Hegemony and moralistic bullying in a contested UK public sector

ABSTRACT

How is workplace bullying morally legitimised in a contested public sector? This article makes an original contribution to workplace bullying scholarship through its focus on ‘moralistic’ bullying. The United Kingdom (UK) public sector has undergone significant changes propelled by neoliberal marketisation over four decades, purportedly to enhance competitiveness, financial accountability, and efficiency. These reforms coincide with a reported increase in public sector workplace bullying. Inspired by Gramsci’s [Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Translated by Q. Hoare, and G. N. Smith. London: Lawrence and Wishart. (Orig. pub. 1947.)] concept of hegemony, we adopt a neo-Gramscian analysis of ‘moralistic’ bullying in this context. Drawing from a study of 25 self-identifying bullied targets in UK public sector organisations, we illustrate how moralistic bullying is legitimised through organisational processes propelled by market rationalities and financial imperatives. Our contribution highlights how moralistic bullying is legitimised inconspicuously amidst hegemonic conditions of neoliberal marketisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Gramsci
• hegemony
• marketisation
• moralistic bullying
• neoliberalism
• public sector

Introduction

This article adopts a neo-Gramscian perspective to analyse the conditions in which moralistic bullying is legitimised in UK public sector workplaces. To address this issue, we must hear from ‘targets’ of bullying about their lived experiences. Correspondingly, our article responds to calls to examine bullying as an organisational problem associated with, and facilitated by, neoliberalisation (LaGuardia and Oelke 2021; Sims-Schouten and Edwards 2016; Zabrodska et al. 2014; Zawadzki and Jensen 2020). We address calls within the workplace bullying literature (Akella 2020; Samnani 2013) to develop a critical perspective on the emergence of moralistic bullying within its broader historical, political, and socio-economic framework, eschewing the predominant focus on individual behaviours and the personality profiles of bullied targets and bullying actors. Increasingly, bullying scholarship refrains from describing individuals who have experienced bullying as ‘victims,’ given that this label signifies a pathology, and increases feelings of helplessness (Theriot et al. 2005; Zabrodska et al. 2014). Instead, we adopt the term ‘target’ in this article. Similarly, we do not use ‘perpetrators,’ but instead organisational ‘actors’ of bullying to avoid individual-oriented blame, and to acknowledge the wider framework within which contemporary bullying has emerged.

Workplace bullying has been explored by numerous researchers (e.g. Aquino and Thau 2009; Baillien et al. 2009; Fox and Stallworth 2010), writing often from a psychological perspective, and investigating personality traits and individual characteristics. Conventional analysis has thus focused on discrete events between individual agents in localised workplaces, with attention being paid to the dysfunctional characteristics of individual bullying actors (e.g. Lind et al. 2009; Nielsen and Knardahl 2015). Social psychological analysis of workplace bullying sought to extend the field towards a wider focus on role conflict, toxic leadership, micro-politics, and organisational culture (Akella 2016). Nevertheless, the very nature of social psychology assumes an interpersonal, relational process, and is limited by the analysis of workplace bullying at the individual level. Similarly, organisational theories that adopt situational approaches highlight internal environmental factors, such as the influence of working conditions, predisposing bullying behaviour (see Balducci, Conway, and van Heugten 2021). The latter perspectives are, however, constrained in their scope, insofar as working conditions are under-theorised, and accepted as a given (Branch et al. 2021). These ontological and epistemological limitations have meant that workplace bullying has yet to be adequately examined in relation to broader power relations and prevailing ideologies (Akella 2020).

We contend that studying workplace bullying is of paramount importance for enabling a fuller understanding of its proliferation and mitigation, and (hopefully) its eradication. As an organisational phenomenon, workplace bullying is indicative of power asymmetries and inequity (Hoel and Salin 2003). It comprises repeated and persistent harmful and antagonistic actions aimed at one or more targets in positions of vulnerability, resulting in the creation of a hostile and often untenable working environment. The impact of bullying on targets can be serious, involving depression, psychological distress, trauma, and suicidal ideation (Conway et al. 2021; Einarsen and Nielsen 2015). In taking inspiration from neo-Gramscian theory to analyse the conditions in which workplace bullying takes place, our standpoint is politically motivated, with a view to highlighting a salient need for change. Adopting a neo-Gramscian framework eschews the dominant emphasis on workplace bullying as an individualised and organisational problem to be remedied through managerial intervention, and instead reframes the phenomenon within wider structures that are ideologically produced, reproduced, and legitimised. A neo-Gramscian perspective of moralistic bullying thereby facilitates its examination within hegemonic conditions of neoliberalisation.

Workplace bullying exists in many organisational settings, and is of course not restricted to the public sector. Why then should we investigate public-sector bullying? Our research is driven by the reported increase in workplace bullying in UK public sector workplaces (El Ghaziri, London, and Lipscomb 2021; Fevre et al. 2009). This body of research demonstrates that bullying is more widespread in public sectors as opposed to private sectors. The UK ‘public’ sector is contested, and definitions are ambiguous and shifting. We conceive of the UK public sector as comprising of a variety of workplaces including the civil service, local councils, educational institutions, and National Health Service (NHS) organisations: those who have been subject to ongoing marketisation over four decades of neoliberalisation and New Public Management (NPM) reform (Brown 2020; Hernandez 2021; Kinchin and Gravett 2022; Lucas and Crowther 2016; Umney and Coderre-La Palme 2021). This article examines how moralistic bullying (Zabrodska et al. 2014) takes place within this wider political and socio-economic framework of analysis.

We address neoliberalisation as a material and discursive paradigm that has expanded market ideology from the private to the public sphere, serving to eradicate the distinction between them. UK public sector policies and practices have become underpinned by market competition, financial accountability, and the prioritisation of spending-reductions (Hood and Dixon 2015; Malin 2020; Umney and Coderre-La Palme 2021). Our article is supported by the argument that neoliberalisation, operationalised through NPM and managerialism, has led to work intensification and employment insecurity and, in turn, the legitimisation of moralistic bullying in the workplace. Moralistic bullying, which we elaborate on later in this article, is harmful behaviour that is morally justified by bullying actors. The bullying behaviour is not always recognised by actors as bullying, and even when it is, it is considered in some way virtuous due to its alignment with the facilitation of organisational objectives.

Organisations are characterised by ideological norms, social structures, power relations, and hierarchy, and do not operate as hermetically sealed entities (Alvesson and Spicer 2016). Given that workplace bullying incidences have risen in an increasingly marketised public sector (Greer and Umney 2022; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara 2017; Omari and Paull 2015; Taberner 2018), analysis should extend beyond examining individual behaviours towards the broader systemic context in which workplace bullying occurs. In many instances, workplace bullying is mistakenly attributed, or even masked, as owing to personality clashes (Seigne et al. 2007). In other instances, there has been the acquiescence or condoning of bullying as the price of getting things done (Lewis 2005). We argue that the root of this problem cannot solely be attributed to individuals or discrete groups, but to a more fundamental ideological condition orchestrated between the state, public sector organisations, and their employees.

