Search Results (145)

Retail service workers face complex occupational demands across psychosocial, environmental, and physical domains; however, integrated multidomain workload assessments remain limited. A cross-sectional study among 253 retail workers used the Find My Stress Progressive Web Application (PWA)—a digital tool assessing subjective workload (Subjective Workload Index; SWI), psychosocial factors, environmental discomfort, musculoskeletal symptoms, and handgrip strength. Hierarchical multiple regression identified four significant SWI predictors: postural difficulty (β = 0.176, p = 0.012), workplace bullying (β = 0.175, p = 0.008), task duration (β = −0.179, p = 0.004), and air quality (β = 0.171, p = 0.011; Adjusted R² = 0.199, ΔR² = 0.227, p < 0.001; VIF: 1.03–1.57). Grip strength was retained as a functional capacity indicator. Sex-stratified analyses revealed distinct risk profiles: postural difficulty and task duration predicted SWI in men (Adjusted R² = 0.224); workplace bullying was the sole predictor in women (Adjusted R² = 0.170). The PWA demonstrated excellent reliability (α = 0.97) and usability (87%; n = 359). The Find My Stress PWA provides a scalable platform for multidomain stress screening. Integrated ergonomic, organisational, and environmental interventions guided by digital screening offer targeted strategies for reducing occupational workload burden in retail settings. Full article

The objective of this research was to examine the effects of sexual and generalized harassment in the workplace on risk for all-cause mortality in a sample (n = 1745) originally drawn from a university workplace and followed over a 24-year period after baseline. Eleven timepoints of data on self-reported workplace harassment were collected between October 1996 and February 2021, at time intervals ranging from one year to 13 years, and linked to mortality data (n = 249 deaths) from the National Death Index through December 2021. We used proportional hazards modeling to examine the risk for all-cause mortality associated with workplace harassment (as measured by a modified version of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire and the Generalized Workplace Harassment Questionnaire) occurring in the previous time period. We also examined differential risk by gender for White and Black study participants. In fully adjusted models, experiencing generalized harassment (GH) was associated with significantly increased hazard of mortality at the next time point for White women (HR = 1.03, p < 0.01). Experiencing sexual harassment (SH) was associated with a trend-level increase in the hazard of next-time-point mortality for Black women (HR = 1.05, p = 0.09). Neither SH nor GH was associated with increased hazard of mortality for men. Workplace interventions to address harassment, stronger enforcement of sexual harassment policy and law, and enactment of policy and law to prevent generalized harassment and bullying may contribute to the reduction of all-cause mortality among working women. Full article

The persistently high prevalence of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in higher education institutions is a well established phenomenon, as is the inadequacy of institutional responses and the silencing of those who aim or attempt to report it. Drawing on Ahmed’s concept of ‘non-performativity’, ‘institutional speech acts that do not bring into effect what they name’, this paper argues that the non-performativity of anti-bullying and harassment policy is an exercise of power, consistent with Agócs concept of institutionalised resistance. Reporting misconduct is intentionally transformational, but seen as a threat to powerful organisational actors, who exercise institutional power to enact procedures in such a way that victim-survivors are unvoiced and tricked into ‘reluctant acquiescence’ with adverse consequences on their personal and occupational health. We employ documentary analysis to critique policies and procedures for GBVH in Irish universities, and specifically how institutional power is exercised through policy documents. The analysis is based on ten pseudonymised universities, rendering a sample size of 23 documents, pertaining to GBVH for staff. We find that the tone and language employed in policies, and the way in which the informal and formal approaches in anti-bullying and harassment policies frame the problem, serve the interests of the institution. Confidentiality clauses, the framing of the problem as an individualistic, incident-based problem, to be resolved case-by-case, and quasi-legal processes facilitate non-performativity, preserving institutional power and the status quo. From a public health perspective such inertia undermines efforts to prevent harm and promote workplace wellbeing. Meaningful reform will require that HEIs employ alternative tools capable of unsettling these entrenched institutional arrangements and to adopt alternative, proactive tools that prioritise accountability, transparency, prevention and health gain. We suggest new tools in the form of victim-centred, trauma-informed, remediation- and restorative-based approaches. Full article

