The Mobbing Encyclopaedia
Bullying; Whistleblowing
The relationship of mobbing to conflict
© Heinz Leymann - file 11320e
As originally understood in the Swedish research carried out since 1982,
mobbing should be viewed as an exaggerated conflict. Mobbing evolves after
a certain time from a conflict, sometimes very quickly, sometimes after
weeks or months, leading to characteristics described in other files in
this homepage. In social psychology, research on aggression and conflicts
is voluminous. Nevertheless, the mobbing phenomenon was not detected by
these efforts, the reason probably being that the social context in which
it develops and is carried out, changes (see ãMobbing
- its course over timeÒ). Another reason is probably that
conflict researchers have investigated many things but have never focused
on the outcomes in terms of the health of the persons involved in the conflict.
Therefore, experiences from "conflict-solving" may not necessarily
be helpful (Zapf et al., 1996).