Under Pressure: Mobbing, Otherness, and the Making of a Scapegoat

When Organizational Strain Finds a Target

Mobbing and bullying dynamics in the workplace rarely appear out of nowhere. While hostility and exclusion can occur in virtually any setting where people come together, they tend to surface and escalate in teams and organizations that are already under considerable strain (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2011; Leymann, 1996).

Research on the organizational antecedents of bullying shows that escalation is especially likely in workplaces characterized by poor psychosocial conditions, organizational change, and internal competition (Hoel & Salin, 2003; Zapf, 1999). Typical sources of strain include budget and staff cuts, overwork, existential insecurity, and persistent performance pressure that overloads both individuals and structures (Glambek et al., 2014).

Importantly, the strain that fuels escalation is not only financial or workload-related. Role conflict, being asked to act against one’s values, being silenced when raising concerns, and unresolved interpersonal conflicts are among the conditions associated with bullying because they create chronic tension and identity threats that have nowhere to go (Feijó et al., 2019; Trépanier, Fernet, Austin, & Boudrias, 2016).

Beyond these well-documented risk factors, another source of institutional strain is the erosion of genuine belonging and the rise of workplace loneliness. Chronic social disconnection is a powerful stressor in its own right, affecting not only emotional well-being but also physical health and cognitive performance (Cacioppo & Cacioppo, 2018; Murthy, 2023). The World Health Organization has identified lack of social support and connection as important occupational risk factors. A deficit of belonging can therefore become as stressful as job insecurity or overwork. In hyper-competitive environments, the pressure to fend for oneself can gradually replace a sense of community, further intensifying both individual and collective vulnerability to stress.

Based on this understanding, the present article explores how combined pressures on workload and identity can make groups increasingly “ready” to turn against one particular person, and how institutional conditions, group dynamics, and the biology of stress together shape the making of a scapegoat.

The question, then, is not simply why one person bullies another. A deeper question is what happens when pressure accumulates within a group, and the resulting tension cannot be addressed at the level where it originates.

Why does institutional stress sometimes crystallize in the form of targeted hostility toward one person instead of being addressed at the structural level?

Workplace Bullying and Mobbing as Collective Processes

In the research literature, workplace bullying and mobbing are understood as processes that unfold over time rather than as single incidents. Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, and Cooper (2011) describe workplace bullying as a situation in which an employee is repeatedly, over a prolonged period, exposed to negative acts at work, in a context where it is difficult for that person to defend themselves.

Leymann (1996) uses the term mobbing for a similar pattern and speaks of “psychological terror” at the workplace when hostile and unethical communication is directed systematically against one person, often almost every day and for at least six months, leading to serious psychological and social consequences.

In much of the European tradition, bullying is used as an umbrella term for sustained negative acts carried out by one or a few individuals, whereas mobbing emphasizes the collective dimension of such hostility. It highlights how a wider group or organizational climate can join in and gradually isolate the targeted person (Einarsen et al., 2011; Leymann, 1996; Zapf, 1999).

Both perspectives highlight repetition, a variety of negative acts, and a growing power imbalance that makes effective self-protection increasingly unlikely. Subsequent work has reinforced this picture of bullying and mobbing as gradually escalating patterns of harm, often beginning with what appears to be ordinary conflict and ending in stigmatization, trauma, and exclusion from working life (Einarsen, 1999; Leymann, 1990, 1993, 1996; Zapf & Gross, 2001).

Seen from this perspective, mobbing and bullying are not isolated acts of cruelty. They are social processes that gather force over time within particular organizational climates.

This escalation-focused view can be placed alongside earlier functional accounts that ask how groups as a whole respond to perceived norm deviation and threats to collective functioning. From this perspective, mobbing can be understood as an escalating psychosocial process embedded in wider organizational conditions. This raises a central question: why does institutional stress so often crystallize as targeted hostility toward one person rather than being addressed at the structural level?

One early answer comes from animal behavior research.

From Difference to Otherness

Bilz and the Group’s Readiness to Attack Difference

Bilz (1971) developed his concept of mobbing within a paleoanthropological framework that drew on behavioral research comparing humans and animals. He looked for shared patterns of aggression against group members who stood out. This grounding in ethology, the study of animal behavior, gave his framework a biological starting point before he applied it to human institutions.

