ABSTRACT
Bullying is offensive, abusive, malicious, insulting and/or intimidating behaviour that occurs on more than one occasion. Sometimes a serial bully is bullying more than one person at a time and when, usually, the bully has succeeded in destroying the target, another target is selected and the cycle of bullying behaviour begins all over again. Bullying is also known as mobbing, victimization or le harcèlement moral. These are the terms most commonly employed among researchers and they are almost, although not entirely, interchangeable. Generally, mobbing was considered to have connotations of mental and emotional harassment, whereas a strong element of physical coercion was always included in definitions of bullying. Like bullying and mobbing, harassment is not an isolated incident of conflict in the workplace and several factors characterize it: frequency, length of time over which it takes place and severity of the effects on the target of the behavior.
