Making Sense of Workplace Bullying: A Narrative Inquiry into Lived Experiences

This qualitative narrative inquiry study explores how individuals who experienced workplace bullying made sense of their experiences and what their stories revealed about organizational culture and response. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant-created artwork, the study examines how targets interpreted what was happening to them, what it meant about themselves, and what it revealed about the organizations in which they worked. The findings show that workplace bullying was not experienced only as harmful interpersonal behavior, but as a process shaped by organizational culture, organizational response, and the silence or support of others. Participants described workplace bullying as embedded in broader organizational conditions, including authoritative and non-accountable leadership cultures, clique-based and favoritism-driven environments, minimizing responses, and systems that existed on paper but often failed in practice. The findings also suggest that harm deepened not only through bullying behavior itself, but through institutional abandonment, misrecognition, and loss of trust in the organization. Among participants in public-serving roles, workplace bullying was described as affecting not only employees, but also, in some cases, service quality, safety, and ultimately public trust. This study contributes to workplace bullying research by showing how targets’ lived experiences illuminate the organizational conditions that shape harm, sensemaking, and response. It also offers implications for organizational accountability, duty of care, training, and future research on workplace bullying, trust, and public institutions.