One of the central examples Bilz discusses is a 1939 experiment by the German biologist Friedrich Goethe (1911–2003), who studied avian behavior. Goethe marked individual birds and observed what happened when one bird became visibly different from the others. The marked bird was attacked by the group, even though its difference was artificial and posed no actual threat.

Bilz (1971) used this observation to illustrate what he understood as a basic group response to visible deviation. The animal need not have violated a meaningful rule. It only needs to stand out. The significance of the observation lies precisely in this apparent irrationality. The marked bird is not dangerous because of the mark. The mark simply makes it different. The aggression therefore appears to be directed not at an actual threat, but at a conspicuous deviation from the group.

Bilz (1971) extended this logic to human groups. He proposed that mobbing could be understood as a group’s repressive response to perceived deviation from an implicit norm, a form of “Anstoßaggressivität” that can serve the group’s survival even when the trigger itself is trivial.

A person may be more competent, conscientious, sensitive, generous, ambitious, or morally principled than others in the group and become the focus of hostility. The characteristic itself may not be harmful. Under conditions in which conformity, cohesion, or group identity are under strain, however, conspicuous difference can become socially significant. What is different can gradually come to be experienced as problematic.

The implications of this framework are significant. A group may turn against a member who is not actually harmful, but who is perceived as standing apart from an implicit norm. In other words, the group’s perceived need to restore order can override consideration of the individual qualities of the person selected as the target.

Bilz’s (1971) framework shifts attention away from individual perpetrators and victims toward a readiness within the group to respond to perceived deviations. This readiness provides the backdrop for later work that looks more closely at how particular people come to embody tensions the group cannot otherwise resolve.

Carriers of the Group’s Inner Conflict

Ottomeyer’s (2000) work on identity at work picks up a related thread, focusing on effort rather than talent. He describes two opposing positions in relation to work. One pulls back and protects its own energy, avoiding overwork. The other pushes forward, competes, and tries to get ahead. These positions reflect a tension within working life itself: the desire to protect oneself from excessive demands exists alongside the pressure to perform, compete, and advance.

Seen in this light, someone perceived as lazy, or as too eager to please the boss, may come to carry one side of a tension that the wider group also recognizes but may prefer not to acknowledge. The individual can therefore become a visible representation of a conflict that is not located solely within that person. In Bilz’s (1971) terms, they may become the visible symptom of a tension the group cannot otherwise resolve.

Taken together, Bilz (1971) and Ottomeyer (2000) show how groups under strain can turn against members who embody disowned aspects of the group’s own life: difference, sensitivity, withdrawal, ambition, or other qualities that disturb the group’s felt equilibrium, even when the targeted person has done nothing structurally wrong.

Yet these accounts leave an important question open. Why do quiet, unremarkable workers sometimes become targets? Why can someone be singled out simply for being different, even when there is no obvious behavior to explain the aggression? And what happens when the difference is not a deficit, but a quality that actually benefits the group, such as intelligence, competence, creativity, or particular talent?

The Social Construction of “Us” and “Them”

Social identity research going back to Tajfel and Turner (1979) shows that people can discriminate against out-groups once a group boundary exists, even when that boundary is arbitrary, and there is no genuine conflict of interest. Later work on in-group and out-group bias confirms how readily this can occur.

Self-Categorization Theory developed this perspective further by examining how people determine what constitutes a prototypical member of a group (Turner et al., 1987). Groups do not simply distinguish between insiders and outsiders. They also develop implicit expectations about what a typical or legitimate member of the group is supposed to be like. These prototypes can encompass attitudes, behaviors, values, and other characteristics that come to represent what members of the group understand as “people like us.”

The significance for workplace bullying is that difference is not judged in isolation. A person can become conspicuous when they depart from what the group has come to regard as normal, appropriate, or representative of membership. What counts as a deviation, therefore, depends partly on how the group defines its own norms and prototype.

This becomes particularly important when the person who deviates is not an outsider but a member of the group itself. Research on the “black sheep effect” suggests that deviant in-group members may be judged more harshly than comparable out-group members because their behavior can threaten the group’s image and sense of coherence (Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988). The issue is therefore not simply that the person is different. It is that the person is different from within.

