Investigating Effort-Reward Imbalance Model in Prediction of Workplace Bullying

In work environments, job stress is the main factor that can break the control of employees and provide the context for the occurrence of aggression in employees. For this reason, this study investigated the role of the effort-reward imbalance model in the occurrence of bullying in the workplace.

This study was descriptive-analytical in nature. In this research, to measure the variables, two self-report questionnaires, the effort-reward imbalance scale and the negative actions questionnaire, were used.  The research population was employees of one of the process industries, and 202 people were included in the study using the census method. Analyses were performed using SPSS 18 software, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and linear regression.

 The total number of participants in the study was 202. The average age and work experience of the participants in this study were 40.13±9.32 and 15.9±9.50 years, respectively. Among the participants, 72.8% were male and 86.1% were married. In terms of educational status, 10.9% had an associate's degree, 81.2% had a bachelor's degree, and the rest had a master's degree or higher. About three-fourths of the people were officially employed, and the rest were working on a contract basis. Based on the results of the multivariate regression model, among the variables investigated in this study, effort-reward imbalance and extreme commitment were able to significantly predict the changes in the bullying score (P<0.001).

Employees who feel imbalanced between inputs and outputs in the job, as well as employees who have the characteristic of extreme commitment, are more likely to engage in negative behaviors in the form of bullying in the workplace.