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The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a Delphi study of trainers in the prevention and safer management of violence in mental health settings that sought to identify and clarify what represents best practice at a European level.

A Delphi method was used to garner the views of a sample of 54 trainers involved in the training of managing violence and aggression on a draft charter of best practice.

A high level of agreement was found with the suggested indicators of best practice but the levels of agreement varied in some key areas and respondents identified a series of omissions from the charter and a number of potential challenges to its implementation.

The sample was restricted to Europe and further research is planned to seek the views of a wider sample.

The charter will provide a reference document for best practice in the interim.

Its implementation will require trainers to consciously identify the ethical implications not just of the content of their training buts its overall approach.

The study is presently unique in its focus and context but further research in this area is underway designed to complement this study.

The purpose for writing this paper is to help develop and apply integrated models and methods of best practice that can prevent and manage workplace incivility (WPI) and workplace violence (WPV).

This approach uses the framework of the public health model to integrate neurobiological, behavioural, organisational, mental health, and educational theory into a holistic framework for the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of WPV. The key concepts built into this model are those of organisational violence (OV), trauma‐informed services, and positive behaviour support (PBS). This approach is further illustrated by case studies from organisations that have successfully implemented safety protocols that demonstrate the effectiveness of such an integrated approach. This method is derived primarily from qualitative data based on the expertise and experience of the authors in the areas of psychiatry, social work research, and instructional implementation as well as reviews of the current literature.

This model suggests that understanding WPI and violence as reactions to a combination of internal and external stressors is key to interrupting these violent responses. Responding to WPV requires that organisations first take responsibility for their own role in generating WPV and recognize the impact of organisationally generated trauma on staff and services users. In this behavioural model, WPV and WPI have functions which require the teaching of replacement behaviours that help individuals to escape from these stresses in ways that do not cause harm to themselves and/or others. Thus, management must instruct staff how to teach and reinforce appropriate social and communicative behaviours in order to replace those behaviours leading to WPV and WPI.

The practical implications of this paper are that it provides human service practitioners with: an understanding of the functions of reactive violence at work; a methodology to identify different types WPI and WPV; a framework to proactively teach violence replacement behaviours, empowering people to address the causative factors in ways that do not cause harm to self and/or others; skills that can be taught to management and staff individually or in group settings, as well as to service users; and implementation models from various organisations that have achieved significant reductions in WPV. Another important outcome demonstrated through the case studies is that significant financial savings can be achieved through reduction of WPI and WPV which may in turn lead to a related improvement in the quality of life for staff and service users through changes in workplace practices. This outcome has implications for organisational practice and theory as well as human services education and training.

One key social implication of the model, if integrated into the company's social responsibility policies and practices, is the potential for improving the quality of life for staff and patients in health care settings as well as employees, customers, and service users in other settings.

The originality shown in this paper is the way the three key concepts of OV, trauma‐informed services, and PBS are built into a public health model to prevent and mitigate WPV. This paper is of particular value to boards of management, organisational directors, supervisors, HR and training departments as well as direct care staff, service providers, and regulatory bodies.

This chapter examines aggression at work perpetrated by individual insiders by bringing together streams of research that have often been examined separately. A comparison of the similarities and differences of aggression toward individuals, such as verbal abuse or physical attack, and aggression toward organizations, such as embezzlement or work slowdowns, is shown to provide important insights about the causes and consequences of workplace aggression. We propose a comprehensive model based on the integration of prior theoretical treatments and empirical findings. The model attempts to offer a framework to systematically examine psychological and organizational mechanisms underlying workplace aggression, and to explain the reasons why workplace violence policies and procedures sometimes fail. A set of research propositions is also suggested to assist in achieving this end in future research.

This outline paper stems from the shared interest of a criminologist and a scholar in business organisation in the problem of responsibility in the large and complex modern corporation. For the criminologist, this has a particular significance in the context of corporate crime; for the student of management, it opens up questions of decision making and control. For both, it raises considerations of business ethics as well as the function of law in regulating business practice. In particular, there is the central question of how an organisation can, per se, be held criminally liable, without the present requirement in English law, of identifying a ‘controlling mind’ Within it.

Disaster inquiries regularly contain a sad litany of what went wrong, procedures bypassed and ignored, and undue risks taken. It is clear in many of these cases that there were individuals in the know, who may have spoken up, but been over‐ruled or silenced. Some more persistent individuals decide to speak up external to the organisation, and hence become whistleblowers. Their efforts, although virtually by definition in the public interest, have not always been well received, certainly by their employers, and the agencies to whom they resorted, while pleased to have received their information, have invariably not reciprocated by offering employment protection, or even upholding confidentiality. Disaster case studies are presented involving a variety of industries from the nuclear power to the petroleum, aircraft, space and oil industries. The stresses on the whistleblower are indicated, one being the controversy remaining over their role, with opposition from some business leaders. The law offers first line protection, although experience in the USA suggests that this is insufficient in itself. In the more unified and compact jurisdiction of the UK, new legislation, coupled with political will, seems likely to produce a more effective regime. Organisations need to internalise whistleblowing as part of their natural systems and procedures, and codes of practice assist in this regard, as long as they are more than window‐dressing. Countries less advanced in their thinking and legislation are more at risk and, given the global consequences of the likes of an environmental disaster, need to be regarded as international pariahs.

This chapter considers how observers can effectively and safely engage with unethical organizational behaviors. Engagement methods need to be aligned with the situational contexts of specific cases. Micro-level individual, meso-level organizational, and macro-level environmental contextual obstacles to effective and safe engagement are considered. Five types of observer ethics engagement methods are considered in the context of specific cases and contextual obstacles. Engagement methods considered are as follows: (1) evocation and framing of dialogic engagement as consistent with the identity, vision, and values of the organization; (2) win–win incentive and ethics networking methods; (3) internal and external whistle-blowing methods; (4) if the observer is in a position of organizational power, top-down forcing methods; and (5) linking of observed unethical behaviors with strong external social movements.