How to Identify Workplace Bullying. A Case Study Based on Judgement from the Norwegian Court of Appeal

Abstract

Workplace bullying has many labels, but no generally accepted definition exists. The purpose of this article is to find which criteria that a court did or did not use for identifying the phenomenon. The present text analyses focuses on one selected judgement from the Norwegian Appeal Court. Here the court dismissed the employer’s appeal concerning its liability for damages, but also the employee’s claims regarding satisfaction and permanent disability. The findings show that the court viewed the employee’s allegations as a long-lasting conflict and only some recent fragmented episodes relevant for his claim. By ignoring bullying definitions requiring minimum frequency and duration, the court could still conclude that his superiors had overstepped acceptable behavioural limits. However, if the court had emphasised the victim’s powerlessness or perpetrators’ intent, these definitional criteria might have strengthened the employee’s case further. The article highlights the intricate nature of bullying. Thus, the court had good reasons to evade disputed definitional criteria by using a common sense evaluation of episodes. Nevertheless, this practice gives unclear feedback to the workplaces as to what laws and regulations actually require in these disputes. The article discusses alternative ways of identifying bullying from traces of patterns found in the transcript.