A “black sheep” is therefore not necessarily someone who has done something objectively harmful. The person may instead become problematic because their difference is experienced as a threat to the group’s preferred image of itself. This helps explain how a person can remain formally a member of the group while increasingly being treated as though they do not properly belong. The more strongly a group organizes its identity around particular norms, values, or expectations, the more consequential deviations from those expectations can become.

The question therefore moves beyond who belongs and who does not. It becomes a question of what happens psychologically when a group begins to experience one of its own members as “not quite us.”

This is where the concept of otherness becomes important.

Otherness in group dynamics is broad and multifaceted. Individuals may become targets not only because of visible differences such as ethnicity, age, or gender, but also for being too competent, too generous, too principled, too attractive, too quiet, too outspoken, or in any other way conspicuously different.

Research has shown that attributes perceived as setting an individual apart from group norms, whether social, intellectual, moral, or physical, can increase vulnerability, particularly under institutional strain (Einarsen, 2000; Szabó & Bereczkei, 2017). The vulnerability does not necessarily arise from the trait itself. It may arise from the perception of standing apart in a context where conformity and cohesion are under threat.

Under institutional strain, people who are coded as “not quite us,” or who stand out through achievement, generosity, moral conviction, appearance, or other forms of distinction, can more easily be reframed as problems rather than as members. Difference can therefore become socially meaningful even when the characteristic itself is not harmful.

This provides an important bridge between the functional account developed by Bilz (1971), the projection dynamics described by Ottomeyer (2000), and the scapegoating mechanism considered next.

Scapegoating and the Displacement of Conflict

The concept of otherness in group dynamics is broad and multifaceted. Individuals may become targets not only because of visible differences such as ethnicity, age, or gender, but also for being too competent, too generous, too principled, too attractive, too quiet, too outspoken, or in any other way conspicuously different.

Research has shown that attributes perceived as setting an individual apart from group norms, whether social, intellectual, moral, or physical, can increase vulnerability, particularly under institutional strain (Einarsen, 2000; Szabó & Bereczkei, 2017). The vulnerability does not necessarily arise from the trait itself. It may arise from the perception of standing apart in a context where conformity and cohesion are under threat.

This is where scapegoat theory takes the argument one step further. Everyday terms such as “black sheep” and “scapegoat” already imply that group tension and guilt may be shifted onto one individual rather than addressed directly.

Girard (1977) makes this implication explicit. When tension within a group builds without a clear cause, it may be discharged onto one person, chosen less for what they have done than for being available and slightly apart from everyone else. Collective aggression can then organize itself around that figure and subsequently be experienced as a justified response to the person’s alleged danger or guilt.

In later work, Girard (2001) describes the scapegoat mechanism as a recurring pattern in which communities facing complex crises of rivalry and disorder converge on a single victim and misattribute the crisis to that person or subgroup. The victim’s expulsion or destruction is then experienced as restoring peace and order even though the underlying causes have not actually been resolved. The solution is therefore, in Girard’s terms, “wrongly experienced as a solution.”

This distinction matters. “Mobbing” primarily names the relational outcome: who becomes the victim and who becomes the perpetrator. “Scapegoat” and “black sheep,” by contrast, encode a psychological hypothesis about why the aggression occurred: that shared conflict, anxiety, rivalry, or guilt needed somewhere to go.

When considered alongside Bilz (1971) and Ottomeyer (2000), Girard’s (2001) account broadens the original picture. The group does not necessarily need a genuine rule-breaker to police. It may instead find someone who can carry what the group cannot bear to recognize in itself.

From this perspective, the scapegoat becomes more than the object of aggression. The person becomes a carrier of unresolved group tension. This helps explain why the target does not always correspond neatly to the alleged reason for the hostility.

The target may be too successful, too quiet, too ambitious, too generous, too principled, too visible, or simply not sufficiently aligned with the group’s sense of sameness. What matters is not necessarily what the person has done. What matters is what the person comes to represent.

Taken together, these perspectives suggest a movement from difference, to otherness, to projection, to collective targeting. The unresolved tension of the group becomes increasingly organized around one person.

Marked as Other: The Selection of Targets Under Strain

With this mechanism in view, a practical question follows: who, in contemporary workplaces under strain, is most likely to be chosen to carry that unresolved tension?

