What Are the Different Types of Workplace Bullying?

Baron & Neuman (1998) first defined the workplace aggression behavior, and considered that the workplace aggression behavior is the individual's attempts to harm other members of the organization who currently or have worked for them, including three types: workplace violence violence), obstructionism, and expressions of hostility.

Chinese name: Workplace attack
Foreign name: Workplace Aggression

Applied discipline: psychology
Application range: Social psychology

Related concepts of workplace attacks

Workplace aggression is a concept proposed by Baron & Neuman (1996) in the field of organization for more than a decade. Think of workplace aggression as an effort by individuals to harm other members of the organization they currently or have worked with, including three types: Workplace violence, Obstructionism, and expressions of hostility of hostility).

Dupre (2003) defines workplace aggression as follows: trying to harm others in an organizational context, starting with implicit and covert behaviors, using active confrontation, the destruction of property, and direct Direct physical assaults.

Schat and Kello (2006) [8] provided a more comprehensive definition of workplace aggression: Occurred in a work-related context, where individuals or individuals inside and outside the organization intentionally cause physical or psychological harm to their colleagues Harmful behavior.

Barling (2009) believes that workplace aggression is caused by employees, intentionally causing harm to individuals or organizations within the organization, sometimes different from workplace violence, and to a certain extent emphasizes psychological attacks.

Features of Workplace Attacks

There are four characteristics of workplace aggression:

(1) it is a deliberate act of the attacker;

(2) the act was initiated with the intention of harming one or more individuals or organizations;

(3) This behavior is mainly due to interpersonal aggressive behavior stimulated by internal factors of the organization, not by external factors or by individuals outside the organization;

(4) Being unwilling to accept such acts as a victim of an attack. In general, workplace attacks are more frequent than other attacks (Barling, Dupre, & Kelloway, 2009).

Types of workplace attacks

Type one is a workplace attack where the perpetrator has no legal relationship with the target employee or organization. The perpetrators mainly come from two aspects: On the one hand, the perpetrators are those who enter the working environment to commit criminal acts, such as armed robbery and shop theft. On the other hand, for the public service industry, perpetrators come from customers, residents, or other members of the public, and nearly 34% of such workplace violence is reported (US Public Service Commission, 2002).

The second type is that the workplace attack occurs when the perpetrator has a legal relationship with the organization, and is in a situation that is being taught and followed by members of the organization, such as consumers, prisoners, students, patients, etc., and finally evolves into violent behavior.

Type three is a workplace attack where the perpetrator and the victim are both internal members, that is, the perpetrator and the victim belong to the current or previous employees of the organization. This type of media reports are mainly attacks between subordinates and superiors. behavior.

Type four is a workplace attack where the perpetrator has a personal relationship with the organization's victimized employee, but has no relationship with the organization, such as a current or former spouse, relative, friend, or acquaintance.

Workplace Attacks Reasons for Workplace Attacks

Individual characteristics

2. Unfair organization

3. Temporary Dismissal (Layoff) Causes Workplace Attacks

The relationship between workplace attacks and customer attacks

According to workplace offensive behavior as defined by Baron and Neuman (1996), customer offensive behavior should not be classified as workplace offensive behavior. However, some scholars believe that workplace attacks should include attacks that occur outside the organization and outside normal working hours, and should be included by employees, customers, and organizations (Howard & Voss, 1996). According to the classification of workplace attacks by Peek-Asa et al. (2001) and Hader (2008), it can be seen that customer attacks should be a subset of workplace attacks.

The ambiguity of the concept between customer attack and workplace attack may be caused by the ambiguity of the concept of the customer itself: On the one hand, the customer is an external person because they have no employment relationship with the organization; on the other hand, the customer is similar Internal employees, because they have long-term contact with the organization's employees and work together with the organization's employees to achieve the goal of organizational services. From the above discussion, it can be known that the relationship between attack behavior, workplace attack, and customer attack is: customer attack is a form of workplace attack, which is a workplace attack in the service industry; and workplace attack is an attack behavior in the workplace Embodiment.

Workplace Attack Measurement of Workplace Attack

Baron and Neuman (1996) specifically developed the Workplace Aggression Scale (WAS). The scale is divided into three sub-scales: Expressions of Hostility, Obstructionism behaviors, and obvious attack behaviors. (Overt Aggression behaviors).

Kessler (2008) measured the violence climate survey indirectly as a measure of workplace aggression. The scale was tested using different Heterogeneous Sample methods in different organizations in the United States. The test results showed that the attack behavior was significantly correlated with all the stress at work.