The remainder of our article is structured as follows. First, we outline our neo-Gramscian framework, before moving on to discuss the neoliberalisation of the UK public sector under the NPM regime. We then discuss the hallmarks that comprise workplace bullying, and the particular concept of moralistic bullying that we develop in this article. Thereafter, we illustrate our methodological approach involving interviews with bullied targets, and employing Critical Discourse Analysis and Thematic Analysis to interrogate the data. Our findings then examine a series of participant vignettes that explore experiences of moralistic bullying in the context of public sector reform. Our article concludes by highlighting our contributions to studying moralistic workplace bullying amidst public sector marketisation, using a neo-Gramscian organisational analysis.

Neo-Gramscian perspectives in organisation and management studies

Neo-Gramscian perspectives have generated welcome theorisations to the field of organisation and management studies (OMS), drawing upon Gramsci’s (1971) concept of hegemony to illustrate the discursive workplace terrain of power, identity, and meaning (see Bohm, Spicer, and Fleming 2008; Brown and Humphreys 2006; Contu, Palpacuer, and Balas 2013; Girei 2015; Levy and Egan 2003; Mumby 1997). Issues under exploration have included corporate political strategy (Levy and Egan 2003), identity formation in tertiary education (Brown and Humphreys 2006), resistance to international business organisations (Bohm, Spicer, and Fleming 2008), resistance to managerialism (Spicer and Bohm 2007), the politics of multinational corporations (Contu, Palpacuer, and Balas 2013), and the effects of managerialism in international development (Girei 2015).

Hegemony is a key neo-Gramscian concept, and encompasses the idea of ideological perpetuation of wider social, material, and economic inequalities within civil society formulated by the plutocracy. The predominance of values of competition and profit assimilate into human subjectivity, leading to a ‘common sense’ belief system amongst the populace (McNally and Schwarzmantel 2009). This process occurs through coercion in the form of discursive persuasion, leading to consent to legitimised norms, mores, ideas, and practices, which only ostensibly benefit subaltern classes (Gramsci 1971). Consent, however, is a fragmented discursive process, which privileges the interests of capital over subordinated groups, and where consent to work regimes by workers is reached in various coercive and subtle ways. Notably, organisational actors are not conceived of as mechanically succumbing to neoliberal ideologue through passive consent, but instead organisational life is characterised by dialectical tension over what counts as legitimate, moral, and common sense, at any given moment.

Neo-Gramscian analyses do not reduce inequality to capital–labour power dynamics alone, and focus on the discursive realm through Gramsci’s (1971) concepts of ‘normative’ and ‘spontaneous grammar.’ Normative grammar is pivotal to hegemony, where teaching and inculcation produces grammatical conformity that ‘spontaneously’ influences norms of consciousness (Ives 2004). Through power relations, spontaneous grammars within speech emerge that are influenced by ideological currents, largely unthinkingly accepted as legitimate, and replicated through practices amongst the populace (Ives 2004). Gramsci argued that spontaneous grammar has been politically engineered through a dialogic process of legitimising conformist perspectives, which reify inequities, while suppressing dissenting narratives (Carlucci 2014). Moreover, common sense and spontaneous grammar are areas of contestation, accompanied by ‘counter-hegemony,’ and ‘good sense’ (Kioupkiolis 2019), exemplifying a critical conception and rejection by subalterns of their unequal conditions.

A fundamental tenet of the neo-Gramscian framework is a critique of managerialist authority, and an emphasis upon the coercion-persuasion-consent of workers within the exploitative labour process (Ekers and Loftus 2013). According to labour process perspectives, workers’ labour power is a commodity, which is misappropriated to suit the needs of the capitalist, primarily seeking to expand capital, surplus value, and profit (Braverman 1974). Within the context of profit maximisation, worker coercion and exploitation are a central feature of the capital–labour dynamic, resulting in the social division of labour. From a Gramscian labour process perspective, the coercion of workers on its own never works. Instead, this process is ingeniously combined with discursive forces in the workplace, coupled with material and moral pressure from the state and the plutocracy (Wilkes 2017).

Labour process perspectives of workplace bullying (see Beale and Hoel 2011; Ironside and Seifert 2003; McIntyre 2005; Sjøtveit 1992) highlight how managers exploit the labour of employees for surplus value within a contested employment relationship, through bullying. Due to the inherent conflict endemic within the labour process, and owing to the inequality of interest and unequal power relations between employers and employees, workplace bullying arises to facilitate the subordination of employees to, for instance, high-performance work practices. Labour process perspectives also highlight that workplace bullying occurs to maximise actors’ earnings, or to secure personal and organisational advantage in the competitive labour market. Within the associated wage-effort bargain, and exchange of work for remuneration, workplace bullying becomes a tool to ensure organisational conformity, and compliance to disproportionate levels of productivity for profit.

Hegemony, coupled with the conflict inherent within the labour process, has been conceptualised by neo-Gramscian scholars as engendering workplaces not only as sites of consent, but of persistent struggle and contestation (Bohm, Spicer, and Fleming 2008; Brown and Humphreys 2006; Contu, Palpacuer, and Balas 2013; Levy and Egan 2003). Indeed, the concept of hegemony emphasises the dialectical nature of unequal social relations, incorporating the oscillation between discursive persuasion, consent, and also resistance (Gramsci 1971). Resistance denotes the contradictory and ambivalent nature of subaltern consent, characterised by a complex combination of opposition, specifically, good sense, as well as compliance, to hegemonic power (Mumby 1997; Palpacuer and Seignour 2020). Analysing workplace bullying through the lens of hegemony enables an examination of the material and discursive forces which constitute organisational relations, and scrutiny of workplace bullying propagation within the political and socio-economic context of neoliberalisation.

Neoliberalism and NPM as hegemonic discourses

From a neo-Gramscian perspective, neoliberalism is the dominant hegemonic project of late capitalism. Facilitated by the administrative regime of NPM, the domain of private enterprise with its associated output measures and performance targets has permeated into public sector organisations, previously insulated from market forces (Davies and Blanco 2017). Bohm (2006), drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (2014) concept of hegemonic articulation, addresses neoliberalism as a discursive formation which, while not a totality, is made effective by representing the concerns of all through ‘chains of equivalence,’ fashioned between differing and even competing discourses. Crucially, through hegemonic articulation, discourses that constitute material forces exclude and deny elements that are radically incommensurable within them, leading to dialectical tension (Laclau and Mouffe 2014; Levy and Egan 2003). At stake is the contested nature of hegemonic expansion in the production of an all-encompassing and legitimised worldview, inclusive of associated morals and philosophy (Levya 2018).

