ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of bullying (i.e. intentional harmful repetitive behavior where the person being targeted cannot defend him-or herself) has received a great deal of attention in the past two decades among school-aged youth (Espelage and Swearer, 2011). In fact, many people associate bullying with child or adolescent behavior and rarely think of this phenomenon as something that can affect adults as well. But adult bullying can be just as pervasive and dangerous as child bullying; this adult aggression generally occurs at an adult’s place of work and is therefore referred to as “workplace bullying.” As with previous research on bullying among youth, we will conceptualize the complexity of bullying behaviors among adults from a social-ecological perspective (Espelage and Swearer, 2003, 2011; Swearer and Doll, 2001). As Kurt Lewin wrote over 75 years ago, behavior
is the function of the individual’s interaction with his or her environment (Lewin, 1936). Thus, workplace bullying is defined by the individual’s personal interaction with the work environment.
