Moderating Effects of Structural Empowerment and Resilience in the Relationship between Nurses’ Workplace Bullying and Work Outcomes: A Cross-Sectional Correlational Study

Abstract

This cross-sectional correlational study aimed to evaluate the moderating effects of structural empowerment and resilience in the relationship between workplace bullying and nursing work outcomes. Data were collected from 435 nurses and nurse managers working at a tertiary hospital in Seoul, South Korea. The moderating effects were examined using stepwise hierarchical multiple regression models. The bootstrapping method was utilized to verify the magnitude and significance of the moderating effects. Structural empowerment showed a moderating effect in the relationship between workplace bullying and nursing work outcomes: for the conditional values above the average level of structural empowerment, workplace bullying was significantly associated with nursing work outcomes, while work outcomes were low regardless of workplace bullying for the conditional values less than average. However, resilience had no moderating effect. To improve work outcomes, bullying must be reduced and structural empowerment and resilience increased.

A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis of Studies on Workplace Bullying among Nurses

“…As previous findings have shown, managerial or institutional intervention can be one of the most effective measures to deal with WPB [ 25 ]. Strategies that target nurse managers are needed to impart to them leadership skills that enable them to properly handle WPB.…”

Unraveling the effect of differential leadership on employee performance: Evidence from China

“…Differential leadership thus upgrades the dynamics of the organization's relational network, stimulates employees to respond positively to organizational dynamics, and continually reinforces the individual's supportive perception of the organizational environment in the employees' pursuit of organizational integration. Employees tend to position the organization as a personified individual, and the leader is the spokesperson of it, so the perception of organizational support could be equal to the level of the leader's care for themselves (Kang and Han, 2021). Although the leader seems like the symbol of a corporate image, as a relatively independent individual, there is a differential feature in handling interpersonal relationships.…”

“…Within the existing literature on the study of differential leadership, there is still room for improvement. The main way to account for this is to study only the impact of differential leadership on other variables, such as employee creativity, innovation behavior, and turnover intention, while at the same time sweeping aside the theoretical analysis of differential leadership (Kang and Han, 2021). Lerutla and Steyn (2022) inspected the mediating role of perceived identity between differential leadership and organizational citizenship behavior.…”

Safety Competency

“…Furthermore, structural empowerment has been associated with improved nursing outcomes, including quality and safety. [17][18][19][20] A personal factor that can influence safety competency is systems thinking. 21,22 Systems thinking is defined as a set of synergistic analytic skills that increase one's ability to identify and appreciate the interactions among systems to identify appropriate action to produce desired outcomes.…”

“…When employees feel empowered, they are more likely to access resources to improve the quality of their work outcomes. Furthermore, structural empowerment has been associated with improved nursing outcomes, including quality and safety 17–20…”