Neoliberalism has placed organisations and individuals in competition with each other, where employees are imbued with a responsibility to compete, become cost-effective, and save one’s departmental budget, underpinned by service delivery efficiencies, targets, and monitoring (Aoki 2019; Diefenbach 2009; Levy and Egan 2003). Managerialism facilitates hegemonic articulation (Bohm 2006; Laclau and Mouffe 2014) of plutocratic aspirations that circulate within organisations, but in effect naturalise inequality. A pertinent example is the misplaced moral discourse of meritocracy, resting on the contested notion of a level playing field, and continuous, competitive upwards movement, thus positioning working-class culture as something to escape from (Littler 2018). Neoliberal discourses and organisational objectives frame what might be possible at any moment, where a business ontology is considered simply obvious and unambiguous (Fisher 2009; Littler 2018). Our interests lie in examining how the demands of the neoliberal workplace translate into moralistic bullying. To facilitate this, we explicate how moralistic bullying differs from orthodox depictions of bullying in the section below.

Conceptualising moralistic bullying

To differentiate ‘moralistic’ bullying from conventional portrayals of workplace bullying, it is apposite to explain what workplace bullying is, and to outline its hallmarks. Workplace bullying outlines a situation in which one or more bullied targets are persistently subjected to harmful interactions, by one or more actors of bullying (Zabrodska et al. 2014). Harm is a bullying hallmark resulting from deliberate or unwitting actions perpetrated by actors, such as false accusations, criticism, ridicule, gossip, personal insults, slander, scapegoating, rumour spreading, and condemnation of bullied targets (Einarsen et al. 2020). A temporal dimension exists whereby harmful behaviours are persistent and sustained over time, rather than situations of one-off hostility (Samnani, Singh, and Ezzedeen 2013). Implicitly, power asymmetries are extant between the different organisational actors involved (Keashly, Tye-Williams, and Jagatic 2020). The longer-term impact upon targets is notable, encompassing stigmatisation, isolation, humiliation, and victimisation (Vartia 2001). Workplace bullying can include supervisory abuse of employees (Einarsen 2005), as well as horizontal bullying where workplace peers join forces with those with positional power against a target (Lewis and Sheehan 2003).

Moralistic bullying departs from orthodox perspectives, which typically view bullying as an abhorrent feature of human behaviour or conceive of bullying actors as immoral psychopaths. Proposed by Zabrodska et al. (2014), and supported by research undertaken by Bandura (2015), Bloch (2012), Davies (2011), Jenkins et al. (2012) and Robson and Witenberg (2013), moralistic bullying encompasses the above hallmarks of bullying, yet perpetrated in relation to an excessive and misguided defence of the dominant order. Moralistic bullying thus inextricably links the enactment of bullying to the perceived sagacity of organisational norms (Jenkins et al. 2012). It is deemed ‘appropriate’ by actors who perceive such conduct to be socially worthy, morally sound, and legitimate in the pursuit of organisational objectives (Davies 2011; Zabrodska et al. 2014). This process enables actors to maintain a self-image of moral probity, despite engaging in bullying actions (Bandura 2015).

Moralistic bullying emphasises a perceived ‘reasonableness’ in the harmful conduct undertaken by the actors themselves, and sometimes, although not always, includes the absence of any recognition that such conduct is bullying. Robson and Witenberg (2013) emphasise absence of responsibility, or lack of remorse, as key attributes of moralistic bullying. Bullying actions that ensue to control workers in the labour process can be justified through moral disengagement where actors reconstruct harmful actions, internally, or through the approbation of like-minded workplace allies, as acceptable (Ng, Niven, and Hoel 2020). Bloch (2012) highlights that actors additionally engage in moral condemnation of targets who are perceived as violators of organisational requirements, thereupon triggering feelings of contempt towards them. In this study, we contend that the normative precepts of neoliberalism link morality to marketisation and organisational competitiveness, and bestow a form of legitimacy that facilitates moralistic bullying. Below, we investigate moralistic bullying in public sector workplaces by exploring the lived experiences of our participants.

Methodology

Our research explored the perspectives of 25 participants who disclosed to us that they had experienced bullying in the context of public sector reform. We did not pursue research on bullying actors due to the complexities associated with acquiring participants who would actually admit to having carried out bullying actions. Similarly, bystanders who witness bullying are a challenging pool of participants to access due to their indirect and often ephemeral exposure to bullying incidents. The lead author had connections with Trade Union, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, and Human Resources professionals, who in turn communicated details about the research study to their networks, highlighted that participation was voluntary, and requested that if anyone was interested to contact the lead author directly. Following this step, preliminary conversations with potential participants (who made contact and expressed an interest in participating) took place via telephone calls and email exchange to discuss whether they wished to proceed to further involvement. A question schedule was provided in advance detailing the research focus on experiences of workplace bullying. It was explained that the questions would also focus on organisational reforms and the context of wider UK governmental policy related to the public sector. This process resulted in recruiting participants for the research who self-identified as having experienced workplace bullying.

We used two analytical means to confirm the phenomenon of bullying amongst participants. Firstly, the accounts of self-identifying targets included explanations of what bullying meant to them. Secondly, their accounts were then cross-referenced with extant research on the hallmarks of bullying. It was important that bullying experiences had already been classified and understood on these terms by the participants themselves, prior to becoming involved in the research study. Epistemological debates abound concerning workplace bullying based on bullied targets’ subjective perceptions of being bullied, versus objective, ‘behavioural’ definitions of workplace bullying (e.g. Beswick, Gore, and Palferman 2006; Healy-Cullen 2017). Exploring participants’ subjective impressions of workplace bullying, however, aligns with the interpretive stance taken in the study. In addition, researchers (e.g. Einarsen et al. 2020; O'Neill and Borland 2018; Parzefall and Salin 2010) have emphasised the importance of subjective assessments by the bullied target, and as Parzefall and Salin (2010, 765) state, bullying is a ‘subjective experience that resides in the eye of the beholder.’

Qualitative approaches to workplace bullying allow for the exploration of social realities and enable respondents to speak for themselves about their bullying experiences (Lewis 2006). Furthermore, bullying scholars (e.g. Bartlett and Bartlett 2011; Matthiesen and Einarsen 2010; Neidl 1995) observe that the target’s subjective experience is critical to understanding the nature of bullying by providing a deeper level of meaning to the phenomenon. Indeed, Neidl (1995) argues that the definitional hallmarks of workplace bullying become visible and illuminated through the subjective accounts of targets, within which they invariably reveal experiences of repeated, intentional, hostile, humiliating, and intimidating acts directed towards them. We, therefore, did not impose a definition of workplace bullying upon our participants when we recruited them. Rather, we explored the participants’ workplace experiences, which when cross-referenced, matched with hallmarks of bullying outlined in extant research.

There were inherent challenges involved in recruiting enough participants willing to disclose their experiences of bullying, both due to the sensitivity of the subject, and fear of repercussions (Easteal and Ballard 2017). Nevertheless, participants came forward, and snowball sampling also occurred where we recruited additional individuals suggested by initial interviewees, which led to the participant pool gradually growing (Onwuegbuzie, Leech, and Collins 2008). Our sample incorporated individuals of differing professional status and organisations including the civil service, councils, further education colleges, and universities. Our sampling approach was underpinned by the principle of granting interviewees a voice, whilst being careful to protect their identities. Correspondingly, the study received full ethical approval.

