionnaires were returned. We used the Mobbing Perception Scale (MPS) for data collection. Results: A total of 58.2% of the academicians experienced recurrent physiological violence at least once a week in the workplace and 16.6% stated that they were directly exposed to mobbing behavior every day (>1 point) in the past year, 44.7% reported “assault to their professional status”, 42.8% reported “assault to personality”, 39.9 % reported “isolation from work”, 13.0% reported “direct negative behavior”. The most commonly (30.4%) experienced behavior was; “groundless talk about the person in question”. Mobbing was not associated with demographic and professional variables. The main source of mobbing was the managers. Also 68.0% of the victims resorted to passive defense strategies, and only 2.5% took legal action. Conclusion: Workplace mobbing is a critical problem for academicians in our university. The level of directly mobbing behavior was substantially high. The most common threatening behavior was “assault to professional status”. The primary mobbers were the managers. A great of majority academicians had not been received professional help and they internalized the mobbing. The findings indicated that levels of awareness of mobbing have increased among academicians.