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The purpose of this paper is to extend awareness that workplace bullying impacts on the health of individuals both within and outside the workplace and that there are implications for workplace health management.

The paper contextualises the problem of workplace bullying and workplace health management and introduces the five articles in the special issue.

Workplace health management is becoming more prominent in some organizations and workplace health management, and a corporate culture based on partnership, trust and respect, offers considerable potential to move the agenda forward. Moreover, there appears to be a paucity of knowledge available as to how workplace health management strategies and programmes impact on organizational culture and assembling and sharing such a knowledge base could be a useful step.

Further research is required to extend the studies presented and to address workplace bullying from the perspective of workplace health management.

Research is required to explore the extent to which the potential of workplace health management programmes to impact positively on corporate approaches to bullying and harassment has been realised and how those programmes have influenced corporate culture.

A partnership approach to knowledge creation and sharing has the most potential for successful outcomes and accords closely with the inferred ideals of the Luxembourg Declaration for Workplace Health promotion.

The paper addresses a perceived gap in the literature linking workplace bullying to the impact on individual health and the implications for workplace health management.

This article provides a brief overview of some of the applied approaches being taken in four countries to deal with workplace bullying and serves as a preamble to the articles by Archer, Crawford, Lewis, Sheehan and Zapf in this section. The work undertaken by the Beyond Bullying Association in Australia and that of the Anti Bullying Centre in Dublin is discussed. Swedish legislation that addresses bullying and the ways that employers, unions, university researchers and voluntary sector organisations attempt to deal with bullying in the UK follows. The article concludes by mentioning the likely legal and economic implications for organisations and society.

This article provides a brief overview and commentary on theoretical approaches discussed in the articles by Einarsen, Liefooghe and Olafsson, and Rayner in the theoretical section of this special issue. In highlighting the difficulty in defining bullying, this article suggests that definitional boundaries ought to be all encompassing and open for discussion as a way of further developing the debate about workplace bullying. A discussion of methodological approaches, including those used by the authors in the theoretical section then follows. The article suggests that a collaborative approach between employers and researchers would help further address the problem of workplace bullying.

Within a concept of life‐long learning, the study here reported is framed within the context of the expanding use of education and training in achieving organisational change. The focus of the research study was on one particular organisational education and training intervention and on how individuals experienced the learning and implementing of part of that intervention, namely group process facilitation. Such experiences may best be understood from the perspective of the learners themselves. There were four important factors reported that impinged on the learning process for the participants and that helped them construct new realities: the novelty of the learning environment; the value of flexibility; the value of openness; and the educational value of difference.

This article outlines some of the signs indicating bullying in the workplace as a problem within contemporary organisations. Moreover, using evidence from recent Australian Court cases, the article mentions some of the costs organisations may be faced with if they fail to address the problem. Having identified the problem, the article then suggests some solutions including legislative change and development of more co‐operative workplaces. Such workplaces would deal with the problem in a problem solving, rather than punitive, framework. Development of people’s emotional intelligence skills is suggested as one way to help address the problem within such a framework.

Describes a case study in which the Kolb learning model was used in the implementation and evaluation of a facilitation skills training programme associated with organizational change. Demonstrates the usefulness of experimental learning theory and Kolb′s learning model to facilitator and participants in process evaluation. Achieves evaluation without complex descriptions of learning theory and psychometric instruments; simply relies on the model to guide participants through the learning cycle. Suggests the approach may be used to encourage participants to recognize their learning preferences and understand the importance of exploring the full range of learning activities. To main links between theory and application of facilitation skills, participants kept a journal of their activities and learnings. Describes how journalized comments were plotted on to sectors in the model which described learning outcomes to serves as preliminary feedback of participants′ learning experiences and the programme.

This paper aims to highlight how workplace bullies manipulate services by presenting themselves as victims. In the absence of robust screening and assessment tools to distinguish between bully and victim, personnel staff are at risk of being coerced into perpetuating the abuse of victims. The paper also aims to argue for an in‐depth investigation of the psychological motivations of perpetrators to inform the development of a specialised assessment tool.

The paper contains two short case studies drawn from staff attending a workshop on responding to domestic violence in the workplace. Similarities between the coercive behaviour patterns of the domestic violence perpetrator and the workplace bully were striking. The approach taken to discussing the case studies closely follows the approach used in the assessment of domestic violence perpetrators where controlling behaviours and coercive control are captured.

The case studies used in the paper illustrate the dangers of taking a neutral stance in situations where bullying is ongoing. A lack of clarity about who is doing what to whom allows the bully to use any intervention to further abuse. The important issues of victim safety and abuser accountability are absent from the processes employed by personnel staff in the management of these two cases.

There are limitations in the process and the scale of the project, but the case studies are indicative of wider issues, and point towards the central dilemma faced by personnel departments generally.

The domestic violence field offers many insights into the motivations for abusiveness. This paper draws on those insights and shows how they can be used to think more systematically about accusations of bullying in the workplace. The paper argues for increased caution around accepting the self‐reports of bullies who may be presenting as victims.

This paper focuses attention on the ways in which bullying individuals attempt to coerce services into perpetuating their abusiveness.

This paper aims to evaluate the subjective experience with associated clinical and health effects on workers subjected to persistent harassment in the workplace. The study also attempts to explore an a priori hypothesised personality/clinical effects model of workplace bullying, identifying the relationships between relevant variables using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The sample represents 100 individual psychological assessments conducted by professional psychologists at an Anti‐bullying research and resource centre. The quantitative results are based on robust psychometric inventories. The conceptual models were tested using the software LISREL 8.7.

Results indicate elevated overall psychometric scores on all psychological and physical health inventories. The constructed a priori model was conceived based on grounded theoretical literature which assessed the moderating impact of individual factors such as personality on the severity of clinical effect, thought to be as a result of workplace bullying. Using a strictly confirmatory approach, however, all tested models were not adequate fits.

Results of this study have implications for the prevention and intervention of workplace bullying both of which need to be intensified in order to minimise the physical and psychological ill effects of victimisation in the workplace. One of the key messages of this study is that the severity of the clinical effect may not relate to a person's character, but rather to the traumatic experience of bullying itself. The findings suggest that action is needed at an organizational level as explanations with regards to the intensity of psychological health outcomes may not be found in the constitution of one's personality.

This is a unique study that looks specifically at personality as a potential moderating factor of psychological and physical health in relation to workplace bullying.

Workplace bullying is a prevalent and costly form of abuse influencing women's health. The purpose of this study is to expand knowledge of how women care for their health after experiencing workplace bullying and to explore variation in that process.

A qualitative feminist grounded theory method was used to study a community sample of 40 adult women across three Canadian provinces.

Experiencing workplace bullying causes a disruption in women's health and this was identified as the central problem for women in this study. Women address health disruption using a three‐stage process the authors named “managing disruption” that involves protecting, mobilizing, and rebuilding. Women's efforts to care for health which they define broadly as including control over their lives are influenced by formal and informal support and by personal factors such as past experiences, perception of employability, values and beliefs, and relationship patterns.

Longitudinal study would be useful to understand long‐term consequences and potentially helpful resolutions of workplace bullying. Whether men's perspectives on their experiences are similar could also be explored.

Increasing awareness of what workplace bullying is and how to manage it would contribute to diminishing its occurrence and its impact.

Women need support and resources from workplace and healthcare professionals when they have experienced workplace bullying.

Few studies have explored women's experiences of caring for health during and after bullying. Interestingly, women reported adopting more balanced perspectives on work and life after their bullying experiences.