Measuring the Scale and Scope of Workplace Bullying: An Alternative Workplace Bullying Scale

Ambreen Anjum, Amina Muazzam, Farkhanda Manzoor, Anna Visvizi, Gary Pollock and Raheel Nawaz
Additional contact information
Ambreen Anjum: Department of Applied Psychology, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore 54000, Pakistan
Amina Muazzam: Department of Applied Psychology, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore 54000, Pakistan
Farkhanda Manzoor: Department of Zoology, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore 5400, Pakistan
Anna Visvizi: School of Business & Economics, Deree College, The American College of Greece, 153-42 Athens, Greece
Gary Pollock: Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6BH, UK
Raheel Nawaz: Department of Operations, Technology, Events and Hospitality Management, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6BH, UK

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 17, 1-11

Abstract: The toll of workplace bullying is immense, yet, similarly as with an iceberg, its scope, scale and implications tend to remain underestimated. Several ways of assessing the prevalence of workplace bullying have been proposed in the literature. The most frequently discussed are the ‘subjective method’ assessing individuals’ perceptions of being a victim and the questionnaire, i.e., criterion-based, methods, including Negative Acts Questionnaire (NAQ) and Leymann Inventory of Psychological Terror (LIPT). Since in both cases culture plays a profound role as a mediating factor in the process of identifying, collecting, and processing data, the applicability of these methods across cultures and countries has several limitations. At this stage, it is impossible to determine the impact of the implicit cultural-bias that these methods entail on the research outcomes. This would be possible if an alternative workplace bullying scale (WBS) was at hand and, consequently, a comparative analysis was conducted. This paper, drawing from a study conducted at higher education institutions (HEI) across Pakistan, addresses this issue by devising an alternative WBS. The value added of this paper is three-fold, i.e., it elaborates on the study and the specific methods employed to prove the validity and relevance of the alternative WBS. Moreover, by so doing, it addresses some of the limitations that other methods measuring the prevalence of workplace bullying display. As a result, it adds to the researchers’ and administrators’ toolkit as regards research and policies aimed at mitigating the scope and scale of bullying at HEIs across cultures and countries.

Keywords: workplace bullying; Workplace Bullying Scale (WBS); bullying; convergent validity; Job Stress Scale (JSS); higher education institutions (HEI) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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