Is there any place free of bullying?

When I was a child I avidly read the writings of philosophers such as Socrates – this led me to the belief that democracy was founded on the concepts of freedom of speech and expression.

For years I studied and ended up with six degrees, hoping always to find a place where people could say and write what they think, without fear of persecution or prejudice in employment.

What did I observe?

My first decade was spent in private industry. Anyone who did their job as an internal or external auditor could be coerced, either by direct threat of loss of employment, business or under an inducement. During my employment at a merchant bank I was bullied by the administration not to insist on maternity leave.

So in search of freedom I accepted a Commonwealth Scholarship.

I returned to University to study and develop systems of regulation for the accounting profession, to ensure that the provision of information was carried out in a non-prejudicial manner. That is, to ensure that no bullying occurred by company officers and directors to distort such information.

When I presented my thesis, which demanded the provision of mandatory cash flow statements, I was bullied into supplying all my data, so that someone could rerun my experiment and refute my results.

I was also intimidated by university editors not to publish, as it could result in monies being withdrawn by accounting firms to fund professorial and lecturing positions.

The only person who came to my defence was an American professor who substantiated my demands and stated that the US was about to mandate for such information.

As a result my career was limited at the university where I undertook my thesis. Committees to promote waited to meet until no equal opportunity officer was present. Male candidates were promoted over females regularly.

So I returned to the workforce.

On the eve of the greatest boom in the eighties what I witnessed were bank officers being bullied by superiors receiving bonuses to distort the credit approval process.