Workplace bullying

What is workplace bullying
The term workplace bullying was used for the first time in the late 1980s to describe a specific form of persistent workplace harassment. Workplace bullying is a distinct phenomenon from other forms of harassment at the workplace, such as sexual and racial harassment, in that it refers to a form of interpersonal aggression that can be both flagrant and subtle, but which is mainly characterised by its persistency. A common definition of the concept is that bullying refers to situations where a person repeatedly and over a period of time is exposed to negative acts (i.e., constant abuse, offensive remarks or teasing, ridicule or social exclusion) and where the target perceives that he or she is incapable to neutralise or stop the negative acts to which he or she is being subjected (Einarsen, 2000).

Since the introduction of the concept, there has been an increasing focus on workplace bullying within organisational research. For instance, in 2006, the issue of workplace bullying was acknowledged as an important and distinct research area in a series of APA Monitor articles. Of the many studies on the phenomenon, several have shown that workplace bullying has significant effects on both targets and observers. As a telling example, two recent meta-analyses that compared the impact of bullying and sexual harassment on outcome variables, such as job-satisfaction, stress, anger and health, found that the effects of workplace bullying were significantly more severe than the effects of sexual harassment (see American Psychological Association, 2008; Lapierre et al., 2005).

Workplace bullying has been found to be a wide spread problem in contemporary working life. In Great Britain for example, every tenth employee reports exposure to bullying at work.. The occurrence in Norway varies between one and 14 per cent, depending on how the phenomenon is measured.

Our research
Our research focus on almost every aspect of workplace bullying. Through the years we have carried out studies on topics such as prevalence, antecedents and outcomes, and prevention. In the last two years we have especially focused on measurement issues, personality and bullying, work environment and leadership. The overview of our publications found in the above menu should give an indication of what we have accomplished.