Disciplining vs mobbing

Hi

I have been through a lot of bullying in recent years and have been switching between horror and curiosity in how maladaptive it exposed me do be. On the one hand, being subjected to bullying, when done by power figures - be it formal or informal - does point to one's incompatibilities with the environment, doesn't it?
On the other, it is when the collective gradually turns against an individual, that the real (ie. much deeper) maladaptiveness gets conceived. My bad experiences with work peers would pull out of me the worst facts, some of which were hands-down not real at all. That is a topic for a different post, but without seeking sympathy, some provocations I was subjected to made me 'confess' - as if on a disfunct auto-pilot - having committed deeds I have never committed.

The question I would like to pose here is this: if one of the prevalent - from what I have seen - ways of disciplining employees is by using other team members do the dirty work of exclusion, bullying and harassment, then where is the border line between acceptable and unacceptable bullying and harassment?

Doesn't using employees' peers to point to their inadequacies and beat them into submission bear resemblance to using mafia by some totalitarian regimes? What do you think?