How Workplace Bullying Relates to Facades of Conformity and Work–Family Conflict: The Mediating Role of Psychological Strain

Abstract

This study examined the effects of workplace bullying on facades of conformity in the work domain and on work–family conflict in the family domain. In this research, workplace bullying is seen as a reality in organizations, and this study considers individuals’ judgments concerning various features of their workplace situations. Employees’ experiences of workplace bullying influence their creation of facades of conformity and crosses over to influence their partners’ family life through psychological strain. Psychological strain mediates the influence of workplace bullying on facades of conformity and on partners’ work–family life. A total of 569 employee–partner dyads from a large plastics corporation in Taiwan demonstrated significant relationships between workplace bullying and its outcomes at work and at home. The results of this study demonstrate that psychological strain is an important mechanism between workplace bullying and its consequences, both at work and at home. A time-lag study design and two different sources (i.e., employees and their married partners) were utilized to reduce common method bias in this study. The main theoretical and practical implications of the findings for future research are discussed.

Keywords

Workplace bullying psychological strain facades of conformity work–family conflict

Introduction

During the last two decades, workplace bullying has received increasing attention in management studies (Djurkovic, McCormack, & Casimir, 2008; Park & Ono, 2016) and is a critical issue in work life (Einarsen, Hoel, & Notelaers, 2009). Bullying is a reality in organizations and is a serious problem for employees and their organizations. Prior studies show that workplace bullying has a prevalence rate of 21% for physical aggression and 79% for psychological hostility and costs millions of dollars in reduced psychological well-being and health problems (French & Sutton, 2010; Sutton, 2007). Workplace bullying increases employees’ intention to leave (Djurkovic et al., 2008) and reduces job engagement (Einarsen, Skogstad, Rørvik, Lande, & Nielsen, 2016). Therefore, workplace bullying represents a primary organizational issue with extremely negative outcomes in the workplace. Bullied targets may feel forced to withhold their own personal values and engage in fake behaviors in organizations. These behaviors are likely to be described as creation of facades of conformity (Hewlin, 2003). The current study suggests that targets may decide to withhold their personal worth and fake embracing the values of the organization when workplace bullying occurs.

Although workplace bullying is receiving increasing attention in organizational studies (Agotnes, Einarsen, Hetland, & Skogstd, 2018; Park & Ono, 2016), few studies have investigated whether workplace bullying influences the victim beyond the workplace domains, such as the victim’s responsibilities in the family domain (Raja, Javed, & Abbas, 2018; Viotti, Arnetz, & Converso, 2018; Yoo & Lee, 2018). Negative experiences in the workplace may influence the victim’s life beyond the work domain. When employees experience work mistreatment, they may transfer their emotional reaction or stress to their family life with regard to home and health issues. Hoel, Faragher, and Cooper (2004) reported that workplace bullying is harmful to the health and well-being of employees. Therefore, the second proposal of this study aims to explore whether workplace bullying influences bullied employees’ responsibilities at home.

This study applies the theoretical framework of Affective Events Theory (AET; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to validate how workplace bullying produces psychological strain over time, leading to a reduction in family responsibilities and an inability to deal with family demands and work demands. Contextual issues in the workplace may create psychological strain and lead to negative consequences for employees (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Therefore, this study suggests that workplace bullying may cause psychological strain, a negative emotion that leads employees to display pretend behavior in organizations and interferes with family demands at home.

This study aims to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between workplace bullying and its consequences in the work and family domains in three ways. First, this study extends research on work mistreatment to show how workplace bullying can produce inauthentic behavior among employees, particularly in the creation of facades. This study argues that employees who experience workplace bullying may be motivated to engage in fake behavior through facades of conformity that suppress the employee’s own values and cause the employee to pretend to embrace organizational values (Hewlin, 2009; Hewlin, Kim, & Song, 2016). Second, prior studies of workplace mistreatment ignored the impact of workplace bullying outside of the workplace (Agotnes et al., 2018; Park & Ono, 2016). Given that workplace bullying occurs, it is important to examine whether workplace bullying affects family domains. Therefore, this study aims to explore whether workplace bullying can result in a reduction in employees’ fulfillment of family responsibilities in the home. Finally, previous research has yet to significantly examine potential mechanisms through which workplace bullying influences employees’ family and work domains. Thus, this study draws on AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to explain the role of employees’ psychological strain as an important mechanism through two mediation models.

