Impacts of workplace bullying on workers' free will to communicate
Abdullah Zafar Sheikh & Tuaneri Akoto
What the paper says
Restructurings and downsizings have the potential to increase workplace bullying. This study looks at the impact of workplace bullying on victims' free will to communicate, during a large-scale restructuring process. The data were collected through semi-structured qualitative interviews. The findings suggest that managers are the predominant bullies and that they attempt to control employees by silencing them and by impacting on victims' free will to communicate. The study revealed that workplace bullying impacts on a victim's free will to communicate and bullies often achieve this through exploitation of a victim's insecurities and vulnerabilities. Lack of senior management support, retribution, distrust and exploitation of hierarchical position are some of the other factors which exacerbate bullying in the workplace. The findings have significant implications for managerial practices in regard to allowing victims of workplace bullying to exercise free will to communicate.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.19 × 0.4 = 0.08 |
| M · momentum | 0.80 × 0.15 = 0.12 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.