The relationship between organisational change and being a perpetrator of workplace bullying: A three-wave longitudinal study

an article by Elfi Baillien (Research Center of Work and Organization Studies (WOS), KU Leuven, Brussels, Belgium; Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Norway), Yannick Griep (Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Canada), Tinne Vander Elst (Research Group Work, Organisational and Personnel Psychology (WOPP), KU Leuven, Belgium; External Service for Prevention and Protection at Work, Leuven, Belgium) and Hans De Witte (Research Group Work, Organisational and Personnel Psychology (WOPP), KU Leuven, Belgium; Optentia Research Focus Area, North West University, Vanderbijlpark, South-Africa) published in Work & Stress: An International Journal of Work, Health & Organisations Volume 33 Issue 3 (2019)

Abstract

While research has unravelled the association between organisational change and being a target of workplace bullying, scholars have still to shed light on the perpetrator perspective of this association. In the current study, we further the literature by investigating the relationship between exposure to organisational change and being a perpetrator of workplace bullying.

We introduced perceptions of psychological contract breach as a mechanism that accounts for the process in which exposure to organisational change leads employees to direct bullying behaviours to other members of the organisation.

Using three-wave longitudinal data from 1994 employees we estimated a between-subjects mediation model controlling for autoregressive effects. Results confirmed our hypothesis that exposure to organisational change at Time 1 was positively related to being a perpetrator of workplace bullying at Time 3 through perceptions of psychological contract breach at Time 2.

These findings suggest that organisations should invest in factors that lower employees’ likelihood to perceive psychological contract breach in the aftermath of organisational change because these perceptions may indeed result in the enactment of workplace bullying towards other members of the organisation.

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