WORKPLACE MOBBING IN ACADEME : Reports from Twenty Universities
| Author: | Westhues, Kenneth | |
| Year: | 2005 | |
| Pages: | 410 | |
| ISBN: | 0-7734-5977-4 978-0-7734-5977-9 | |
| Price: | $259.95 + shipping | |
| (Click the PayPal button to buy) | ||
A comprehensive introduction to workplace mobbing in today’s colleges and universities, this easy-to-read volume defines and explains the devastating process of being ganged up on by colleagues and administrators, and eliminated from even a tenured professorship. It begins with the editor’s summary of his ground-breaking research, begun in 1992 and set forth in two earlier and widely praised Mellen titles, Eliminating Professors and The Envy of Excellence. The sections of the present book consist of original essays written in response to Dr. Westhues’ work, reporting and analyzing cases of mobbing in both scientific and humanistic fields. Editorial introductions to successive sections show how each chapter helps answer basic questions about mobbing in the academic workplace: what it is, how the process unfolds, what kind of professors join in and what kind get targeted, by what methods professors are attacked and how they fight back, and finally, how the incidence of mobbing can be reduced.
The authors approach mobbing from diverse disciplinary viewpoints, from anthropology and law to psychology and sociology. Contributors: Dhiraj K. Pradhan, Bristol; Hugo Meynell, Calgary; Enrico Cavina, Pisa; Daryl White, Spelman College; O. Kendall White, Washington & Lee; Jo and Joseph Blase, Georgia; Melvin Williams, Michigan; Carey Stronach, Virginia State; Martin Loney, journalist, Ottawa; Irving Hexham, Calgary; Nathan Young, British Columbia; Joan E. Friedenberg, Southern Illinois: John Mueller, Calgary; Brian Martin, Wollongong; Kathleen Kufeldt, Memorial of Newfoundland: Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Wales; Roman Dubinski, Waterloo; Charmian Bondi, consultant, Oslo; Jan Gregersen, consultant, Jar; David Yamada, Suffolk.
The authors approach mobbing from diverse disciplinary viewpoints, from anthropology and law to psychology and sociology. Contributors: Dhiraj K. Pradhan, Bristol; Hugo Meynell, Calgary; Enrico Cavina, Pisa; Daryl White, Spelman College; O. Kendall White, Washington & Lee; Jo and Joseph Blase, Georgia; Melvin Williams, Michigan; Carey Stronach, Virginia State; Martin Loney, journalist, Ottawa; Irving Hexham, Calgary; Nathan Young, British Columbia; Joan E. Friedenberg, Southern Illinois: John Mueller, Calgary; Brian Martin, Wollongong; Kathleen Kufeldt, Memorial of Newfoundland: Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Wales; Roman Dubinski, Waterloo; Charmian Bondi, consultant, Oslo; Jan Gregersen, consultant, Jar; David Yamada, Suffolk.
Reviews
"I recommend it highly, especially, but not only, for people concerned about the mobbing of academics (usually tenured professors). Many of the observations would be accurate across the board for all kinds of employment situations ... This is rich material with diverse viewpoints. The sections on resistance and recovery and strategies of prevention, are leading edge discussions of the important question of what is to be done once this pattern of activity has been recognized. These sections include the papers by Martin and Yamada. Solid discussions of what can be done to make it less likely that mobbing will occur, and to weaken its force when it does, are still rare. Sections 6 and 7 of this book contain perhaps the best collection on these topics yet assembled. Non-academic readers should not be put off by the academic context. I have been on both sides of the 'academic divide' (an assistant professor and a non-academic systems department worker) and my observation is that most of the essentials are not much different. These writers write about academic jobs because that is what they know first-hand, not because they mean to be exclusive." - Nancy C. Much Ross, Librarian, University of Chicago