Innovations in Human Resources Management: Instruments to Eliminate Mobbing

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.

diseases suffered from inappropriate behavior and a broader spectrum of dysfunctional behavior in their workplace (Fevre et al., 2013, p. 288).
On the other hand, Van Heugten (2012, p. 291) found that they have become more resistant and restored the balance of mind more quickly because of abuse at work. The recovery of balance of mind was particularly strong when the mobbed persons felt they were able to control the situation when they received support from the management and witnesses. Yildirim and Uysaloglu (2012, p. 641), who analyzed demographic factors and the nature of the work, state that high-risk groups where mobbing takes place can be formed, and this would allow taking more effective preventive action, taking the needs and characteristics of these groups into account. These studies highlight the complexity and multidimensionality of the phenomenon. Also, there are no unambiguous answers to the question of how much the phenomenon of mobbing is common in different countries. In some countries, the cases of mobbing are more common, and in some, they are rarer, i.e., the actions of mobbing in the organizations of some countries are covert. Therefore, it is much more difficult to notice and, of course, control it (Jacobson et al., 2013, p. 82). In this case, cultural differences that influence the evaluations of the behaviour of colleagues, i.e., what kind of behavior is perceived as negative and unacceptable, can be considered to be significant. Baguena et al. (2011) explain that according to the estimated data, the cases of mobbing in the workplace in different countries are very different, and one of the main reasons for this is the different methods of assessment, under which the data for such research is collected. Given these facts, the purpose of the study is to analyze the prevalence of mobbing in employees' relationships in the leisure sector organizations, distinguishing the most frequent methods of psychological pressure and forming managerial solutions to eliminate the problem.
Literature review. Mobbing research shows that there is a wide range of dynamics of relationships and negative actions. Mobbing involves individual, group, and organizational dynamics (Duffy and Sperry, 2012, p. 52). Thus, it may be vertical (the executive assaults an employee or employees assault the executive), horizontal (employees assault a co-worker of the same level), or mixed (Zukauskas and Vveinhardt, 2013). Still, in all cases, more than one person is involved in the assault. Mobbing is a multifaceted phenomenon, occurring in the workplace by a wide spectrum of assault, which can be divided into three categories: verbal, non-verbal, and physical (Leymann, 1996;Stale, 1999;Einarsen et al., 2003;Tracy et al., 2006;Katrinli et al., 2010).
The scientific debate in the literature shows that the concept is still developing. For example, it is argued that aggression in the workplace may also be expressed in the form of sexual harassment (Waldron and Kassing, 2010, p. 70). Still, Duffy and Sperry (2007) tend to distinguish sexual harassment from mobbing. They emphasize that «mobbing is the nonsexual harassment of a co-worker by a group of other workers or other members of an organization designed to secure the removal from the organization of the one who is targeted» (p. 398). Other studies of employee harassment identified mobbing as one of the forms of violence experienced in the workplace (Fleming and Harvey, 2002;Schindeler, 2013;etc.).
Like Leymann (1993, 1996), Meschkutat et al. (2002, who researched in Germany found the following common actions of mobbing and extended them: rumors and backbiting, unfair work assessment, constant bullying and teasing, withholding important information, constant criticism, isolation, etc. (p. 39). Leon-Perez et al., (2013, p. 1165) stated such negative behaviors as having the opinions ignored, spreading gossip, offensive personal remarks, being socially ignored/excluded, repeated reminders of errors, withholding information, being ridiculed about work, work below competence ordered, unmanageable workload, pressure not to claim, intimidating behavior, being shouted at, the threat of violence/aggression, selflabeling (being bullied), etc. Yildirim et al. (2007, p. 453) identified four common groups of actions: isolation from work, attack on professional status, attack on personality, direct negative behavior. Leymann identified making threats by phone as one of the ways of terrorization, however, with the development of information technology bullying by electronic means or Cyberbullying is sometimes distinguished, although the Marketing and Management of Innovations, 2020, Issue 2 185 http://mmi.fem.sumdu.edu.ua/en latter receives more attention in the studies of pupils' and students' relationships (Lee, 2010;Roland, 2011), it is relevant as the negative experience of the behavior is transferred to the working environment as well.
