Labour and Industry 22:1/2 August/December (2011) pp. 117-142 THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF WORKPLACE BULLYING AND DISCRIMINATION: RESULTS FROM AN EXPLORATORY STUDY DONNA M. BUTTIGIEG, MELANIE BRYANT, GLENN IS HANLEY AND JIE LIU* The intersection of the concepts of discrimination and bullying has generally been under researched. The little research that is available, however, suggests that there may be three possible relationships between these phenomena: first, that bullying and discrimination are caused by identical factors; second, that bullying is a subset of discriminatory behaviour and third, that they are distinctly different. In this paper we analyse data drawn from interviews with men and women working in three industries: manufacturing, retail and hospitality, all of whom report some adverse experience of bullying/discriminatory behaviour. We interpret these interview data as indicating that there are many common determinants of bullying and discrimination, including difference, power and organisational characteristics. Further, the consequences of these two forms of negative behaviour are similar. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research and calls for common theoretical explanations for these two forms of undesirable behaviour. WORKPLACE BULLYING HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS A PREVALENT PROBLEM IN MANY societies. It has been shown to have significant consequences at individual, organisational and societal levels. At the individual level, the consequences of bullying include physical symptoms (e.g., headaches, stomach problems such as ulcers, sleep problems), psychological symptoms (e.g., stress) and mental disorders (Wilson 1991, Einarsen 1999). These individual consequences vary in severity, but at the extreme have involved victims suiciding * Donna Buttigieg is a Professor of Management in the School of Management and Information Systems at Victoria University; Melanie Bryant is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Business at Charles Sturt University and Jie Liu is a PhD student at the School of Business and Economics at Monash University, Gippsland. Correspondence to: Donna.Buttigieg@vu.edu.au