Interview questions were constructed iteratively to explore not only the nature of the participants’ workplace bullying experiences, but also the organisational context in which the bullying took place, amidst a contested public sector. Interviews were conducted in person, lasting between one and two hours each. They were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. We initially conducted pilot interviews with the first three participants to assess the feasibility, practicability, flow, question content, and question sequence, and made alterations accordingly (Majid et al. 2017). Adaptable interview prompts were revised as interviews progressed, allowing participants to speak on their own terms and propose relevant issues. The participants’ details are listed by pseudonym and summarised in Table 1.

Table 1 . Participant details by pseudonym (selected vignettes are in bold).

Bullied target pseudonym	Role at time of bullying	Organisation	Bullying actor(s)	Situation summary
1. Thomas	Further Education Lecturer	Sixth-form college	Line Manager	Bullied in the context of cutbacks and increasing workloads
2. Mark	Further Education Manager	Sixth-Form College	Senior FE Managers	Bullied as part of employee performance management scheme
3. Dominic	Learning and Development Manager	University	Head of Service/Line Manager	Bullied within a context of transformational change
4. Catherine	Careers Adviser	Connexions Service	Senior Managers	Bullied to achieve unrealistic business targets
5. Laura	Senior Leader	Local Government	Senior Leaders	Bullied for expressing a public sector ethos
6. Krystina	Learning and Development Officer	Local Government	Head of Service	Bullied into leaving during a redundancy process
7. Stephanie	Housing Manager	Local Government	Senior Managers	Bullied through undermining of competences and removal of responsibilities
8. Andrew	Senior Lecturer	University	Workload Manager	Bullied into taking on excessive workload
9. Kevin	Senior Lecturer	University	Senior Academics	Bullied in the context of business-oriented changes
10. Robert	Council Officer	Local Government	Head of Service/Line Manager	Bullied into leaving during a redundancy process
11. Miranda	Careers Manager	University	Senior Managers	Bullied to achieve unrealistic business targets
12. Matthew	Civil Servant	Civil Service	Line Manager	Bullied for having a trade union representative role
13. Stephen	Council Officer	Local Government	Line Manager	Bullied for having a trade union representative role
14. Michael	Head of Service	Local Government	Assistant Chief Executive	Bullied to meet central government demands
15. Alistair	Head of Service	Local Government	Executive Directors	Bullied into leaving during a redundancy process
16. Jacqueline	Policy Officer	Local Government	Head of Service/Line Manager	Bullied through unrealistic workload, despite disability
17. Anna	Principal Lecturer	University	Dean	Bullied following return to work following surgery
18. Sandra	Civil Service Officer	Civil Service	Line Manager	Bullied during implementation of a performance management scheme
19. Rebecca	Student Support Adviser	University	Line Manager	Bullied to achieve unrealistic workload within context of cutbacks
20. Penelope	Civil Servant	Civil Service	Line Manager and Peers	Bullied through disciplinary action during cutbacks
21. Caroline	Policy Officer	Local Government	Head of Service/Line Manager	Bullied to achieve unrealistic workload within context of cutbacks
22. Peter	Service Manager	University	Service Manager	Bullied into undertaking work without consideration of workload and skill set
23. Nicola	Learning and Development Manager	Local Government	Head of Service/Line Manager	Bullied as part of redundancy selection process
24. Jack	Events Officer	Local Government	Line Manager	Bullied as part of redundancy selection process
25. Oliver	Assistant Pro Vice Chancellor	University	Chief Executive	Bullied to achieve business-oriented targets

We used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyse the data. CDA is concerned with exposing power relations that are hidden within discourses, whether these are produced by the ruling class, institutions, or authorities, or in individual face-to-face situations (Machin and Mayr 2023). CDA also recognises that there is a dialectical relationship between discursive events, and the social and material world in which they are embedded (Van Dijk 2015). CDA thereby is a means to unpack the role of discursive forces, power relations and ideology in the reproduction of power abuse, by focusing on an identifiable social problem (Fairclough and Fairclough 2018), in our case workplace bullying. We deployed an abductive method (Denzin and Lincoln 2017) to analyse the interview data, where we applied codes to not only categorise discursive events related to bullying experiences (such as, for example, feeling intimidated), but also categorised text within a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework (for example, where organisational objectives related to marketisation appeared to facilitate workplace bullying).

The CDA approach incorporated undertaking three readings of the micro-, meso- and macro-dimensions of the participants’ workplace bullying situations contained in their accounts (Fairclough 2013). Our reading method supports Leitch and Palmer’s (2010) emphasis on strengthening research on organisational phenomena by analysing ‘texts in context.’ This reading process allowed us to examine the way bullying may or may not have served as a legitimate means to maintain and extend organisational edicts. The first readings of each dimension included describing and understanding participants’ accounts to make sense of their workplace bullying situations. The second readings of each dimension entailed examining the organisational setting in further detail. The third readings of each dimension involved applying a neo-Gramscian framework to analyse the wider political and socio-economic context, as outlined in Table 2.

Table 2 . CDA three-dimensional process.

Three dimensions	Focus	Questions related to bullying	Questions related to the text	Associated CDA questions
Micro Text	Content of the text	Who is the target of bullying? Who is/are the actor/s of bullying?	How is the workplace bullying ‘event’ represented? What is the text trying to achieve? (persuasion, justification, defence, explanation) How does the text achieve its aim? (words, phrases, and statements)	How is the workplace bullying ‘situation’ constructed by the participant? What is the participant trying to achieve through their account? How does the participant’s account achieve its aim?
Meso Discursive practice	Production, distribution, and consumption of texts	What is the organisational context? In what way, if any, is the workplace bullying sanctioned by the organisation? In what way, if any, is the bullying justified by the actors?	What is the intermediate level between the text and its social context? Which discourses are drawn upon?	Which discourses are dominant at the organisational level of the workplace bullying situation?
Macro Social practice	Power relations, ideologies	What is the broader context of the organisation? What connections, if any, are there to governmental policy? In what way, if any, have power relations influenced the workplace bullying event?	What is the relationship, if any, of the text to ideology and power? What are the political, and socio-economic factors that constitute the terrain of discursive practice?	In what ways, if any, are ideology and power relevant? What are the political and socio-economic factors surrounding the organisation?

Adapted from Fairclough (2013).

We also utilised Thematic analysis (TA) (Braun and Clarke 2006) to enhance the rigour and trustworthiness of the data analysis, and to facilitate clarity in our research findings. TA enabled the examination of recurring patterns of meaning in the primary data, resulting in the formation of themes to organise the presentation of findings (Maguire and Delahunt 2017). Following CDA, using the TA process outlined in Table 3, we returned to the primary interview data recordings and transcripts, and familiarised ourselves again with the content. We then produced a manual table within which we organised the aggregated data and proceeded to undertake initial meaning-making by applying codes to our data set, following systematic and repeated readings. Codes were applied to each participant’s account and collated to establish sub-themes that were reviewed in relation to the coded extracts of data, and then categorised into broader themes. We undertook repeated examination of the coding and sub-themes to ensure that our identification of overarching themes (such as ‘business imperatives and performance indicators’) corresponded with the participants’ accounts across the data corpus.