Contemporary studies, in line with Bilz’s (1971) emphasis on visible difference and Ottomeyer’s (2000) focus on disowned effort and ambition, identify two particularly exposed positions: those marked as outsiders and those marked as conspicuously successful colleagues (Billan, 2023; Feather, 1989, 1994; Rosander & Blomberg, 2022).

Under institutional strain, people who are coded as “not quite us,” or who stand out through achievement, generosity, moral conviction, appearance, or other forms of distinction, can be more easily reframed as problems rather than as members. They can therefore become plausible candidates to carry fears and conflicts that cannot be addressed at the structural level.

The Outsider as Target

Rosander and Blomberg (2022), of Linköping University, found that foreign-born workers in Sweden face more than double the risk of workplace bullying, rising to nearly fourfold for those from culturally dissimilar backgrounds, independent of actual performance or wrongdoing.

Drawing on social identity theory, they describe a mechanism in which, under threat, a group re-sorts itself into “us” and “them.” Once someone is categorized as “them,” aggression against that person can be interpreted as defending the group rather than harming an insider (Rosander & Blomberg, 2022).

This mechanism echoes Bilz’s emphasis on visible difference but adds an identity dimension. The target is treated less as a colleague and more as a representative of an out-group.

Under institutional strain, whether economic, organizational, or symbolic, it can become easier to justify harsh treatment of people who are marked as “not quite us.” This can feed back into the escalating processes described by Leymann (1990, 1993, 1996) and Einarsen (1999). As Leach et al. (2003) demonstrate, shared negative emotions and schadenfreude toward out-group members can further legitimize or encourage aggression.

The outsider can gradually become the carrier of diffuse fears about change, loss, insecurity, and difference that the group cannot address directly. The person is repositioned from a member to a problem.

These patterns of exclusion can also serve practical organizational functions. The removal of a scapegoat may lead to the quiet redistribution of roles, responsibilities, and opportunities among those who remain. In high-strain environments, this can become a covert form of resource wrangling and career advancement, justified by the prevailing narrative about the target’s deficiencies (Duffy, 2009; Glambek et al., 2014; Hoel & Salin, 2003).

The normalization of bullying, mobbing, or scapegoating is deeply influenced by who initiates or endorses such behavior. When individuals with authority, expertise, or high status participate in or tacitly approve of exclusion, their actions are more likely to be interpreted as acceptable, even necessary, by others (Salin, 2003; Ashforth, 1994).

This dynamic can establish powerful norms, making it less likely that bystanders will intervene or question the legitimacy of the targeting. Aggression that might otherwise be condemned can become embedded in the organizational culture, further protecting those who benefit from scapegoating and amplifying its effects across the group (Einarsen et al., 2020).

The Tall Poppy as Target

Outsider status does not always arise from cultural or social difference. Another form of otherness arises from exceptional achievement, capability, ambition, or success.

This dynamic is at the heart of what Feather (1989) termed the “tall poppy syndrome,” in which a conspicuously successful person attracts envy or hostility and is “cut down” to the group’s level.

Feather’s (1989, 1994) research found that people can experience greater satisfaction watching a high achiever fail than watching an average person fail, and that this tendency is strongest among people with lower self-esteem. Billan (2023), CEO of Women of Influence+, extended this into the modern workplace, surveying more than 4,700 working women across 103 countries and finding that 86.8% had experienced tall-poppy dynamics at work, while roughly 60% believed they would be penalized simply for appearing ambitious.

While the tall-poppy phenomenon is most often associated with conspicuous achievement or ambition, the underlying mechanism may apply to many forms of distinction. Individuals may be targeted not only for visible success, but also for exceptional intelligence, creativity, strong moral conviction, generosity, piety, or any other characteristic that departs from group norms.

The vulnerability of gifted individuals to bullying and exclusion is documented in educational settings (Mullet & Rinn, 2015), while qualitative research suggests that these patterns can persist into adulthood, with gifted employees reporting marginalization, misunderstanding, or resentment in the workplace (Jung & Young, 2017; Persson, 2014).

Moral or prosocial distinction can provoke similar responses. Silverman (2009) discusses how individuals with pronounced moral sensitivity or ethical standards may be perceived as threats to group cohesion, leading to their exclusion or disparagement. Szabó and Bereczkei (2017) similarly show that pronounced prosociality or generosity, far from always being celebrated, can sometimes result in social penalties because such behaviors may highlight others’ shortcomings or disrupt implicit expectations of group sameness.

