Employee Perceptions of Perpetrators and Acts of Workplace Violence in Colleges and Universities

Workplace violence has captured the attention of both the popular press and the scholarly literature, leading to a greater awareness of its existence in society. One area that has been overlooked by the research is how employees perceive various types of workplace violence acts, as well as different types of perpetrators. This study examined employee perceptions of a variety of workplace violence acts and different perpetrators at a large, public university in the midwestern United States. The results indicate that employees perceive various types of workplace violence acts and different perpetrators in a variety of ways. Based on these findings, recommendations on how to improve awareness are suggested.     

情绪劳动策略对主动破坏行为的影响

如何开展员工情绪劳动管理,避免负面行为结果,是服务行业面对的重要问题。以788名呼叫中心员工为研究对象,本文获得的结果表明:1)表层动作显著促进主动破坏行为,而深层动作的影响不显著。2)政策强度感知显著调节表层动作与主动破坏行为间关系;当政策强度感知较低时,表层动作对主动破坏行为的正向影响更为显著。3)情感社会分享显著调节深层动作与主动破坏行为间关系;当情感社会分享水平较高时,深层动作对主动破坏行为的负向影响更为显著。本研究从资源保存视角提出工作场所开展情绪劳动管理的有效策略。     

Accidents happen: Psychological empowerment as a moderator of accident involvement and its outcomes

Research in the occupational safety realm has tended to develop and test models aimed at predicting accident involvement in the workplace, with studies treating accident involvement as the starting point and examining its outcomes being more rare. In this study, we examine the relationship between accident involvement and a series of outcomes drawing upon a learned helplessness theory perspective. Specifically, we predicted that psychological empowerment would moderate the relationship between prior accident involvement and outcomes. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 392 employees and their 66 supervisors working in an iron and steel manufacturing firm in Southern Turkey, using data collected from employees and their supervisors via four separate surveys. Results suggest that accident involvement was positively related to supervisor‐rated employee withdrawal, production deviance, and sabotage only when psychological empowerment was low. The results illustrate that workplace accidents have indirect costs in the form of higher withdrawal and maladaptive behaviors, and organizations may inoculate employees against some of these outcomes via higher psychological empowerment.     

Long-term adverse health outcomes of physical workplace violence: a 7-year population-based follow-up study

The aim of the present study was to analyse whether physical workplace violence increases the risk of long-term adverse health outcomes (i.e., high number of visits to the general practitioner, outpatient treatment, hospital admittance, antidepressant use, and/or having a mental disorder). The study was based on representative survey data from 2006 and 2010 (entitled “How are you?”) merged with register data for a 7-year follow-up period (N = 30,812). To examine if physical workplace violence was a predictor of adverse health outcomes, logistic regression models were conducted for the total follow-up period and for each follow-up year with the different outcome measures as the dependent variables. In the follow-up period, individuals who were exposed to physical workplace violence had a higher number of visits to the general practitioner, had more often received outpatient treatment, and had more often been admitted to hospital than their non-exposed counterparts. Moreover, exposed individuals had higher odds of using antidepressants in the last three follow-up years than did non-exposed individuals. The findings call for heightened attention to securing preventive as well as rehabilitative strategies to help victims of physical workplace violence with the aim of avoiding adverse long-term health consequences.     

How Patient-Perpetrated Workplace Violence Leads to Turnover Intention Among Nurses: The Mediating Mechanism of Occupational Stress and Burnout

This study looked into the impact of patient-perpetrated workplace violence on nurses’ turnover intention by examining the sequential mediation effect of occupational stress and burnout. Results were obtained by analyzing the data collected from 216 nurses working in four public hospitals of central Pakistan. Results provided full support to the research hypotheses, demonstrating that patient-inflicted violence negatively affects nurses’ turnover intention, and that occupational stress and burnout both individually mediate the patient violence–turnover intention relationship. Particularly, the results illustrated that patient violence is related to turnover intention through occupational stress first and then burnout. These results widen the focus of past research by demonstrating that the patient violence–turnover intention link is not as simple as previously believed. Future researchers can use these findings to further develop integrated models that explore the adverse consequences of workplace violence on nursing staff’s personal and professional well-being.     

The aftermath of workplace violence among healthcare workers: A systematic literature review of the consequences

Workplace violence is an important health and safety issue. Healthcare workers are particularly at risk of experiencing workplace violence. Despite the research that was conducted in this domain, little is known about the consequences of being a victim of workplace violence, specifically in the healthcare sector. Therefore, this article aims to review the literature regarding the consequences of exposure to workplace violence in the healthcare sector. Sixty-eight studies were included in the review and they were evaluated according to 12 criteria recommended for systematic reviews. The studies identified seven categories of consequences of workplace violence: (1) physical, (2) psychological, (3) emotional, (4) work functioning, (5) relationship with patients/quality of care, (6) social/general, and (7) financial. Psychological (e.g., posttraumatic stress, depression) and emotional (e.g., anger, fear) consequences and impact on work functioning (e.g., sick leave, job satisfaction) were the most frequent and important effects of workplace violence. In conclusion, this paper recommends further research, particularly longitudinal studies, in order to better grasp the direct and indirect effects of workplace violence.     

