The art of bullying – a study of workplace bullying as a cultural learning process

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate what role workplace culture plays for the genesis of bullying. It investigates and offers a new approach on how bullying emerges in practice. With an ethnographic approach, this article presents a learning-oriented perspective onworkplace culture, it’s emergence and continuous change. This way of perceiving bullying complements the existing bullying research and challenges the triadic approach to bullying as a phenomenon. The article is based on the fi rst author’s ethnographical fi eldwork within the Danish National hospital. The article contributes to the research field by demonstrating the fundamental role of workplace culture for bullying’s origin, and also reveals new ways of understanding the ambiguous, dynamic ways in which the phenomenon of bullying emerges. Previous research has predominantly had an individually oriented approach, focusing on the roles of the bully, the victim and the bystanders. Thus, this cultural approach to workplace bullying has potentially far-reaching consequences for future strategies for handling and preventing bullying..