Dear Professor Hunt,

Until last Friday - when I walked out - I worked for an owner-man- aged building company. The boss was a tyrant who ruled by intimidation and public humiliation. Even senior executives were so frightened of him they would go home via the external fire escape rather than pass his office. This was my first job since graduating: was I unlucky or is such behaviour common?

A recent newspaper article concluded that as many as five million people in the

UK have been bullied at work - defined as when a person is exposed to verbal, physical or psychological aggression from others.

However, before we cry out for action, we must be clear about what we expect to be done about the problem.

Every society and every organisation has its share of bullies. When I worked for a large multinational company, my boss reminded me frequently that he had my career "in the palm of his hand". In today's parlance, was this bullying or simply an introduction to the political realities of career structures, in which the chances of making it to the top diminish the higher your climb the ladder?

Even if it were a mild form of bullying, it illustrates the important fact that it takes two to tango. If we want to understand bullying, we need to stop concentrating on caricatures of the person doing the bullying, or of the person being bullied, or of superficial analyses of context. Instead, we need to understand all three.

Most research concentrates on the perpetrators and tries to understand why some people are prone to be aggressive, abusive bullies. The simple fact is they are just volatile and emotionally immature.

With persistent bullies the most consistent finding is an inability to sense how their victims will feel. They enjoy what they are doing because they believe their victims like what is happening to them, or at least feel it is good for them. Your boss sounds like one of these.

So what do we know about the victims? Studies of bullying at school have shown that the more anxious, insecure and cautious the child, the more likely they are to be bullied. In reacting passively to the bully they present themselves as targets.

However, there is a second class of would-be bullied. These children, who are not insecure and weak, encourage bullying behaviours in others by expressing their concerns in an aggressive and provocative way.

Research into adult bullying has produced similar conclusions, although physical violence is replaced by the more terrifying psychological aggression.

Whether passive or provocative, the bullied play a vital role in attracting their tormentors. Even in your depressing letter, the majority of your former colleagues tolerate the bully. So treating only the bullies is not the answer, as controversial as this may seem.

What about the context? Organisational changes are often blamed for the perceived increase in workplace bullying. Forced by market pressures to re-engineer and downsize, bullies revel in their control over people's lives.

Thus, we might expect those in low-status jobs to be more easily victimised. And indeed, tribunal evidence would suggest that those with power may be easily corrupted and resort to bullying or victimisation.

However, a study in the Academy of Management Journal (June 1999) found no evidence that status was directly related to victimisation. There was no evidence that those up there were less likely to suffer from bullying than those down here.

Little attention has been given to the more recent obsession with performance measurement. At any time, it is possible to assess a person's performance. This constant feedback turns work into a brutal test.

It provides a would-be bully with a weapon that has the sanctity of objectivity. And, conversely, it provides the victim with a measure of failure. Prof Cary Cooper has identified a related form of aggression, which he calls the overloaded bully.

This is a person who is unable to meet performance criteria and so bullies others into getting the work done. This relentless pursuit of targets is a product of performance expectations. It is a survival tactic in a world of uncertainty.

Those who begin to fail on one or two criteria appear to go into a decline that is difficult to reverse. To protect their self-esteem they block out the negative, and present themselves as passive victims. They have what Dr Martin Seligman, the US academic, calls "learnt helplessness".

Its effects can be devastating. If someone knows he or she is failing, they will suffer high levels of stress. Modern performance measurement schemes mean there is public awareness of victims' degree of failure. The more likely the failure, the more anxious we become - and the choice then is either to be a victim or a bully, to fight or take flight.

You took flight. You knew you had a choice. But what of the remaining staff who continue to endure this man's bullying? They have learnt to be helpless.

Your experience also illustrates perfectly why no government legislation will change the bind these people are in. All we can do is try to minimise the underlying causes that separate people from each other.

Someone could blow the whistle, but in an owner-managed business who would listen? Someone could loosen the performance criteria, but how will they convince the owner to agree? That leaves only the third option: the victims can walk out.

I predict that this company will continue until forces greater than the people involved demand a change - a recession, perhaps. You were right to leave. There are many excellent managers who can show you a better way.

John Hunt is professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School and a consultant.