Job satisfaction and public service motivation in Australian nurses: the effects of abusive supervision and workplace bullying

Abstract

Workplace mistreatment is common in healthcare, especially among nurses, who may experience mistreatment from different sources, yet must carry out essential, public-facing duties. However, researchers have typically studied forms of mistreatment in isolation. This paper investigates the combined relationship between abusive supervision (i.e., vertical mistreatment) and workplace bullying (i.e., horizontal mistreatment) on job satisfaction and public service motivation among nurses. Drawing from self-determination theory, we examine how experiencing workplace mistreatment can thwart the fulfilment of psychological needs, operationalised as job satisfaction. Experiencing workplace bullying alongside abusive supervision is predicted to worsen this relationship. In turn, nurses are less likely to internalise their organisation’s values, leading to less public service motivation. We tested our hypotheses on 219 Australian public sector nurses via an online survey, with a temporal separation of six weeks. Results suggest that abusive supervision has an indirect negative association with public service motivation, via job satisfaction. Workplace bullying moderated the indirect relationship at high and low levels, though the indirect relationship was stronger at low levels. Our study contributes to a well-rounded understanding of workplace mistreatment, particularly within the context of self-determination theory, and to our understanding of how public service motivation is affected by employees’ social environment.

Keywords:

• Abusive supervision
• workplace bullying
• public service motivation
• workplace mistreatment
• nursing

Disclosure statement

We have no known conflicts of interest to declare.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Stephen Teo upon reasonable request. The data are not publicly available due to that their containing information could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Notes

1 At the most basic level, Vogel and Kroll (2016) found that PSM changes with age and organisational tenure.