Tragedy at the Virginia Quarterly Review

The suicide of its managing editor has been blamed on workplace bullying. New details suggest the real story is much more complicated. Slate has more, here.

From the piece...

What does it mean to be a workplace bully? For kids, bullying is defined as repeated acts of verbal or physical abuse in a situation where there's a power imbalance between the bully and the bullied. But in the workplace, there is almost always a hierarchy; power imbalances are necessarily part of the equation. That doesn't mean bad behavior can't be policed. Sexual harassment suits do just that. But bosses and employees aren't peers the way school kids are. The leaders of companies and departments have to dictate rules and give orders and occasionally reprimand employees who are falling short on the job—they have to be bossy. It's possible to imagine a scenario in which a boss (or a group of co-workers) deliberately persecutes an employee—sabotaging his work, playing nasty pranks. But is every demanding, gruff boss a bully? Where is the line between mismanagement and harassment? And can a boss ever be held responsible for an employee's decision to kill himself?


A closer look at what happened at VQR, informed by conversations with Genoways and most of his colleagues and by examining internal e-mails sent in the run-up to Morrissey's death, suggests that while the VQR staff was unhappy with their boss, bullying may not be the right label for his behavior. The accusation that Genoways is to blame for Morrissey's suicide is even more questionable. Genoways has been branded as a workplace bully in part because a small band of advocates, which includes Gary Namie, saw in Morrissey's death an opportunity to spotlight their cause and jumped on it. In contrast to the black-and-white story of villainy they've promoted, what happened at VQR is complicated, and several key details have not yet been told.