Theoretical background and hypotheses

A number of concepts and terms have been used to describe situations in which colleagues, employers, or clients steadily and continually harass or annoy in the workplace, such as mobbing (Olweus, 1990), work abuse (Bassman, 1992), harassment (Lennane, 1993), and bullying (Einarsen, 2000). In Scandinavia, the term “mobbing” has been used (Olweus, 1990), whereas the terms employee abuse, harassment, and bullies have been used in North America (i.e., the United States and Canada) (Einarsen, 2000). In the current study, workplace bullying is defined as one type of workplace harassment that entails systematic hostility and aggression toward targets by an individual or a group (Einarsen & Raknes, 1997). Workplace bullying also involves repetitive actions of harassment, including oral violence, a power imbalance between offenders and targets, frequent negative behaviors, and persistence (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2011; Raja et al., 2018; Samnani & Singh, 2012). Prior studies differentiated the concept of bullying at work into five diverse forms: (1) assailing the target’s reputation, (2) inhibiting the target’s potential to contribute to work assignments, (3) attacking the target’s communication with colleagues, (4) degrading the social conditions, and (5) demonstrating personal behaviors of physical pressure or threat (Einarsen, 2000; Leymann, 1990).

Bullying seems to involve regular aggression and violence toward people by a group or by one person. Therefore, workplace bullying may have a widespread negative influence in organizations, because it involves not only the targets but also those who observe bullying (Djurkovic et al., 2008). For example, bullied targets at work frequently experience social isolation, exclusion, and negative behaviors in organizations (Einarsen, Raknes, & Matthiesen, 1994). Rayner, Hoel, and Cooper (2002) found that workplace bullying decreased job performance and reduced the job satisfaction and organizational commitment of the targets. In addition, workplace bullying directly influences the targets’ intention to leave through psychological effects (Djurkovic et al., 2008). Therefore, the central features of workplace bullying, including hostility, persistency, frequency, and power imbalance (Einarsen, 2000), produce a series of negative outcomes for the targets with regard to health, well-being (Park & Ono, 2016), and unhappiness (Mikkelsen & Einarsen, 2002).

Bullied targets perceive an intensifying bullying situation as a critical threat to the features of their work. Workplace bullying may affect the experience of employees with regard to their job security and expectations of the loss of important job features. If a bullying situation cannot be simply modified, bullied employees may begin to consider leaving their job, thereby producing job insecurity (Park & Ono, 2016), which contributes to members’ worth in an organization. Therefore, the targets of workplace bullying may pretend to reject their own values and develop the values of other organizational members (Stormer & Devine, 2008). Bullied targets may create facades to conform to organizational values for the purpose of job security.

Workplace bullying and its outcomes in work and home domains

Facades of conformity are incongruencies between personal values and organizational values. Hewlin et al. (2016) stated that “facades of conformity are false representations created by employees to appear as if they embrace organizational values” (p. 541). Facades of conformity can include conscious behaviors in which employees suppress their own personal values and pretend to express organizational values. For instance, employees may feel compelled to engage in false behavior and fake holding values that are similar to the mainstream employees at work (Hewlin, 2009). As Hewlin (2003) described the conceptualization of facades of conformity, inauthentic behaviors comprise fabrication that conflicts with individuals’ own values.

Employees who encounter bullying may feel pressured to display false behaviors and pretend to embrace the values of other members in the organization. According to the notion of impression management (Jones, 1964), self-presentation involves the procedure by which people seek to use impression tactics to influence others’ perception of them. Bullied employees may create facades of conformity by suppressing their individual values to positively enhance their job employment and avoid being isolated in organizations (Hewlin et al., 2016). Therefore, workplace bullying may imply a severe threat of exclusion from the workplace, which makes bullied employees suppress their own values and conform to others’ values in the organization for job security.

Hypothesis 1: Workplace bullying is related to facades of conformity.

