Emotional load and social support as indicators of bullying at work

Abstract

This study sought to ascertain whether elevated emotional load and a lack of social support could be indicative of bullying at work. Participants totalled 1442 employees from the manufacturing industry in South Africa. Data on emotional load, social support, and bullying were gathered using a self-report survey. Structural equation modelling methods were implemented to establish the variance explained in bullying by colleagues and bullying by supervisors, as outcomes, with emotional load and social support as predictor variables. Additionally, multi-group analyses were performed to investigate how the explained variances might differ based on gender and race. Results revealed that the models fitted the data well and that emotional load and a lack of social support explained a substantial amount of variance in bullying by superiors and bullying by colleagues. With regard to the multi-group analysis more variance was explained for females than for males, but the values were quite similar in all groups which give strength to the generalisability of the findings. The findings of this study therefore indicate that elevated emotional load and a lack of social support are indicators of bullying behaviour at work.