Bullying and ill-treatment: insights from an Irish public sector workplace

This paper explores the experiences of workers in a public sector organization in respect of workplace ill-treatment. The paper is based on 11 interviews which were part of the Irish Workplace Behaviour Study (2018). Workplace ill-treatment, and in particular workplace bullying, has been found to be more prevalent in public sector workplaces. Irish public sector workplaces have taken the brunt of severe austerity measures imposed by successive governments as part of the country's fiscal retrenchment policies between 2008 and 2016. The findings reported in this paper support Salin's (2003) model of 'Enabling, motivating, and precipitating structures', and are considered in the light of psychological contract breach in the context of New Public Management (NPM).