Extant studies have revealed that workplace bullying has consequences on organizations (e.g., Samnani & Singh, 2012). However, the harmful effects of workplace bullying on the victim’s work life suggest that the influence of experiences of workplace bullying is likely to crossover to the bullied employee’s home life. In light of the potentially far-reaching effects of this phenomenon, workplace bullying can negatively affect employees across various roles in multiple domains. Specifically, crossover results when negative experiences at work or in the family affect functioning in the other domain (Staines, 1980). The crossover model has been defined as follows: “In crossover, stress experienced in the workplace by the individual leads to stress being experienced by the individual’s spouse at home” (Westman, 2001, p. 717). Because the employee–colleague relationship involves the exchange of employees’ time and effort for the socioemotional benefits provided by organizations (Aselage & Eisenberger, 2003), bullied employees are more likely to carry negative stress into their family life in ways that affect their interactions with their partners at home. Therefore, it is reasonable that workplace bullying and family life are the major processes of the crossover model in role theory.

Work–family conflict (WFC) happens when individuals’ efforts to accomplish the demands of their role in work intrude with their efforts to satisfy family demands (Liu et al., 2015). Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) defined WFC as a “form of interrole conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respects” (p. 77), and it is classified as one of the main work-related stressors (Liu, Nauta, Spector, & Li, 2008). Previous studies have shown that the competing needs of work and family domains may result in increased negatively emotional reactions (Gutek, Searle, & Klepa, 1991; Westman & Etzion, 2005). Frone, Russell, and Cooper (1992) indicated that WFC comprises two domains: family interfering with work (i.e., family–work conflict) and work interfering with family (i.e., work–family conflict). Although WFC is bidirectional in nature, this study focuses on work interfering with family. Because employees experience work demands in an organization, they usually spend the majority of their time fulfilling work responsibilities (Dahm, Glomb, Manchester, & Leroy, 2015). For example, Demsky, Ellis, and Fritz (2014) demonstrated that employees who experience workplace aggression are affected by this outside of the work domain. Therefore, when employees suffer experiences of bullying in an organization, they may lack the energy to undertake extra family responsibilities, such as caring for sick children. This study hypothesizes that the effects of workplace bullying may produce conflict between the work domain and the family domain (in the form of WFC).

Hypothesis 2: Workplace bullying is related to WFC.

Workplace bully and psychological strain

Workplace bullying creates emotional exhaustion (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012) and reduces mental and physical health (Hoel et al., 2004). After a workday, employees who have experienced a negative workplace event are likely to present signs of depression and negative strain (Liang, 2015). Ashforth(1997) showed that, compared to employees who are treated well, mistreated subordinates experience higher levels of psychological strain in the work and family domains. Prior research has defined psychological strain as the frequency at which people suffer negative psychological conditions, such as annoyance and frustration (Caplan, Cobb, French, Harrison, & Pinneau, 1980). Therefore, this perception of workplace bullying is most relevant and important in the context of AET (Park & Ono, 2016).

AET concentrates completely on the processes of individual judgment and emphasizes the processes of affective reactions in organizations (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Individuals’ affective responses are influenced by workplace events in organizations, resulting in behavioral outcomes at work and at home. For example, Zhao, Wayne, Glibkowski, and Bravo (2007) demonstrated that psychological contract breach (e.g., a negative workplace) can cause frustration and anger, which influence employees’ emotions and job behaviors. Workplace bullying is also likely to produce psychological strain. Employees who experience verbal violence or a power imbalance may find it difficult to set aside bullying, so they are likely to experience psychological strain created through their exposure to workplace bullying. Based on the perception of affective events (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), this study aims to clarify the relationship between workplace bullying and psychological strain. Therefore, this research hypothesizes the following:

Hypothesis 3: Workplace bullying is related to psychological strain.