Table 3 . Thematic analysis process.

Thematic Analysis phase	Description of the process
1. Familiarisation with the data.	Listening to audio-recordings; re-reading the transcripts.
2. Generating initial codes.	Organising the data manually; systematically reading, highlighting, and coding primary data.
3. Searching for sub-themes.	Collating codes into potential sub-themes.
4. Reviewing sub-themes.	Ensuring sub-themes worked in relation to the coded extract.
5. Producing and naming themes.	Establishing themes from sub-themes.
6. Analysing the data.	Identifying relevant extracts from the data and relating themes back to the literature.

Adapted from Braun and Clarke (2006).

To ensure further rigour in our data analysis (e.g. Mauthner and Doucet 2003) we maintained records including retaining memos of the research process and coding decisions. Reflexive diaries were also kept, disclosing researcher thoughts, and potential biases. We engaged in participant checks including asking participants to read and amend their interview transcripts, to verify that the contents reflected their experiences and intended meaning. We e-mailed interpretations of the data to the participants for them to check and amend to validate the findings. We put these various measures into place to offset the challenge of researcher bias, and to enable our active and ongoing reflections of the interpretive process.

Our findings focus on five vignettes from a single participant’s account, organised under themes. Using vignettes to present our findings invariably results in the trade-off between depth and breadth, as different approaches to presenting qualitative data offer advantages and disadvantages (Reay et al. 2019). Vignettes offer the opportunity for explanatory depth by increasing insight into the issue of workplace bullying by focusing on several aspects of the participants’ experiences and situations comprehensively (Wei and Yeik 2022). The vignettes do this by addressing the social context within which workplace bullying, at an interpersonal level, occurred, thus allowing the exploration of wider social structures. In this respect, our approach facilitates the portrayal of the participant as a unique individual through the elaboration of their personal account (Czarniawska 2022), whilst simultaneously illustrating the complexities of the wider workplace context in which their bullying experience emerged. The portrayal of participants’ accounts in the form of vignettes offers high quality and detailed data that facilitates thick descriptions of participants’ experiences (Wei and Yeik 2022). The rationale supporting the vignette choices below is based on these accounts being representative of dominant data patterns amongst the participants (see Eldh, Arestedt, and Bertero 2020), particularly in regard to the hegemonic conditions within which their bullying experiences emerged.

The vignettes begin with an overview of the associated data theme. We follow this with the participant’s specific account of the bullying that they experienced, before illustrating the organisational context in which their bullying took place, and finally the nature of ‘moralistic’ bullying in each case. In this way, the vignettes allow for an in-depth analysis that honours participants’ voices, and makes visible their experiences (Graff and Birkenstein 2018). Focusing on the detail of the participants’ accounts in this manner also illustrates more clearly and explicitly how the demands of a neoliberalised workplace translate into moralistic bullying. Aligned with CDA, and its inherent abductive approach of analysing texts within context, we have given voice to the participants through the usage of quotes and used the neo-Gramscian theoretical framework to offer a critical analysis of participants’ workplace bullying experiences.

Findings

1. Business imperatives and performance indicators

Several participants highlighted that the increased business emphasis in their workplaces resulted in performative target-driven environments underpinned by competition and income generation, and that these factors had an influence on the bullying that they experienced. A recurring reflection amongst these participants was that within the associated conditions of work intensification and performance management, bullying emerged. Indeed, participants highlighted that the bullying actors’ senior positions enabled them to behave in any way that helped them to extend business interests, and ensure that the organisation was able to meet financialised performance indicators. We capture this theme in Mark’s account below.

Mark, a Further Education (FE) manager, both witnessed and experienced bullying in the workplace. When asked about his own bullying experience, he stated:

It involved placing pressure on myself and others to do extra work in overly unconstructive ways, I was put down in meetings with my manager, embarrassed into thinking I was incapable, and knew I was being bad-mouthed in management circles in ways that did not reflect my skills or [the] work that I carried out. I, and others, felt scapegoated for the college not achieving business-based targets.

Mark described his bullying experience as consisting of overbearing pressure to meet ‘efficiency’ targets driven by economic priorities, accompanied by intimidation tactics, and verbal abuse. Mark explained that the college was under pressure to self-generate funding and become financially competitive, stating that, ‘we had to perform, we had to compete in the market and generate income.’ This, he argued, had created what he described as ‘an increasingly toxic environment.’ Aspects of the FE sector have become progressively privatised, rendering them financially independent from local authority control to prioritise market competition (Lucas and Crowther 2016; Mather, Worrall, and Siefert 2005). When probed further about his own bullying experience, Mark commented:

There are many gradients of bullying … direct and … sometimes indirect, which can be just as hurtful emotionally, and I’ve been on the receiving end of both … there was pressure to work in a new way that was about financial survival … it was sophisticated, nuanced bullying, and resulted in a change to my emotional state where I felt intimidated, verbally assaulted, or embarrassed.

Mark highlighted how NPM reforms, which he stated prioritised ‘money over quality of education’ were colloquially and informally reproduced as spontaneous grammar. As he commented:

The college went independent, therefore, we had to fend for ourselves, and be competitive … work was driven by economic priorities, efficiency, business – ‘bangs for bucks’ was a phrase often used.

Mark’s comments echo Ball’s (2003) and Goodley and Perryman’s (2022) arguments that, in response to competitive targets, the teaching profession has been reworked into a performance culture of practitioners of calculation, rather than education. Within this frame, Mark described how fellow teachers were subjected to bullying through disciplinary procedures, with some losing their jobs as result. As he highlighted:

Senior managers drive change … because of marketisation you were made to conform to standards set by Ofsted, and the Government … you were essentially re-professionalised … but Whitehall redefined what a teacher should be. The pressure on lessons is astronomical, to get a one [a good score] is outstanding. With a three you might be under disciplinary, with a four you might be forced to leave.

When probed about why the bullying had occurred, Mark referenced a managerial emphasis on league tables, prescribed results, and pass rates. Mark’s comments below highlight how the hegemonic discourse of meritocracy (Littler 2018) produced essentialised conceptions of ability and talent amongst senior managers (‘they feel they are inherently more gifted or able’). He argued that there is no justification for bullying, but then described senior managers validating their actions morally in line with meeting performance indicators:

There can’t be one full stop, but they would like to think there is one … often based on [the justification of], ‘I’ve got to meet these performance indicators.’ There’s only one reason [the senior managers] were there … to get high results and pass rates. There’s also this ‘holier than thou’ approach from senior managers … they feel that they’re inherently more gifted or able. All of this validates their bullying actions emotionally and morally to themselves.

Mark’s account illustrates the way in which moralistic bullying was induced by a complex combination of material and discursive organisational forces. The college environment was striving to meet demands for reforms, alongside reduced funding, leading to the situation of employees becoming vulnerable, and their employment under threat (Lucas and Crowther 2016). The ascendancy of spontaneous grammar naturalised neoliberal mandates and power asymmetries, leading to a coercion-consent workplace dynamic. The bullying actors’ actions were associated with achieving pass rates that were linked to metricised performance indicators and market-driven priorities. It is through this hegemonic discourse that bullying was moralistically enacted.

