Reconciliation in Workplace Bullying Contexts

The purpose of this article is to discuss reconciliation in workplace bullying contexts. Bullying is a complex and subtle phenomenon that appears in multilayered workplace contexts, which makes reconciliation a controversial issue. What might reconciliation mean in escalated and deeply harmful bullying processes in ordinary workplaces? By discussing this question, I also address the urgent ethical question of justice and the distribution of responsibilities in reconciliatory processes. Drawing from previous research on bullying interventions, primarily focusing on the views of interventions by HR professionals, I trace underlying assumptions about reconciliation and the human beings involved. These tend to be derived from endeavors for financial gain and virtues like efficiency and predictability. As an alternative frame to an individualist approach that seem to be silently operative in the intervention discourse, I seek to explore the ontological imagery of the social body. From there, I elaborate on potential implications of what reconciliation could mean in a workplace bullying context. Resisting the efficiency and predictability of fixed procedures, I suggest organic, social restorative processes of renarration, responsibility, and grace, from within which reconciliation may appear as one among other potential outcomes.