The causes and consequences of workplace bullying and discrimination: results from an exploratory study

The intersection of the concepts of discrimination and bullying has generally been under researched. The little research that is available, however, suggests that there may be three possible relationships between these phenomena: first, that bullying and discrimination are caused by identical factors; second, that bullying is a subset of discriminatory behaviour and third, that they are distinctly different. In this paper we analyse data drawn from interviews with men and women working in three industries: manufacturing, retail and hospitality, all of whom report some adverse experience of bullying/discriminatory behaviour. We interpret these interview data as indicating that there are many common determinants of bullying and discrimination, including difference, power and organisational characteristics. Further, the consequences of these two forms of negative behaviour are similar. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research and calls for common theoretical explanations for these two forms of undesirable behaviour.