The mediating role of psychological strain between workplace bullying and its outcomes

This study draws on AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) to develop the potential mechanisms between workplace bullying and its outcomes at both work and home. More specifically, this research suggests that workplace bullying may generate psychological strain in employees, resulting in facades of conformity in the work domain, whereas employees’ psychological strain may be a potential mechanism between workplace bullying and WFC in the home domain based on the crossover model (Westman, 2001). Therefore, this study utilizes a theoretical model based on the perceptions from the AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) and the crossover model (Westman, 2001) to investigate how workplace bullying influences psychological strain and results in facades of conformity and WFC when psychological strain is the product of an affective reaction.

In the work domain, employees may sustain psychological strain created by bullies that result in the creation of false behaviors within the organization. Therefore, creating facades of conformity has a negative consequence when negative work-related events occur in organizations. Hewlin et al. (2016) provided greater insight into the importance of threats to social demands in the workplace, suggesting that perceived job insecurity has a positive association with facades of conformity. Workplace bullying, as a negative work-related experience, may produce psychological strain, leading to facades of conformity. In particular, this study introduces the theory of affective events to explain why bullied employees may fake their behaviors in organizations.

In addition, workplace bullying was negatively related to job security (Park & Ono, 2016) and endangered social acceptance in organizations (Chen & Park, 2015). Given that workplace bullying can generate social isolation and aggression (Leymann, 1990), this study suggests that workplace bullying establishes a threat to an employee’s feeling of belongingness in the workplace. The bullied employees may experience unhappy and nervous. Therefore, they may consider safeguarding their job security, resulting in generating facades of conformity. This study proposes that the bullied employees may suppress their own personal values and fake accepting organizational worth to reduce the threat to their feelings of belongingness from which they suffer through workplace bullying. This conjecture is consistent with prior studies on facades of conformity, which suggest that employees may create fake behavior (i.e., facades of conformity) as a way to protect their social status in the workplace (Hewlin, 2009; Hewlin et al., 2016; Stormer & Devine, 2008). Therefore, this study hypothesizes that workplace bullying influences psychological strain and leads to facades of conformity because of psychological strain.

Hypothesis 4: Psychological strain mediates the relationship between workplace bullying and facades of conformity.

When employees with psychological strain leave their organizations, they may carry negative work-related experiences to their family life. For instance, prior research that analyzed a sample of 226 employees along with their partners showed that a negative emotional reaction in an organization generated a higher level of WFC (Liang, 2015). Employees may become less able to cope with family responsibilities, such as childcare. When employees feel isolation in social relationships because of job issues in an organization (Einarsen, 2000), they may need the physical or psychological energy to undertake extra family obligations, such as helping with their children’s homework. This understanding is consistent with the crossover model (Westman, 2001), which suggests that one domain transmits the experiences to the other domain (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000).

Therefore, this study argues that negative psychological strain may be transmitted to other aspects of the partner’s life. Particularly, the psychological strain created by a negative work-related experience has been shown to have important effects on family life and to cause negative relationships with family members (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001). This research builds on the AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) as the theoretical framework. Because these work experiences affect employees’ lives outside of the workplace, the process begins with workplace bullying in organizations, which causes an increase in psychological strain, thus affecting WFC. Therefore, this study argues that psychological strain is likely to mediate the link between workplace bullying and WFC. This research hypothesizes the following:

Hypothesis 5: Psychological strain mediates the relationship between workplace bullying and WFC.

Methods

This study was conducted to examine the relationships among workplace bullying, psychological strain, and facades of conformity at work and WFC at home. This part of the article describes the participants and procedures, the survey instruments, and the statistical analyses. Before sending the survey packets to participants, this study received research ethics committee approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. In addition, all responses from the participants were kept confidential.

Participants and procedures

This study used data collection from two self-reported surveys, which depended on responses from employees and their partners. Six hundred fifty full-time employees who worked in a large plastics corporation in Taiwan participated in this study. A time-lag study design and two different sources (i.e., employees and their married partners) were utilized to reduce common method variance in this study (i.e., “variance that is attributable to the measurement method rather than to the constructs the measures represent,” Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003, p. 879). Therefore, the data collection for this study was carried out in two survey periods for employees and one survey period for employees’ married partners. Each employee had a married partner who also completed the survey. In accordance with Ng, Feldman, and Lam’s research (2010), this study collected follow-up data three months after the first administration. The author asked employees to complete the survey questionnaires after they had finished their training programs. After collecting employees’ completed survey questionnaire at Time 2, the author asked them to have their married partners finish another questionnaire in a sealed envelope with a stamp on a return slip and provided gifts (worth approximately US$10) to the employees.

