Workaholism and the Enactment of Bullying Behavior at Work: A Prospective Analysis

Cristian Balducci, Luca Menghini, Paul M. Conway, Hermann Burr and Sara Zaniboni
Additional contact information
Cristian Balducci: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy
Luca Menghini: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy
Paul M. Conway: Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark
Hermann Burr: Work and Health Section, Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), 10317 Berlin, Germany
Sara Zaniboni: Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, 40127 Bologna, Italy

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 1-13

Abstract: Despite the fact that workaholism and workplace aggressive behavior share many correlates, such as neuroticism, hostility, and negative affectivity, little is known about their relationship, with most evidence on both phenomena coming from cross-sectional studies. In the present study, we contributed to a better understanding of the antecedents of enacted workplace bullying behavior (i.e., perpetration of bullying), and the potential interpersonal implications of workaholism, by investigating their cross-lagged relationship. Data from a two-wave one-year panel study conducted with 235 employees in a national healthcare service organization showed substantial cross-sectional and cross-lagged positive relationships between workaholism and enacted workplace bullying. Whereas Time 1 workaholism was a significant predictor of Time 2 enacted workplace bullying, reversed causation was not supported. To shed light on the role of a potential mechanism explaining the link between workaholism and enactment of bullying, we examined whether job-related negative affect (e.g., anger) mediated their longitudinal relationship. However, whereas increased negative affect from T1 to T2 was positively associated with T2 enacted workplace bullying, the relationship between T1 workaholism and increased job-related negative affect was not significant, contrary to the hypothesized mediation. Taken together, our findings suggest that workaholism may be an important antecedent of enacted workplace bullying. Study limitations and future perspectives are discussed.

Keywords: workaholism; workplace bullying behavior; cross-lagged relationship; negative affect; cross-lagged mediation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/4/2399/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/4/2399/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:4:p:2399-:d:753304

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().