Workplace Bullying Essay

Bully. For many people, this term is synonymous with childhood teasing, wedgies, and purloined lunch money. Others, however, break out in a cold sweat at the thought of the term because they know a bully—or work for one. The problem of bullying is an old one but it has recently been sensationalized by way of social media campaigns as a social blight. As a result, responsibility for curing the problem has been handed over to lawmakers. Some European countries have enacted laws against workplace bullying, but politicians in the United States are still trying to agree on a definition. Although there is no universal definition of workplace bullying, employers should take steps to end workplace bullying because it is a pervasive issue that

Hoel (2002) finds that perpetrators may not intend to harm others. Crawshaw (2009) draws a similar conclusion from a case study: When a manager is confronted about his abusive behavior he defends his actions stating that his intention is to protect the safety of his employees, not harm them. One must question, however, whether or not a perpetrator would willingly confess to ill intentions (Hoel, 2002). Understandably, one might be easily distracted by the differences of the terms, definitions, descriptions, and qualifications in the discourse on workplace bullying. Nevertheless, the following definition of workplace bullying, proposed by Carbo and Hughes (2010), provides an adequate concept for the purpose of discussion:

Workplace bullying is the unwanted, unwelcome, abuse of any source of power that has the effect of or intent to intimidate, control or otherwise strip a target of their right to esteem, growth, dignity, voice or other human rights in the workplace. (p.

Leymann and Tallgren (1989) assert that the negative acts of bullying last for a minimum of six months. Zapf et al. (2003) found the average duration of bullying ranges from 15 to 18 months. In other research, the average duration of bullying among 28 study participants was 62 months (Kudielka & Kern, 2004). While there is a wide range of average durations, one can reasonably conclude that average experiences are drawn out. Men’s and women’s experiences with bullying are, for the most part, similar with no significant differences (Hoel & Cooper, 2000). Differences between the genders do exist with respect to targets: Research shows one-third of targets are men and two-thirds are women (Zapf et al.,