The main emphasis in this chapter and most of recent academic and general discussion on this topic has been about the effect on the bullied individual and on the bully, but there is the associated impact on the effectiveness of the business. This was dramatically illustrated by the report of a public inquiry into failings at a Staffordshire Hospital (www.midstaffspublicinquiry. com) in 2013, where an unusually high death rate caused distress, complaint and outrage. The inquiry produced many explanations, among which was: appalling care flourished because managers put corporate self-interest and cost control ahead of patients and their safety.

One salient feature of this was a culture of management disregarding staff complaints and concerns about patient care because of an inward-looking focus on financial targets and the need for ‘efficiency’ improvements so that the hospital could achieve the objective of becoming a Foundation Trust. Staff members who raised other concerns felt bullied into compliance in ‘a climate of fear’. As a business the hospital failed to meet its financial and efficiency objectives because it failed to meet its fundamental and overriding purpose of caring effectively for patients. A month after the report was published the financial situation was so serious that the hospital was put into administration. Although this was a public sector body with unusual and drastic results of its failure, the same criterion applies to every organisation which is always essentially a business. There is always a ‘customer’, whose needs have to be met. A culture putting other objectives ahead of that imperative and fosters an atmosphere of harassing or bullying staff members who raise other concerns is in danger; bullying is damaging to the bullied person, but it also damages the business that fosters or tolerates bullying behaviour.

Questions 

1. In what ways is a bully damaged by bullying?

2. Discussion topic 2 above invited you to discuss the proposition ‘A robust policy on bullying and harassment will be effective in reducing employee perceptions that these behaviours are tolerated in the organisation.’ Would that have been sufficient to deal with the hospital situation in this case?

3. It is quite common that senior or specialist personnel are required to sign agreements that they will not disclose sensitive information about the business if they leave. The reason is to maintain secrecy about matters that would assist a competitor. Can such agreements be reasonable where the information that might be disclosed indicates wrongdoing?