Workplace Violence

Workplace Violence

Introduction

Workplace violence is danger of violence or violence against the employees or co-workers. Workplace violence can take place at workplace or somewhere else outside the workplace. The workplace violence can include threats, verbal exploitation, homicide and physical attack. Workplace palace violence is one of the main causes of deaths within workplace. Nevertheless, it reveals itself; this violence is of great concern for employees and employers countrywide.

What is Workplace Violence

Workplace violence is an action of violence against property or persons, harassment, intimidation, threats and any other kind of disturbing behavior that affects personal protection at workplace. Workplace violence can involve and affect visitors, employees and contractors. Different types of acts in the working atmosphere can cause or set off workplace violence (i.e. infuriation over penal actions, job loss, and argument by a customer on governing actions, the public member who disagrees with practices or policies. It can also take place as result of domestic violence or hate crimes or incidents (i.e. bigotry and intolerance violence, intention of intimidating someone on the basis of his race, religion, ethnicity, sexual inclination, national basis or disability).

Understanding Workplace Violence

To understand the problem of workplace violence, this piece of work provides a summary of most important issues discussed in the literature. This section particularly addresses two main issues: (1) the type of workplace violence and (2) the common causes and sources of workplace violence. The first issue takes account of introductions of types and categories of workplace violence, whereas the second issue considers workplace violence from social, individual and organizational perspectives. First, we must be familiar that violence in the workplace is categorized into two major categories: internal and external. Internal workplace violence is violence between workers and workers, supervisors and workers, or those who are associated with the organization (private companies or public agencies).

External workplace violence, on the other hand, involves offense committed by people who are not associated with the organization. Though there are several cases of external workplace violence, particularly in the cases against workers and public agencies, most of the reported cases of workplace violence are usually considered as internal violence. Furthermore, the violence taking place in the workplace involves three types: harassment, threats and attacks (Mantell and Albrecht, 1994). Attack relates to the usage of power in opposition to another for the purpose of inflicting harm. Threat is described as an expression of someone's objective to inflict harm. Harassment is related to any conduct deliberate to worry or trouble the victim. From the three types, it is the type of attack, specifically linked with murders of the victim, which draws public and media attention.

Types of Workplace Violence

Criminal Intent

Within this type of violence case, the offender has no genuine relationship to any business or to its employees. Relatively, the violence is accompanying crime, like robbery, trespassing or shoplifting. Terrorism actions also come under this category.

Customer/Client Violence

If the offender has any genuine relationship with business like if that person is the client, customer, inmate, student or patient ...