Date of Conferral

2015

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Gwynne N. Dawdy

Abstract

Workplace environments and the dynamics that exist within them affect everyone involved, especially coworkers. Although research has investigated how workplace bullying impacts its victims and the organization, little research has examined the effects of workplace bullying from the role of the bystander. Fewer have investigated how Perceived of Organizational Support (POS) may affect the employee's work engagement of those witnesses. The goal of this quantitative study was to determine the effect of POS on work engagement in the employees who witness workplace bullying. An online survey was used with the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised, (NAQ-R), Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) and POS instruments. It was launched on LinkedIn and 152 respondents participated and were asked to snowball the link. The study employed the affective events theory that presupposes that the occupational atmosphere influences those in proximity to negative behaviors. Regression results showed that only POS (t (150) = 5.14, p < 0.001) predicted employees' work engagement. On the other hand, witnessing workplace bullying (t (150) = -0.69, p = 0.49) did not affect employees' work engagement. This study provides a useful framework to illustrate how the environment of workplace bullying affects an organization's human and fiscal resources, contributing to the body of knowledge that can benefit organizations by helping to affect social change.

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