Editorial: The dynamics of workplace violence: emotions, abusive relationships, and response in organizations

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To fully understand the dynamics of workplace violence, this editorial adopts a multilevel analysis framework (Pais et al., 2026). By synthesizing these perspectives, we move toward a comprehensive understanding of workplace violence as a phenomenon that requires intervention at every level of the organizational system. This special issue brings together twelve diverse studies that explore the complex interplay between individual dispositions, relational tensions, and organizational responses to mistreatment.The role of personality and emotional self-regulation is central to understanding workplace dynamics. In their systematic review and meta-analysis, "Dark Triad traits and workplace bullying: a systematic review and meta-analysis of personality, power, and psychosocial safety", Sui, Malik, Tiliopoulos, and Yu highlight that dark personality traits -Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy-are robust predictors of bullying perpetration, with psychopathy showing the strongest link to interpersonal aggression. However, personality is not a fixed risk factor; rather, it interacts dynamically with the environment. As demonstrated by Rosander and Nielsen in "Being nice, outgoing, curious, organized, and calm-protective or eroded by workplace bullying? Reciprocal effects of personality and bullying, and mechanisms to explain the associations", neuroticism has a reciprocal relationship with bullying: it can act as a precursor to mistreatment through interpersonal conflict while also being exacerbated by exposure to bullying through an emotional distress mechanism.The emotional toll of these experiences often leads to significant clinical and occupational consequences. In "Tyrannical leadership predicts psychotropic use over time: a longitudinal study of healthcare workers in Chile", Ansoleaga, Einarsen, and Reyes-Martínez show that tyrannical leadership in high-complexity hospitals doubles the odds of workers using psychotropic medications (anxiolytics, antidepressants, or hypnotics) as a coping mechanism for sustained psychological strain. Furthermore, for junior nurses, workplace bullying severely impairs adaptive performance, a relationship mediated by the depletion of cognitive resources and the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies like expressive suppression, as explored in "The relationship between workplace bullying and adaptive performance in junior nurses: the mediating role of emotion regulation and work engagement" by Du, Tan, Luo, Li, and Wei. Finally, a broader view of psychological health in high-stress roles is provided by Ben Salah, Mickelsson Blomqvist, and Ghazinour in "Crime scene examiners' mental health: a scoping review", which identifies a distinct constellation of stressors for forensic staff, including cumulative trauma and professional invisibility.Workplace mistreatment often manifests through complex relational structures. This issue examines the impact of dual leadership in "Good cop, bad cop? How (in-)consistencies in dual leadership shape employee strain and commitment" by Bartz and Felfe. Their study reveals that consistency in positive leadership is the only pattern that fosters commitment and alleviates strain; the positive influence of a transformational leader is effectively neutralized if a second leader in the hierarchy is abusive.Beyond direct supervisor-subordinate dyads, this issue explores the tripartite relationship involving perpetrators, victims, and third-party witnesses. In "The contingency effects of abusive supervision of coworker on helping behaviors: the relationships among the perpetrator, the victim, and the third party", Sun, Luo, and Zhao find that witnesses are less likely to offer help to abused coworkers when they perceive low similarity with the victim or when they have high perceived support from the abusive supervisor. Similarly, covert behaviors are explored in "Negative workplace gossip and organizational citizenship behavior in the Chinese kindergarten teaching workforce: exploring interpersonal trust as a mediator" by Xu, Feng, and Mao, showing how gossip erodes interpersonal trust, which in turn reduces the willingness of employees to engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Subtle forms of symbolic violence are further examined by Guillem, Cifre, Lorenz, and Algner in "Measuring workplace gender microaggressions in Spain: validation and measurement invariance of the Spanish version of the MIMI-16", which validates a crucial tool for assessing everyday gender-based devaluation that impacts women's occupational health.Organizations play a pivotal role in either constraining or enabling violence through their ethical infrastructure. In "Procedural justice, managerial leadership and gender-based harassment in the workplace: longitudinal cross-lagged associations in a Swedish cohort", Peristera, Paulin, Cedstrand, Johansson, and Nyberg demonstrate that procedural justice and supportive leadership serve as long-term antecedents that reduce the risk of gender-based harassment and being a witness to it.However, this issue identifies a "paradox of moral salience" in "The paradox of moral salience: when ethical leadership amplifies the impact of coworker incivility on workplace cheating behavior" by Feng and Chen. They find that leadership can unintentionally amplify the impact of coworker incivility when leaders promote high moral standards but fail to address unchecked peer incivility; the resulting normative discrepancy provides employees with cognitive justifications to morally disengage, potentially leading to unethical behaviors like workplace cheating.Finally, the issue considers the impact of legal and regulatory shifts in "Topic modeling of workplace bullying discourse following legal regulation in South Korea" by Oh, Kim, Ahn, and Lee. According to their analysis, the introduction of legal frameworks against bullying has caused discursive patterns to become highly procedural. Responses to victimization now predominantly cluster around evidentiary requirements and formal administrative channels, even as the core issue of psychosocial suffering remains an unchanged variable.Taken together, the contributions in this special issue underscore that addressing workplace violence requires a multilevel prevention strategy. Beyond individual resilience or clear policies, organizations must foster environments that prioritize psychosocial safety, ensure leadership alignment, and recognize the subtle, covert nature of emotional and relational abuse. By unpacking these dynamics, we move toward a more comprehensive understanding of how to protect both the integrity of employees and the health of organizations through countries, professions and organizational contexts.