The clinical effects of workplace bullying: a critical look at personality using SEM

This paper aims to evaluate the subjective experience with associated clinical and health effects on workers subjected to persistent harassment in the workplace. The study also attempts to explore an a priori hypothesised personality/clinical effects model of workplace bullying, identifying the relationships between relevant variables using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The sample represents 100 individual psychological assessments conducted by professional psychologists at an Anti‐bullying research and resource centre. The quantitative results are based on robust psychometric inventories. The conceptual models were tested using the software LISREL 8.7.

Results indicate elevated overall psychometric scores on all psychological and physical health inventories. The constructed a priori model was conceived based on grounded theoretical literature which assessed the moderating impact of individual factors such as personality on the severity of clinical effect, thought to be as a result of workplace bullying. Using a strictly confirmatory approach, however, all tested models were not adequate fits.

Results of this study have implications for the prevention and intervention of workplace bullying both of which need to be intensified in order to minimise the physical and psychological ill effects of victimisation in the workplace. One of the key messages of this study is that the severity of the clinical effect may not relate to a person's character, but rather to the traumatic experience of bullying itself. The findings suggest that action is needed at an organizational level as explanations with regards to the intensity of psychological health outcomes may not be found in the constitution of one's personality.

This is a unique study that looks specifically at personality as a potential moderating factor of psychological and physical health in relation to workplace bullying.