Percepção sobre assédio moral para servidores universitários: da prática hostil a consequência da violência.

In the last decades, the theme of workplace bullying has gained visibility, although is still often no misunderstanding or misinterpretation of its concept and characteristics. This article aims to analyze the perception of teacher’s and technical-administrative employees, from a Federal University in southern Brazil, about the characterization workplace bullying. The research was classified as mixed approach and descriptive, whose information was collected through a survey (214 responses) and 12 interviews, and analyzed using descriptive statistics and content analysis, respectively. It was observed that the participants define workplace bullying in two ways: primarily by hostile practice (disrespect; abuse; coercion; violence; embarrassment); and the consequence/effect it can provide (humiliation; shame; fear; anguish; low self-esteem; anger). Among the interviewees, only two mentioned in their verbalizations two important elements that characterize workplace bullying, the frequency and duration, which shows limited knowledge about the problem.