It should be noted that a wide variety of actions of mobbing occurring in any form or system are designed to create an intimidating environment and intimidate the victim. The same actions that do not fall under the criteria for the definition of mobbing should be identified as harassment. Also, the discriminatory aspect of mobbing is highlighted. Therefore, the term «mobbing» used in this research is defined as a certain form of discrimination in relationships between employees, revealing dysfunctional aspects of interpersonal relationships, based on intensive and long-term oppression of the victim (Vveinhardt, 2009;Zukauskas and Vveinhardt, 2013). Single cases of harassment are negative actions directed against a person that creates an intimidating environment, abusive, offensive verbal and nonverbal behavior, which causes discomfort, stress, and psychological pain to the victim offends the person's dignity, may adversely affect health (Vveinhardt and Zukauskas, 2012;Androniceanu et al., 2020). Methods of pressure (or harassment, mobbing) are the psychological violence directed towards the restriction of a person's freedom of social action, exercised by complex, systematic offensive actions by one person or including a group, excluding the victim from others, making the victim feel emotional, social discomfort in the work environment (Zukauskas and Vveinhardt, 2013;Ciobanu et al., 2019;Vveinhardt and Sroka, 2020). Given this fact, solutions to the problem of mobbing as a psychosocial stressor are intended for the creation of a healthy and safe environment (Ranki et al., 2018;Majerova, 2015).
One should also add that there are substantial links between employee protection from mobbing and CSR and on the direct or indirect benefit of being socially responsible to the enterprises (Gkorezis and Petridou, 2017;Vveinhardt et al., 2019), though there are also opponents of this concept (e.g., Chwistecka-Dudek, 2016). In general, they are related to the fact that the organizations that adopted CSR concepts (or plan to do it) as a rule will be less inclined to tolerate mobbing. That is because CSR organizations may focus on external stakeholders and image retention (Czubala, 2016). This is important not only for business organizations but also for non-governmental institutions, and principles of ethical behavior (ethics) should be a guideline for the daily activities (Toleikiene and Jukneviciene, 2019;Sroka and Vveinhardt, 2018).
Methodology and research methods. The question of the most common methods of psychological pressure in the relationships between employees in the leisure sector organizations is raised in the problem of the research. One of the parts of the aim of this research is to distinguish the most common methods of pressure in relationships between employees in the leisure sector organizations. During the second phase of the strategy of the research methodology, qualitative research is carried out: data collection (interviews), data analysis (qualitative analysis of the content), interpretation of the research results. The research data were analyzed based on the Emic and Etic perspectives proposed by Krysik and Finn (2010): a quote that reflects the investigated person's opinion, thinking and is relevant in the researcher's view is presented (in italics) and followed by the researcher's interpretations. The emic perspective is essential to understand how people perceive the world around them; therefore, firstly, categories are formed based on the interviewees' own words and conceptions that reflect the meanings they provide (the emic perspective) (Fetterman, 2008). Categorization is followed by abstraction by forming categories from the etic perspective (Maxwell, 2013). Integrating and systematizing the data obtained from these approaches (Weiss, 1997;Morris et al., 1999), conclusions are drawn.
Research sample. To determine the methods of pressure in the relationships between the employees of the leisure sector organizations, victims of mobbing were interviewed in 2018, using the method of the structured interview. After the analysis of the content of messages, 14 potential research participants were selected. The informants were selected so that each new informant could provide some additional infor-mation. Four possible informants refused to participate in the research. However, anonymity was guaranteed, ensuring that only the summarised results of the research will be published, and the voice record will be deleted after the analysis. The final number of the informants willing to participate in the research was 10, but during the 10th interview, «data saturation» occurred; therefore, the decision to analyze the responses of 9 informants was made.
Employees of the leisure sector organizations participated in the research. The main characteristics of the informants (an abbreviation I) are identified in Table 1. Organization of the research. The interviews were recorded on a voice-recorder with the informant's consent. After each interview, the recording was uploaded as a computer file; the data were transcribed and then analyzed.
