Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidates, or aggressively dominates others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power. Behaviors used to assert such domination can include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion, and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets. Justifications and rationalizations for such behavior sometimes include differences of social class, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, behavior, body language, personality, reputation, lineage, strength, size or ability. If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing. Targets of bullying are also sometimes referred to as victims of bullying. A bullying culture can develop in any context in which human beings interact with each other. This includes school, family, the workplace, home, and neighborhoods. In a 2012 study of male adolescent football players, the strongest predictor was the perception of whether the most influential male in a player's life would approve of the bullying behavior.
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior intended to disturb or upset, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is intentional behavior which is found threatening or disturbing. Sexual harassment refers to persistent and unwanted sexual advances, typically in the workplace, where the consequences of refusing are potentially very disadvantageous to the victim.
Harassment is an action that is meant to or happens to cause discomfort for the victim. Bullying is when one individual, or party, socially degrades the victim either for the purpose of increasing their own self-comfort or for the enjoyment of others.
Unlike the more physical form of school bullying, workplace bullying often takes place within the established rules and policies of the organization and society. Such actions are not necessarily illegal and may not even be against a firm's regulations; however, the damage to the targeted employee and to workplace morale is obvious.
Bullying can occur in nearly any part in or around the school building, though it may occur more frequently in physical education classes and activities, recess, hallways, bathrooms, on school buses and while waiting for buses, and in classes that require group work and/or after school activities. Bullying in school sometimes consists of a group of students taking advantage of or isolating one student in particular and gaining the loyalty of bystanders who want to avoid becoming the next target. These bullies may taunt and tease their target before physically bullying the target. Bystanders may participate or watch, sometimes out of fear of becoming the next target.
Workplace bullying is when one a person or group of people in a workplace single out another person for unreasonable, embarrassing, or intimidating treatment. Usually the bully is a person in a position in authority who feels threatened by the victim, but in some cases the bully is a co-worker who is insecure or immature. Workplace bullying can be the result of a single individual acting as a bully or of a company culture that allows or even encourages this kind of negative behavior.
Bullying and harassment in the workplace are considered serious issues which require employers to be responsible for taking responsible steps in preventing such vice. Some of the actions that may constitute bullying in the workplace include ridiculing or demeaning an individual where they are picked on or set up to fail, victimization, making threats or comments about job security without foundation as well as deliberate undermining of a competent employee by overloading and constant criticism. On the other hand, harassment in the workplace mainly constitutes unwelcome sexual advances which may be in the form