ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a snapshot of Australia as a country, its cultural context, and findings to date relating to negative behaviours in the workplace. Workplaces in Australia are multicultural; characterised by diverse value systems, providing different lenses through which interpersonal interactions are experienced, perceived and interpreted. This diversity at times leads to dissonance and conflict at work. Australian research on workplace abuse, incivility and bullying is fragmented. The Australian workplace is complex and at times contradictory. Informality is common, and it is often the cases that people at all levels in an organisation address each other by given rather than family names or titles. Research into workplace abuse, incivility and bullying in Australia has been sporadic, scattered and diverse. Recent findings from empirical work conducted in a variety of different sectors in Australia leads to the conclusion that there are inherent abuse, incivility and bullying issues in Australian workplaces needing attention.