What if the IT bully is the CIO or CTO? This interesting and fun article doesn't address that situation directly. Professional sports, I believe, is instructive here: it is easier to fire a coach or manager than get a new team (even piece meal through attrition).

Excuse me but since when is A-----? not considered a vulgar curse word? We do not allow our staffers to speak like that here and we still consider it swearing. I think you would be more likely to get me to read something if it doesn't automatically offend me in the first paragraph.

We're geeks. Help us out. How do you define an a-hole? What are their most common attributes other than you don't like em?

Your article on IT Bullies was needlessly coarse. Surely, your writers can find a substitute for the word "asshole" which is not profane. Furthermore, "assholery" is not an English word: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/assholery

Please encourage your writers to exhibit the kind of sensitivity to their audience that they advise us to use when dealing with an IT bully.

Sheesh.

The 'offensive' word, as the voiced concern of several, serves its purpose by getting your attention, hence answering the question about its use.

Conversely, the word bully, while legitimate, lacks the scientific aura of so many other disorders and syndromes.

In reality, workplace bullying ruins countless lives every year. It causes injuries - psychological and physical - is the cause for suicides, not to mention ending careers and the related repercussions.

The majority of the western industrialized world has recourse of some sort against workplace bullying. While people think they are protected by EEO laws in the US, they are very narrowly defined regulations allowing for redress only if the bullying is done because of an individual's status within the categories of race, gender, religion, disability, etc.

However, if a boss or co-worker doesn't like people with brown eyes, as an example, that person can make the brown-eyed person's life at work a living hell, and do it with impunity.

Don't plan on turning to HR. Studies indicate that in 50 percent of reported bully cases HR does nothing, and in more than 20 percent of the cases HR sides with or assists the bully.

Bullies are not simply 'bad bosses.' They seek out individual targets and repeatedly take actions against the target while trying to remain undetected by others in an organization...including the target.

Keeping a bully on board is costly business decision, first because they usually target the best people in an organization, and then the related costs in personal days off, sick days, health care and ultimately the recruiting and training of the person who replaces the target pushed out of the workplace.

Here are some links:

Are Workplace Bullies Sabotaging Your Ability to Compete? (McCord and Richardson - Pepperdine University).

Research compiled by the Workplace Bully Institute.

Series of links and references in the Workplace Mobbing and Reference Page

After reading more on the matter many may find that Sutton's 'coarse' term is in reality mild when referring to those who perpetrate workplace bullying behaviors.

GLS

I guess preference for semantics has a nasty way of diverting the sensitive from the dialectic.
The discussion is essentially about creating and sustaining a harmonious work environment. The first step would be to examine hiring and promotion practices. Are there HR guidelines in place for assessing the emotional quotient (EQ) of personnel? Training (or rehabilitation) would be the next course of action. Organizations must recognize that bullying is a learned behavior that must be arrested before it is viewed as a necessary evil and becomes an enduring facet of company culture.
Given the accepted inverse relationship between EQ and IQ in IT this poses and exceptional challenge :-)

I was actually physically threatened (and I'm not a small guy) by the VP of Manufacturing of a large publicly traded company. He didn't like the way I was doing things. Thought he knew more about IT than I did (CIO). I've worked for IBM, Intel, and others (successfully) and never ran across a bully like this. BTW, he stood all of 5 ft. 2 in. tall.