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Workplace abuse, interpersonal mistreatment that occurs within the victim’s work environment, has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In this chapter, we argue that problems with the conceptualization and measurement of workplace abuse have thwarted scientific progress. We identify two needs that we believe are especially pressing: (a) the need to consider the construct breadth of workplace abuse scales and (b) the need to test whether the measures of various types of workplace abuse effectively capture the unique qualities of the constructs they purport to assess. To guide our discussion of these issues, we conducted a review of the item content of several workplace abuse measures. We offer suggestions for addressing these and other conceptualization and measurement issues, and we discuss the possible implications of these issues on the study of the hypothesized predictors and consequences of workplace abuse.

This paper offers a synopsis of workplace cyber abuse, identifying patterns of and responses to cyber abuse, as well as barriers to reporting and successful organisational intervention.

Using a pragmatic research paradigm, quantitative and qualitative survey data were collected from 205 targets of cyber abuse in New Zealand.

Nearly half of all respondents experienced more than one form of cyber abuse, with gendered patterns emerging. Workplace cyber abuse also frequently went unreported for varying reasons. Based on the descriptive analyses, four key challenges for the management of cyber abuse are identified: (1) multiple and gendered patterns of cyber abuse, (2) cyber abuse across organisational boundaries, (3) non-reporting and underreporting and (4) ineffective (or lack of) organisational interventions.

Implications for human resource management (HRM) and line managers include adopting a preventative approach to workplace cyber abuse by implementing clear policies, guidelines and resources to deal with cyber abuse, clarifying the boundaries of “workplace” cyber abuse and considering organisational protection measures for non-standard and vulnerable workers.

Unique challenges with workplace cyber abuse emphasise the need for a coordinated, multilevel intervention approach involving organisations, policymakers, online platforms and academics.

This study provides an important overview of existing approaches to the management of workplace cyber abuse as well as a foundation upon which to base further research exploring good practice in its prevention and intervention and much-needed theoretical development.

The purpose of this study is to investigate foodservice industry employees’ experiences and perceptions related to substance abuse prevention measures in the workplace.

A qualitative approach was used for this foundational study, and data collection occurred by conducting in-depth interviews with 30 foodservice employees.

Participants reported that, in their perceptions, substance abuse prevention measures were virtually non-existent at their places of employment. The few participants that were aware of such policies indicated that they had never seen the policy actually enforced.

The results of this exploratory study suggest that foodservice employees may not be receiving adequate messages about workplace substance abuse prevention policies nor are they developing an adequate awareness of such policies. Further, where such policies are in place, they may not being adequately enforced, implying negligent business practices. Failure to display a presence and communication of workplace substance abuse policies and prevention efforts for this potentially high-risk population is both organizationally and socially irresponsible. Suggestions for the implementation of such harm reduction strategies are also provided, as is a call for further research conducted in a quantifiable method to offer more generalizable results.

No previous study has investigated employee awareness of substance abuse policies and prevention measures or harm reduction strategies in the foodservice workplace. This study provides a step toward understanding foodservice employee substance abuse and prevention that was previously lacking in the literature.

This study seeks to synthesize theories from communication, psychology and criminology to examine the factors that influence the two most popular topics in industry – internet abuse and addiction at the workplace.

The survey results of 351 responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses and research model using structural equation modeling. Data were collected in Southern Science Park in Taiwan.

It was found that personality factors such as locus of control and self‐esteem significantly influence employees' internet addictions; and internet addiction significantly impacts employees' internet abuse at the workplace.

Employers should pay special attention to employees' personalities because they play important roles in internet addiction and internet abuse. Also a good internet policy will be useful especially to a panoptic working environment, which is becoming popular.

This study provides a comprehensive theoretical foundation to better understand the two controversial issues in industry. The empirical study validates the important theories of locus of control, self‐esteem, use and gratification, control, and containment in workplace surveillance and deviant behavior research.

This paper seeks to overview the issues, concerns and challenges relating to internet abuse and internet addiction in the workplace.

Using psychological literature, the paper outlines a number of important and inter‐related areas including brief overviews of internet abuse, and the most extreme form of internet abuse in the workplace (i.e. internet addiction).

The paper reveals that internet abuse is a relatively neglected area of research and that internet abuse is a potentially serious cause of concern for employers. It also highlights that there are many different kinds of internet abuse in the workplace (e.g. cybersexual internet abuse, and online friendship/relationship abuse, internet activity abuse, online information abuse, criminal internet abuse). It is concluded that internet abuse has the potential to be a serious occupational issue.

The empirical base for the paper was based on a relatively small number of peer‐reviewed papers and relies heavily on the author's own work in the area.

Using the findings of the psychological literature, some guidance for managers on the issue of internet abuse in the workplace are presented.

Research on internet abuse and internet addiction is sparse and there is very little in the empirical literature concerning implications internet abuse in the workplace.

The appalling abuse healthcare workers have endured from patients is long documented in the popular press and social media. Less explored in the healthcare management literature is workplace abuse that professional nurses experience from their coworkers.

The authors use text-based first-hand accounts from nurses posting on Reddit (N = 75) to better understand the types and context of abusive acts endured by their coworkers in the contemporary healthcare setting. Each account is content analyzed using two raters, and thematic analysis is utilized to summarize findings.

Findings indicate that nurse workplace abuse frequently targets new entrants to a work unit (e.g. recent grads), typically is ongoing, takes verbal and nonverbal forms, mainly stems from coworkers (i.e. lateral mistreatment), and frequently takes place in front of other coworkers, mainly in hospital settings.

By applying the lens of mindfulness, healthcare organizations can transform these harmful interactions within the nursing profession. The authors offer administrators and frontline workers practical implications for mitigating workplace abuse, including reshaping the culture, bystander interventions and explicit leadership support.