2. Employee compliance and increased workloads

A number of participants outlined that workplace bullying was used as a strategic device to coerce them into taking on additional workloads and duties beyond reasonable contractual expectations. In this sense, they described the strategic deployment of bullying to ensure employee compliance to excessive workloads in situations of work intensification. The bullying involved actors wielding an indirect threat by inferring that non-compliance could diminish bullied targets’ employment security, or negatively impact on the survival of the organisation. This theme is illustrated in Andrew’s account below.

Andrew, a Senior Lecturer at a UK university, revealed his experiences of peer-to-peer workplace bullying. He stated that he experienced bullying from workload managers who deployed market rationalities to intensify his, and other academics’ workloads, beyond reasonable contractual expectations. When asked about his bullying experience, Andrew stated:

The word ‘bullying’, originally meant to me an aggressive behaviour, but I’ve come to realise that it can be subtle, especially by senior members of staff. . . the bullying that affected me is where I was pressurised to do more work, taken advantage of because they knew I needed my job, resulting in an unmanageable workload, but with [the bullying actors] continuing with the bullying regardless of my push back, and despite me telling them that I was at breaking point.

Within this context, Andrew went on to describe his situation comprising of peers with workload remits bullying him into undertaking excessive workloads. He discussed competitive objectives related to league table positioning, underpinned by an implied threat of losing his job if they were not met:

I was badgered into doing work beyond the normal level of expectation from workload managers … the university wants to rise in [the] league tables … there’s a directive from the vice chancellor that we must be proactive and profit centred. The imperatives are on performance, the threat towards me is if we don’t perform well, the institution could collapse, so I was expected to take on more work, or the implication was that I would have to leave. ..

Andrew felt that the bullying actors were directly influenced by wider political objectives placed on universities to become more profitable:

They’re [bullying actors] influenced by external changes, the political arena changes, it comes into the institution. It’s been agreed from top down … it filters down to a level where the engagement is between management and employee, ‘Well, we need to achieve targets … to get income generated … we’re going to be profitable’ and that’s created a bullying culture.

Andrew discussed the bullying actors’ sense of moral justification emerging from the legitimisation of managerialist practices. He described a sense of moral superiority amongst actors as they became entwined in market forces, leading to the exertion of heavy-handed peer pressure, and bullying of academics to accept unreasonable workloads. As he continued:

I think morally they believe they have the right to behave like this because they’ve got the backing of the wider management structure that goes right up to the vice chancellor. They’ve got themselves so caught up in the competitive agenda, they believe that’s the way things should be done. And that makes them feel superior. The problem is it becomes more forceful, leading to a disproportionate workload which I did through fear of losing my job.

Workplace bullying in universities, often related to managerialism, bureaucratic accountability, competitive funding regimes, and the clientisation of the student body, has led to a reported decline in collegiality, and adversely affected the mental health of employees (Zawadzki and Jensen 2020). Andrew’s bullying experiences comprised pressure to accept unmanageable workloads, which were regarded as legitimate by the institution (Keashly 2021; Twale and De Luca 2008), but for Andrew constituted coercion as he feared for the safety of his position. Andrew’s account is a pertinent example of the saturation of neoliberal rationalities and values, leading to a hyper-competitive, work-intensive academy (Cannella and Koro-Ljungberg 2017), resulting in the legitimisation of moralistic bullying.

3. Political beliefs and morality.

A consistent issue that was raised by several participants was that of actors’ political positions being aligned with the dominant corporate discourses that permeated their organisations. This placed actors in opposition to bullied targets who felt that the associated conflict of perspectives and the actor’s alignment with the prevailing corporate discourses enabled them to morally justify bullying behaviour. In such situations, the bullied targets were concerned about the negative impact of market-oriented approaches, based on financial calculations and profit generation, on the quality of service delivery. Bullied targets outlined an organisational environment where actors felt morally justified in their behaviour through their responsibility for implementing wider directives. Robert’s account below highlights how this situation translated into moralistic bullying.

Robert, a Council Officer at a Local Authority, highlighted the impact of austerity policies as a key factor in his experience of workplace bullying. UK local government has been subject to ongoing privatisation of service functions, austerity measures, budget reductions, and job cuts (Hernandez 2021). Robert described the bullying as being undermined, scapegoated, and isolated by his head of department during a redundancy process:

The bullying was about abuse of power to get rid of me in a situation of job cuts. It was orchestrated by someone in a position of power … and that individual undermined my work contributions. I felt that I had become the team scapegoat for objectives that we weren’t meeting, and I had a sense that dismissive remarks were being made behind my back, and this left me voiceless, and isolated within the team.

Robert discussed the effects upon the local authority following deficit-reduction plans. As he stated:

The government had decided that the council had been overspending, [and] was to blame for UK debt. [It] needed to cut its cloth accordingly, most departments were downsizing, making job cuts … the Council had to cut back money … 

Robert drew attention to political differences between himself and the bullying actor over preferred models of service delivery, rendering the workplace as a site of struggle, leading to him being discredited professionally. This situation was compounded by the actor having the power, discretion, and authority to retain him or make him redundant. Robert was eventually made redundant, and he felt that he had been bullied out of his job:

I think one of the main reasons [the bullying actor] felt I had to go was because I spoke candidly about certain issues … which [they were] unhappy with because the truth is often unpalatable … things like losing quality of services, being bogged down in administration to meet ridiculous targets. There was pressure on Council Officers, everyone was criticising and blaming us for debt. Politics are murky, there’s a lot of political spin, and suddenly we had to lose [our] jobs to save the country money.

For Robert, the bullying actor’s views were politically consonant with objectives to implement redundancies. Robert felt that those who were bullied out of their roles were morally castigated as violators of these objectives. As he stated:

The perpetrator believed [they were] acting morally because [they were] defined by [their] political beliefs. Intrinsic to those beliefs was the view that anyone with a different belief was inferior. It’s a very political organisation, [they were] imbued with the same politics as the hierarchy, and it’s a ridiculously politicised management to the point where it impedes their professionalism to deliver services.

Key to Robert’s account was the emphasis on contestation and struggle in the face of power relations and privilege. His account is indicative of the ongoing dialectical struggle for legitimacy at work, an implicit feature of ideological hegemony, where ruling plutocracies are faced with ‘irreducible antagonistic struggle amongst different actors’ (Van Bommel and Spicer 2011, 1720). In this example, Robert’s professional and personal efficacy, incorporating his counter-hegemonic good sense, resistance, and struggle, were weakened through complex hegemonic power relations and dialectical tension. The bullying actor, immersed in hegemonic discourses disregarded the possibilities for any alternative, and engaged in moralistic bullying.

