Workplace bullying and employee outcomes: a moderated mediated model

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between workplace bullying and employee outcomes in a healthcare setting. Drawing on HR process theory, we investigate the mediating role of the perceived effectiveness of implementation of anti-bullying practices on employee outcomes and whether targeted line manager training was a moderator of that relationship. Our multi-level analysis (utilising responses from 1507 employees within 47 hospitals with matched HR Director interviews), finds that the relationship between workplace bullying and employee outcomes is partially mediated by employees’ perceived effective implementation of intended anti-bully practices. The mediated relationship is moderated by targeted line manager training in anti-bullying practices. The mediated moderation model illustrates that it is effective implementation of anti-bullying practices enhanced by targeted training that is required to reduce bullying probabilities and their associated negative employee outcomes. The paper contributes to resource based view of the firm, HR process and human capital theories. The implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• HR process theory
• workplace bullying
• anti-bullying practices
• employee outcomes
• line manager training
• multi-level analysis

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank David Guest for invaluable feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript and Orlagh Reynolds, NUI Galway, for research assistance.

Notes

1. Paper copies of the survey were offered as an option for potential rural respondees who would often have poor internet connections, for those who may have wished to complete the survey during a break at work where internet access would not always be available and for potential respondees who were concerned that the on-line survey could be traced to an individual respondent. In total 12 paper surveys were returned. No biases between the on-line and paper respondents and their responses were found.

2. As the data on work place bullying reported in this paper are employees’ self-report measures, it is recognised that what is analysed is ‘perceived’ work place bullying.

3. Despite the expected presence of anti-bullying policies in health care organisations in Ireland, a survey conducted in 2010 found that 38.5% of nurses reported that they had experienced workplace bullying (McMahon et al., 2013).

4. One possible explanation for only finding partial support for hypothesis 1 is that we were not able to control for the possibility that line managers may have engaged in bullying behaviours either in the past or even in the present. A line manager who bullies is likely to hinder effective implementation. Moreover, employees may perceive that training lacks value if his/her line manager engages/ed in bullying behaviours. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal for highlighting this.