Bullying in the Workplace: a Diverse New Culture Bullying is a subject covered in the media almost daily. With the advent of internet and social media, bullying at the school-age level has taken on an entirely new face, having grown into a global problem. Bullying seems to have transformed into its own culture. The media details horrific stories of teenage suicides blamed on cyber bullying. YouTube videos depict unwarranted attacks for offenses ranging from stealing someone’s significant other, to accidentally sitting on their hamburger. While the focus of the media and general population is on children, there is an aspect of bullying that is very overlooked, in spite of having been heavily researched since the 1980s. That aspect is workplace bullying. As stated by Indvik and Johnson (2012) “bullies come in every race, age, religion and gender,” and are no longer just on the playground, but on the jobsite …show more content…
Workplace bullying is a rising problem, not only crossing cultural lines in the United States, but demonstrating its diversity on a global scale as well. Terms used for workplace bullying are as diverse as the countries these acts occur in; however, the theme and basic definition remain the same throughout them all. American textbooks currently define bullying as unwanted, aggressive behavior that meets three widely accepted criteria as follows: 1) intentional physical or psychological harm, 2) capitalizes on a power imbalance between the bully and the victim, and 3) is repeated over a period of six months or more (Matsumoto & Juang, 2013). The Workplace Bullying Institute’s definition is similar, stating clearly that bullying is a non-physical form of workplace violence, citing domestic violence as the most similar phenomenon (2014). The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, or EU-OSHA, (2010) proposes a diverse number of terms that are