How does workplace ostracism hurt employee creativity? Thriving at work as a mediator and organization-based self-esteem as a moderator

Drawing on the socially embedded model of thriving and conservation of resources theory, we explore the negative effect of workplace ostracism on employee thriving. We model organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) as a moderator and extend our examination to the downstream implications of thriving for employee creativity. Using a scenario-based experiment (Study 1) with 387 working adults, we find that workplace ostracism is more likely to prevent workers with higher levels of OBSE from thriving at work. This finding is verified in Study 2, in which we use multiwave, multisource data collected from 207 employees and their supervisors to test the proposed model. The results further show that for employees with higher levels of OBSE, thriving at work is more likely to mediate the relationship between workplace ostracism and employee creativity. These findings provide important practical implications for fostering employee thriving and promoting creativity in the workplace by managing workplace ostracism.     

The Prevalence and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Intrusion in the Workplace

This study examines the prevalence and consequences of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the workplace. Surveys were completed by 1,390 employees in 32 different companies representing different organization types. Over half of the women and almost a quarter of the males reported that they had been an IPV victim at some point in their lives with 16% reporting victimization in the previous 12 months. Younger workers and workers who witnessed IPV frequently as a child were more likely to be current IPV victims. Further, 41% of lifetime victims reported significant workplace consequences, such as missed days of work, tardiness, and perpetrator intrusion. Younger workers, a history of IPV physical injury, more frequent IPV events over longer periods of time, and a history of stalking were associated with a greater number of IPV work consequences. The cumulative effects of IPV as well as active victimization contribute to negative workplace consequences. With significant numbers of employees experiencing IPV and reporting workplace consequences, the present research underscores the need for employers to develop a more precise means of understanding cost and response.     

委屈可以求全吗?自我表现视角下职场排斥对个体绩效的影响机制

有关职场排斥对员工绩效的影响结果, 已有研究存在不一致的研究结论, 表明该领域还存在潜藏的作用机制有待深入发掘。为此, 基于自我表现理论, 本文构建并检验了一个有条件的间接作用模型, 探讨遭受职场排斥的个体如何以及何时可能获得更高的绩效评价。基于一个情景实验和一个多时点、上下级配对的问卷调查, 研究结果支持了理论假设：职场排斥会激发个体表面顺从的应对策略, 并且这种应对趋向对高集体主义倾向的员工更为明显; 而在领导的集体主义倾向较高的情况下, 高表面顺从的下属能获得更高的绩效评价; 当且仅当下属和领导的集体主义倾向都较高时, 职场排斥通过表面顺从对绩效评价产生正向影响。     

服务破坏行为：概念、测量与相关变量

服务破坏行为是指服务行业组织成员在向顾客提供服务的过程中,故意做出的对服务造成负面影响的行为,也是以往研究中关于工作场所中的破坏行为在服务行业中的体现;服务破坏行为的表现主要有四种类型：习惯且私下的服务破坏,习惯且公开的服务破坏,偶发且私下的服务破坏,偶发且公开的服务破坏;服务破坏行为的测量方法主要有：访谈法,问卷调查法和情景投射法;从个人、群体、组织与环境四个水平分析服务破坏行为的前因变量,从对个体、服务绩效及组织绩效三个方面探讨服务破坏行为的结果变量;该领域未来的研究应着重于进一步改进测量的方法,分析相关变量之间的作用机制,寻求控制服务破坏行为的有效对策,拓展视野,进一步扩大研究中被试的类型及行业领域     

The enduring impact of violence against children

More than one billion children – half of all children in the world – are exposed to violence every year. The violence children are exposed to includes both direct experiences of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as indirectly witnessing violence in their homes, schools, and communities. What these various forms of violence share, based on a review of the literature, is their enduring potential for life-long consequences. These consequences include increases in the risks of injury, HIV, sexually transmitted infections, mental health problems, reproductive health problems, and non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes. Studies addressing biologic underpinnings of such consequences demonstrate that violence-associated toxic stress may cause damage to the nervous, endocrine, circulatory, musculo-skeletal, reproductive, respiratory, and immune systems. Furthermore, rigorous economic evaluations suggest that costs associated with the consequences of violence against children exceed $120 billion in the U.S. and account for up to 3.5% of the GDP in sub-regions of East Asia. The expanding literature confirming the mechanisms of consequences and the associated costs of violence against children has been accompanied by growing evidence on effective approaches to prevention. Moreover, the expanding evidence on prevention has been accompanied by a growing determination on the part of global leaders to accelerate action. Thus, as part of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development agenda, the UN has issued a call-to-action: to eliminate violence against children. This unprecedented UN call may foster new investments, to fuel new progress for protecting children around the world from violence and its preventable consequences.     

