Extract

Introduction

Human labour is not an ordinary commodity these days, since a labourer has inalienable rights derived from the inherent human dignity. In the sphere of management, the labourer is the most valuable resource of an organization – a human resource. However, a disadvantageous situation existing in the labour market for many years has given rise to an imbalance between the employee and the employer. It is most often employers who impose conditions and requirements on the employees, giving them a privileged position. The omnipresent risk of losing one’s job often makes employees accept the imposed conditions, at the same time giving them little choice. The above-described situation becomes a field for abuse of various kinds.

One of the areas of conflict at the workplace that has been explored intensely and successfully by research is the phenomenon of mobbing. Currently, a great number of heterogeneous definitions of this issue can be found in the literature on the subject. The most frequently used terms are: mobbing, moral harassment, bullying/terrorizing psychological harassment, moral coercion. It is emphasized that the applied terminology reflects the cultural differences of societies, and a focus on different aspects of violence at the workplace shows how complicated this phenomenon is (Di Martino et al., 2003).

This study has used H. Leymann’s interpretation of the phenomenon of mobbing. Defining the concept of mobbing, the author focused on the interaction occurring between the perpetrator and the victim. He formulated mobbing/psychological terror as “unethical...