Description/Overview: Patterns of history and immediate circumstance that are recognizable as ‘milieu’ tend not only to describe context as it exists in its present state, but also to predict the outcomes of specific events occurring within it. Particularly when events are complex, individuals’ understanding of the surrounding milieu serves to significantly influence the ways they describe and address the events occurring therein, constraining or expanding possibilities for problem solving. Workplace bullying is one such complex event, incorporating perpetrators, victims, and bystanders in shifting and long-standing relationships that, historically, have proven to be largely intractable, despite their inherent uneasiness. Few published studies address interventions for workplace bullying. Of those that are published, only a percentage show demonstrable improvement in subsequent bullying behaviors and victim responses. As a consequence, workplace bullying has seen a meteoric rise internationally over the past 20 years, resulting in negative personal and organizational consequences that far outstrip the typically meager behaviors that constitute workplace bullying in the first place. Symposium presenters will address the significance of workplace milieu as a substantial contributor to the occurrence and the consequences of workplace bullying. The symposium comprises three papers that address findings of current studies regarding the character of the workplace milieu itself, the ways the histories of individuals within it shape the milieu’s character, and specific behaviors that can influence the character of the milieu over time. Findings of our program of research suggest that through attention to the milieu, those in the workplace can address historical and current circumstance to strengthen both the ways we deal with bullying when it occurs and the efforts we employ to prevent bullying’s occurrence in the first place.