Thus, the “difference” that draws aggression is not limited to background or nationality. It can include any conspicuous characteristic that marks a person as distinct from the group. The tall poppy, like Goethe’s painted bird, may stand out through success, intelligence, creativity, generosity, or moral conviction. Any of these qualities can disrupt the group’s sense of sameness or security.

When group members experience strain, insecurity, or fragile work identities, the presence of a visibly strong, gifted, or principled individual may intensify discomfort, leading to resentment and exclusion. When people’s work identities are already fragile because they feel persistently devalued or invisible, or because their sense of self depends on maintaining an exaggerated image of superiority, the presence of a visibly strong performer may intensify their distress rather than ease it (Berjot et al., 2013; Braithwaite, 2011).

Attacking or undermining the high performer can serve both to protect a shaky identity and to restore a sense of dominance. In Ottomeyer’s terms, the high performer becomes a living reminder of the inner figure that wants to push forward, compete, and get ahead, and thus a plausible carrier of what the group wishes to disown.

Between them, outsider status and tall-poppy visibility help fill a gap left by earlier accounts. The group does not necessarily need a rule-breaker to police. It may only need someone who reads as different enough, in identity or achievement, to absorb its unresolved tension.

Institutional Strain and Mobbing Readiness

To understand why these vulnerabilities can turn into full-scale mobbing rather than remaining private feelings, it is necessary to return to the institutional pressures described at the beginning of this article.

From Bilz’s (1971) perspective, institutional pressures are not neutral background conditions. They form part of a bio-psycho-social model in which groups under strain become more prepared to respond to disturbance by isolating someone. Bilz argued that when institutions face pressure, what might be called “mobbing readiness” rises: the group’s baseline willingness to move from unease about deviation toward active aggression against a member.

This understanding fits with contemporary findings showing that psychosocial stressors at work, such as high demands, role conflict, lack of control, and perceived injustice, are important risk factors for bullying (Feijó et al., 2019). Hershcovis, Reich, and Niven (2015), writing for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, found that job insecurity, high workload, and organizational injustice are strongly associated with both perpetrating and being targeted by bullying.

In other words, the conditions associated with institutional strain are also conditions under which otherness-based and tall-poppy-based targeting may intensify. Institutional strain does not simply increase the number of conflicts. It can change the meaning of difference and success within the group. Under pressure, colleagues who might otherwise be seen as resources because of their skills, sensitivity, or distinct perspectives can more easily be reframed as threats or burdens.

This is where the individual and collective levels of the process begin to meet. Chronic institutional strain affects the environment in which people relate to one another, while prolonged stress also affects the capacities individuals bring to those relationships.

The Stressed Group: When Reflection Gives Way to Reaction

Current work in stress neurobiology helps explain how chronic strain can lower the threshold for reactive behavior by altering the regulation of attention, emotion, and control in the brain (Nolfe et al., 2018).

Acute threat perception activates the amygdala and, through hypothalamic signaling, triggers both the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the sympathetic-adreno-medullary system. Cortisol and catecholamines are released, and attention shifts toward salient threat cues (Chu et al., 2024; Harvard Health Publishing, 2024).

This response evolved for short, acute danger with a clear resolution in fight, flight, or freezing and can be observed in many animal species, including humans.

Animal work by Arnsten (2009, 2015) shows that repeated or uncontrollable stress can lead to dendritic retraction and loss of synapses in neurons of the prefrontal cortex, with corresponding impairments in prefrontal-dependent functions such as working memory and flexible regulation of behavior.

McEwen, Nasca, and Gray (2016) describe a broader shift in structural plasticity in which prefrontal circuits become more vulnerable under chronic stress while limbic regions show stress-related growth. Arnsten (2015) summarizes this shift as a movement “from a reflective to a more reflexive state” (p. 1376), in which rapid, stimulus-bound reactions dominate over slower, reflective regulation.

In organizational terms, chronic strain does not simply make people more anxious. It may also compromise some of the capacities needed for perspective-taking, self-restraint, and deliberate conflict resolution. Under such conditions, colleagues may be more likely to respond quickly and defensively to perceived threats and less able to pause, question group narratives, or intervene when they see someone being unfairly targeted (Kim & Kim, 2023).

