Conundrums and confusion in organisations: the etymology of the word “bully”

Bullying behaviour has always been part of the human condition. On a global level we have witnessed fairly overt domination even recently. Its visibility level is not so obvious in current workplace practices but its existence is in no doubt. More subtle, less detectable actions and behaviours are employed by the bully and the emergence of e‐mail’s flame mail and spamming techniques in the workplace demonstrate this point. Bullying in the workplace is psychological violence. Two cases of bullying interventions are compared in this paper. Noticeably both organisations had detailed employment policies, personnel departments and occupational health departments. Their ability to manage bullying, however, was determined by their organisational culture, in part, through a Dignity at Work programme. Bullying is identified as immoral, as theft, and as a misuse of loyalty. The paper concludes by calling on the different disciplines involved in the analysis of this topic to collaborate and acknowledge plurality of perspective.