Workplace Violence Toward Hospital Staff and Volunteers: A Survey of an Italian Sample

Interest in the phenomenon of workplace violence has increased in recent years because such violence is evident in the healthcare sector. The prevalence and consequences of victimization among healthcare professionals have been well-investigated but not in volunteers who have direct and prolonged contact with patients and visitors. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of physical and psychological workplace violence, the psychological and emotional consequences for hospital staff and volunteers, and the coping strategies that they adopted. In the current study, both of these groups worked with patients suffering from chronic diseases in a hospital in northern Italy. The participants included 108 hospital staff and 96 volunteers in cardiology and oncology units. The results revealed that for the staff victims of physical or psychological violence, the increase in depressive and anxiety symptoms (both state and trait) corresponded to a greater use of coping strategies to avoid facing the event. For the volunteer victims of physical violence, an increase in state anxiety was associated with an attempt to cope with the discharge of emotion, whereas trait anxiety was associated with a coping strategy that represents a positive interpretation of life events. A worrisome finding was the number of staff and volunteer victims of physical and psychological violence who did not report these occurrences: only one third of staff and volunteers reported these events to management or to the police.     

Job crafting mediates how empowering leadership and employees’ core self-evaluations predict favourable and unfavourable outcomes

ABSTRACT

Based on job crafting theory and workplace resources theories, the present study develops a model of both antecedents and consequences of job crafting. We hypothesized subordinates’ perceptions of empowering leadership and core self-evaluations influence employee job crafting behaviours, which subsequently influence four outcomes: improving three employee well-being outcomes, (a) work-family enrichment, (b) flourishing, and (c) life satisfaction; and simultaneously reducing the organizational outcome of (d) deviant behaviours. Three-waves of data over nine months were collected from U.S. full-time employees (n = 276). Results showed empowering leadership and core self-evaluations positively related to expansive/approach forms of job crafting behaviours, which in turn related to the three different well-being outcomes. However, job crafting did not affect employee deviant behaviour. Instead, empowering leadership and core self-evaluations directly predicted less deviant behaviour. With the imputed data, we also found job crafting had a significant but weak relationship with deviant behaviour. These findings provide an integrated understanding of how and why employees engage in job crafting, and the important influence that job crafting has on employees’ subjective well-being. The present study advances leadership and job crafting theories, providing practical recommendations for promoting employee well-being and decreasing undesirable behaviours in the form of workplace deviance.     

Les violences et agressions physiques au travail : analyse de la littérature

"The whole of the personnel was put in strike… the reason… one of their colleagues was violently attacked by a user with a knife…". Far from being a news in brief, workplace violence is present within the media; privileged witnesses of an iceberg. Indeed, according to last figures of European investigations, close of an employee on one on ten (9%) known as to have been victim of intimidation on its workplace, and 6% were victims of physical violence. And, however, some advance the idea that the official figures are well far from reality from the company, the majority of the figures relates the violence with even morbid serious after-effects more (Eurogip, 1998). This article will thus stick to work out an inventory of workplace violence and more specifically of physical violence. With this intention, an analysis of 28 articles was carried out starting from various criteria in order to raise conceptual nebula around this phenomenon. Which are the definitions suggested, methodologies used and the results obtained by this research? Thus, this article will open a track of reflexion on the perception of violence at work like occupational hazard but also like a stake of health at the work and public safety.     

L’effet médiateur de l’épuisement professionnel et des violences psychologiques dans le processus d’auto-objectification au travail

This study aims to highlight the mediating role of burnout and psychological violence between objectification and its consequences on the perception of oneself as an object. In total, 180 professionals responded to an online questionnaire to measure these constructs. The results reveal a direct effect of objectification on self-objectification, this effect being mediated by both burnout and the level of psychological violence. This study invites to question dehumanizing relationships at work and their conditions of emergence as a framework for interpreting risks at the workplace.     

