Kan het daderschap van pesterijen verklaard worden via het Job Demands-Resources model?

Abstract

Can workplace bullying be explained by the Job Demands-Resources model? Can workplace bullying be explained by the Job Demands-Resources model? Workplace bullying leads to negative consequences and should be prevented. Studies investigating antecedents of bullying showed however two shortcomings. First, they mainly focused on targets, so little is known about perpetrators. Second, they rarely used theoretical frameworks to structure the antecedents. Therefore, this study aims to apply the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) model to being a perpetrator of bullying. We hypothesized that job demands related positively and job resources related negatively to being a perpetrator of bullying. We assumed an interaction effect between demands and resources and expected exhaustion to mediate the relationship between demands, resources and being a perpetrator. The results (N = 706) showed a significant interaction: job resources buffered the positive relation between job demands and being a perpetrator. No evidence was found for the direct effects and for exhaustion as a mediator. In summary, the JDR model is a valuable framework to explain being a perpetrator of bullying: job demands and resources interact in the prediction of being a perpetrator. Future studies may focus on other mediators that could explain this relationship.