Bullying, emotional & verbal abuse, and violence at the workplace

When we think of violence in the workplace, we often focus on spectacular incidents of gruesome destructiveness. But those incidents are only the extreme, dramatic end of a spectrum that includes pervasive, ongoing patterns of passive aggression.

This was evidenced by a study published by the International Society for Research on Aggression: “Workplace violence and workplace aggression: Evidence on their relative frequency and potential causes” by Robert A. Baron and Joel H. Neuman.

As described in the abstract, the study’s aim was to investigate two hypotheses:
1) most aggression occurring in work settings is verbal, indirect, and passive rather than physical, direct, and active;
2) recent changes in many organizations (e.g., downsizing, increased workforce diversity) have generated conditions that may contribute to the occurrence of workplace aggression.

The abstract shows that “a survey of 178 employed persons provided partial support for both predictions”:
- “Verbal and passive forms of aggression were rated as more frequent by participants than physical and active forms of aggression.”
- “The greater the extent to which several changes had occurred recently in participants' organizations, the greater the incidence of workplace aggression they reported.”

Source: “Workplace violence and workplace aggression: Evidence on their relative frequency and potential causes” published in 1996 by the International Society for Research on Aggression. Authors:  Robert A. Baron, Department of MP&O, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Joel H. Neuman, Department of Business Administration, State University of New York at New Paltz