Political climate and workplace cyberbullying perpetration: a multilevel moderated mediation model.

BACKGROUND

In the post-COVID-19 era, more work is being done online; more people are working remotely; and communication has shifted online. Increased concerns about workplace cyberbullying (WCB) have accompanied these changes in work, but the scholarly literature is limited in terms of understanding the characteristics of organizations and individual perpetrators that shape WCB behavior. Drawing upon social exchange theory and the literature on organizational politics, we proposed and tested a multilevel moderated mediation model to examine the cross-level direct and indirect relationships between political climate and WCB perpetration mediated through psychological contract violation, and we also investigated the moderating role of toxic online disinhibition in this process.

METHODS

We collected multiphase and multilevel data from 416 white-collar employees nested within 30 organizations in the service sector in Islamabad, Pakistan. We used a multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) technique in Mplus to analyze the data.

RESULTS

We found a direct and positive cross-level relationship between political climate and WCB perpetration. Multilevel mediation analysis revealed that psychological contract violation mediates the cross-level relationship between political climate and WCB perpetration. Moreover, multilevel moderated mediation analysis suggested that the conditional cross-level indirect effect of political climate on WCB perpetration via psychological contract violation was stronger and significant at higher levels of toxic online disinhibition, whereas it was weaker and non-significant at lower levels of toxic online disinhibition.

CONCLUSION

Studies exploring the situational antecedents of WCB perpetration are scarce, particularly at the organizational level. We proposed and tested a multilevel model of WCB perpetration indicating that political climate leads individuals to engage in WCB perpetration directly as well as indirectly through its impact on psychological contract violation. We outline a number of practical implications and suggest future research directions.