Setting the Stage the New Face of Workplace Violence
摘要
This chapter examines bullying, harassment, and sexual abuse within the workplace as violence and not merely as relational discord. Citing examples in healthcare, law enforcement, and education, this chapter illustrates the manner in which sustained systemic humiliation, coercion, and isolation impact a person’s health, career, and sense of worth. Drawing from clinical psychology, organization studies, and public health, this chapter posits that the problem is systemic and tied to the interplay of hierarchy, weak policies and frameworks, and silence, as well as poorly crafted definitions of psychosocial risk and violence. Research links violence to anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep disorders, and chronic illness, and even suicide, as well as spillover effects of stress to bystanders, attrition, and mistrust. Employing an ecological perspective, this chapter maps systemic and structural violence and their cultures that equate domination with leadership. This chapter advocates for a public health approach to bullying by treating it as severe, preventable violence resulting from personality discord, and by implementing safety-first design, leadership accountability, early identification and support, and postvention.