Antecedents of Workplace Bullying among Employees in Germany: Five-Year Lagged Effects of Job Demands and Job Resources

Paul Maurice Conway, Hermann Burr, Uwe Rose, Thomas Clausen and Cristian Balducci
Additional contact information
Paul Maurice Conway: Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, 1165 Copenhagen, Denmark
Hermann Burr: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), 10317 Berlin, Germany
Uwe Rose: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), 10317 Berlin, Germany
Thomas Clausen: National Research Centre for the Working Environment, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Cristian Balducci: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 20, 1-13

Abstract: Objectives: The aim of the present study was to examine the long-term association of job demands and job resources with self-reported exposure to workplace bullying in a representative sample of employees in Germany. Methods: We analysed a nation-wide representative cohort of employees working in the same workplace with a 5-year follow-up (S-MGA; N = 1637). The study contained self-reported measures of psychosocial working conditions, including work pace, amount of work, influence at work, role clarity and quality of leadership, and workplace bullying, and of organisational factors, including organisational restructuring and layoffs. Results: After controlling for bullying and occupational level at baseline, higher baseline levels of organisational restructuring (OR 1.73; 95% CI 1.10–2.70), work pace (1.30; 95% CI 1.01–1.66), and amount of work (1.55; 95% CI 1.21–1.99), and lower baseline levels of influence at work (0.70; 95% CI 0.55–0.90) and quality of leadership (0.64; 95% CI 0.50–0.82), were associated with an elevated risk of workplace bullying at follow-up. In all, 90% of cases of self-reported workplace bullying could be attributed to these factors. Conclusions: The study suggests that employees reporting higher demands and lower resources, as well as organisational factors such as restructuring, are at a higher long-term risk of being targets of workplace bullying. Interventions aimed at preventing workplace bullying could benefit from a focus on psychosocial working conditions and organisational factors.

Keywords: workplace bullying; S-MGA; job demands-resources model; psychosocial working conditions; prospective study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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