Top Twenty Takeaways from Research on Workplace Mobbing

Abstract

By takeaway is meant “a key fact, point, or idea to be remembered.” From the research literature on workplace mobbing, this paper gleans what the author considers the twenty most important takeaways. These are: the concept itself, its distinction from bullying, the insufficiency of self-reports, separation of outcomes from definition, acceptance of ambiguity, a value on individualism, recognition of both nature and culture, interdisciplinarity, social contagion, the variety of causes or triggers, the centrality of envy, turning inward away from extrinsic goals, how apology fuels the fire, mobbing as a cost of job security, process as punishment, rarity of second thoughts, the place of postmodernism, variation by workplace, how courts and tribunals make things worse, and most important, the benefits of a focus on situation rather than person.