ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES OF WORKPLACE BULLYING IN PAKISTANI ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract

The present research was conducted to determine the perception of experience of workplace bullying, its antecedents and outcomes among employees of Pakistani organizations. More specifically following the theoretical framework of Vartia (2003), this study sought to find out Antecedents (Individual, Group & Organizational) of workplace bullying as well as Outcomes of workplace bullying on individual (perceived stress, general health, & psychological wellbeing) and organizational (job burnout & job satisfaction) level. The study also aimed to test the proposed model of relationship between antecedents, outcomes and workplace bullying. The study further determined the demographic differences (Gender, Marital status, Income level, Educational level & Profession) with reference to workplace bullying. This research comprises of two phases. In phase I, after identification and adaptation of the instruments through committee approach and expert opinion and a pilot study was conducted on a convenient sample of 200 employees from four different professions i.e., (banking, telecommunication, university teachers and doctors). The psychometric properties of instruments and the identification of an initial pattern of relationships among various constructs of the study were established. Negative Act Questionnaire (Einarsen & Rakens, 1997), NEO-Five Factor Inventory (McCrae & Costa, 2004), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), Compliance Scale (Gamian-Wilk, 2013), The Work Environment Scale (WES) xiv (Moos, 1994), The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) (Cohen, Kamark, & Mermelstein, 1983), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) (Goldberg, Gater, Puccinelli, Gureje, & Rutter, 1997), Ryff Scale of Psychological Well-Being (RPWB), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI, Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996), The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) (Weiss, Davis, London, & Lofguist, 1967) were used to measure their corresponding constructs. The results revealed satisfactory indices of psychometric soundness in terms of reliability and confirmatory factor analysis and a pattern of relationship in desired direction. Phase II constituted the main study of this research through which the proposed hypotheses were tested. A convenient sample of 621 employees including men (n=397) and women (n=224) having age range of 22 to 60 (M = 30.34, SD = 5.46) years from different cities (Bhalwal, Sargodha, Lahore, Fasialabad, Mandi Bahauddin, Rawalpindi, Abbottabad, & Islamabad) of the province of Punjab and KPK and the capital area was recruited. A minimum job experience of 1 year and the 16 years of formal education was the inclusion criteria for the participants. SPSS 22 was used for testing the hypotheses of the present research. The results on prevalence of workplace bullying revealed that almost 41% of the sample experienced workplace bullying at different times during the job. Results further revealed that participants reported high on supervisors as the perpetrator of bullying. The analysis on duration of bullying suggests that the perception of experience of bullying was highest in the previous 6 months to 1 year duration. Regression analysis were used to found out the relationship between antecedents and xv bullying and results revealed that workplace bullying was positively related with neuroticism, negative affect, general health, and job burnout while it has a negative relationship with agreeableness, positive affect, compliance, work environment, psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction. Neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, affectivity, compliance and relationship dimension of work environment significantly predicted workplace bullying and both of its forms. Furthermore, results on outcomes of workplace bullying revealed that bullying significantly predicted the general health, psychological wellbeing, job burnout and job satisfaction but perceived stress had non-significant relationship. The findings on testing the proposed model of relationship showed independent predictive relationship of antecedents and outcomes on workplace bullying. It can be concluded that workplace bullying is an important phenomenon at workplace which is triggered by different antecedents working on each level; individual, group, and organizational and this bullying then further leads to different negative outcomes that hinder not only the employees’ performance but also the organizational performance. Implications of the study for employees and suggestion for future research have also been discussed.