A Synthetic Review of the Workplace Bullying, Abusive Supervision, and Mobbing Literatures

Abstract

Bullying at work is both widely prevalent and harmful for victims. This article aims to provide the most comprehensive and systemic analysis of workplace bullying research to date by drawing on scholarship from across the social sciences. The review begins by analyzing different definitions of workplace bullying and argues for an advantageous definition of the concept. Next, a bibliometric science map of 1,425 articles (link) on workplace bullying is provided. This map reveals four research clusters of workplace bullying articles which are empirically distinguishable by their citation patterns: 1) Abusive Supervision research, 2) Applied Psychology bullying research, 3) Management bullying research, and 4) bullying research in Healthcare Settings. We argue these four sub-literatures are unnecessarily siloed by disciplinary boundaries. As such, our review synthesizes common themes and conclusions reached by these four communities into an overarching intellectual framework. Then, drawing on the review, the article suggests that the field has two major limitations – 1) a lack of evidence that would convince “bottom line realists” to reduce workplace bullying, and 2) largely ignoring the question of why people have different perceptions of whether workplace bullying has occurred. Future research opportunities to address these limitations are discussed.