4. Non-conformity and health issues

A significant concern raised by participants was that of workplace bullying related to employee health issues. In particular, several participants outlined a systematic lack of consideration for health-related issues when assigning workloads, and where reasonable adjustments were not made. In this sense, bullying was based on perceived violations of implicit organisational mores. Bullied targets highlighted that workplace bullying ensued as a way of expediting their departure from their respective organisations. Often formal competency actions were initiated against targets, where they were blamed for their predicament rather than an appreciation of individual differences, diversity, and appropriate support. Anna’s story outlines how this influenced the moralistic bullying that she experienced.

Anna, a Principal Lecturer at a UK university, who self-identified as disabled, experienced bullying after resuming her role following an extended period of sickness, following surgery. Upon returning to work, she outlined how the bullying actor began to stigmatise her, applied excessive scrutiny to her work, and imposed an unmanageable workload, despite her disability (Ciby and Raya 2018; Greer and Umney 2022). Anna described the bullying as consisting of persistent criticism, belittling, and being singled-out by an actor with positional power (Einarsen et al. 2020). Anna recounted the bullying as:

… undermining me, belittling me in individual meetings, doing that also in a public way in meetings in front of others … I think it was about … institutional agendas, and I think that conduct was something that was seen as a way of achieving those agendas.

Anna explained that the bullying actor targeted employees perceived to be of a different mindset, culminating in formal competency proceedings against them. As she stated:

The Dean had a strategy … [they] didn’t like people who didn’t conform to [their] way of thinking … [they] would invent a negative narrative about the people [they] didn’t like … [they] would institute incompetency proceedings over absence through sickness … I took an extended period off sick [leave] for spinal surgery … when I came back, I’d be undermined constantly, and was given disproportionate amounts of work to do.

Anna described the actor’s exercise of power as aligning with prevailing managerial objectives to move the university ‘forward’ in league tables, and meet increasingly competitive demands. As she elaborated:

We’ve got to be the best … move up the league tables … it’s this whole competition thing, and that’s become associated with league table outcomes … it’s developed into a vicious circle.

Anna discussed market-oriented discourse and questioned why it was reinforced in the workplace, thus asserting her own counter-hegemonic position. She highlighted the seeming impossibility of alternatives, where competitive reasoning was beyond reproach (Fisher 2009). For Anna, these hegemonic discourses were embodied in the bullying actor’s professional identity:

[They were] totally bought into managerialism, and that goes back to … marketplace competition, the root of all neoliberal rhetoric in education. I don’t understand why people have bought into these ideas … it’s become self-perpetuating, as part of the institution’s systems. ‘This is the world’, … an unquestioning acceptance of it was embodied in [their] professional identity and thinking, and the bullying that I experienced.

Anna’s story outlines a process through which the actor engaged in bullying actions as a matter of morally upholding organisational performance, despite her disability. Civil society shapes individual morality amidst broader hegemonic forces. Although fragmentary, the common sense and consent that ensues is facilitated by an ‘unconscious’ acceptance of a prevailing worldview, incorporating values, ideas, and practices (Gramsci 1971). Anna’s account illustrates her resistance, rather than voluntary servitude, defeatism, and quiescence towards ideological hegemony (Bowes-Catton et al. 2020). For Anna, whose counter-hegemony and good sense manifested as struggles over meaning and methods at work, met with little potential for an alternative (Fisher 2009). The bullying actor’s consent to the legitimacy of organisational discourse in a competitive institutional context, materialised as moralistic bullying.

5. Moral condemnation and defamation

Participants highlighted that workplace bullying was justified through negative moral judgements against them by the bullying actors. In these situations, actors were seen to be exonerating and morally justifying their own behaviour through their financial requirements to meet organisational objectives to downsize teams. Participants outlined an organisational environment where actors appeared to morally justify their behaviour and decision-making through condemning or defaming bullied targets as unworthy employees. Participants also experienced negative moral judgements by actors who portrayed them as being unable to meet organisational demands, rather than the demands being excessive, leading to justifications for redundancy. This situation is depicted in Penelope’s account below.

Penelope, a Civil Servant, highlighted work intensification stemming from significant financial pressures associated with austerity policies, which lead to redundancies. She described the bullying actor defaming her in the process of justifying which employees would be recommended for redundancy. As she commented:

It [the bullying] involved demeaning the impression of me and defamation of my character to others … basically it was about not allowing me to contribute, and these things made me feel insecure in the workplace … [It] led to anxiety and feeling intimidated at work because of the situation that was created around me.

Penelope focused on a reduction of support staff due to austerity measures, and the ensuing increase in workloads and working hours:

It’s a time of austerity … big job cutbacks. In the past we had an administration team of up to ten staff. With cutbacks the administration team was reduced, there’s growing pressures of work, more cases, quicker turnaround required … but also the pressures with indicators … I’m never switched off from work to keep up with demands.

Penelope had been reliant upon administrative support for her role. When she was unable to adapt to increasing pressures, this was framed by the bullying actor as a matter of her personal inadequacy. The bullying consisted of moral condemnation of Penelope’s abilities, and the claim that she herself was responsible for her inability to keep up with work demands, as opposed to structural explanations. Her account demonstrates a form of hegemonic saturation, where the bullying actor’s subjectivity is embedded and justified through prevailing ideology. Penelope described the bullying as being undermined, silenced, intrusively monitored, and ostracised. She contended that these actions were designed to justify job cuts:

The bullying is about trying to undermine you, exclude you, making out you’re incompetent, trying to control you, ‘I’m watching you’, with an underlying threat to possibly get rid of you.

The situation escalated into official performance management proceedings against Penelope. She described the actor’s positional power as being strengthened by the organisational infrastructure, policies and systems that supported discrete management control. As she stated:

[The actor] put me through performance management. [Their] power stemmed from their position and actions that managers can take at an informal or formal level, and their power being supported by the wider organisation’s infrastructure. They’ve got policies and systems that support them. There’s things that aren’t visible to others below the chain, like me.

Penelope highlighted how targets of bullying were individually blamed for the effects of structural failings, a means by which bullying actors secured legitimacy for harmful judgements and actions (Bandura 1996). Indeed, Baillien et al. (2009) argue that targets are often reframed as under-achievers, deemed as unworthy employees attributed to their supposed personal inabilities. Penelope felt that the actor constructed negative impressions of her competencies thereby morally justifying their behaviour through an assumed moral superiority:

They needed the team reduced … they justify it by making out that you’re the problem, judging you, blaming you for things that aren’t in your control or your fault, they build up a fake dossier on you, so when the time comes to make the job cut they’ve got all this supposed stuff on you … and they start to believe it themselves, providing the moral ground to get rid of you.

Penelope’s account demonstrates how a specific ensemble of political and socio-economic discursive relations bind a network of actors to a legitimised framework of internal governance (see Levy and Newell 2002), in this case concealing bullying behaviour. The infrastructural policies preclude actors from problematising the marketised terrain of a contested organisational context. Within a system of norms, rules, and decision making, the bullying actions incorporated moral condemnation of Penelope’s purported inability to deal with work intensification, leading to performance management procedures being set into motion. This situation was reinforced by an unconscious hegemonic process whereby the actor believed their appraisal to be true, providing the moral justification for job cuts. These elements represent hegemonic actions insofar as they are deemed virtuous, specifically, moralistic bullying for the purposes of ensuring organisational survival in a budget-deficit context.