In total, 650 survey questionnaires were delivered voluntarily by workers at a large plastics corporation. A total of 602 surveys were returned at Time 1 for a return rate of 93%. The author also asked the 602 employees to distribute separate questionnaires to their married partners. After completing the surveys, the partners returned them in stamped and sealed envelopes. In this study, all participants’ personal information, such as birthdates and ID numbers, was sought to aid in survey matching. A total of 582 employee–partner dyads’ surveys were returned for a response rate of 97% at Time 2. After excluding missing and unavailable data, the final count was 569 employee–partner dyads, including 479 male employees (84%), whose average age was 40.70 years, and 90 female partners (16%), whose average age was 39.58 years. The mean work hours for per week was 46.65 hours (standard deviation = 12.5).

Measures

Before the participants in this study completed the surveys, the English version was translated to a Mandarin version. In addition, native researchers analyzed the survey scales by using a back-translation procedure to ensure the equivalence of the Mandarin and English versions (Brislin, 1980). Therefore, the participants in this study completed all surveys in the Mandarin version. All surveys used a five-point Likert response scale, which ranged from never (1) to always (5).

Employee measures

Workplace bullying

At Time 1, the Negative Acts Questionnaire (Einarsen & Raknes, 1997) was used to measure workplace bullying. The 22-item scale measured bullying within the past six months, with responses ranging from never (1) to always (5). Sample items included “ridicule or insulting teasing” and “being ignored or excluded.” The internal consistency estimates were 0.93 for work-related bullying.

Psychological strain

Strain was measured using a 13-item scale (α = 0.80) from Caplan et al.’s (1980) measure. This measure was used to test the degree of negative psychological states (such as nervousness and annoyance) at Time 1. Sample items were “I feel nervous” and “I feel unhappy.”

Facades of conformity

Six subscales from Hewlin’s (2009) facades of conformity survey were used to assess the level of facades of conformity at Time 2. The subscale evaluated whether employees tend to pretend to embrace organizational values and suppress personal values. The items of this subscale were rated on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree; Hewlin, 2009). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.83. A sample item was “I behave in a manner that reflects the organization’s value system even though it is inconsistent with my personal values.”

Measure for employees’ married partners

Work–family conflict

A nine-item subscale from Gutek et al.’s (1991) measure was employed to assess the partner’s levels of WFC at Time 2. The items from this subscale were rated on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.85. An example item stated, “Stress at work makes my partner irritable at home.”

Control variables

Participants’ age, gender, number of children living at home, education, and work hours per week were controlled to reduce false results from probable effects of demographic characters, which are frequently employed in psychological strain research and work–family issues (Bolger, DeLongis, Kessler, & Wethington, 1989; Liu et al., 2008). Age and number of children were specifically assessed using open-ended items.

Results

Factor solution

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to measure the constructs’ distinctiveness and evaluate the various fit indices. The fit indices of chi-square test, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), comparative fit index (CFI), and adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) are recommended by Hu and Bentler (1998) to determine model fit. In addition, Jöreskog and Sörbom (1996) suggested that RMSEA values less than 0.05 are preferable. CFI values above 0.90 are preferred, and these values should not be lower than 0.90. It has been suggested that AGFI should be higher than 0.90 (Bentler & Bonett, 1980). The hypothesized mediation model was examined by means of the bootstrapping approach (Preacher & Hayes, 2008).

Measurement models

This study utilized Harman’s single-factor test to examine the effects of common method variance (CMV) among the variables. Based on Podsakoff et al.’s (2003) assumption, CMV is present if a single factor explains the majority (>50%) of covariance among the study variables. Harman’s single-factor test was performed by including all study items in a fixed one-factor unrotated factor analysis. With a total explained variance of 44.49%, this test found no evidence of CMV. In addition, the average variance extracted (AVE) by each construct (workplace bullying = 0.53; psychological strain = 0.55; facades of conformity = 0.62; WFC = 0.52) was larger than 0.5, which suggested that discriminant validity was acceptable.

