Workplace bullying: exploring an emerging framework

Abstract

To date, emphasis within the literature on workplace bullying has been on gathering empirical data with a focus on individual acts, actors (targets and perpetrators) and consequences. This analytical focus has resulted in an understanding of workplace bullying as fundamentally an individualized phenomenon. This article begins with a brief discussion of the theorization that currently predominates in the workplace violence and bullying literature and the outcomes of this theorizing. An emerging framework, conceptualizing violence broadly, is then outlined for understanding violence and bullying. Through this framework, it is argued that the discourse and research on workplace violence – in all its forms – must explore explicit connections between these social phenomena and the interrelatedness of all forms of oppression. Workplace violence must be examined within a framework where power cannot be separated from social dimensions within and outside the workplace.