Results and Discussion. The combined results of the interviews are presented in Table 2. It should be noted that the results of the interviews distinguish only the most frequent methods of pressure, which are later elaborated when transcribing the text. Based on the interviews, the following significant circumstances should be distinguished. Firstly, the specific character of the work of the employees who experienced mobbing is directly related to customer service, secondly, to the size of the organization and, thirdly, to organizationally unavoidable frequent contacts with co-workers. Thus, two criteria, in the context of which it is focussed when attacking the victims, are highlighted. They are communication and isolation, reputation, and tasks. In the dimension of communication and isolation, many actions are defined as unsound, hostile communication with the signs of slightly expressed isolation. The attack in the area of communication significantly resounds the actions distinguished by Leymann (1990). Still, the possibilities of direct social isolation are limited by the specific character of work in this sector, i.e., organizations are relatively small (physical environment can limit the possibilities of such actions as the transfer of an employee to other premises, farther away from co-workers), and the specific character of work is usually based on direct contacts with clients. The appointment of tasks, in this case, may not necessarily be directly related to the objective of hurting the dignity of the victim to expel the victim from the organization. Judging from the context presented by informants, there is a relevant problem of clear determination of the limits of work responsibilities (functions). Thus, the situation is used both to humiliate an employee and to pursue the objectives of the organization (in violation of the rights of the employee) by giving additional work and thereby reducing costs that would be required to hire additional staff. In this context, the statement of the informant I3 that the manager said «... if you don't like it, you can quit...», may be associated with the pressure to resign, and with the prevailing business culture in Lithuania, where the human resources of the organization are not valued and developed adequately to the concept formed by the management science (Veinhardt and Kotovskiene, 2008;Baksyte and Stripeikis, 2011;Cesyniene and StankeviCiene, 2012). That is, there are features of abuse when forced to do the work, which is not paid extra, and using psychological pressure. On the other hand, the resistance to perform «unpaid» work in the case of I1 has become the reason for systematic terrorization and quitting the job: «... They signed my letter of resignation; there was neither talk nor a meeting, I had to initiate the commission myself, so that I could pass the assets assigned to me, to settle with the institution and quit...».
Persons who suffer from mobbing do not have objective opportunities to explain the reasons for the dysfunctional behavior of managers and co-workers «.. Although in the process of escalation of mobbing victims tend to blame themselves (Adams and Crawford, 1992;Keashly, 1998;Cowie et al., 1999;Keashly, 2001;Rayner et al., 2002;Tracy et al., 2006;etc.) and this issue is debatable, it has not been confirmed within the scope of this study.
Thus, such a general trend as the participation of executives (direct active -by harassment, and passive by failing to regulate the relationships between employees) has been revealed. In the sample of this study, horizontal (co-workers against an employee) and vertical harassment (the executive against an employee) took place separately, i.e., the dynamics of dysfunctional relationships did not include both levels. Also, dysfunctional behavior of executives in respect of the victims should be treated as a consequence of the general style of management: «...the majority is treated like this...» (I1), «...this is their [managerial staff] working method...» (I6), «...the executive terrorizes employees who have direct contact with him...» (I7). The problem of the management style is also emphasized by the management attitude and non-participation in dealing with emerging conflicts between employees. I9 states that «...the management knows everything, they accept it as natural phenomena typical of all organizations...» I2 emphasizes that «... they are indifferent, don't understand or don't want to understand that this is a big problem...». Passive participation of the executive becomes an incentive for the escalation of mobbing. This shows that the issues and challenges of both preventions of mobbing and intervention policy are a relevant managerial problem that should be solved on the organizational level. At this level, the issues of dynamics of relationships between the employees forming at the horizontal level, which are stressed by the informants who emphasize the problems of the lack of support for colleagues who suffer from abuse related to organizational policy, should be solved as well: «...everyone wants to have a job and are afraid of losing it, so often behave inadequately...» (I1), they also note that «...too much confidence as the executive...» (I8). Given this organizational policy, the employees exposed to assault isolate themselves, e.g., «...I do not react, just swallow inwardly...» (I1), «...I quitted work several times...» (I4). The reaction to the resistance ended: «...by the deterioration of relationships...» (I9) «...the same repeats...» (I4), «...by even more bullying...» (I7), «...in this case, they say goodbye to employees...» (I1), «...the executive closed the eyes to it...» (I5). If the manager does not deal with the problem, the victim experiences even greater pressure. An intimidating atmosphere that makes the victims feel unsafe in respect of colleagues, even if certain actions have not been accepted, is created. For example, I6 did not indicate the circumstances in which the informant would be sneered down. However, I6 felt that it was «...probably...» happening.
