What is Workplace Bullying?
Workplace bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment by one or more employees of an employee: abusive conduct that takes the form of verbal abuse; or behaviors perceived as threatening, intimidating, or humiliating; work sabotage; or in some combination of the above.
— Workplace Bullying Institute
About This Research
How do targets of workplace bullying make sense of their experiences? And what do their stories reveal about their organization's recognition, response, and culture?
The findings below represent patterns that emerged across participants' stories. While each experience was unique, these themes appeared consistently. My broader argument is that workplace bullying is also a sensemaking issue: how leaders, coworkers, and organizations respond shapes what targets come to believe about what is happening, what it means about them, and what kind of organization they are part of.
Research Results
1 Workplace bullying was not just about one difficult person. It was embedded in organizational culture.
Across participants' stories, bullying did not appear as an isolated interpersonal issue. It was shaped by workplace cultures that normalized silence, protected power, and made accountability uneven. While participants used different words to describe their environments, two cultural patterns came up most often: authoritative, non-accountable leadership cultures and clique-based, favoritism-driven cultures.
In these settings, people learned quickly that safety and belonging often depended on being agreeable, connected, and quiet. Bullying was not an exception to the culture. It was often a predictable outcome of how the workplace already functioned.
2 When people sought help, organizations often protected themselves rather than the person being harmed.
Participants described HR, leadership, and formal reporting systems that looked protective on paper but often failed in practice. Some chose not to report at all because they had already seen what happened to others who spoke up. Those who did report were often met with minimization, delay, redirection, or responses that focused more on containing the problem than addressing it.
What stood out across stories was not just a lack of support, but a pattern of institutional self-protection. Many participants entered these processes believing that if they worked hard, documented the harm, and followed the rules, the system would respond fairly. For many, that belief collapsed.
3 A major part of the harm was misrecognition.
Many participants struggled not only with the bullying itself, but with the fact that others would not name it for what it was. Their experiences were often reframed as personality conflict, drama, miscommunication, or simply something they had to manage on their own. As a result, participants were frequently left doubting themselves and questioning whether they were overreacting.
In many cases, the organization's response did not just fail to resolve the harm. It made it harder for participants to understand what was happening and to trust their own judgment. Misrecognition was not a side issue. It was one of the ways bullying was allowed to continue.
4 Participants were often trapped in a no-win situation, but support still mattered.
One of the clearest patterns across stories was that both silence and reporting could lead to harm. Some participants stayed quiet because they believed speaking up would make things worse. Others did report and then faced retaliation, exclusion, or lasting professional consequences. In that sense, many were trapped in a no-win situation created by the organization itself.
At the same time, participants made clear that human support mattered deeply. Being believed by a coworker, friend, family member, therapist, or even simply being listened to without judgment helped reduce isolation and preserve a sense of self. That support rarely stopped the bullying, but it often made the difference between facing it alone and surviving it with some measure of dignity intact.
5 Workplace bullying is not only an organizational issue. It is a public and structural issue.
For participants working in public-serving roles, the harm did not stop with them. Teachers, nurses, and others described bullying as something that affected students, patients, service quality, and public trust. Participants also repeatedly pointed to legislation and advocacy as necessary because internal systems had proven unreliable.
Taken together, these stories suggest that workplace bullying should not be treated as a private personnel matter. It is a structural issue with consequences for employee well-being, organizational integrity, and, in many cases, the public itself.
Main Findings & Recommendations
Based on this research, the following key findings and recommendations emerge:
1 Organizational Responsibility
Workplace bullying should be understood as an issue of organizational responsibility, not just individual behavior.
2 Public Trust Issue
In public institutions, workplace bullying should also be recognized as a governance, service, and public trust issue.
3 Duty of Care
Employers should strengthen their duty of care through annual training, effective policies, and safe reporting channels.
4 Legislative Support
Legislation, alongside organizational culture and response, may help reinforce employers' duty of care.
Explore the Sensemaking Model
See how different combinations of organizational response and bystander behavior lead to different outcomes for targets.