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1. Introduction
The phenomenon of workplace bullying, a global epidemic (Farmer, 2011), took researchers by storm since its initial studies in the 1990s (Leymann, 1996). It involves two parties, one who exhibits bullying behaviour, while the other experiences victimization. It is referred to as “repeated exposure to unwanted negative acts, be it personal or work-related, and of predominantly psychological nature, and where exists a power imbalance between the protagonists” (Hoel et al., 1999). Research on the phenomenon has unveiled various antecedents that lead to bullying (Baillien et al., 2011; Motsei and Nkomo, 2016; Salin, 2003); of these, “power” occupies a significant space in the literature (Hodson et al., 2006; Hutchinson et al., 2006; Salin, 2003). Hence, the disparity of power between the two parties has been considered as the central problem (Tracy et al., 2006).
The meaning attached to the word “power” may differ based on the context it is being used in. Here, the authors refer to power in terms of resources that one person may have, resulting in influence (French and Raven, 1959; Raven, 1993), over another individual, providing them the liberty to behave and act in a certain way in an organizational setting. In the milieu of workplace bullying, power differences leave little scope for the target to defend themselves, resulting in prolonged hostility (Saunders et al., 2007). Nonetheless, the target may identify different ways to face the perpetrator's power (Karatuna, 2015; D'Cruz et al., 2018) and reduce the imbalance that may result in reduction or cessation of bullying behaviour (Kwan et al., 2016). Thus, the sources of power that the perpetrator(s) exploit and the actions taken by targets are of importance if one is to understand the phenomenon better. Moreover, the perpetrator may not always hold a superior position to the target; hence, the power may not necessarily flow top to down in the hierarchy (Ramely and Ahmad, 2017). This brings to the questions, “what sources of power do perpetrators with non-hierarchical positions, adhere to, to be able to exert bullying behaviour?” and “how the relatively weak individual tackle those power?” Hence, the objective of this paper is to “explore how the targets in public sector organizations chose not to leave the organization...