An ethical infrastructure to reduce the risk of workplace bullying: The importance of psychosocial safety, justice and conflict management linked to group identification, bystanders and personality

Research problem and specific questionsThe proposed research project focuses on workplace bullying, a detrimental phenomenon that affects hundreds of thousands Swedish employees.

The overarching aim of the project is to provide new theoretical insights and practical implications that can help reduce the occurence and mitigate the consequences of workplace bullying for victims and bystanders, and for the workplace as a whole.

To get a fuller picture of workplace bullying, working conditions and dispositional factors will be examined in conjunction rather than separately.

The research project will focus on how the working environment in terms of stress and stressors, leadership, social support and psychosocial safety, and an ethical infrastructure may be affected by individual level factors such as personality as well as group level factors such as group identification, prototypicality and norms with regard to workplace bullying.

Data and methodThe project research questions will be investigated using a longitudinal survey design.

The design will be full panel prospective, permitting analyses of change over time as well as possible reciprocal or reverse relationships.

Data will come from two different sources — a probability sample of the whole Swedish workforce drawn and collected by Statistics Sweden (SCB) and at least one large organization collected by us. Societal relevance and utilisationReports of occupational disease has increased in recent years.

Being exposed to bullying at work increases the risk of long sickness absence as well as being excluded from the labour market all together. The project aims to better understand workplace bullying and how it affects the victims and those around.

An important focus is to investigate the conditions for an ethical infrastructure and the importance it may have for workplaces in reducing the occurrence and mitigating the consequences of workplace bullying for victims and bystanders, as well as for the workplace as a whole.Plan for project realisationWe have already contacted SCB and will continue the dialogue if the project gets approved.

At the same time the recruitment process of organizations will start. The first of two data collections will be done in the spring of 2024, the second nine months later. The largest post in the budget is salary costs followed by the cost for the SCB random sample of the Swedish workforce. There are also costs for communication of the research results.