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

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.

Bullying in the Bahamian Workplace

“…While workplace bullying has attracted the attention of researchers for some time, differences in defining and measuring it persist (for example, Lewis et al, 2008;Anjum et al, 2019). Anjum et al (2019) suggest a concise definition: "workplace bullying is essentially about purposeful breaches of an individual's space of dignity, rights, and integrity" (p. 1).…”

“…While workplace bullying has attracted the attention of researchers for some time, differences in defining and measuring it persist (for example, Lewis et al, 2008;Anjum et al, 2019). Anjum et al (2019) suggest a concise definition: "workplace bullying is essentially about purposeful breaches of an individual's space of dignity, rights, and integrity" (p. 1). For behaviours to be considered bullying, they must occur regularly, occur over a prolonged period of time and arise from a power inequality between the victim and the bully (Anjum et al, 2019).…”

“…Anjum et al (2019) suggest a concise definition: "workplace bullying is essentially about purposeful breaches of an individual's space of dignity, rights, and integrity" (p. 1). For behaviours to be considered bullying, they must occur regularly, occur over a prolonged period of time and arise from a power inequality between the victim and the bully (Anjum et al, 2019). In their review of the components of bullying, Cowie et al (2002) considered not only types of bullying activities but also the frequency of bullying, imbalance of power, perspective of the "victim" and "victimizer", and workplace culture.…”

Measuring the Scale and Scope of Social Anxiety among Students in Pakistani Higher Education Institutions: An Alternative Social Anxiety Scale

“…Moreover, it cannot be known if the structure of the scale is equivalent for men and women and whether the item functioning is the same for both genders. Another limitation of our work is the implications of statistical techniques only, thus, in future studies, we further plan to employ state-of-the-art natural language processing and machine learning techniques to better understand the aversive effects of SAD on daily functioning; these have already proven to be highly useful in understanding other disorders that can lead to psychological problems, directly or indirectly [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50].…”

Linking Work-Family Conflict (WFC) and Talent Management: Insights from a Developing Country

“…Balancing work-family demands has become an increasingly exigent task for working personnel around the globe [16]. Work to family interference (WIF) factors tend to be related with job type, job involvement, job flexibility, work time commitment [17], inflexible working hours or schedules [32], overtime [33], and workplace bullying [34] considered as responsible of causing occupational stress among the workers [35]. A research conducted with working women reported that women tend to have a poor relationship with their spouses as a result of inflexible work schedule [36] and unfinished work [37].…”