Social capital and workplace bullying

Abstract

Background: Workplace bullying is a serious stressor with devastating short- and long-term consequences. The concept of organizational social capital may provide insights into the interactional and communicative dynamics of the bullying process and opportunities for prevention.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the association between organizational social capital and being a target or observer of workplace bullying.

Methods: Based on self-reported cross-sectional data from a large representative sample of the Danish working population (n = 10.037), logistic regression analyses were conducted to explore at the individual level the associations between vertical and horizontal organizational social capital with being a target or observer of workplace bullying.

Results: In the fully adjusted models, low organizational social capital (vertical and horizontal) was associated with significantly increased odds ratios of both self-labelled (vertical: OR = 3.25; CI = 2.34-4.51; horizontal: OR = 3.17; CI = 2.41-4.18) and observed workplace bullying (vertical: OR = 2.09; CI = 1.70-2.56; horizontal: OR = 1.60; CI = 1.35-1.89), when compared with high organizational social capital.

Conclusions: This study supports that characteristics of the psychosocial work environment are of importance in the development of workplace bullying, and provides focus on the importance of self-reported organizational social capital.

Keywords: Danish WorkEnvironment Cohort Study; Work environment; observers of bullying; organizational social capital; targets of bullying.