Discussion

This article set out to examine how bullying is morally legitimised in a marketised and contested UK public sector. In doing so, our article firstly contributes to calls to explore moralistic bullying within the constitutive political and socio-economic context in which it takes place. We address workplace bullying, not in relation to bullying actors’ personalities or psychological characteristics, but instead as ‘moralistic,’ and arising from a complex enmeshment with material and discursive forces. Drawing upon neo-Gramscian conceptualisations of neoliberalism, NPM, and managerialism as hegemonic discourses (Bohm 2006; Spicer and Bohm 2007), we illustrate how these discourses operate at the organisational level, and how they facilitate moralistic workplace bullying. For our participants, bullying was initiated in relation to business-oriented discourses and associated requirements, which intensified under neoliberal reforms. Moralistic bullying became a legitimate means of exerting undue pressure in the context of increasing work intensification, employment insecurity, and the implementation of organisational processes associated with market reforms and budget constraints.

A further contribution of our article is to highlight the relevance of a neo-Gramscian approach to workplace bullying analysis, and the role of consent to neoliberal ideology in legitimising moralistic bullying. Through our study, we have revealed how hegemonic discourses serve to reject that which is inconsistent within them (Laclau and Mouffe 2014; Levy and Egan 2003), where efficiencies, cost reductions, and business ontology serve not only as simply obvious and unambiguous (Fisher 2009) but are also constitutive of moralistic workplace bullying. One of Gramsci’s (1971) central propositions is that sustaining power requires the widespread inculcation of morality through hegemonic consent to the market apparatus. Morality, in this sense, does not spring from an ideological vacuum, but emerges through competitive discursive processes that reify inequities, and quell counter-hegemonic positions and perspectives (Amable 2010). The contested UK public sector is an area of organisational life that has become increasingly subject to moral justifications for neoliberal reforms (Skeggs 2014), where alternative modes of reasoning are, as our participants illustrate, subject to discipline, de-legitimisation, and bullying. Moral discourses, predicated on the rationale of competitiveness, ‘customer’ delivery improvements and organisational survival, placed disproportionate demands on the participants of our study. Moralistic bullying, as an exercise of power, emerged in situations of dialectical tension where bullied targets’ values and viewpoints were inconsistent with prevailing ideological tenets.

We also contribute to bullying research by shedding light on the nature of workplace bullying experiences which are often concealed or under-reported due to the inconspicuous reproduction of hegemonic discourses, processes, and norms within organisations. Marketised workplaces are governed by neoliberal mandates and punitive systems of financial accountability. The inherent spontaneous common sense that emerges is politically manufactured through competitive discursive processes and relations of force (Gramsci 1971). Our participants’ experiences highlight pressurised and competitive workplace conditions where discursive formations imbue a level of coherency, which serves to deny any meaningful possibility of negotiation. Our neo-Gramscian approach therefore demonstrates the importance of examining the subtle and potentially ‘undetectable’ nature of workplace bullying, as that which takes on a moralistic dimension in the context of a neoliberal infrastructure of organisational systems, policies, and practices. The maintenance of the associated norms results in the disciplining of employees in more pervasive and coercive ways, where work intensification, budget cuts, and individualistic frameworks of reasoning result in moral justifications for bullying.

Our article additionally contributes to bullying scholarship by bringing to light the exploitative nature and effects of labour processes in the marketised context. Moralistic bullying, as a form of labour control, leads to disproportionate demands being placed upon employees, where bullying, as our findings show, emerges in instances where there is resistance rather than consent to neoliberal imperatives. Addressing our participants as counter-hegemonic subjects illustrates the detrimental influence of hegemonic expansion, where space for contestation is not only limited, but also potentially harmful. Hearing from participants with lived experiences of bullying illustrates just some of the costs involved of marketisation and austerity policies on labour process dynamics, resulting in significant professional, material, and personal consequences for bullied targets. Those on the receiving end of moralistic bullying are perceived to be misaligning with organisational edicts, and are not merely viewed as unreasonable, but are considered immoral. Bullied targets are often blamed for their own predicament, as opposed to any meaningful discussion about the constitutive context of their situation, and that of the organisation.

Conclusion

In addressing the marketised UK public sector as a contested and politicised organisational arena, we highlight the intensification of moralistic bullying in this context. Our aim has been to emphasise the role of neoliberal hegemony in the formation of moral probity and resultant bullying. Our study supports the claim that the actors conceive of their own bullying actions as somehow virtuous, as those morally bound to navigate a problematic yet ‘unalterable’ reality. Moralistic bullying manifests not only amongst managerial cadre but through peer-related bullying, illustrating how subaltern strata can actively participate in the reproduction of ideological hegemony. We are not suggesting, however, that organisational actors engage in moralistic bullying through unquestionably succumbing to the pressures of marketisation. Rather, multifaceted, and nuanced hegemonic forces can create unwitting and contradictory consent to neoliberal ideology by all organisational actors.

Hegemony is a historical condition that is neither certain, fixed, nor complete, but is discursively reified when ideology is seemingly immovable and concrete at a given point in history (Gramsci 1971). Social forces and counter-hegemonic positions that lose out amongst neoliberal conditions, however, do not vanish from the domain of struggle. For the participants in this study, despite their resistance and ‘good sense,’ hegemony was not only apparent through moralistic bullying by the actors, but through supposed moral leadership within the broader ensemble of relations of power. The experiences that our participants describe are indicative of a moment of both contradiction and clarity, where ‘common sense’ is refuted, and capitalist realism (Fisher 2009) is exposed as that which does not serve the interests of all. By adopting a neo-Gramscian lens, our hope is that these accounts serve as a timely reminder of the harmful repercussions of neoliberal marketisation as a pervasive, hegemonic, and encompassing worldview, and the salient need for change.

Future research could examine the way in which bullying is governed and managed in public sector workplaces. In this sense, the focus on workplace bullying could extend beyond bullied targets’ experiences to investigate the wider governmental and managerial problematisation of the phenomenon. The legislative and professional context remains contested, illustrated recently by the ‘Bullying and Respect at Work’ bill forwarded by Racheal Maskell (Member of Parliament), who argues that the UK government has not sufficiently legislated to protect workers (Maskell 2023). The ambiguities and lack of confidence in organisational processes and managerial interventions designed to respond to and deal with workplace bullying are well-known, with a significant disparity between the high prevalence of bullying and the number of complaints reported (see Thompson and Catley 2021). The hidden nature of workplace bullying, as our research reports, is in part a consequence of the managerial control of labour through organisational processes animated by neoliberal reforms. We would suggest, then, that research could be extended to the governmental problematisation of workplace bullying, with a particular focus on the effects of workplace neoliberalisation and marketisation. This research agenda has the potential to shed light on legislative gaps and appropriate trade union solutions for addressing workplace bullying in a more holistic and impactful way, with a view to encouraging safety, dignity, and respect at work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).