BEIJING, Aug. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- How do people get promoted in the workplace? One way seems to be by making their subordinates miserable, according to an online survey quoted by media reports Monday.

Remarkably disturbing: a survey taken for a New York conference on management found 64.2 percent of the 240 surveyed said a nasty boss was either never punished or got promoted.

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable - remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

Despite their success in the office, bad supervisers can cause serious problems for subordinates -- nightmares, insomnia, depression and exhaustion are just some of the symptoms being reported.

The authors advocated immediate intervention by industry chiefs to stop fledgling office authoritarians from rising up the ranks.

"As with any sort of cancer, the best alternative to prevention is early detection," they wrote.

They faulted senior managers for not recognising the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses.

"The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

(Agencies)