Tracing the ferment of workplace violence back to its root causes involves looking into the role of individual behaviour, the interaction of a set of risk factors and the situations presenting the greatest risk. Taken separately, each act of violence requires a complex explanation.

At an individual level, within a given population, it is possible to attribute various probabilities of violence to each member of this population based on their personal characteristics. However, the validity, reliability and accuracy of these probabilities are as yet far from guaranteed. The data available make it possible to estimate in a relatively reliable manner that the risk of workplace violence is high for certain population groups with the following characteristics:

• having had a violent past;
• having had a difficult childhood due to maladjusted parents, a stormy relationship with family and a school life marked by failure;
• having problems with psychotropic substance abuse, especially alcoholism;
• suffering from a serious mental illness, the symptoms of which have neither been correctly diagnosed nor treated with    appropriate therapy;
• being in a situation which is likely to lead to violent acts against oneself or others, such as having access to firearms.

At an individual level, current knowledge does not allow us to predict with sufficient validity, reliability and accuracy whether a given individual from this population group will become violent. The danger of exclusive recourse to a list of characteristics of this type is to wrongly accuse some people of being violent while overlooking those who actually are violent. Moreover, these profiles for detecting personal risks must be used with extreme caution in order to avoid a discriminatory and prejudicial selection process leading to the exclusion of certain groups and certain individuals, in addition to exposing the organization to legal proceedings. When organizations and their employees have legitimate reason to believe that an individual is at risk of becoming violent, they would be well-advised to offer assistance to this person or, if necessary, restrict his access to the workplace. It is therefore wiser to link potential attackers to certain types of roles in the workplace and their interaction with certain traits of the victim, taking into consideration the specificities of the work environment and the situations most likely to present a risk.

Attackers and Victims

The attacker usually fits into one of the following categories: a staff member, a client or customer, or a third party or visitor from outside the organization. The following traits generally describe the victim of workplace violence:

• wearing a uniform, which is perceived very negatively by the attacker,
• affected by the stress of overwork or certain light forms of mental illness leading to misunderstanding or misinterpretation on the part of the person who is attacked,
• lack of experience in resolving difficult problems at work,
• women are more likely than men to be victims of violence but respond less aggressively; also more prone are personality types that tend to be demonstrative, expansive, less flexible or less displomatic, as opposed to the kind of person who tends to be self-effacing in difficult or delicate situations in the workplace.

Work Organization and Management

The confrontation between the attacker and the victim unfolds within the context of a well-defined organization where certain characteristics foster the emergence of violence:

• overcrowded, poorly-ventilated, dirty and noisy premises,
• a lack of precision in the assignment of roles and responsibilities,
• a poorly-distributed workload,
• too many bureaucratic procedures and a lack of decision-making autonomy among staff or with clients,
• a centralized and depersonalized organizational culture, tied to large companies in which the risks associated with management are higher than in small companies,
• a very authoritarian management style or one allowing very little participation, where there is too wide a gap between job design and task performance,
• a work environment where employees and groups of employees are isolated, encouraging mutual suspicion and intentional disregard of various forms of workplace discrimination,
• a lack of job security caused by precarious employment and the whole set of deteriorating working conditions associated with the weakening of unions, globalization and budget cutbacks in the public service

Thus, any prediction of violent acts rests on the careful study of a combination of factors, with each case of organizational violence requiring specific analysis. This, then, is why it is possible but very difficult to predict the possibility of specific acts of workplace violence. On the other hand, in light of recent studies, some situations linked to tasks carry a serious risk of internal or external workplace violence.

The situations which carry the highest risk of external violence are listed as follows:

• Working alone (night-time taxi drivers, investigative journalists and foreign correspondents, service station employees),
• Being in contact with the public (members of the police force, restaurant and hotel personnel and public transportation employees: buslines, railway and subway systems, airlines),
• Handling valuable items and money (private security agencies and retail sales),
• Assisting people in distress and their family and friends (homecare, social services, detoxification centres, emergency services, psychiatric hospitals, senior citizens' homes),
• Working in education (schools in poor neighbourhoods of large cities or in rural and outlying areas),
• Holding a job in particularly vulnerable conditions (child slave labour in sweatshops or in the street, unskilled workers in outlying rural areas and immigrants).

The situations which carry the highest risk of internal violence are tied to events that affect the working conditions of employees and are listed as follows:

•  Recruitment, selection and integration of employees,
• Performance or salary appraisals,
• Applying disciplinary measures including moving staff around, (transferring from one team to another, demoting, suspending, firing, dismissing without notice),
•  Disputes related to compensation for employment injuries,
• Exercising a right or obligation in accordance with various labour laws,
• Whistleblowing with or without the consent of management

Important Notes on Conflicts and Hyperconflicts in the Workplace :

• Conflicts in the workplace are more often negotiated than resolved or are bound to develop into various forms, except where there is a commitment on the part of management to resolve underlying problems in personnel management and the distribution of tasks.
• It is important to broaden the analysis of violence to include overall work organization because conflicts, even when they are subject to negotiation, do not necessarily lead to aggressive acts but they can be the breeding ground or the incubator for such violence.