Effect of Perceived Bullying at Workplace on Emotions Related to Job Commitment

Abstract

Workplace bullying is a well-documented phenomenon that has been associated with a number ofnegative consequences. However, employees face difficulty sharing their experiences of bully and many of such incidents go unreported. We have attempted to make the sharing less threatening in this research by developing some scenarios (depicting bully, extracted from the real-life situations) and asking the participants to 'imagine' themselves in similar situation of bully and feel it then complete a questionnaire for evaluating the emotional state. This way, we would not be able tostudy the direct psychological effects of bullying on employees however, this technique may enable us to see the moderation effect of (perceived) bullying on job commitment. This exercise would be neutral on people who were never bullied but it may trigger the post trauma in people who had been bullied and they may report their emotions similar to the emotions when they were bullied. We asked 290n people; working in different organizations of Karachi, Pakistan; to complete theactivity of imagination, reporting their emotional state, and their job commitment. Instruments used for this purpose included: especially developed organizational bullying scenarios, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule scale (PANAS; Watson & Clark, 1988) and Organization Commitment Scale (OCS; Cook & Wall, 1974). Findings suggested that bullying at workplace is related to both an increased negative effect and a decreased job commitment. If employees relating these perceived bullying incidents to negative emotions and lower job commitment then it may be detrimental in real situations. Keywords: workplace bullying, job commitment, positive effect, negative effect