Academic Mobbing, A Challenge For Higher Education: A Review of Literature

The phrase "Academic mobbing" can be described as character assassination or psychological harassment against a colleague. According to many published reports, individuals in any workplace, including the academic environment, may be targets of coworkers' antisocial behaviors such as accusation, humiliation, emotional abuse, and general offences. In addition to personal negative outcomes including decreased job satisfaction, increased occupational stress, and higher risk for anxiety and depression; academic mobbing can lead to decreased efficacy of the organization to reach its targets. Job dissatisfaction leads to decrease effort of faculties in performing educational and scientific activities that has indirect consequences on community. The direct effect of dissatisfaction of faculties would be decreased quality and quantity of educational services to students. Since the first steps to systematically deal with any social issue, including academic mobbing is understanding the nature and characteristics of the situation, the current review tends to introduce and establish the characteristics of academic mobbing as well as the role of the authorities in preventing or resolving the problem.