Explaining the Employees Bullying towards Managers in the Public Sector

Providing appropriate working conditions along with supporting and protecting employees from possible workplace harms are among the main concerns of organizations. Hence, it is necessary to investigate destructive phenomena such as organizational bullying and identify their instances in order to address them via appropriate actions. In the present study, phenomenology was used to identify the phenomenon of employee bullying of the managers or, in other words, the upward bullying. For this purpose, 14 people who had at least 3 years of experience in management in governmental organizations were selected through non-random purposive sampling and were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Their experiences in this regard were obtained and the data analysis was performed using Collaizzi method. The findings of the study led to the identification of four main dimensions, namely personal bullying, bullying through threats to defame the manager’s professional performance, bullying in terms of threats against the manager’s position, and gender-oriented bullying, along with 21 components of upward bullying. The results of the study showed that the upward bullying in the public sector is a serious challenge for some managers and requires more attention.