Organizational Resources and Demands Influence on Workplace Bullying 1

Estimates of the incidences of workplace bullying vary from the single digits to greater than thirty percent. Despite the disparity in the estimates, the consensus is that workplace bullying is both pervasive and harmful. The detrimental impact of workplace bullying impacts employee well-being, organizational productivity, and national health systems. Thus, organizations should consider not only direct policies and interventions, but also elements of the work environment that may exacerbate or mitigate workplace bullying. Organizational environments can be a source of resources that contribute to employee well-being and demands that increase stress. Additional factors in the environment also act to facilitate or inhibit the employee's ability to accumulate or access the resources needed for resilience. This study integrates conservation of resources theory and the job demands-control model to investigate a specific type of employee stress- workplace bullying. Based upon a large sample of working adults in Great Britain, the findings affirm that the organizational environment plays a substantive role in workplace bullying. Results suggest organizations may reduce perceptions of workplace bullying by fostering a trusting environment and affording employees a degree of control over their work. Specifically, the study finds that trust in management decreases perceptions of workplace bullying, while role overload increases perceptions of workplace bullying. Job control factors, namely job autonomy and employee participation, moderate these relationships, enhancing the negative effects of trust and mitigating the positive effect of role overload; however, social support continues to play an ambiguous role in individual perceptions of workplace bullying.