Abstract

Mobbing in employees’ relationships is a widely researched and analyzed problem, and the concept is still developing. The deliberations mostly concentrate on negative aspects associated with this phenomenon, e.g., deterioration of the relationships between employees, devastating consequences for victims, deterioration of the company’s performance and image. The research on what managerial solutions can help reduce or eliminate the problem is still, however, not very abundant. Also, though many studies confirm the existence of this phenomenon in different sectors of the economy, there is not so much research on mobbing in relationships between employees in the leisure sector organizations. What is equally important, the dysfunction of relationships between employees includes the factors that have a significant impact not only on the quality of communication but also on the services provided in the organizations providing services. Given this fact, this study deals with the prevalence of mobbing in relationships between employees of the leisure sector organizations, distinguishing the most frequent forms of psychological pressure, and shaping the managerial solutions to eliminate the problem. The results of the qualitative research are presented using a semi-structured interview method. The research sample comprises employees of the Lithuanian hotels. The qualitative data analysis was performed using Emic and Etic approaches. The results achieved show that the dynamics of mobbing in the leisure sector organizations can be related to the economic recession, when the number of customers has decreased, corporate earnings shrunk. It affected the staff policy of organizations; it also shows that the relationship between the employees forming within organizations is significantly exposed to external circumstances, the influence of which could be compensated by the change in personnel policy. The originality of this article is presupposed by the fact that a complex, versatile model of managerial solutions designed to eliminate the phenomenon of mobbing is presented as the main result of the studies carried out. Using the proposed model, the practitioners will be able to look at the phenomenon of mobbing from a different angle, and researchers analyzing destructive relationships between the employees will be able to develop strategies of prevention and intervention of mobbing in relationships between employees based on the model.  

Keywords: mobbing, employee relations, human resource management, managerial solutions, qualitative methods, Lithuania

JEL Classification: M1, M14, L25.

Cite as: Vveinhardt, J., & Sroka, W. (2020). Innovations in human resources management: instruments to eliminate mobbing. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 2, 182-195. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2020.2-13

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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