First-hand accounts from nurses in the frontlines of healthcare provide a rich voice that reveals the reality of ongoing verbal and nonverbal peer abuse in hospitals and healthcare settings.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of targets’ experiences of cyberbullying on online labour markets (OLMs). In addition to highlighting the link between targets’ coping and power and control, the paper compares conventional and digital workplaces.

The method of critical hermeneutic phenomenology is used in the inquiry, bringing political and applied dimensions into the study. Targets’ lived experiences, developed as case studies, were explored via conversational interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken ideographically, followed by ideology-critique at a nomothetic level. Adopting the psychological/behavioural lens of coping theory, ideology-critique identified micro-level schemas and macro-level ideologies that perpetuate target disenfranchisement. Critical hermeneutic phenomenology illuminates the mutuality between individual and social processes, opening new doors to address power inequities through emancipation.

Hermeneutic phenomenology uncovered the core theme of “pursuing holistic and long-term well-being”, capturing targets’ attempts at working through their experiences of bullying without jeopardising their position on the OLM. Ideology-critique went beyond highlighting problem-focussed and emotion-focussed coping strategies that empowered targets to indicate how participants’ mindsets, anchored in ongoing circumstantial discourses and long-standing social cognitions, inhibited them from questioning the status quo and exploring alternative coping strategies like legislation and collectivisation, thereby curbing their agency. The findings were theorised in terms of power and control vis-à-vis the unique attributes of workplace cyberbullying, comparing and contrasting conventional and virtual workplaces.

The inquiry is limited to the Upwork platform. Including other OLMs will enhance theoretical generalisability.

The study feeds into praxis by alerting digital workers in general and targets in particular about their circumstances, setting the stage for mobilisation.

The study makes several pioneering contributions. First, it reports the first empirical inquiry examining bullying in digital workplaces, importantly, also extending knowledge on cyberbullying across conventional versus digital workplaces. Moreover, OLM research on abuse and harassment has not been undertaken so far. Second, methodologically, the inquiry illustrates the combination of hermeneutic phenomenology with ideology-critique, taking the rare steps of joining ontological perspectives conventionally viewed as divergent and of incorporating a largely neglected micro-level focus into ideology-critique. Third, it furthers theoretical insights into power and control in workplace bullying while drawing links with coping.

Based on the social exchange theory and the reactance theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of workplace abuse from two sources. The study explores the linkage between abusive supervision and co-worker abuse on the targeted employee’s organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior and intention to quit as mediated by procedural justice. Furthermore, this study extends understanding workplace abuse consequences by investigating its effects on organizational citizenship behavior directed to individuals and organizational citizenship behavior directed to the organization.

To test the proposed hypotheses, a cross-sectional research design was used. The sample comprised 500 employees working in various private and public sector organizations in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Using a split-sample approach, mediation analyses were performed on the test and validation samples.

The research results showed that procedural justice mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and affective and normative commitment, organizational citizenship behavior directed to individuals and intention to quit. Procedural justice was found to mediate the relationship between co-worker abuse and affective and normative commitment, and intention to quit.

This study extends previous academic studies on workplace abuse by comparing the effects of abusive supervision and the lesser researched source of co-worker abuse on the targeted employee’s organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior and intention to quit. It also reports on the effects of each source on an employee’s organizational citizenship behavior directed to individuals and organizational citizenship behavior directed to the organization, as there is limited empirical research within the workplace abuse literate on these two dimensions.

The chapter elaborates how organizational governance can optimally address workplace bullying, a synergy possible because organizational governance seeks to promote ethical functioning while workplace bullying is considered an unethical behavior. Through its suggestions, the chapter aims at furthering employee dignity and well-being, cohering with international calls for human rights at work.

A review of two literatures was conducted: (a) workplace bullying differentiated on the basis of its situatedness and level into internal bullying – of an interpersonal and depersonalized nature – and external bullying; and (b) organizational governance including its theoretical perspectives, especially the societal lens, and international, national, and firm codes.

Several organizational governance measures at institutional level – both international and national in scope – and at firm level are proposed to deal with varieties of workplace bullying encompassing primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Accordingly, a shift in organizational effectiveness from goal-based models to process-oriented frameworks so that economic and non-economic objectives are balanced, following the stakeholder approach, is advocated. The political dynamics involved in such an initiative are alluded to.

Application, drawing on secondary rather than primary data, is the essential thrust of the chapter, with recommendations anchored in organizational governance, particularly its societal perspective, conceptualized to address workplace bullying in a holistic manner.

First, despite the clear relevance of organizational governance to workplace bullying, the prospect of interventions from this standpoint has never been previously explored. Second, the term “varieties of workplace bullying” is propounded to capture the different types of emotional abuse at work known so far.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effects of social competencies, specifically, political skill, self‐monitoring and emotional intelligence, on the workplace conflict‐abusive behavior relationship.

The study utilized data collected from graduate and undergraduate students majoring in psychology, management, human relations and social work who were recruited from two mid‐sized mid‐western universities. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to test the study hypotheses.

Results indicated that interpersonal conflict in the workplace is associated with employee engagement in counterproductive work behaviors. Results also suggested that social competencies interacted with interpersonal conflict to predict the likelihood of abusing others at work. Politically skilled workers and high self‐monitors were more likely to engage in abusive behaviors when experiencing high levels of interpersonal workplace conflict.

The study is the first to show that certain social competencies may actually have negative ramifications in the workplace. Specifically, individuals who are politically skilled and/or high self‐monitors are more likely to abuse others when they themselves experience interpersonal conflict.