Work-related risk factors for workplace bullying : The moderating effect of laissez-faire leadership

Abstract

Workplace bullying has been described as repeated and systematic exposure to negative social acts over time, which the target has difficulties defending against (Einarsen et al., 2020). Previous research has established that bullying in the workplace is related to a wide range of negative outcomes, and bullying has been classified as a more crippling and devastating problem for employees than all other work-related stress put together (Hauge et al., 2010; Wilson, 1991). Yet, the field still lacks systematic and thorough knowledge of the mechanisms that may explain how situational antecedents are related to the occurrence and development of the workplace bullying process. Drawing on the work environment hypothesis, studies have shown that bullying seems to thrive in demanding workplaces where employees experience organizational constraints and contradictory expectations and demands. Furthermore, leadership practices are expected to have a significant impact on the presence of stress at work. For example, poor and destructive leadership has been identified as a root cause of subordinate stress (Kelloway et al., 2005; Skogstad et al., 2014), and may, as such, act as a strong stressor in its own right. However, leaders may also impact the level of stress at work indirectly, either by influencing the opportunities employees have to cope with those stressors present, or by either aggravating or alleviating the stressors already present in the work environment.

The main aim of this PhD-project has been to improve our understanding of the phenomenon of workplace bullying, by investigating some mechanisms and conditions which allow bullying to flourish and escalate. The present thesis is comprised of three scientific papers, all of which employ self-report questionnaire data. The overreaching research question in all three papers was whether laissez-faire leadership can act as a moderator in the relationship between various prevailing workplace stressors and subsequent experiences of negative acts and workplace bullying. Moreover, Paper 2 examines the role of the inter-relationship between two prevailing role stressors in the development of workplace bullying, by testing the mediating effect of role conflicts in the relationship between role ambiguity and subsequent exposure to bullying behaviours. In addition, Papers 2 and 3 also investigated the potential buffering effect of transformational leadership, a constructive form of leadership that is in stark contrast to laissez-faire leadership.

In paper 1, the main objective was to investigate the prospective relationship between co-worker conflict at time 1 and individuals who self-reported as new victims of bullying two years later, and whether this relationship was exacerbated by the individuals’ reports of laissez-faire leadership behaviour enacted by their immediate supervisor. Results from a logistic regression analysis on a representative sample of Norwegian workers (N = 1772) showed a significant positive relationship between conflict with co-workers and subsequent new victims of workplace bullying. Furthermore, the results showed that this relationship was only present for employees who reported high (vs. low) levels of laissez-faire leadership behaviour from their immediate supervisor.

Paper 2 had two main objectives. First, we aimed to investigate the mechanisms through which role stressors lead to workplace bullying, by testing the hypothesis that the impact of role ambiguity on employees’ exposure to negative acts is mediated through their experiences of increased levels of role conflicts. Second, we tested whether laissez-faire leadership exacerbated, while transformational leadership attenuated, this relationship. In this study, we employed a national probability sample of 1,164 Norwegian workers, with three measurements across a 12-month period. The results supported our hypotheses, in that the relationship between employees’ role ambiguity and subsequent exposure to bullying behaviours was mediated by an increase in employees’ experience of role conflicts. Moreover, we found that laissez-faire leadership exacerbated, while transformational leadership attenuated, the indirect relationship between role ambiguity and subsequent exposure to bullying behaviours through role conflicts.

Finally, the objective of Paper 3 was to test whether it is possible to detect these mechanisms even on a daily basis. Accordingly, this study investigated the day-to-day relationship between employees’ work pressure and their exposure to bullying-related negative acts and tested the hypotheses that even daily levels of laissez-faire leadership exacerbated while daily levels of transformational leadership attenuated this relationship. Using data from a sample of 61 naval cadets, who completed a daily diary questionnaire on 36 consecutive days (N = 1509 daily observations), we tested the day-to-day relationships between work pressure and exposure to bullying-related negative acts, and the moderating effects of daily transformational and laissez-faire leadership. The results of multilevel analyses showed a positive relationship between daily work pressure and daily exposure to bullying-related negative acts, and a positive moderating effect of daily laissez-faire leadership behaviour. More specifically, our analyses showed that the positive relationship between daily work pressure and daily exposure to bullying-related negative acts was only present on days when the subordinates reported higher levels of laissez-faire behaviour from their immediate leader. Finally, we did not find support for a moderating effect of daily transformational leadership behaviour.

Taken together, these findings yield support to the theoretical notion of the work environment hypothesis, in that situational stressors represent prevailing risk factors for individuals to be exposed to negative acts and bullying in the workplace (Einarsen et al., 1994; Leymann, 1996). Moreover, our findings support the theoretical assumption that laissez-faire leadership is an important facilitator in the development of workplace bullying. Indeed, our results indicate that laissez-faire leadership may be of greater consequence in exacerbating the bullying process than transformational leadership is in attenuating the negative consequences of workplace stressors. If leaders neglect their inherent responsibility to adequately address employees’ experiences of stressful situations and ongoing interpersonal conflicts that merit attention, the risk of workplace bullying is likely to increase. Furthermore, our results show the same trends across samples and research designs, thereby strengthening the robustness of our findings. Finally, the results from Paper 2 improve our understanding of the inter-relationship between role ambiguity and role conflict in relation to bullying, by supporting the hypothesis that employees’ experience of role conflicts mediates the role ambiguity-bullying relationship. This finding indicates that role conflicts may be the more proximal, while role ambiguity may be a more distal antecedent of workplace bullying.