Long-term Consequences of Workplace Bullying on Sickness Absence

Tine Louise Eriksen, Annie Hogh () and Åse Marie Hansen ()
Additional contact information
Annie Hogh: University of Copenhagen
Åse Marie Hansen: University of Copenhagen

No 10101, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Bullying in workplaces is a problem thought to harm individual productivity. This paper investigates whether being exposed to bullying in the workplace increases long-term sickness absence. We analyze employees from a selection of workplaces from The Bullying Cohort Study conducted in Denmark in 2006. The Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised was used to avoid bias related to self-labeling as being bullied. We account for important confounders, such as historical information on sickness absence and mental health, obtained through rich registry data. Our results show that gender does not significantly explain exposure to bullying and that exposure to bullying is associated with negative immediate self-reported health for both genders. We also find, however, that only bullied females have higher, persistent increases in long-term sickness absence and adverse long-term health. This suggests that men and women have different coping strategies. We investigate plausible explanations for this and find that the differences cannot be explained by, for example, turnover or lack of employment. Although insignificant, our results nonetheless indicate that men are twice as likely to leave the labor force immediately after exposure to bullying.

Keywords: absenteeism; harassment; working environment; health; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-hea and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2016, 43, 129 - 150

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10101.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Long-term consequences of workplace bullying on sickness absence (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10101

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().