Relationships between stressful work environments and bullying: Results of a large representative study

Abstract

This paper contributes to the relatively sparse knowledge about relationships between stressful work environments and bullying. Relationships between job stressors and leadership behaviour were analysed as possible predictors of bullying at work on the basis of the work environment hypothesis, which states that stressful and poorly organized work environments may give rise to conditions resulting in bullying. Analyses of a representative sample (n=2539) of the Norwegian workforce showed role conflict, interpersonal conflicts, and tyrannical and laissez-faire leadership behaviour to be strongly related to bullying, and that the strength of associations to a high degree differed for various measures of bullying. Support was found for an interactive relationship between decision authority and role conflict at different levels of laissez-faire leadership. Not only targets and bully/targets but also bystanders assessed their work environment more negatively than did non-involved employees, while perpetrators of bullying did not differ significantly from non-involved employees as regards their perception of the work environment. Hence, bullying is likely to prevail in stressful working environments characterized by high levels of interpersonal friction and destructive leadership styles. In addition, bullying is particularly prevalent in situations where the immediate supervisor avoids intervening in and managing such stressful situations.

Keywords:

• Workplace bullying
• work environment hypothesis
• moderation
• job stressors
• leadership behaviour

Acknowledgements

The present project is a collaborative project between the University of Bergen and Statistics Norway, which collected the data. The project was made possible by joint grants from two Norwegian employer associations (the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises and the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities), the Norwegian government (the National Insurance Administration), and their programme FARVE. Thanks to Bengt Oscar Lagerstr⊘m and Maria H⊘stmark of Statistics Norway, and Stig Berge Matthiesen and Morten B. Nielsen at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, for their contribution to the data collection. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable comments.