An Inflection-Point Model of Targets’ Experience of Workplace Mobbing

Abstract

Existing discussions of workplace mobbing often describe the injury caused to targets as the cumulative result of prolonged workplace hostility. Repeated mistreatment can certainly cause significant distress; however, cumulative-harm models do not fully explain when the psychological injury for the target actually begins. This paper presents an inflection-point model of workplace mobbing which proposes that the most decisive injuries occur when the target recognizes that the pattern of harm is coordinated and unlikely to be corrected. The model maps the phases that unfold before and after this inflection moment of recognition. In the early stages of mobbing, individuals typically experience uncertainty and attempt to repair the situation through ordinary professional communication and institutional procedures. However, once recognition occurs, the situation changes, and engagement begins to give way to protection. Workplace mobbing injury hence may be shaped less by the total amount of mistreatment and more by the moment the pattern becomes unmistakably clear. Although this model has been developed from the academic mobbing literature, it may apply more broadly across workplace mobbing settings characterized by prolonged, coordinated hostility. The framework of the model helps explain delayed symptom onset, continued outward professional functioning during mobbing, and the long-term psychological effects that many targets experience even after inevitably leaving the institution. The paper concludes with what some of the practical implications of this model might be.