Bullying in global organizations: A reference point perspective

Michael Harvey, University of Mississippi
Darren Treadway
Joyce Thompson Heames

Abstract

Why does bullying occur in an organization? How will the globalization of an organization facilitate the process and encourage bullying to occur in that organization? What can be done to reduce the level/impact of bullying in an organization that is in transition? These are the focal questions addressed in this paper. Reference Point Theory (RPT) is applied to the bullying phenomena in an effort to illustrate the various reference points that can be used by the bully, the bullied, ‘others’ in the global organizations, as well as the management of the organization. The divergent reference points used by individuals in the organization can encourage bullying to occur and make attempts to reduce the resulting conflict much more difficult to implement. The paper develops a process to reduce the level of bullying during the transition to global organization and to limit the impact of bullying events that do occur in the organization. ©2006 Published by Elsevier Inc.