Workplace bullying in Serbia: The relation of self-labeling and behavioral experience with job-related behaviors

Abstract

Workplace bullying has been identified as a widespread problem in contemporary organizational research. The aim of the paper was to acquire theoretically based and comparable findings about workplace bullying in Serbia: to explore the behavioral experience and self-labeling approaches (applying the Negative Acts Questionnaire - Revised, NAQ-R) and their relationship with job-related behaviors. The sample comprised 1,998 employees. Prevalence rates of workplace bullying based on self-labeling and behavior experience approaches overlap significantly (70% of employees operationally identified as bullied had also labeled themselves as bullied). Both the self-labeling and behavioral experience approach showed significant correlations with job-related behaviors (perceived threat to a total job, absenteeism, intention to leave, and perceived productivity). Previously bullied, presently bullied and non-bullied employees differed significantly on all four job-related behaviors, with large effect size for the intention to leave and medium effect size for the perceived threat to a total job. The findings support combining self-labeling and behavioral experience approaches in workplace bullying research.