Effect of Workplace Bullying on Workplace Deviance and Project Success: Mediating Role of Perception of Politics

Abstract

Workplace bullying has been a critical issue at any workplace. In the last few decades, workplace bullying has negatively influenced work and project outcomes. Further, workplace bullying leads to many underlying negative mechanisms which will also affect project performance and thus overall organization performance. Employing of conversation of resources theory, the current research investigates the relationship between workplace bullying and (a) workplace deviance (b) project success via perceived organizational politics. Two wave data were collected from 200 employees working in various construction and industrial projects in Pakistan. SPSS 21 was used to analyze descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha, correlation, and regression analysis while mediation was done through Hayes PROCESS macro (Model 4). The results suggest that workplace bullying has a positive and significant relationship with workplace deviance but a negative and significant relationship with project success. Furthermore, results also indicate that perceived organizational politics partially mediates the relationship between workplace bullying and workplace deviance. It is also found that perceived organizational politics partially mediates the relationship between workplace bullying and project success. This study suggests that the Human resource department and project managers should define and implement a proper code of conduct, organizational ethics, and policies in the team which can lead to decrease workplace bullying and perceived organizational politics. Organizations also need to deploy strict rules on uncivil behavior and misbehaving attitudes. Workplace bullying and perception of politics are significant workplace behavior, which is experienced by both men and women. Therefore, the most effective strategies to counter these problems may include problem-focused strategies like dealing collectively with colleagues, looking for support of the managerial staff, filing complaints to the management, mentoring, orientation, training for potential victims, and employee engagement. This would, in turn, result in better team performance and project outcomes.