The outlandish favouratism and bad jokes parodied in the hit TV series, The Office, are bad for business, but so is your garden-variety borish middle manager, a new study, written up in Science Daily, has found.

Panicking about deadlines, passing on stress, passing the buck, and telling staff what to do without consulting them, are the kind of annoyances that continually chip away at morale and undermine employee wellbeing. The survey of 500 employees and 120 managers was conducted by Kingston University, London, for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

The study found that managers who are big failures are likely to be revealed and removed, but mediocre managers fly under the radar, causing long-term damage.