Violence

Conceptual Overview

Workplace violence has traditionally been thought to involve acts with a physical component, such as physical assault, rape, and harassment. Another approach to defining violence has been to include only behavior that has a criminal aspect to it (or that would be considered criminal if it occurred outside the work setting), such as assaults, threats, damage to property and reputations, verbal obscenities, and sexual harassment. Recent definitions of violence are broad, recognizing any harassing or threatening behavior, physical or psychological, that involves elements of fear, isolation, exclusion, intimidation, assault, or abuse. Thus, under this broader conception of violence, exclusion from decision making and normal daily routines, harassment, blocking of career opportunities, being subjected to cruel taunts or jokes, being ignored, and the removal of responsibilities all constitute violence, especially as it is experienced in an organizational context. Violence experienced at work can also include atrocities: flagrant violations of fundamental cultural values through acts of physical or psychological violence.

Violence can include any elements of physical or psychological aggression that are either felt or perceived by an individual targeted. Various authors have categorized the many forms of aggression that can include violence as comprising delinquency, bullying/mobbing, retaliatory behavior, workplace incivility, deviant behavior, antisocial work behavior, harassment, mistreatment, sabotage, abuse, counterproductive behavior, and workplace aggression. Violence at work often results from an abuse of power in the work setting.

Definitions of violence need to take into account the context and culture of the organization in which the violence has taken place and recognize that the range of phenomena that is characterized as violent can only be artificially separated on any constructed continuum. Acts of violence cannot easily be separated from other related phenomena such as sexual or racial harassment, bullying, and workplace incivility, and, often, violent incidents may incorporate many aggressive constituent parts.

It is important to note that violence is experienced subjectively. The target perceives that violence has taken place—that there has been a perceived or actual verbal, emotional threat or physical attack on an individual's person or property by another or others in the organization. The same violent incident may be experienced and responded to in different ways, depending on the target's individual circumstances, personality, resilience, and life experiences. It is noted that the consequences of nonphysical violence may well be as serious for the target as a physical assault, although they are likely to be more difficult to measure and prove.

Potential causes of violence in the workplace may include problematic interpersonal functioning, changing working environments, high levels of stress, an incongruent management style, aggravated coworker relationships, and romantic obsessions. Possible predictors of violence might include high levels and multiple sources of stress, cognitive factors, demographic characteristics, or a history of violence on the part of a potential perpetrator.

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