Background: Workplace victimization is a form of repeated and systematic psychological violence that can severely affect both mental and physical health. From a psychological perspective, it impacts mood states, defense mechanisms, and personality functioning. Methods: This cross-sectional study investigated the psychological and behavioural correlates of workplace victimization in a sample of 33 workers from various professional sectors, using a multidimensional assessment including standardized measures of personality traits, mood states, and defense mechanisms. Results: The MMPI-2 profile revealed elevated scores in Hypochondriasis (Hs: 72.00), Depression (D: 70.21), Hysteria (Hy: 67.61), and Paranoia (Pa: 68.76), indicating somatic symptoms, depressive features, and suspiciousness. The POMS showed increased Tension–Anxiety (T: 65.06), Depression–Dejection (D: 68.21), Anger–Hostility (A: 68.15), and Fatigue–Inertia (F: 65.24), alongside reduced Vigor–Activity (V: 43.18). The DMI analysis highlighted a high Reversal score (REV: 65.91), suggesting a predominant use of defense mechanisms such as altruism and idealization to cope with distress. Conclusions: In this selected sample of adults referred for psychological evaluation for suspected or documented workplace victimization, participants showed a clinically relevant psychological burden, including depressive symptoms, somatic concerns, Anger–Hostility, fatigue, reduced vigor, and specific defensive patterns. Given the cross-sectional design, small sample size, and absence of a control group, these findings should be interpreted as preliminary and cannot establish causality or the specificity of this profile to workplace victimization. Full article

This study employs a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design to explore organizational awareness of workplace bullying in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, from the perspective of HR managers. Quantitative data were collected using the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) administered to 171 employees across several organizations and analyzed descriptively. These findings were subsequently used as a contextual reference point in qualitative in-depth interviews with nine HR managers, during which aggregated results were discussed to explore interpretations of workplace bullying prevalence and organizational responses. Analysis suggests that 91.2% (n = 156) of participants reported exposure to severe bullying at their workplaces within the given time period of 6 months, with 60.2% of respondents endorsing being bullied “from time to time” based on a stand-alone direct question. The qualitative analysis revealed 2 main themes: (1) Workplace bullying is often unrecognized, misinterpreted, harming employees and organizations, and (2) Managers expect employees to resolve conflicts, denying organizational responsibility for bullying. The implications and context of the findings are discussed. Full article

This study examines workplace bullying within the middle-management tier of a large Gauteng-based retail organisation in South Africa, with a focus on structural organisational pressures and perceptual differences among managers. While traditional research often emphasises individual personality traits or victim demographics, this study explores how organisational conditions—particularly the “middle management squeeze” and performance-driven Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)—are reflected in workplace behaviours. Grounded in a positivist paradigm, a quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among a probability-based sample of 253 retail managers. Data were collected using the Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ-22) and analysed using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and nonparametric inferential tests. The findings indicate that task-related negative acts, such as micromanagement (M = 2.00) and persistent monitoring (M = 1.87), are frequently experienced. EFA identified two dimensions—General Harassment and Managerial Control—accounting for 62% of the total variance. Inferential results show that perceptions of General Harassment differ significantly across educational groups (p = 0.0268), whereas perceptions of Managerial Control remain consistent (p = 0.3378). These findings indicate that social forms of incivility are interpreted differently across educational cohorts, while task-related managerial practices are widely normalised. The study highlights the importance of understanding workplace bullying as both a structural and perceptual phenomenon and underscores the need for organisational interventions that address systemic pressures rather than relying solely on individual-level approaches. Full article

Background: Workplace bullying constitutes a persistent psychosocial risk in public service settings, where hierarchical structures and limited exit opportunities may intensify employees’ psychological strain. Although previous research has documented associations between workplace bullying and burnout, less is known about the psychological processes through which bullying translates into emotional exhaustion and the contextual conditions under which these processes are activated, particularly in public sector contexts. Method: This study used survey data from 234 public service employees working in administrative, educational, and non-clinical healthcare institutions across three major cities in Türkiye (Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir). Participants who were frequently exposed to workplace bullying were selected to examine the detrimental cycle that victims experience. A moderated mediation model (PROCESS Model 7) was tested to examine emotion-focused coping as a mediating mechanism between workplace bullying and burnout, operationalized through emotional exhaustion, and to assess whether this indirect effect was conditional on perceived bystander silence. Results: Findings indicated that workplace bullying was associated with increased reliance on emotion-focused coping only when perceived bystander silence was high. The conditional indirect effect of workplace bullying on burnout via emotion-focused coping was significant at higher levels of bystander silence, whereas no indirect effect emerged under low silence conditions. Conclusions: These findings suggest that burnout does not arise as an automatic consequence of bullying exposure but unfolds through coping processes that are activated in socially silent environments. By highlighting the conditional role of bystander silence, this study emphasizes the value of social context in shaping how public service employees respond to workplace bullying and how burnout develops. We discuss the practical implications for organizational interventions that aim to reduce bystander silence and support healthier coping processes in organizations. Full article

In contemporary Japanese workplaces, interpersonal relationship problems have become increasingly serious, leading to heightened psychological stress and declining organizational functioning. One major contributing factor is power harassment (workplace bullying). This study surveyed 1621 Japanese workers to examine how support from supervisors and organizations influences power harassment, with particular attention to differences in self-esteem levels and narcissistic types. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that among individuals with high self-esteem, supervisor support tended to reduce power harassment in those characterized by the Need for Attention and Praise type, whereas organizational support tended to increase it. Additionally, for those classified as the Sense of Superiority and Competence type, the interaction between ego threat and both types of support showed a tendency to exacerbate power harassment. For individuals with low self-esteem, the interaction between ego threat and both types of support similarly tended to intensify power harassment in the Need for Attention and Praise type. These results suggest that the effects of support are not uniform; rather, they may inhibit or facilitate power harassment depending on individual psychological traits. Therefore, tailoring the method, timing, and source of support to workers’ psychological characteristics is essential for both preventing power harassment and promoting psychological adaptation. Full article

Workplace bullying is a pervasive interpersonal stressor with well-documented negative consequences for employees; however, the understanding of the psychological processes linking bullying to employee outcomes remains fragmented and constrained by methodological similarity. As a result, it remains unclear which psychological mechanisms are most central in explaining how bullying affects employees, particularly at the within-person level. Addressing this gap, the present study compared within-person variation in two mediating processes: basic psychological need (BPN) frustration and psychological capital (PsyCap). Eighty-five participants participated in a five-wave weekly diary study, completing a total of 356 surveys. As predicted, within-person variation in weekly bullying exposure predicted poorer outcomes (i.e., lower energy, higher stress, reduced belonging, and greater turnover intentions). Multilevel mediation analyses showed that BPN frustration mediated these relationships: weeks with more bullying were associated with greater need frustration and poorer outcomes. In contrast, PsyCap did not mediate these relationships. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models provided no support for lagged mediation effects, indicating that neither BPN frustration nor PsyCap transmitted the effects of bullying across weekly intervals. These findings demonstrate that workplace bullying undermines employee outcomes primarily through the contemporaneous frustration of BPN and underscore the importance of organizational interventions that support employees’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Full article

This study explores how teachers’ work sustainability is shaped through everyday governance practices within private higher education institutions in China. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the analysis draws on long-term fieldwork and in-depth interviews with teachers, administrators, leaders, and students from two private colleges. The findings suggest that teachers’ difficulties do not stem from isolated adverse incidents, but rather from an ongoing organizational process embedded in routine management practices. Evaluation-centered promotion systems, relationship-based governance, and data-driven oversight interact to restructure how teaching work is organized, recognized, and assessed. Professional contributions are frequently treated as negotiable outcomes subject to managerial discretion, while informal alignment practices and selective monitoring gradually narrow teachers’ space for professional judgment and initiative. Despite accumulating dissatisfaction, most teachers remain in their positions. Occupational identity, social expectations, and constrained labor mobility limit realistic exit options, transforming short-term accommodation into prolonged endurance. In this context, teacher retention reflects not organizational stability, but the persistence of governance conditions that challenge the long-term sustainability of teachers’ work. By examining how routine management practices gradually reshape teachers’ work, this study highlights an overlooked dimension of sustainability in higher education: the long-term viability of teachers’ professional lives within existing governance arrangements. Unlike studies that conceptualize teachers’ difficulties through the lens of workplace bullying or interpersonal conflict, this study focuses on how ordinary governance practices shape long-term work sustainability without overt confrontation. Full article

Incivility and civility have been studied for more than a century across disciplines and in many areas ranging from workplaces to communication, the digital world, and everyday life. They are often used to the detriment of marginalized groups. Their negative use is seen to set the groundwork for other negative treatments, such as bullying and harassment, impacting the social climate in a negative way. Ostracism is seen to be linked to incivility. Disabled people disproportionally face negative treatments, such as bullying and harassment, and experience a negative social climate, as highlighted by the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, suggesting that they also disproportionately experience incivility and ostracism. Climate surveys aim to expose toxic social climate in workplaces, schools, and communities caused by incivility, ostracism, bullying, and harassment. As such, how incivility, civility, ostracism, and the design of climate surveys are discussed in the literature is of importance to disabled people. We could find no review that analyzed the use of climate surveys beyond individual surveys and the concepts of incivility and ostracism in relation to disabled people. The objective of our study was to contribute to filling this gap by analyzing the academic literature present in SCOPUS, EBSCO HOST (70 databases), and Web of Science, performing keyword frequency and content analysis of abstracts and full texts. Our findings provide empirical evidence for a systemic neglect of disabled people in the topics covered: from 21,215 abstracts mentioning “civilit*” or “incivilit*”, only 14 were relevant, and of the 8358 abstracts mentioning ostracism, only 26 were relevant. Of the 3643 abstracts mentioning “climate surveys,” 12 sources covered disabled people by focusing on a given survey, but not one study performed an evaluation of the utility of climate surveys for disabled people in general. Racism is seen as a structural problem facilitating civility/incivility. Ableism, the negative judgments of a given set of abilities someone has, and disablism, the systemic discrimination based on such judgments, are structural problems experienced by disabled people, facilitating civility/incivility. However, ableism generated only 2 hits, and disablism/disableism had no hits. Most of our sources focused on workplace incivility, and authors were mostly from the USA. We found no linkage to social and policy discourses that aim to make the social environment better, such as equity, diversity, and inclusion, well-being, and science and technology governance. This is the first paper of its kind to look in depth at how the academic literature engages with the concepts of civility, incivility, and ostracism and with the instrument of social climate surveys in relation to disabled people. Our findings can be used by many different disciplines and fields to strengthen the theoretical and practical discussions on the topics in relation to disabled people and beyond. Full article

Grounded in the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study investigates the impact of workplace bullying on the psychological and physical well-being of Information Technology (IT) professionals in five major metropolitan cities in India (Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Mumbai). Specifically, it examines how workplace bullying increases psychological distress and how this distress subsequently impairs sleep quality, along with the moderating role of resilience in this relationship. Data were collected from 380 Information Technology employees using a structured online questionnaire through a Stratified simple random sampling technique. The sample consisted of full-time IT professionals across various age groups, job levels, and work arrangements. The hypothesized relationships were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Results show that workplace bullying significantly elevates psychological distress and reduces sleep quality. Psychological distress partially mediates the effect of bullying on sleep, while resilience weakens the negative impact of distress on sleep, confirming a conditional mediation model. Theoretically, this study advances COR theory by demonstrating how personal resources such as resilience buffer the loss spirals associated with workplace stressors. Practically, the findings highlight the need for IT organizations to strengthen resilience-building initiatives and implement targeted interventions to reduce bullying and protect employee well-being. Full article

Workplace ostracism, a form of workplace harassment, delineates the experience of being excluded or ignored at work. Despite its covert nature, workplace ostracism elicits a unique pain that distinguishes it from other overt forms of harassment, such as bullying or undermining. While a growing body of literature has examined harassment directed at leaders (e.g., upward bullying), follower ostracism, in which leaders are excluded by their followers, has received relatively little attention. Drawing on Power-Dependence Theory, we conducted a multi-wave, time-lagged study (N = 137) to examine follower ostracism as an antecedent to destructive leadership, specifically micromanagement. The findings indicate that follower ostracism threatened leaders’ power, which subsequently motivated leaders to engage in micromanagement as a means to reestablish their influence and authority. Moreover, female leaders experience greater power threats, and exhibit more micromanaging behaviors than their male counterparts. This study advances the theoretical understanding of workplace ostracism, destructive leadership, and gender roles. It also offers practical solutions for organizations and leaders to prevent and cope with the detrimental effects of exclusion by subordinates. Full article

Background: Emotions play a central role in how employees respond to workplace bullying, influencing both their well-being and organizational outcomes. The purpose of the current study was to examine how workplace bullying and turnover intention are related to negative emotions and workplace unfairness. Methods: The research involved collecting data from 269 boundary-spanning bank workers (call center workers, frontline office staff, and customer service representatives) who experienced bullying. A moderated mediation was tested using Model 7 of the Process macro. The relationship between workplace bullying and turnover intention was analyzed, emphasizing the moderating effect of workplace unfairness and the mediating role of negative emotions. Results: The results validated the model, showing that an increase in negative emotions and workplace unfairness promotes the link between workplace bullying and the intention to leave. Increased negative emotions and perceived workplace unfairness amplified the relationship between workplace bullying and turnover intention. Conclusions: The findings underscored the cumulative risk of bullying environments for employee well-being and retention, providing practical recommendations for HRM and leadership strategies to cultivate healthier, more inclusive workplace settings. This study adds to the bullying–turnover literature by examining the joint role of negative emotions and workplace unfairness in a moderated mediation framework. The study connects these findings to sustainable labor management, emphasizing both theoretical and practical implications for organizations. Full article

Burnout is a growing concern in the teaching profession, reflecting the inability to cope with persistent workplace stress and posing serious risks to teachers’ well-being and the sustainability of educational systems. It is characterised by diminished personal accomplishment, lack of fulfilment, and reduced productivity at work, usually expressed in three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and professional accomplishment. This study evaluated the relationship between burnout and workplace bullying among teachers in Portugal. Data were collected through an online questionnaire including sociodemographic information, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terrorization scale (LIPT-60), with a final sample of 2003 teachers from preschool to higher education. Both instruments demonstrated excellent validity and reliability (KMO > 0.90; Cronbach’s α > 0.87). Most teachers presented a low risk of burnout (61.2%), while 36.9% were at moderate risk, with emotional exhaustion emerging as the most critical dimension (37.8% high levels). Statistically significant differences in burnout were found by gender, marital status, contractual relationship, working hours, and family separation. Workplace bullying correlated significantly with all burnout dimensions, with victims reporting higher emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation and lower professional accomplishment. These findings highlight the need for institutional strategies to reduce bullying and prevent teacher burnout, thereby promoting sustainable education systems. Full article