To sum up, the results of the interviews, the causes that determined the situation of the victims in respect of dysfunctional relationships are indicated below (Table 3). Thus, mobbing forces the victims to choose the pattern of behavior that is characterized by self-isolation, extreme emotional reactions, and self-defense when choosing to leave the workplace. Organizational conditions, i.e., stress determined by intensive contacts with customers and co-workers, which is experienced by employees of this sector, management style, and conditions of work organization determined by it, in the absence of an active system of prevention and intervention of the conflict regulation, should be named as the main causes.
The model of managerial solutions to eliminate the problem of mobbing in employees' relationships. Based on the results of the interviews with victims of mobbing in the leisure sector organizations and the conclusions, the complex of managerial solutions is proposed. These solutions would, firstly, remove the causes of occurrence and escalation of mobbing within organizations, secondly, strengthen the organizational system, thirdly, evaluate the influence of economic/social-cultural circumstances on the tension within an organization, and help learn to respond flexibly when making managerial decisions.
Four complex measures of changes: at the level of the management (1), at the level of the development of the organizational structure (2), training and development of personal characteristics (3), and at the level closely related to the employees' behavior (within the organization), are structurally visualized. Positive changes in the http://mmi.fem.sumdu.edu.ua/en organization can take place only if all the system of measures is implemented in a combined way, taking internal and external factors into account. The structured flow chart is visualized in Figure 1.
In a tense, competitive environment, executives have to deal with both the challenges of the market and the issues of work organization, take care of the internal working environment. The interviews have highlighted a direct role of the head of the organization participating in the attack on the victim and participating passively, when escalation of mobbing in employees' relationships is left to chance, without interference and without taking active intervention actions. Both the results of the interviews in the sample of this research and the practice of national organizations show that very often, far from the primary role is given to the management style. Therefore, the primary task for the executive and the managerial personnel of the organization is the development of personal management competence, revision of values, and the change of the methods of management. Also, the managerial competence is necessary to regulate the structure of the organization, which on the one hand, would ensure a working environment, allow to avoid the loss of human resources (not only because of mobbing), to create an unfavorable (preventive) environment and intervention policy for the dysfunction of relationships that could evolve into mobbing. The latter includes the submission of complaints and appeals and their impartial examination with the involvement of staff representatives, providing information on decisions to the employee concerned or, in the event of potential breaches of the law, by appealing to external institutions.
As has already been mentioned, the job in the leisure sector is characterized by very frequent contact with both the organization's clients and employees of the organization. Work with clients; conflictual relationships are a significant cause of work-related stress that influences relationships with colleagues as well. Unevenly distributed workload, unfavorably organized work, and rest schedule increase the stress and the likelihood of conflict, so these are the challenges that executives must deal with when they organize the work of subordinates. Unclearly defined working functions; duplicating work is another potential cause of conflicts. Besides, the lack of clear functions and operational standards provides personnel managers the opportunity to abuse, terrorize the subordinates, waste working hours not to perform their duties. Elimination of informal communication, which becomes one of the possibilities of attack and replacing it with formal communication, as well as ensuring transparency, plays a dual role. On the one hand, it directly increases the functionality of the work processes; on the other hand, it helps to create a favorable, preventively acting psychological climate. The latter is strengthened by the norms of ethics, regulating professional and interpersonal relationships, provided that the compliance with these norms and responsibility for breaking the norms are ensured.
The third important factor is training and consultation for the staff of the organization. The most common criteria when hiring the personnel are professional competence and work experience. The development of professional competence is mostly focussed when organizing various training for employees. But even the employees with the same education come to the organization with different levels of knowledge, different values, and motives, differently developed social skills that affect the functionality of the interpersonal relationships.
Four directions of training and consultation are distinguished in the model. The first is the development of standards of ethics of professional and interpersonal relationships, which helps to realize the rules of professional and interpersonal ethics approved by the organization and follow them.
The second is the dissemination of knowledge about mobbing, that is, the ability to recognize, respond to emerging conflicts and to deal with them both independently in the initial stages and to look for help within the organization (invoking colleagues, executives, recording the evidence of misconduct, etc.) or outside it (professionals, lawyers, family members, etc.). The research of dynamics of mobbing shows that both in the case of assault and for the victim's opportunity to avoid the attack, to respond adequately, the support of both managers and colleagues, which may be positive and negative (supporting the assault), is necessary. The ability to recognize and publicly name mobbing enables to solve the problem already in the initial phase of the conflict.
