Abstract
In this paper employing a phenomenological method to explicate seven informants’ experience of interpersonal bullying behaviors in a South African work context, I demarcated four general themes namely: lack of recognition, discrimination, obstructionism, and isolation. Moreover, I found that perpetrators (male and female managers) predominantly used verbal and indirect negative acts to bully subordinates. Finally, racial tensions contributed to bullying behavior. While a phenomenological approach shows promise to explore local bullying behavior more research is needed to broaden our understanding of the phenomenon, including explicating bullying through the eyes of bystanders and alleged bullies.
Highlights
Bullying is an important issue in the contemporary workplace
My purpose here is to answer the following research question: What is the situated structure of interpersonal bullying behaviours in a South African work context?
In the literature review interpersonal bullying was identified as a problem in academic institutions
Summary
Bullying is an important issue in the contemporary workplace (see Höel, Rayner & Cooper, 1999; Rayner & Sheehan, 1999). In the light of the preceding discussion I decided to use a phenomenological approach, based on the work of, Giorgi (1985), to explicate the meaning and experience of workplace bullying from the viewpoint of a group of informants in a South Africa work context. This approach includes the following steps: Identification of the phenomenon to be researched; selection of informants; eliciting first person descriptions (protocols); protocol analysis; theme identification, and data explication. Lewis found that managers were the principle perpetrators of downward bullying, they were in turn, bullied by more senior managers
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