Sischka Philipp E, Melzer André, Schmidt Alexander F, Steffgen Georges
Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Health and Behaviour, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
Department of Psychology, Social and Legal Psychology, University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 9;12:627968. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.627968. eCollection 2021.
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 ( = 1,257) 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.
职场霸凌是一种会对健康、工作相关态度以及受霸凌者行为产生严重不利影响的现象。特别是，遭受职场霸凌与较低的总体幸福感、工作满意度、活力和工作表现以及较高的倦怠感、职场偏差行为和离职意愿有关。然而，这些关系背后的心理机制仍未得到充分理解。借鉴心理契约和自我决定理论（SDT），我们假设心理契约违背感和基本需求受挫在 workplace bullying exposure（此处原文有误，可能是workplace bullying exposure，即职场霸凌暴露）与幸福感、态度和行为结果之间的关系中起中介作用。通过在线调查，在亚马逊的Mechanical Turk平台上收集了不同工作背景员工（n = 1257）的自我报告数据。结果表明，心理契约违背感和基本需求受挫在幸福感、工作满意度、倦怠感、活力和离职意愿方面解释了独特的变异，表明这两种心理机制都有各自的作用。然而，当控制基本需求受挫这一因素时，心理契约违背感不再是职场霸凌暴露与工作绩效之间的中介变量。帮助员工有效应对职场霸凌暴露可能会缓冲其负面影响，减少他们所经历的基本需求受挫感，维护他们 的幸福感、活力和工作表现，并最终预防倦怠。本研究首次同时阐明了职场霸凌背景下心理契约违背和基本需求受挫所提出的心理机制及独特作用。
