The term moral harassment is synonymous with other terms such as psychological abuse, mobbing and bulling [1]. Even if there is no consensus definition [2], the one proposed by Hirigoyen [3] Seems the most consensual. “Moral harassment at work is defined as any abusive conduct (gesture, word, behavior, attitude...) that undermines, by its repetition or systematization, the dignity or the psychic or physical integrity of a person, endangering the employment of the person or degrading the working climate. The emergence of the concept of moral harassment took place against the backdrop of globalization and industrial competitiveness, which increasingly confronted workers with job requirements, organizational constraints, and an intensification of work, all often associated with uniform management method that takes less account of individual psychic specificities [4] [5]. This led to the individuation of work to the detriment of the community, suggesting recognition “on merit” [2]. This type of organization is characterized by a sense of responsibility at work that contrasts with a lack of symbolic recognition [6]. In this sense, it is possible to understand that the suffering generated by work can lead to a “malaise” [7]. Studies have theorized the mechanisms behind bullying, therefore it appears there is a need to integrate the harassed and harassing, couple with the organizational factors to better understand this phenomenon [6] [8] [9]. There may be no disagreement between two colleagues [9] but rather the manner of organization of the company may condone negative actions that may significantly affect both the individual and organizational [2]. According to Poilpot-Rocaboy the notion of “repetition of behavior” is essential [1], it emphasizes among other things the nature of the behavior, the focus on a target and the results of the behavior. Moral harassment from the hierarchy descending vertical or bossing is the most common, there are other types of harassment; the horizontal harassment perpetuated by colleagues whereas mixed harassment combines the first two forms. On the other hand, the vertical upward harassment is done by employees on their hierarchical superior [3].

In moral harassment it is important to individualize the executioner or agressor and the victim, to analize the environment and scrutinize the consequences and especially the mechanisms that underlie it. Several studies have attempted to determine a typical personality of victims or perpetrators, however they revealed that there was no typical personality even-if certain traits could be dominant [9]. Therefore, it has become necessary to focus on the behavior that underlies the phenomenon of hostile behavior that is characterized by its subjectivity [8]. Various studies have identified set of hostile actions within the company which constitute the base of the moral harassment [1] [10] [11]; these are grouped into 5 classes that aim to isolate the victim, to prevent him from expressing himself, to make him lose his self-esteem, to prevent him from working properly and to compromise his health. The works of Poilpot-Rocaboy [12] on the other hand have led to a modeling in 4 components: 1) the individual and organizational determinants 2) the behavior of moral harassment 3) the responses of the victim and the organization and 4) the individual consequences. The peculiarity of this approach is that an isolated act can constitute psychological violence [13] [14] while their persistence over time defines moral harassment. However in some countries, depending on the law, an isolated act may constitute harassment [15].

Studies have shown the extent of this scourge of moral harassment within modern working environment to be on a global scale [1] [2] [4] [16] but there is dearth of published work within the African continent. This development may be due to lack adequate consideration of the rights of workers, lack of attention to the health of workers generally and specifically absence of policy and institutionalization of work place mental health among African countries. Our work was aimed at studying the existence and frequency of these hostile acts within a Senegalese company.

Hostile actions are usually characterized by their sneaky and subjective character [17], they often take the form of verbal abuse [8]. In addition, there may be minor physical violence, ranging from jostling to intimidation. In our study the frequency of exposure to verbal abuse was 35%, this is in the range reported by Di Martino [18] in his work, which ranged from 32.2% in Bulgaria to 67% in Australia. This violence was in the form of invectives in 20% of cases and criticisms on the private life of the employee (9%). The workplace violence has the particularity of disrupting the victims’ functioning and psychology, these are part of denial of recognition and disqualification leading to unjustified and progressive rejection [19]. Whereas the victim does not understand what is happening to him but finds himself/herself dealing with acts that are purposely designed to isolate him/her and to prevent him/her from self-expression. These actions persist into long-term activities with cyclical phases of harassment and reassurance: 1) the perpetrator reassures the victim after a violence act, 2) the victim hopes the violence is going to stop, but 3) when the victim is confident, violence occurs again) [1].

In our study, actions to prevent the victim to express themselves were found in 22% of cases, Delage [18] in a study conducted in Quebec found the same phenomenon in 33% of cases. This phenomenon of isolation is important insofar as it aims to cut the victim out of his environment. It is in this sense that these hostile acts constitute the foundation on which the mobbing develops. Another hostile act is to bring the victim into disrepute before his/her colleagues at work or in his/her private life. These actions are aim at depriving the victim of respect and self-esteem [19]. In our study, the frequencies of these behaviors were 25% and 13% respectively. Delage [18] in his works reported that 6% of victims reported impairment of performance at work, which is lower than our finding. On the other hand, actions aimed at private life was reported by 74% of victims. In our study, the most frequently reported hostile action was to assign the victim work below his qualifications (15%). It should be noted that the Delage [18] in his study reported higher frequency. These targeted hostilities have led to the assertion that the major purpose of the inflicted violence is to control the victims. According to Grebot [9] the hold is at the heart of the harassment and can be exercised by different types of personality including the narcissistic personality, the obsessive personality can also use the hold to dominate the other in order to establish power and authority. The victim is more or less left to act, think and desire things as he/she sees fit, whereas the perpetrator exercises his/her power insidiously through permanent control and repeated intrusions that violate the privacy of the victim and breaks the limits of his/her inner space. Such that these types of personalities install their power within a permissive environment.