The third and fourth are the development of conflict management competence and empathy. While conflict management is included in many universities and non-university higher education programs, a large part of leisure sector employees has vocational or basic education. Empathy increases mutual understanding and development of conflict management skills serves not only to relationships between the employees, but also to maintain the relationships with the customers.
This training should be conducted regularly and each time, additional consultation has to be held when a case of mobbing is noticed. Organizations apply different training and consultation practices. However, it is advisable both to raise the professional competence of the staff of the organization and invoke the help of external professionals in interpersonal relationships.
Two vectors are drawn in Figure 1 conditionally separate managed organizational environment from the unmanaged (but known) cultural and social/economic environment, which may be partially predicted.  Cultural environment, which is unique and slowly shifting, consists of attitudes, stereotypes, usual behavioral patterns, moral, ethical values, and other factors that constitute the cultural medium of the organization. This medium can both stop the changes, and facilitate their implementation; therefore, matching the organization's values with generally accepted universal norms becomes a significant condition.
The differences in the occurrence of mobbing in the leisure sector organizations found in the empirical part of the research may be partly linked to external circumstances -changes in the social and economic situation that took place. As the studies of mobbing (Zukauskas and Vveinhardt, 2013) show, social/economic environment, changes in the labor market, etc. have a considerable influence on relationships between employees. On the other hand, the results of the interviews that highlighted the fear of losing the job, debasement of human resources during dismissal, partly reflect both the competence of the management and the situation on the labor market, in addition to the fact that when forecasting changes in the markets, economic and social transformations, investigation of the causes for employees' voluntary resignation becomes an important factor on the level of organization of work. It is also necessary to consider how these changes can influence the relationships between employees of the organization. Therefore, one of the directions of organizational system change emphasizes the development of flexibility and adaptability of the company, which strengthens the organization's economic stability and functionality of social connections.
Conclusions. The studies of dysfunctional relationships between the employees carried out over the past three decades leading to the conclusion that mobbing is not the problem of single areas of professional activities or individual, culturally, and socially defined groups. In addition to the fact that mobbing is statistically defined by the criteria of frequency and duration of the actions of attack, the dynamics of impact on the victim, usual relationships between employees may be regulated by organizational solutions. When making organizational-managerial decisions, it is necessary to evaluate the factors of risk (e.g., Olah et al., 2019) and threats that are determined by internal and external circumstances related to the specific character of the leisure sector, that is, the frequent contacts, conflicts with colleagues and clients and tension raised by the clients. Research does not distinguish professional groups in which specific actions of attack would be actualized; however, the cultural specificities leading to the problem of perception of the negative behavior are focussed. Thus, the highlighting of the model of the actions of attack in leisure organizations remains a relevant problem, the analysis of which would capacitate effective managerial solutions.
To distinguish the most common methods of psychological pressure, the analysis of the results of the interviews with victims of mobbing has highlighted two major trends of the assault. They are direct verbal abuse and attack by using informal communication. In this context, firstly, the victim is terrorized (intimidated) by verbal means -by shouting, intensely criticizing, harassing, diminishing the dignity, and secondly, by undermining confidence in the victim, destroying the reputation in the eyes of the colleagues, criticism of work, incorrect assessment and backbiting. This pattern of behavior reflects the common culture of interpersonal relationships and management styles that have been formed in the organizations of the analyzed sector (within the scope of this research). Whereas the management itself participates in the attacks on the victim or ignores the dysfunction in relationships between the employees, the victim's resistance is undermined by intensified attacks. Also, the problem of competence of the victims of mobbing in dealing with conflict situations has been disclosed -even in the case where the executive did not take part in the attack, there was no active position to deal with the problem at the level of the management, often choosing self-isolation, which is one of the objectives of the abusers.
The model of managerial solutions to eliminate the phenomenon of mobbing in the leisure sector organizations developed on the basis of the results of the research emphasizes the changes in the philosophy of management and organizational system. The model of managerial solutions can be applied in the leisure sector organizations when dealing with the problems of relationships between the employees and mobbing. The accompanying effect, in the long run, is identified as the development of the management unit and balancing of the organizational system, improving the functionality of internal processes, the quality of the work of staff, strengthening the employees' informal bonds with the organization.