What is Workplace Bullying?
Workplace bullying involves repeated behaviors intended to intimidate, humiliate, or undermine a worker. Unlike a single conflict or disagreement, bullying is characterized by a pattern of harmful behavior that creates a hostile work environment.
But here's what makes this research different: the harm doesn't come just from the bully—it comes from how organizations and people respond.
Exclusion from meetings
Undermining language
Gossip and rumors
Taking credit or sabotage
Public humiliation
Threats to job security
About This Research
This project is grounded in the stories of people who have experienced workplace bullying. Through in-depth, one-on-one conversations with 14 participants, I listened as they described what happened to them, how it affected them, and how their organizations responded—or failed to respond.
Recognizing that some experiences are difficult to express in words alone, I also invited participants to create visual reflections capturing their emotions. 4 participants chose to create artwork, which is featured in the gallery section of this website.
"This work is about responsibility. No one should lose their livelihood, dignity, or sense of self for speaking up."
Research Questions
This study was guided by three central questions:
- How do targets of workplace bullying make sense of their experiences? What meaning do they assign to what happened, and how does that meaning evolve over time?
- How do organizational responses shape targets' sensemaking? What messages do organizations send—intentionally or unintentionally—about whose experiences matter?
- How do bystander responses influence targets' understanding of their experience? What role does silence, support, or intervention play in how targets interpret harm?
Methodology
This qualitative study used in-depth interviews with participants who self-identified as having experienced workplace bullying. Interviews explored the nature of the bullying, how participants made sense of what was happening, how the organization responded, and long-term impacts.
Data was analyzed using thematic analysis, with attention to patterns across cases as well as unique individual experiences.
Participants
In-depth interviews
Artworks
Visual reflections
Minutes
Per interview
Key Findings
Research insights
Why Art?
Participants created artworks as part of a sensemaking process. Visual expression allowed them to represent emotions and experiences that are often difficult to describe in words. These pieces reveal patterns of harm, resilience, and recovery while helping researchers understand how individuals rebuild meaning after toxic work environments.
Theoretical Framework
This research draws on sensemaking theory to understand how targets interpret and assign meaning to their experiences. When something unexpected or harmful happens, people engage in sensemaking—asking questions like "What is happening?", "What does this mean about me?", and "What kind of organization is this?"
Sensemaking
The cognitive and emotional work targets do to understand what is happening. They ask: "What is happening to me?" "What does this mean about me?" "What kind of organization is this?"
Sensegiving
How organizations actively shape how employees interpret their experiences—through policies, leadership behavior, and cultural norms. Much of this sensegiving is unintentional and occurs through everyday interactions, silences, and contradictions between policy and practice.
Sensebreaking
When an employee's fundamental assumptions about their workplace collapse—when expectations about fairness, protection, or justice are shattered rather than confirmed.
Epistemic Injustice
When someone's credibility or knowledge is unfairly dismissed or discredited—either through having their account doubted (testimonial injustice) or lacking shared language to describe their experience (hermeneutical injustice).
Key Insight
Applying sensemaking, sensegiving, and sensebreaking theory to workplace bullying shifts attention away from individual resilience or conflict management and toward organizational responsibility.
Epistemic Injustice in Practice
Participants repeatedly described seeking help and being told that what they were experiencing was a "personality conflict," "miscommunication," or simply "drama." In one case, a participant described first asking a colleague for help, only to be told, "I don't know what to do." When they escalated the concern to their vice principal, the response was equally dismissive: they were told, "You have to get along, that's our school rule."
These responses reflect testimonial injustice, in which participants' credibility as knowers of their own experiences was systematically undermined. Many described feeling dismissed, doubted, or treated as overly sensitive. As a result, participants began to doubt themselves, wondering whether they were overreacting or misinterpreting what was happening.
Why This Matters
Eleven of the fourteen participants worked in public or publicly oriented roles—teachers, nurses, government employees. When bullying persists in these settings, it doesn't just harm individuals; it undermines the conditions necessary for ethical, attentive, and competent public service.
This project aims to make visible what is often invisible: the organizational dynamics that allow bullying to persist, the silence that amplifies harm, and the pathways toward more accountable and humane workplaces.
Whether quiet or explicit, bystander support mattered. Even when it did not lead to intervention, it reduced isolation, buffered psychological harm, and helped participants maintain a sense of self when institutions failed to act.
Explore the Research
Dive deeper into the findings and frameworks that emerged from this study:
Key Research Findings
Explore the 10 major findings from participant interviews, including patterns of harm, organizational response, and paths to advocacy.
Sensemaking Model
Interact with the Workplace Bullying Sensemaking Model to understand how organizational culture, responses, and bystander behavior shape outcomes.
Participant Artworks
View visual reflections created by participants to express their experiences with workplace bullying.
Ready to Explore?
Start your journey through the research and discover your role in creating healthier workplaces.