The Care Quality Commission review quotes Professor Frans Cilliers’s view that bullying often surfaces in organisations during periods of significant change and transformation in which there are high levels of performance anxiety. The bullying behaviour is a manifestation of collective anxiety. And in these circumstances, some weak managers, finding themselves faced with situations for which nothing in their training or experience has prepared them, can find only one response, which to start shouting at their staff.
Makes you wonder if there’s been a surge in bullying in the newsroom in recent years.