Stop Workplace Abuse: STOP WORKPLACE ABUSE

Workplace bullying, like childhood bullying, is the tendency of individuals or groups to use persistent aggressive or unreasonable behavior against a co-worker or subordinate. Workplace bullying can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, physical abuse and humiliation. This type of aggression is particularly difficult because unlike the typical forms of school bullying, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. Bullying in the workplace is in the majority of cases reported as having been perpetrated by management and takes a wide variety of forms. Bullying can be covert or overt.

While there is no single formal definition of workplace bullying, several researchers have endeavored to define it. Some categorize all harmful boss-behavior and actions of malintent directed at employees as bullying. Bullying behaviors may be couched in humiliation and hazing rites and iterative programs or protocols framed as being in the best interests of employee development and coaching. Others separate behaviors into different patterns, labeling a subset of those behaviors as bullying, explaining that there are different ways to deal effectively with specific patterns of behavior. Some workplace bullying is defined as involving an employee's immediate supervisor, manager or boss in conjunction with other employees as complicit, while other workplace bullying is defined as involving only an employee’s immediate supervisor, manager or boss.

Race also may play a role in the experience of workplace bullying. According to the Workplace Bullying Institute (2007), the comparison of combined bullying (current + ever bullied) prevalence percentages reveals the pattern from most to least: