PWBI - Profiles of workplace bullying involvement - FHSE

The project aims to identify profiles of workplace bullying involvement and their link to different attitudinal, behavioral, and well-being outcomes.

The project at a glance

Start date:

01 Dec 2020
Duration in months:

72
Funding:

Others
Principal Investigator(s):

Philipp SISCHKA

About

Exposure to workplace bullying has been well documented as a severe stressor in contemporary working life with detrimental effects on the target, the organization, and the society. Workplace bullying describes a situation where the target is repeatedly and over a longer time period (e.g., six months) exposed to negative acts and where there exists a (real or perceived) power imbalance between the target and the perpetrator(s). Just like many school bullying researchers, many scholars investigating workplace bullying assume the existence of four groups of employees: Uninvolved employees, victims, perpetrators, and victim-perpetrators (also called bully-victims) Yet, empirical evidence supporting these four groups is lacking so far. Instead, studies on workplace bullying mostly focused solely on the victim perspective, while far less studies investigated the perpetrator perspective. Moreover, the current research situation has little to say about employees that are targets of workplace bullying but are also engaged in bullying behavior with the consequence that the concept of bully-victims only exists in theory. This project aims to uncover unique profiles of workplace bullying involvement by conducting studies that employ a person-centered approach and including both, workplace bullying exposure and perpetration indicators. Preliminary results found no evidence of a pure perpetrator group and showed that the different profiles of workplace bullying involvement is associated with different personality profiles.