We’re Monitored Too Much! Workplace Bullying or Managerial Control in the Maldivian Tourist Resorts

Abstract

In the Maldives, the tourism accommodations offer a unique working environment, which makes employees vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and likely to create its own profile of bullying. Therefore, this study places the spotlight on a setting about which little is known by the broader community of academics and professionals working in the field of human resource management. We used both quantitative and qualitative methods in this study to understand the phenomenon of workplace bullying, where participants faced an interview and then complete a questionnaire. Our study reveals that workplace bullying can be a strategy used by management to get work done in the short term. The managers’ primary goal is to achieve an organisational objective by leveraging the formal power and control structures they possess within the organisation. This approach gives off the impression of being unfair and inherently unjust towards those lower in the organisational hierarchy. As a result, individuals fail to report bullying incidents to the appropriate authorities and do not receive the necessary assistance; instead, they suffer in silence. Workers regard bullying as inherent to the system and ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ in this environment, as a result of the systems and the processes that they see operating.