Yet, the need for belonging does not disappear when reflective capacity is diminished. If genuine social safety feels unattainable, groups under strain may seek alternative routes to cohesion. One of the most striking and troubling mechanisms is collective schadenfreude: the shared satisfaction in another person’s downfall.

Image via Unsplash by corina ardeleanu @corina

From Individual Targeting to Collective Participation

Research shows that shared negative emotions and schadenfreude toward out-group members can generate a powerful sense of togetherness and can legitimize aggression (Cikara, Botvinick, & Fiske, 2011; Leach et al., 2003). The group’s shared experience of witnessing or participating in another person’s suffering can provide a rapid sense of connection.

When such acts are repeated, each instance of putting someone down may reinforce the group’s shared emotional experience. In social contexts, reinforcement mechanisms can help explain how exclusionary group behavior can become self-sustaining, as members continue to seek the temporary relief or satisfaction associated with shared hostility or derision (Bhanji & Delgado, 2014; Tzavella & Tzavellas, 2021).

The act itself can become a shortcut to belonging. But it comes at the cost of deepening exclusion and amplifying the suffering and stress of the person who has been targeted.

This dynamic is particularly important for understanding mobbing because it helps explain how individuals who might not initiate aggression can nevertheless become participants. Once a group has organized itself around a common target, questioning the legitimacy of the targeting can become psychologically and socially costly.

The shared narrative provides cohesion. The target provides a common point of reference. And the aggression itself can become normalized.

The normalization of bullying, mobbing, or scapegoating is deeply influenced by who initiates or endorses such behavior. When individuals with authority, expertise, or high status participate in or tacitly approve of exclusion, their actions are more likely to be interpreted as acceptable, even necessary, by others (Ashforth, 1994; Salin, 2003).

This dynamic can establish powerful norms, making it less likely that bystanders will intervene or question the legitimacy of the targeting. Aggression that might otherwise be condemned can become embedded in the organizational culture, further protecting those who benefit from scapegoating and amplifying its effects across the group (Einarsen et al., 2020).

This process of normalization means that anyone who stands out, whether through difference, visibility, or excellence, can become vulnerable to group targeting. Leaders or managers, too, may participate in or even initiate such exclusion, especially when high performers are perceived as a threat to their own position, authority, or status.

Defensive Targeting: An Integrative Model

Taken together, the perspectives discussed here suggest a possible sequence.

Institutional strain creates chronic pressure through workload, insecurity, organizational change, role conflict, injustice, identity threat, and loss of belonging. Under these conditions, group cohesion becomes more fragile and sensitivity to difference can increase.

A person who is marked as an outsider, or who stands out through achievement, moral conviction, generosity, intelligence, or another conspicuous quality, becomes more visible against the background of threatened sameness. Social identity processes can create an increasingly meaningful boundary between “us” and “them.”

Otherness then provides a social position from which the individual can be understood differently. The person becomes “not quite us.” What might once have been experienced simply as difference can increasingly be interpreted as a problem, a threat, or a source of disturbance.

Bilz’s (1971) concept of mobbing readiness helps explain the group’s increased readiness to respond to perceived deviations as institutional pressure rises. Ottomeyer’s (2000) account suggests another layer: the target may come to embody an aspect of work identity that the group recognizes but does not want to acknowledge in itself.

Girard’s (1977, 2001) scapegoat mechanism provides a further psychological interpretation. Diffuse conflict, anxiety, rivalry, or guilt becomes concentrated on one person. The group can then experience the target as the problem, and the removal or degradation of that person can be experienced as a restoration of order.

At the same time, chronic stress may reduce reflective capacity and increase reactivity, making it more difficult for individuals to question the group narrative or interrupt the process. The need for belonging, however, remains, and collective hostility can provide a rapid, if maladaptive, form of cohesion.

The result is a convergence of several processes:

institutional pressure → threatened belonging → heightened sensitivity to difference → social categorization → othering → projection and displacement → collective targeting → temporary cohesion → normalization of aggression

The making of a scapegoat is therefore not simply a matter of one person’s malicious choice. It may emerge from the convergence of strained institutions, group-level needs for cohesion, identity dynamics, and stressed nervous systems.

The person who becomes the target may be carrying something the group cannot bear to face collectively.

