In order to solve this issue; the culture of silently accepting the behavior by society as a whole (MACRO LEVEL) and by the individual, people within each company (MICRO LEVEL) needs to change.

People need to start SPEAKING UP to re-enforce the behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated as a societal norm. Even if it is in upper management, if the social norm is it’s not acceptable in the working culture, those senior leaders and managers who support a respectful workplace value will naturally start to re-enforce this belief.

As it becomes part of the core value of the company, then we will see the changes in the work groups. We will then start to see a natural consequence to the behavior, and cognitive change in the bullying behaviors.

I have seen this in action in a work group under a certain manager already in my research. However, when he left, the culture slipped back to being abusive as it was allowed.

Currently the natural consequence towards the target is put up with the abuse OR the group will also abuse you. What I have seen is:

1) people adding rude comments that actually support the bully

2) people being silent and allowing the bully to continue, or

3) bystanders gossiping about the target later adding to the toxic and abusive cultural norm

I am not a mediator; I am a labor relations specialist with a social work degree that specializes in group dynamics and conflict management. I am a workplace harassment researcher whose goal is to figure out how to resolve this social crisis.

I have been educated to look at societal issues, and use social policy or campaigns to help create Macro level changes that then effect the micro levels living patterns. For example – anti-smoking, do not drink and drive, child abuse issues, domestic abuse issues; all these impacted at the micro levels each day.  However, to have real change, they had to deal with it at the macro levels to have an impact in the individual daily living cognitive behaviors of what is or is not acceptable behaviors.

The core issue is this is the pattern within society to be rude and abusive to each other. If you want to fix the micro of a social norm, then you need to tactical it at the Macro level.