Definitions and causative factors of psychological violence in the workplace and their role in the risk assessment of mobbing

A variety of terms are used to determine the different forms of psychological violence in the workplace, such as bullying, mobbing, harassment, psychological harassment, abusive behavior, emotional abuse, workplace aggression. In the relevant literature, in many cases these terms are used as synonyms while in others they indicate different meanings. This creates difficulties in evaluating the risk of psychological violence, since there is no common definition determining its characteristics. This literature review of mobbing evaluation strategies presents the underlying difficulties that influence the reliability and validity of these strategies.