Workers' perception of workplace bullying: A cross-cultural study

Abstract

This study is one of the first studies to approach workplace bullying crossculturally. It sought to compare employees' understanding of workplace bullying in two different world regions: Central America and Southern Europe, regarding three aspects of workplace bullying: psychological vs. physical harassment, hierarchical vs. horizontal bullying, and direct vs. indirect aggression. A convenience sample of 246 workers provided their own definition of workplace bullying through a single, open-ended question. The results showed that employees from Central America emphasized the physical component of workplace bullying more than the Southern European employees. However, similarities in the conceptualization of workplace bullying across both cultures were found as well. Both Southern European and Central American employees defined workplace bullying mainly as a hierarchical phenomenon, where the aggression took the form of direct strategies. Such differences and similarities bring to the field some positive inputs for the development and implementation of different strategies for dealing effectively with this phenomenon.

An Operative Measure of Workplace Bullying: The Negative Acts Questionnaire Across Italian Companies

“…In that sense, Salin 21) considered that the NAQ-R is not exhaustive of all bullying behaviors and not all the behaviors included are of equal severity. As several authors have argued, it seems reasonable to think that national culture may play a decisive role on how employees perceive bullying behaviors, thus, what is classified as an "unacceptable" behavior in some countries, may be tolerated in other countries (e.g., 32,33) ).…”

Identifying Victims of Workplace Bullying by Integrating Traditional Estimation Approaches Into a Latent Class Cluster Model

“…This cluster ("negative working conditions") is partly characterized by excessive monitoring and unmanageable workload and aggression. Taking into account that workplace bullying in Spain is more often a top-down process from superiors to their subordinates (MorenoJimenez, Rodriguez-Muñoz, Garrosa, & Morante, 2005), some negative behaviors may be relatively common between employees and may either not be perceived as a major problem per se or not be recognized as bullying behaviors by the targets (employees in the "negative working conditions" cluster had the lowest probability to perceive themselves as bullied) since they may be seen as usual managerial practices or part of the working conditions in a "macho culture" (Escartin, Zapf, Arrieta, & Rodríguez-Carballeira, 2011;Giorgi, Arenas, & Leon-Perez, 2011). However, the deterioration of interpersonal relationships at work as a result of being exposed to a negative work environment (e.g., employees grouped in the "severe bullying and aggression" cluster reported higher levels of interpersonal conflict than employees in the "negative working conditions" cluster) may lead to being bullied.…”

Investigating Workplace Bullying in India: Psychometric Properties, Validity, and Cutoff Scores of Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised

“…EFA results of the present study were inconsistent with the previous studies as Item 2 (Being humiliated or ridiculed in connection with your work) has been found to be an indicator of factor named work-related bullying instead of person-related bullying. In view of differences regarding conceptualizations of workplace bullying across countries (Di Martino, Hoel, & Cooper, 2003), with national culture as an important determinant of employees' perceptions regarding bullying behaviors at work (Escartin et al, 2011), the contrasting results may be attributed to cultural variation (Giorgi et al, 2011). As any negative behavior directed toward one's professional role becomes an indicator of work-related bullying (Notelaers & Einarsen, 2013), it can be argued that culture may influence the perception of behaviors (e.g., humiliation or insult) occurring in association with one's work to be perceived as targeted at one's professional role.…”

“…Although an internationally acclaimed indirect standardized measure of workplace bullying (Ciby & Raya, 2015), NAQ-R has been developed in Norway (Einarsen, Hoel, & Notelaers, 2009) and tested mostly in Western countries. As national culture is an important determinant of employees' perceptions regarding bullying behaviors at work (Escartin, Zapf, Arrieta, & Rodriguez-Carballeira, 2011), assessment of validity and psychometric properties of NAQ-R is essential before its use in Indian context. Given the nature of measurement scale underlying response categories of NAQ-R , reliability and validity assessment of the same using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is highly recommended (Said, Badru, & Shahid, 2011).…”