Employee Silence and Workplace Bullying

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between workplace bullying (WB) and employee silence (ES) as well as its mechanism. This paper collects data from 322 employees of three Chinese enterprises in two waves, with a 2 months interval between the two waves. Moreover, this paper uses confirmatory factor analysis, a bootstrapping mediation test, a simple slope test, and other methods to verify the hypothesis. We find that: (1) WB is positively correlated with ES; (2) psychological safety (PS) and affective commitment mediated the relationship between WB and ES, respectively, and these two variables have a chain mediating effect in the above relationship; and (3) a forgiveness climate moderates this chain mediating effect by weakening the negative impact of WB on PS. Our findings can effectively guide organizations to ultimately adjust their management style, pay attention to employees’ cognitive and emotional resources, and formulate some measures to curb WB in organizations.

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Workplace bullying and employee silence

Personnel Review ◽

10.1108/pr-03-2017-0071 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 226-256 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Arpana Rai ◽

Upasna A. Agarwal

Keyword(s):

Psychological Contract ◽

Workplace Bullying ◽

Full Time ◽

Management Support ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Passive Coping ◽

Content Type ◽

Workplace Friendship ◽

Indian Context ◽

Employee Silence

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of workplace bullying on employee silence (defensive, relational, and ineffectual silence), and to test the mediating role of psychological contract violation (PCV) in this relationship and the extent to which the mediation is moderated by workplace friendship. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 835 full-time Indian managerial employees working in different Indian organizations. Findings Results revealed that workplace bullying positively correlated with silence (defensive, relational, and ineffectual silence). The hypothesized moderated mediation condition was supported as results suggest that PCV mediated the bullying-silence relationship and workplace friendship moderated this mediating pathway, i.e. indirect effects of workplace bullying on employee silence via PCV were weaker for employees with high workplace friendship. Research limitations/implications A cross-sectional design, use of self-reported questionnaires, and gender-blind perspective to examine bullying are few limitations of this study. Practical implications This is the first study examining employee silence in response to workplace bullying and one of the few attempts to examine employees’ passive coping strategies in response to workplace mistreatment. This study is also one of the rare attempts to examine bullying-outcomes relationship in the Indian context. Social implications A well-formulated and effectively implemented anti-bullying policy and management support may encourage employees to combat bullying by raising their voices against it. Originality/value This is the first study examining employee silence in response to workplace bullying. This study is also one of the rare attempts to examine bullying-outcomes relationship in the Indian context.

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