With the word "Mobbing"
(also "Bullying" or "Job harassment") Work and Organisational
Psychology identifies a continuative and constant conflict on the workplace. It is a well
known situation which seems to be on one hand deeply connected with the most intimate and
also somehow instintive pulsions of the human mind (envy, anthipathy, etc) and on the
other also tied to organisational factors such as economical problems of the company,
personnel evaluation, staff reduction, etc. Traditionally, this topic has been studied
mostly in Central-Northern Europe, and only recently the scientific interest towards it
has shifted also in southern countries.
Work psychologist Harald Ege Ph.D. was the first to introduce the knowledge of Mobbing in
Italy. In 1996 he wrote the first book on Mobbing in Italian and founded PRIMA
Associazione Italiana contro Mobbing e Stress Psicosociale, a non profit organisation
which pioneered the field of psychological and legal support to Mobbing victims.
Having trained and studied in Germany, his country of origin, but living and working in
Italy, Ege became well aware of an aspect of Mobbing somehow put apart in most researches:
its cultural implications. He realized for example that Mobbing assumes the characters and
the ways of working of the culture in which it is performed, so that what is felt as
Mobbing in Germany or Sweden may not be so perceived in Italy or Spain, and vice versa.
Moreover, in the mediterranean society, peculiar values and habits, such as family ties or
gender implications, can play a crucial role in the origin and development of workplace
conflict. The notion of "Double-Mobbing" and the "Italian six-phase
model" of Mobbing are just two of the new and original ideas linked to what Ege calls
"Cultural Mobbing", which he developed and presented in the several books and
articles which he has been producing since 1996.
This book is the English translation of a combination of two of Ege's works: "Il
Mobbing in Italia. Introduzione al Mobbing culturale", published in 1997, and "I
numeri del Mobbing. La prima ricerca italiana", published in 1998. The first one
explains the main theoretical points of Cultural Mobbing, whereas the second one has a
purely empiric trait, containing the data and results of the first study on Mobbing
victims ever carried out in Italy, using a modified and enlarged version of the LIPT
questionnaire.
H. Ege: ricercatore tedesco da anni residente in Italia, � specialista
in relazioni industriali e del lavoro, dottore di ricerca in psicologia del lavoro e
dell'organizzazione e svolge attualmente attivit� di ricerca presso l'Universit� di
Bologna. E' responsabile della ricerca italiana sul Mobbing. Nel 1996 ha fondato PRIMA
(Associazione Italiana contro Mobbing e Stress Psicosociale), un'organizzazione senza
scopo di lucro che si prefigge di divulgare, formare, assistere ed intervenire sul Mobbing
a tutti i livelli, dal lavoratore al campo dirigenziale ed imprenditoriale. |
