Workplace Coercive Control™: A Landmark Term for a Hidden Workplace Reality

Today marks a defining moment in my work.

After years of evidence‑based research, lived experience, and professional analysis, I am formally naming what so many workers have endured in silence:

Workplace Coercive Control™

and

The Workplace Coercive Controller™

These terms are now launched into the public domain.

I want to acknowledge the foundational contribution of Professor Evan Stark, who originally coined coercive control within the context of domestic violence. His work opened the conceptual doorway that now allows us to recognise similar patterns of domination, entrapment, and psychological harm in organisational environments.

My contribution extends this lineage into the workplace, where coercive control manifests through structural, relational, and behavioural patterns that systematically undermine a person’s dignity, autonomy, psychological safety, and professional identity.

Across my research, clear and repeated themes emerged — patterns that are not “difficult personalities” but coercive systems of control embedded in workplace culture.

By naming this, we create:

• Language for what has previously been invisible

• A framework for recognising patterns, not isolated incidents

• A pathway for organisational accountability

• A foundation for future policy, governance, and protection

This is not just a concept.

It is a workplace reality that demands recognition, prevention, and structural response.

Workplace Psychological Coercive Controller™

A person(s) who exerts intentional, harmful, repetitive, and strategic patterned identity‑restricting and presence‑controlling psychological interference, exploitation, and violation. This is carried out through surveillance, policing, entrapment, and covert, deceitful, underhanded behaviours within a professional environment. These behaviours are often reinforced by organisational failure, systemic complicity, bystander inaction, and group violence (mobbing), enabling career‑ending, health‑impacting, and trauma‑inducing harm.

The Silence of Violence. We must make the invisible visible.

Workplace Coercive Control™

A patterned, intentional, and strategic system of psychological domination within a professional environment, designed to restrict a person’s voice, identity, autonomy, presence, and professional agency. It is enacted through surveillance, policing, containment, manipulation, exclusion, entrapment, and covert or deceitful behaviours that create fear, dependency, and disorientation. Workplace Coercive Control™ is reinforced by organisational failure, systemic complicity, bystander inaction, and group violence (mobbing), resulting in career‑limiting, health‑impacting, and trauma‑inducing harm.

It is the silent architecture of workplace violence — and naming it makes the invisible visible.

My work continues — and today, it becomes public.

Judith Carmody

Founder, Leadership in Workplace Wellbeing & Safety

Originator of Psychological Intelligence™

Advancing language, frameworks, and protections for psychological safety in the workplace

This post is for information and awareness purposes only. Anyone experiencing psychological distress or workplace‑related harm should seek support from a qualified clinical or mental‑health professional.

All terms, definitions, and conceptual frameworks in this post — including Workplace Coercive Control™ and Workplace Psychological Coercive Controller™ — are original work and are protected by copyright. Any reproduction, adaptation, or use must acknowledge the author, Judith Carmody.

First published by Judith Carmody on Wix, and LinkedIn, 25 February 2026.