Psychological Contract Violation or Basic Need Frustration? Psychological Mechanisms Behind the Effects of Workplace Bullying

Abstract

Workplace bullying is a phenomenon that can have serious detrimental effects on health, work-related attitudes, and the behavior of the target. Particularly, workplace bullying exposure has been linked to lower level of general well-being, job satisfaction, vigor, and performance and higher level of burnout, workplace deviance, and turnover intentions. However, the psychological mechanisms behind these relations are still not well-understood. Drawing on psychological contract and self-determination theory (SDT), we hypothesized that perceptions of contract violation and the frustration of basic needs mediate the relationship between workplace bullying exposure and well-being, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes. Self-reported data were collected among employees with different working backgrounds (N = 1,257) via Amazon's Mechanical Turk in an online survey. Results showed that feelings of contract violation and frustration of basic needs accounted for unique variation in well-being, work satisfaction, burnout, vigor, and turnover intentions, pointing to individual contributions of both psychological mechanisms. However, when controlled for frustration of basic needs, feelings of psychological contract violation were no longer a mediator between workplace bullying exposure and work performance. Helping employees to deal effectively with workplace bullying exposure might buffer its negative effects and reduce their experienced frustration of basic needs, preserving their well-being, vigor, and work performance and, eventually, prevent burnout. The present study is the first to concurrently elucidate the proposed psychological mechanisms and unique contributions of psychological contract violation and frustration of basic needs in the context of workplace bullying.

Basic psychological need satisfaction and well-being for gig workers: a fuzzy set QCA approach in DiDi of China

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COVID-19 countermeasures at the workplace, psychological well-being, and mental health - a nationally representative latent class analysis of Luxembourgish employees

“…First, a cross-sectional design was implemented, precluding a causal interpretation between the COVID-19 countermeasure classes and well-being. Although reversed causation seems unlikely, it has to be noted that important covariates of well-being, i.e., work related stressors such as mental strain (Steffgen et al, 2015 ), emotional demands (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011 ), or workplace mobbing (Sischka et al, 2021 ) that also might have increased with the pandemic, were not adjusted and, thus, might have confounded the results (MacKinnon et al, 2000 ). Second, only self-reported measures were employed, possibly contaminating associations with common method variance (Podsakoff et al, 2012 ).…”

The Influence of Emotional Exhaustion on Organizational Cynicism: The Sequential Mediating Effect of Organizational Identification and Trust in Organization

“…These elements are required for a successful relationship in social exchanges between organizations and employees. In cases where an organization can create a sense of trust and employees perceive less risk when developing trust-based relationships, OC and psychological contract breach (Johnson & O’Leary-Kelly, 2003; Sischka et al, 2021) may not occur. Organizational trust will not prevail in a cynical work environment since cynicism is more likely to emerge in cases of repeated breaches or violations of the psychological contract (Johnson & O’Leary-Kelly, 2003).…”