It should be noted that the perpetrator rarely acts alone and the lone target is also exceptional [9] [15]. According to the study conducted by Viaux [20], it was reported that in 45% of cases there are at least four perpetrators to a victim and in 87.5% of cases there are several victims of a perpetrator [20]. We also report similar results in this study, in fact, 49% of our study population say they are victims of harassment multiple perpetrators and this type of behavior multiple perpetrators and multiple victims is reflected in daily actions noted within the company. Thus, it is clear that bullying constitutes major mode hostility within the organization framework in the company. Although studies have tried to profile the perpetrators and victims [20], we however opined that there was a need to focus on the factors associated with these hostile acts.

In our series, among the 49 employees who were exposed to hostile acts we observed a male predominance with 48 men exposed against only 1 woman. The difference was statistically significant (p value = 0.017) and similar results are found in the literature from Seiler and equally cited by Clausia [21]. It should be noted that most studies report a predominance of women [1] [11] [15]. The male predominance found in our study is related to our study to the field of activity of the organization. Beyond the variable results, the common point is that there is a parallelism between the gender and the exposure to the negative acts coming within the framework of the psychological violence [20].

In our study, agents aged 40 to 49 were most at risk, the same age groups are reported in studies conducted in France [9] [15] [20]. According to Grebot [9] in this context, they found that harassment appears as a real sanction and is borne out of deliberate desire to get rid of the oldest employees. This is a form of stigmatization underpinned by a depreciative recognition [19]. Because one is brought to think that with the age the premium of duration of service increases, so is the responsibility of the organization to the staff. At the same time, there is greater autonomy and less resistance to submission, in addition to this is the fact that it is more difficult to find a new job after 45 years. In our cultural context, employees tend to favor stability of employment and sense of job security, this is highlighted by the high number of employees with open-ended contracts, as such age is related to duration of service in the organization most often. Although we are tempted to link bullying with age, we have not found a statistically significant relationship. Just as we found in our study, it should be noted that other investigations have reported harassment among employees under 25 years of age, this is generally considered the point of starting their carrier activity and such staff are in a precarious status [22]. At the same time, hostile acts were more common among workers with less than 15 years of duration of and this was statistically significant (p value = 0.0001).

It is important to distinguish stress from moral harassment, in our work we report that the frequency of stress was lower than that of exposure to negative behaviors. These results highlight the place of bullying among the major psychosocial risks in business. However, we also observed that victims often do not relate their illness to the harassment they were exposed to, we found that, only 11% of our studied population thought they were exposed to actions that could affect their state of health, whereas a higher frequency 31% was reported by Delage [16]. This difference can be explained by a better awareness of workers on the issue of moral harassment and its consequences in their study. On the other hand, the majority of those exposed to hostile actions (76.5%) reported that they did not feel well, we believe that the loss of this feeling of well-being better reflects the situation of moral harassment. Other studies reported similar findings [11] [17] [23] [24]. We also observe that this sort of subjectivity was also reflected in other symptoms, in our study 62.2% of the staff exposed to the negative behaviors admitted to suffer from fatigue. Similar results are reported in the literature [23] [24]. The same is true of insomnia where 64.3% of subjects who reported insomnia episodes were exposed to hostile actions. Insomnia and fatigue have been reported in the literature as a warning sign of existence of psychological violence at work place [23]. The subjectivity of these symptoms may be an obstacle to the request for medical consultation. This leads to a situation of functional disability with the main psychopathological syndromes encountered namely burnout, depression, trauma and suicide [1] [4] [18] [23] - [28]. In our study population, 66.7% of the staff exposed to the negative behaviors consulted a doctor because of fatigue or stress, indeed other studies have reported these as warning symptoms that requires adequate attention [23] [24]. Fatigue (62.2%) or stress (64.3%) were reported in our study among harassed workers, these figures highlight the physician’s role in screening for psychological violence within the company [11] [15] [23] [24]. Hirigoyen [8] reported a request for medical assistance of victims in the same proportions 65% with a satisfactory response rate was observed in 42% of cases. However, this request for help was lower among labor physicians, which was 39% with a satisfactory response rate of 13% of cases. According to Poilpot-Rocaboy [1]. This difference can be explained by the late request for help from the victim due to the cyclical insidious harassment which was embedded within the organization, we opine that the type of relationship between the doctor and his patient can be decisive.

Hostile behavior forms the basis of moral harassment at work and their devious nature makes them difficult to detect, this contrasts with its harmful consequences on the health of the staff. Potentially harmful workplace stress has become more frequently encountered in the contemporary workplace and has constituted an occupational hazard. The most common symptoms reported are feeling unwell and general fatigue. We emphasize that the occupational doctor has a major role to play in its detection and management.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Sy, A., Kokou, E.K., Tine, J.A.D., Sy, N.A.M., Diallo, A., Seck, I., Ndiaye, M., Sheikh, T.L. and Thiam, M.H. (2020) Study of Descriptive Determinants of Moral Harassment at Work in a Factory in Senegal. Health, 12, 106-117. https://doi.org/10.4236/health.2020.122009