Harald Ege
Mobbing presents itself as an action (or series of actions) repeated over a long period of time, performed by one or more mobbers in order to harm someone (whom we shall call the mobbed person or mobbing victim), almost always systematically and with a precise aim. The mobbed person is literally surrounded and intentionally set upon (the verb to mob means "to tackle, assail, crowd around someone") by aggressors who put behavioral strategies into practice aimed at his/her psychological, social and professional destruction. Social relations are bent towards conflicts and increasingly thin out, relegating the victim to isolation and despairing marginalization.
With the word "Mobbing" (also "Bullying" or "Job harassment") Work and Organisational Psychology identifies a continuative and constant conflict on the workplace. It is a well known situation which seems to be on one hand deeply connected with the most intimate and also somehow instintive pulsions of the human mind (envy, anthipathy, etc) and on the other also tied to organisational factors such as economical problems of the company, personnel evaluation, staff reduction, etc. Traditionally, this topic has been studied mostly in Central-Northern Europe, and only recently the scientific interest towards it has shifted also in southern countries.
Work psychologist Harald Ege Ph.D. was the first to introduce the knowledge of Mobbing in Italy. In 1996 he wrote the first book on Mobbing in Italian and founded PRIMA Associazione Italiana contro Mobbing e Stress Psicosociale, a non profit organisation which pioneered the field of psychological and legal support to Mobbing victims.
Having trained and studied in Germany, his country of origin, but living and working in Italy, Ege became well aware of an aspect of Mobbing somehow put apart in most researches: its cultural implications. He realized for example that Mobbing assumes the characters and the ways of working of the culture in which it is performed, so that what is felt as Mobbing in Germany or Sweden may not be so perceived in Italy or Spain, and vice versa. Moreover, in the mediterranean society, peculiar values and habits, such as family ties or gender implications, can play a crucial role in the origin and development of workplace conflict. The notion of "Double-Mobbing" and the "Italian six-phase model" of Mobbing are just two of the new and original ideas linked to what Ege calls "Cultural Mobbing", which he developed and presented in the several books and articles which he has been producing since 1996.
This book is the English translation of a combination of two of Ege's works: "Il Mobbing in Italia. Introduzione al Mobbing culturale", published in 1997, and "I numeri del Mobbing. La prima ricerca italiana", published in 1998. The first one explains the main theoretical points of Cultural Mobbing, whereas the second one has a purely empiric trait, containing the data and results of the first study on Mobbing victims ever carried out in Italy, using a modified and enlarged version of the LIPT questionnaire.
H. Ege: ricercatore tedesco da anni residente in Italia, è specialista in relazioni industriali e del lavoro, dottore di ricerca in psicologia del lavoro e dell'organizzazione e svolge attualmente attività di ricerca presso l'Università di Bologna. E' responsabile della ricerca italiana sul Mobbing. Nel 1996 ha fondato PRIMA (Associazione Italiana contro Mobbing e Stress Psicosociale), un'organizzazione senza scopo di lucro che si prefigge di divulgare, formare, assistere ed intervenire sul Mobbing a tutti i livelli, dal lavoratore al campo dirigenziale ed imprenditoriale.
-- DetlevLengsfeld 2010-01-30 15:05:44 
Harald Ege (last edited 2010-01-30 15:16:58 by DetlevLengsfeld)
