The Mean Team

Michelle Duffy, associate professor of business management at the
University of Kentucky, learned from surveys of 4,100 employees at a U.S.
retailing company that 53 percent of workers had participated in some
form of "social undermining," such as starting rumors about co-workers or
sabotaging their projects.

Duffy could detect the strikes and counter-strikes in her research.
"You could actually watch it moving through the social structure," she
says.

Employees were 30 times more likely to attack someone if they
thought they were helping a friend by doing so. Groups of colleagues
banded together to pick on the same people over and over again. Workers
seen as bosses' pets were among the most common targets, as well as women
and members of the "in" crowd. Popular people attacked each other and
were attacked by outsiders, but outsiders were usually left alone.