Workplace bullying as a legitimate tool to advance political agenda of the organization

Despite the feel good notion that workplace bully are insecure and tries to get rid of competent peers, most workplace bullying are simply political tools to get rid of undesirable people without having to show proper cause.

The fact of matter is all workplace are hierarchical dictatorship where a small group are in charge of the fate of the majority, and benefits both monetary and non-monetary (eg turning a blind eye or even support the bully) flows from above.  The only way to avoid getting bullied is by making sure one ends up inside the stream of benefit flow and not outside of it, by finding a more powerful sponsor with teeth or by switching political allegiance via quitting and finding an organization with a better political fit.

For example if your organization does a lot of business with China, then your boss will have to carry out political agenda to the liking of Chinese government and its many princelings whose son or grandson may even be on your organization’s payroll.  So if you misstep that implicit bound by “innocently” congratulating Liu Xiao Bo’s Chinese Nobel Peace Prize win in 2010, the princeling’s son would easily arrange for your boss to be notified (a.k.a. ccing the manager) and torpedo your career via work place bullying.

Sadly this has already occurred many times over to the Seattle company called Microsoft, whose famously politically charged stack ranking system (manage out the bottom 10-20% through systematic workplace bullying) was co-opted by princeling’s son and grandson from China to legitimately punish any voices in America that is not to the liking of Chinese ruling class.  Microsoft has no choice but to support Chinese government on America soil and bully American workers for their unfavorable views on China.

Are Chinese princelings or Microsoft feeling insecure?  Obviously not.  So in reality workplace bullying is really just a legitimate political tool and should be recognized as such.  Banning workplace bullying is like banning office politics, which will not work until corporations start to run with more democratic ideals.  At present they are run like autocratic dictatorship, exactly what Chinese government likes.