Newcomers as Bystanders of Workplace Bullying

Abstract

Workplace bullying is a destructive behavior that affects everyone in an organization including those who witness it as bystanders. A vulnerable bystander group influenced by bullying are organizational newcomers. Witnessing bullying as a newcomer can put newcomers in sensitive positions where they must make sense of the bullying and consider their responses to it. Neophyte newcomers (newcomers with little past work experience) or veteran newcomers (newcomers with a history of work experience) may engage with workplace bullying differently. Additionally, situational variables and individual differences influence how newcomers will make sense of the situation, how they gather information and respond as bystanders.

An online survey was administered to college students (representing neophyte newcomers) and full-time employees (representing veteran employees). Through an experimental design, participants read a vignette that detailed a situation where they are witnessing a manager bullying a coworker and are then asked to put themselves in the position of a newcomer bystander. Based on the stimuli of the vignette, participants responded to a questionnaire that asked questions relating to how they interpret the bullying and how they would react.

The results determined that situational variables such as social cost and psychological contracts did not influence information seeking tactics, but did influence the type of bystander veteran newcomers would become. Individual differences such as work experience, knowledge of workplace bullying and conflict management styles influenced information seeking tactics and bystander roles for both samples. College students are more likely to engage with bullying scenarios more directly while full-time employees took more indirect routes by reporting the bullying to human resources.