Source: Adapted from Oldewage, D., & Jonck, P. (2025). The Dark Triad traits in the South African workplace: moderators of career interests and success. Frontiers in Psychology, 16. University of Johannesburg.
Why corporate bullies are harder to catch than management books admit—and what South Africa is doing about it
WORKPLACE FOCUS
WHEN two lecturers recently published a new book called Monsters, they offered a witty survival guide to corporate madness, categorising difficult workplace personalities into amusing types: Anxiety Aliens, Talk Titans, Time Trolls and Toxic Tyrannosaurs. It is clever, entertaining and painfully recognisable to anyone who has spent years inside an office.
But compared to the real beasts that lurk inside many companies, those monsters are tame.
When you have worked in corporates long enough, you discover there is another side nobody speaks about openly. Even after people leave toxic workplaces, most stay silent. They want to move on, not relive the experience. They do not want to become “difficult”, “emotional”, or “that former employee with a grudge”. And honestly, who can blame them?
The reality is that fighting a corporate psychopath is usually a losing battle. The people doing the hiring and firing hold the power. You can report bullying, intimidation, or even the misuse of company resources. But whether anything actually happens depends entirely on the company itself—and many companies are more focused on protecting profits and reputations than protecting people.
That is the uncomfortable truth hidden behind glossy HR brochures and corporate wellness campaigns.
The economics of bullying
Most organisations love to talk about “safe spaces”, “wellness”, and “people-first cultures”. Yet when genuine bullying takes place, everything becomes murky and procedural. Human Resources departments are usually not independent structures; they exist inside the corporate hierarchy and ultimately protect the firm. Legal departments do the same. Internal ombuds systems, where they exist, are still funded and managed by the organisation itself.
Bullying in companies is rarely dramatic enough to resemble a courtroom crime. It happens quietly: through humiliation in meetings, exclusion, impossible deadlines, passive-aggressive emails, and managers who suddenly begin documenting every tiny mistake after years of satisfactory performance. Often the worst bullying begins when a new, inexperienced manager arrives desperate to prove authority.
The damage these people cause is enormous but difficult to quantify. Studies on corporate psychopathy suggest that around 26% of workplace bullying is driven by just 1% of the employee population—those displaying distinct psychopathic traits.
In South Africa, the problem is structurally pervasive. Long-standing data from organizations like the South African Journal of Human Resource Management indicates that nearly a third of local employees have experienced workplace bullying. More recent targeted data, including a 2024 study tracking South African healthcare professionals, found an objective bullying prevalence of 38.7%, with women twice as likely to be targeted as men.
The macroeconomic costs are material. Bullying increases staff turnover, absenteeism, and “presenteeism” (showing up to work disconnected), while reducing productivity and escalating legal exposure. According to data publicised by the Stellenbosch Business School, work-related stress accounts for more than 40% of all workplace-related illnesses in South Africa, with at least one in four employees diagnosed with depression. For a country with a tight labour market for skilled workers, these costs are not merely ethical—they are a material drag on competitiveness.
How South Africa tries to stop bullying
South Africa does have legal and organizational mechanisms to prevent and respond to workplace bullying, but they are unevenly distributed and often difficult to leverage.
- Labour Legislation: The Employment Equity Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act require employers to provide a safe workplace and prohibit unfair discrimination and harassment. However, bullying that cannot be linked to specific discriminatory grounds (such as race, gender, or disability) is much harder to litigate.
- The CCMA and Bargaining Councils: Workers can refer harassment and constructive dismissal disputes to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). Yet, cases require a high evidentiary threshold to prove that the employer made continued employment intolerable.
- Common-Law Delict Claims: Where bullying causes severe psychiatric injury, employees can sue for damages under common law. These cases require ironclad medical evidence linking the conduct to diagnosable harm, making them costly, slow, and out of reach for the average worker.
- Independent Ombuds and Whistleblowing: Since the turn of the decade, a growing number of larger South African firms have created independent ombuds offices or external whistleblower hotlines managed by third parties. These raise the chances of an impartial review, but they remain concentrated in large, heavily regulated sectors.
- Regulatory Pressure: Financial sector regulators, such as the FSCA and the Prudential Authority, have steadily elevated conduct and “fit-and-proper” standards for leadership, pushing some firms to take complaints against senior managers more seriously to avoid institutional sanctions.
How many companies have independent ombudspeople? Relatively few. Most small and medium enterprises (SMEs) rely solely on internal HR. Even in larger firms, ombuds roles are often under-resourced and vulnerable to executive pressure. Cases are typically taken seriously only when the cost of ignoring them—regulatory sanction, litigation, or reputational damage—exceeds the political cost of disciplining a revenue-generating manager.
What support do employees actually get?
Many South African companies now offer Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), where workers can speak confidentially to therapists. EAPs are widely used and provide valuable short-term crisis counselling. But they cannot remove an abusive executive or restructure skewed power dynamics. At best, they help people cope with unhealthy environments that management itself refuses to confront.
Workplace wellness programmes—resilience training, stress management, and manager sensitisation—are increasingly common. Yet without real internal accountability, training easily becomes a box-ticking exercise.
For employees, practical options remain deeply limited: document everything, use internal channels strategically, secure independent medical documentation, and often—unfortunately—prepare an exit strategy. When the probability of remedial action is low and the psychological tax is high, leaving is often the most rational economic choice.
The core problem
Proving psychological bullying is incredibly difficult. How do you prove manipulation? Systematic undermining of confidence over two years while the manager remains perfectly charming to senior executives? Unless there are written threats or witnesses willing to risk their own careers, most cases dissolve into grey areas and flat denials.
Meanwhile, the employee being targeted is usually the one sent to counselling.
Ironically, artificial intelligence may eventually eliminate at least one aspect of workplace toxicity: human cruelty. AI systems may replace jobs, bringing an entirely new set of economic and ethical dilemmas, but an algorithm does not humiliate staff in meetings because it feels personally insecure or threatened.
The authors of Monsters are correct about one thing: organisations are filled with monsters. But the most dangerous ones are not the comic personalities described in management books. They are the hidden bullies who understand power, manipulate systems, and remain protected because confronting them is simply too costly for the organisation.
You can laugh about “Meeting Monsters” over coffee. But there are employees sitting in parking lots before work every morning trying to gather the emotional energy just to walk back into buildings where they feel psychologically unsafe. That is the real corporate horror story.
Further reading: South African research on workplace bullying and corporate psychopathy
- Workplace bullying of South African employees: prevalence and the relationship with sense of coherence and diversity experiences
Prevalence data and coping frameworks within local corporate environments.
North-West University Research Repository - The prevalence and impact of workplace bullying among doctors in South Africa
A stark look at bullying prevalence and structural intimidation within the healthcare sector.
South African Journal of Anaesthesia and Analgesia (2024) - The Dark Triad traits in the South African workplace: moderators of career interest and career success
An evaluation of how Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy influence corporate progression locally.
Frontiers in Psychology (June 2025) - Corporate Psychopaths, Bullying, Conflict and Unfair Supervision in the Workplace
A foundational analysis of the disproportionate organizational damage caused by a tiny fraction of highly toxic managers.
Palgrave Macmillan / Ideas RePEc - Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (Revised Edition)
The definitive text on how corporate psychopaths use superficial charm, manipulation, and character assassination to exploit organizational blind spots and secure executive promotion.
Babiak, P., & Hare, R. D. (2019). Snakes in Suits, Revised Edition: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office. HarperBusiness.
