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.

摘要

尽管研究揭示了组织变革与工作场所欺凌的目标之间的联系，但学者们仍必须阐明这种联系的肇事者观点。在当前的研究中，我们通过调查暴露于组织变革的风险与实施工作场所欺凌行为之间的关系来进一步推广文献。我们引入了对心理合同违约的理解，该机制解释了暴露于组织变革导致员工将欺凌行为直接指向组织其他成员的过程。使用来自1994年员工的三波纵向数据，我们估算了一种控制自回归效应的受试者间中介模型。