Workplace bullying: in pursuit of truth in the bully-victim-professional practice triangle

Abstract

Workplace bullying has become a hot topic for discussion in the media and on the workplace training agenda in Australia. Using the framework developed by Foucoult (1986), this paper provides a genealogical investigation, in the form of a case study, of the events that led to the development of a set of guidelines entitled Workplace Bullying: An Employer's Guide, and the accompanying Workplace Bullying: An Employee's Guide, by the Division of Workplace Health and Safety (Queensland) (19980, 1998b). It also examines the response to this move by Australian practitioners. This event is treated as a case of 'truth' production, and is used as an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which practices, such as bullying, are named, invested with therapeutic authority, legitimised, and codified. The genealogical approach pravides a useful critical analytical tool to map the new vocabulary and complexities of the discourse bullying at work (D8W) in the interests of denaturalising the discourse and revealing its limitations. The analysis points to the dangers of uncritically taking aposition In the bully-victim-professional practice triangle. It also points to the need to examine some of the ways in which diverse interests interact in the emergence of 'bullying' as a new truth about contemporary workplaces.