Assédio moral com jovens trabalhadores: um estudo com alunos de graduação em Administração na cidade de Belo Horizonte (MG)

Abstract

Moral harassment is considered a workplace violence as abusive and humiliating conduct in interpersonal relationships is perceived. These can be triggered by the working conditions in contemporary organizations where the competitiveness among workers is stimulated and, from this, a permissive organizational culture is experienced and even an incentive of hostile practices, praising the achievement of organizational goals or objectives, at any cost. In this sense, young workers have been an usual victims of aggressions in the work environment, constituting themselves targets peculiar to such violence due to the idiosyncrasies of this public. In this scenario, the research focused on the perceptions and experiences of moral harassment in the workplace, from the perspective of young workers undergraduate students of courses of Administration in Institutions of Higher Education (IHE), in the city of Belo Horizonte (MG). The theoretical references focus on concepts such as that of Hirigoyen (2005), which considers, in addition to the humiliating attitudes caused by an individual who morally harasses another, the fact that moral harassment may have as a starting point a refusal of differences within organizations, for example: ways of being, talking, dressing; socioeconomic reasons; age groups; breeds/skin colors; religious orientations; deficiencies (physical/mental); sexual orientations, among others. Existing types of harassment, consequences of the phenomenon, constituent elements and various hostile attitudes were also addressed. In addition, it has deepened on issues of work and youth to better understand the public in question. The field research, with a descriptive character, with a quantitative and qualitative approaches, counted on the application of questionnaires in five IES, in its students of the Administration course who already had some experience in the labor market and with age between 15 and 29 years considered young people legally. Subsequently, interviews were conducted with the young people who, at the previous stage, made themselves available to share their experiences. Data from 296 questionnaires were statistically treated, univariate analysis. The results indicate that most of the young people interviewed: already experienced different forms of bullying at work, with medium frequency (70% to 90% of them); identified all types of harassment (horizontal, vertical ascending, vertical descending, mixed, strategic and collective) in the work environment, with medium frequency (86% to 95% of them); and considers their reflexes in personal and professional life, with a medium frequency (75% to 85% of them. The 13 interviews were transcribed in full and submitted to content analysis. Most of these young people (seven of them) experienced moral harassment at work, but one of them is not aware or clear of it. The types of harassment reported were the downward vertical, the horizontal and the mixed and their victims perceive several consequences in personal and professional life, such as: psychological problems (panic syndrome and depression), problems of hair loss, labyrinthitis and gastritis, besides of reports of sadness, demotivation, fear and fear, concern about the future of the career and possible future occurrences of harassment. This emphasizes that methodological triangulation was essential to identify points of convergence and divergence between the data collected by different methods, as well as to promote a greater understanding of possibilities of associations with other topics relevant to the Administration. Given the findings, contributions and limitations of the research, future suggestions have been outlined