Employee–supervisor political skill congruence and work outcomes: The mediating role of leader–member exchange quality

This study aims to investigate the effect of employee–supervisor political skill congruence on the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX), which in turn influences employees' job satisfaction and turnover intention. For this purpose, two survey studies were conducted. The first study examined the relationship between employee–supervisor political skill congruence and LMX using multi-source data collected from 287 employee–supervisor dyads. The second study examined the indirect effect of congruence in political skill on work outcomes through LMX by using time-lagged multi-source data collected from 142 employee–supervisor dyads. The findings indicate that compared with incongruence, congruence in political skill is associated with higher employee-rated LMX. Moreover, among dyads with congruent political skills, congruence at high levels of political skill is associated with higher employee-rated LMX compared with congruence at low levels of political skill. Moreover, in case of incongruency, low employee–high supervisor political skill combination was related to higher supervisor-rated LMX compared with high employee–low supervisor political skill combination. Lastly, employee–supervisor political skill congruency indirectly influences job satisfaction and turnover intention through employee-rated LMX. This research significantly contributes to the political skill literature by examining potential consequences of employee–supervisor congruence in political skill in the workplace.     

Positive Leader Behaviors and Workplace Incivility: the Mediating Role of Perceived Norms for Respect

Scholars have called for research on the antecedents of mistreatment in organizations such as workplace incivility, as well as the theoretical mechanisms that explain their linkage. To address this call, the present study draws upon social information processing and social cognitive theories to investigate the relationship between positive leader behaviors—those associated with charismatic leadership and ethical leadership—and workers’ experiences of workplace incivility through their perceptions of norms for respect. Relationships were separately examined in two field studies using multi-source data (employees and coworkers in study 1, employees and supervisors in study 2). Results suggest that charismatic leadership (study 1) and ethical leadership (study 2) are negatively related to employee experiences of workplace incivility through employee perceptions of norms for respect. Norms for respect appear to operate as a mediating mechanism through which positive forms of leadership may negatively relate to workplace incivility. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for organizations regarding leader behaviors that foster norms for respect and curb uncivil behaviors at work.     

Seeking Clarity in a Linguistic Fog: Moderators of the Workplace Aggression-Strain Relationship

This study used cross-sectional data from 579 nurses to examine main and interaction effects of workplace aggression and theoretical nuances on employee strain. Perceived intensity of aggression and intention attributions by the target, power of the perpetrator in relation to the target, and perceived visibility of aggression by the target all served to exacerbate various relationships of workplace aggression with depression, physical symptoms, job satisfaction, and accidental contagious disease exposure. Three-way interactions reveal that these moderators may have complex roles in workplace aggression–strain research. This research supports a model where workplace aggression and its distinct moderators jointly impact employee strain and provide clarity to questions left unanswered due to term fragmentation and measurement overlap that currently obscure how mechanisms underlying workplace aggression constructs impact employee strains.     

Expanding the Conceptualization of Workplace Violence: Implications for Research,Policy, and Practice

Workplace violence generally refers to interpersonal aggression, sexual harassment, bullying, and other forms of discrimination and oppression occurring within the confines of the paid workplace. Workplace violence affects women across the globe, resulting in a wide range of health, economic, and social problems. We advocate for broader, transdisciplinary, intersectional, and transnational conceptualizations of workplace violence in research, policy, and practice. Supported by findings from research conducted around the globe, we argue that workplace violence occurs not only within the context of women’s paid employment in the formal workplace, but also within the contexts of other types of work in which women of all ages engage. An expanded, more inclusive conceptualization of women’s workplaces in research, policy, and practice will promote broader recognition and acknowledgement of women’s experiences of interpersonal violence in the contexts of their multiple work roles in unpaid and informal work, as well as the paid labor force. Incorporating intersectional, transnational, and transdisciplinary perspectives into research, policy, and practice related to workplace violence will expand understandings and interpretations of women’s experiences of workplace violence across the lifespan; within their own multi-faceted cultural contexts and racial, ethnic, gender, and class identities; and will facilitate transnational, cross-cultural comparisons. Implementation of policies based on expanded conceptualizations of workplace violence can contribute to more effective education and prevention efforts, improved reporting procedures, and enhanced post-violence support services and treatment programs that meet the needs of women across a wider spectrum of workplace contexts.     

Looking on the Bright Side: The Positive Role of Organisational Politics in the Relationship between Employee Engagement and Performance at Work

Scholars have largely focused on the negative consequences of organisational politics for employees' performance. In contrast, we maintain that organisational politics has positive aspects and moderates the relationship between employee engagement and behaviors at work such as knowledge sharing, creativity, proactivity, and adaptivity. Using data from 253 high‐tech employees and their supervisors in Israel, our findings demonstrate that perceptions of organisational politics strengthen the relationship between employee engagement and these behaviors. When engaged employees perceive their workplace to be political, they are more proactive, creative, and adaptive, and more likely to share their knowledge with their peers. These findings confirm the challenge/opportunity stressor theory regarding perceptions of organisational politics and suggest that whether politics is viewed as positive or negative depends on the employees' point of view. For those who are engaged and more actively involved in their jobs, politics can be regarded as a challenge and even an opportunity for obtaining more resources to improve their performance. Implications for the development of theory and practice in this area are discussed.