The self-regulatory role of trait mindfulness in workplace bullying, hostility and counterproductive work behaviours among hotel employees

Abstract

While counterproductive work behaviours (CWB) harm hotels’ financial and non-financial performance, hospitality research ought to pay more attention to unpacking its antecedents and how employees are triggered to engage in CWB. Drawing on Affective Events Theory (AET), we posit that workplace bullying (WB) leads to enacting CWB by eliciting the targets’ emotions of hostility. Furthermore, considering the affective disposition in AET and adopting the self-regulation perspective, we argue that the mediating mechanism of hostility for the link between WB and CWB is moderated by trait mindfulness. Using a two-wave data collection from employees in hotels in Jordon (N = 328), we found that employee hostility mediated the relationship between WB and CWB. Trait mindfulness was found to attenuate the positive association between WB and emotional response of hostility, leading to reduced CWB. Our findings lend credence to the AET to further understand how WB induces CWB.