Westhues, K.
(2004).
Workplace mobbing in academe : reports from twenty universities.
"Mobbing is like a tornado boiling up during stormy, unsettled, inclement times at work. Such times occur in all workplaces, academic ones not least, and everybody knows the signs: disputed decisions, angry words, bruised egos, and tension in the air. Usually such periods of conflict blow over like a summer storm and things settle down again, leaving minor damage to productivity and human relations, damage repaired in subsequent weeks and months.
People who have lived through a tornado, however, know what meteorologists have determined scientifically, that this is not just a 'bad storm', but a distinct kind of near-total devastation categorically apart. That is what workplace mobbing is: a destructive social process arising out of unsettled relations at work, similar to the storms of everyday conflict but of such force, fury, terror and ruination as to warrant its own name, separate study, and specific safeguards." (p. 2)
Westhues, K., & Baldwin J. A.
(2006).
The remedy and prevention of mobbing in higher education : two case studies.
"Far from being a slang expression, mobbing is the scientific term Leymann drew from the ethological studies of Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz (1967), to describe fanatic ganging up of managers and/or co-workers against a targeted worker, subjection of the target to a barrage of hostile communications, humiliations, threats, and tricks, toward the end of driving the target out of his or her job." (p. 2)