Strategies for a nonviolent response to perpetrator actions: what can christianity offer to targets of workplace mobbing?

ENThis study sought to identify what strategies Christianity can offer for a morally justifiable, nonviolent response to mobbing actions. A qualitative content analysis of the Gospel of Luke was performed, and Heinz Leymann’s action groups of workplace mobbing were used to create categories. Three strategies of nonviolent response to attacks on communication, personal and professional reputation as well as social exclusion and physical attacks were identified. T heir set consists of active efforts to maintain the observers’ support, refusal to engage in a stubborn and destructive struggle, and cognitive reappraisal and making sense of negative experiences. The possibilities for using these strategies in different situations are discussed, and directions for further research are outlined, enabling us to evaluate the effec-tiveness of millennia-old religious coping practices in cases of workplace mobbing. Keywords: workplace mobbing, non-violence, Christianity, victim, perpetrator. [From the publication]