This does not make the aggression inevitable. Nor does it remove individual responsibility. Rather, it suggests that understanding mobbing requires attention to the level at which the tension originates, not only to the individuals who become its visible carriers.

Implications for Understanding Workplace Bullying

This perspective has implications for how workplace bullying is understood and addressed.

First, it suggests that attention to the individual perpetrator and target, while necessary, is insufficient. If bullying is embedded in institutional strain and group dynamics, intervention cannot focus exclusively on the interpersonal relationship between aggressor and target. The wider organizational conditions also need to be examined.

What pressures are present? What conflicts have remained unresolved? Where are people being asked to act against their values? Where have concerns been silenced? Where has belonging deteriorated? And what happens when someone stands out?

Second, the perspective highlights the importance of distinguishing between difference and wrongdoing. A person may become a target not because they have violated an important norm, but because their presence exposes a difference that the group is struggling to tolerate.

This difference may be cultural, intellectual, moral, interpersonal, or professional. It may even be excellence. The question is therefore not only, “What did the target do?” It is also: “What does this person represent within the group?”

Third, the dynamics described here point toward the importance of psychological safety. When people feel seen, heard, and believed, and when their perspectives are recognized and their identities respected, they are better able to speak up, take risks, and contribute fully (Edmondson, 1999).

Psychological safety is therefore not simply a matter of individual comfort. It is a condition that allows difference to remain difference rather than becoming a threat. For organizations, this matters not only for well-being but also for innovation, adaptability, and sustained performance.

Finally, leadership matters. When leaders misuse power or prioritize their own status over human connection, they can create environments in which voices are silenced, and potential is squandered. When leaders foster genuine connection and recognize the humanity of those around them, they can support both individual potential and collective intelligence.

If the goal is sustained performance and healthy growth, organizations need environments in which identity is affirmed, difference is tolerated, power is used responsibly, and belonging does not depend on finding someone else to exclude.

Conclusion: What Happens When a Group Cannot Bear Its Own Tension?

Workplace mobbing is often described through the behavior of perpetrators and the suffering of targets. But another question deserves equal attention: What happens inside a group when it cannot bear its own tension?

Institutional strain can weaken belonging, increase insecurity, and heighten sensitivity to difference. Under these conditions, a person who stands out may become increasingly visible as an outsider, a problem, a threat, or a symbol of what the group cannot comfortably acknowledge.

The person may be different, successful, gifted, generous, morally sensitive, ambitious, quiet, outspoken, or simply available. What matters is not necessarily the particular characteristic itself, but what the person comes to represent within the group. Under pressure, difference can become increasingly visible, and the individual can gradually become the carrier of tensions that the group cannot otherwise acknowledge.

This is where otherness can become scapegoating. And scapegoating can become mobbing. The process may provide temporary relief. It may create the feeling that something has been resolved. It may even produce a counterfeit sense of belonging through shared hostility.

But the underlying institutional tension remains. The scapegoat may be removed. The problem is not.

Understanding this dynamic does not absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions. Rather, it makes visible the larger system in which those actions become possible, normalized, and sustained.

Sustainable organizational health, therefore, requires more than reducing workloads or asking individuals to behave better. It requires attention to the conditions that create chronic strain, to the ways groups construct insiders and outsiders, to the ways difference is interpreted, and to the ways unresolved conflict can become concentrated in one person.

It requires genuine psychological safety. It requires leadership that can tolerate differences without turning it into a threat. And it requires organizations capable of recognizing their own tension before that tension needs a person to carry it.

Only then can belonging become something other than sameness. Only then can difference remain a source of strength rather than becoming a reason for exclusion. And only then can people bring their full humanity to work without becoming the scapegoat for what the system itself cannot bear to face.

About the Author

Dr. Kerstin Hecker, PhD, is a workplace bullying researcher, depth psychologist, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and holistic counselor. Her work focuses on workplace bullying, covert aggression, abuse of power, relational harm, organizational dynamics, and the effects of chronic stress. She offers online counseling in English and German.

© 2026 Dr. Kerstin Hecker. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any form without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations with proper citation.

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Executive Summary: Under institutional strain, groups may become increasingly intolerant of difference. Certain individuals then become socially marked as “other,” and this otherness can make them available to carry unresolved group tension. Scapegoating provides a mechanism through which diffuse institutional and group-level conflict becomes concentrated on one person.