All data from this study were evaluated on an individual level with workplace bullying, psychological strain, facades of conformity, and partners’ WFC. In the baseline model of this study, the convergent and discriminant validity of the variables were examined with CFA, constructed in LISREL 8.8 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2006). This study took additional steps to examine the influence of CMV. In these steps, each measurement model was allowed to load on its underlying theoretical construct and on a latent CMV factor. Thus, this study added a CMV factor to the CFA model explained above. Table 1 shows that a four-factor model with workplace bullying, employees’ psychological strain, facades of conformity, and partners’ WFC fit the data better—χ² (569) = 1444.87; df = 318; RMSEA = 0.06 (p < 0.05); CFI = 0.97, and AGFI = 0.96—which allowed to test the hypotheses. Based on the significant chi-square and differences in the model fit indices, alternative models 1, 2, and 3 showed considerably poorer fit than the baseline model. Although the baseline model revealed a good model fit, the alterative models 1–3 revealed a statistically significant decrease in model fit. These conclusions were based on the results of alternative models in Table 1, as the delta chi-squares (Δχ²) were statistically significant (model 1 = 3023.08; model 2 = 3569.90; model 3 = 8944.28), with notable ΔRMSEA, ΔCFI, and ΔAGFI when compared to the baseline model. According to these results, the measures display acceptable values and validity.

Table 1.

Comparison of measurement models.

Model	Factors	χ²	df	Δχ²ª	RMSEA	ΔRMSEA	CFI	ΔCFI	AGFI	ΔAGFI
Baseline model	Four factors	1444.87*	318	–	0.06	–	0.97	–	0.96	–
Model 1	Three factors: Two outcomes were combined into one factor, one mediator and one independent variable	4467.95*	321	3023.08^**	0.13	0.07	0.92	−0.05	0.82	−0.14
Model 2	Two factors: Two outcomes and one mediator were combined into one factor, and one independent variable	5014.77*	323	3569.90^**	0.14	0.08	0.78	−0.19	0.71	−0.25
Model 3	One factor: All four factors were combined into one factor	10389.15*	324	8944.28^**	0.20	0.147	0.76	−0.21	0.65	−0.31

^aBaseline model was compared with models 1–3, respectively. RMSEA: root mean square error of approximation; CFI: comparative fit index; AGFI: adjusted goodness of fit index.

*P<0.05; **p < 0.01.

Hypotheses testing

The means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients between all variables are shown in Table 2. This study predicted a positive relationship between workplace bullying and facades of conformity in Hypothesis 1. The results indicated that workplace bullying was positively related to facades of conformity (r = 0.62, p < 0.01; see Table 2). Hypothesis 2 predicted a positive relationship between workplace bullying and WFC. Table 2 shows that workplace bullying was positively related to WFC (r = 0.55, p < 0.01). In addition, workplace bullying was positively related to psychological strain (r = 0.62, p < 0.01; see Table 2).

Table 2.

Means, standard deviations, Cronbach’s alpha, and intercorrelations among study.

Variable	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. Gender	1.16	0.37	(－)
2. Age	40.53	9.45	−0.04	(－)
3. Number of Children	1.50	0.95	−0.04	0.56**	(－)
4. Education	2.68	0.76	0.04	0.12**	−0.12**	(－)
5. Work Hours	46.65	12.50	−0.01	−0.19*	−0.18**	0.11*	(－)
6. Workplace Bullying	1.96	0.95	0.01	−0.03	−0.14**	−0.04	0.04	(0.93)
7.Psychological Strain	3.03	0.96	0.03	0.16**	−0.02	0.12**	−0.05	0.46**	(0.80)
8. Facades of Conformity	3.16	0.68	0.03	0.11	−0.05	0.13**	−0.07	0.62**	0.36**	(0.83)
9. Work–Family Conflict	2.77	1.23	−0.02	0.18**	0.03	0.07	0.11*	0.55**	0.47**	0.40**	(0.85)

Note: Coefficient alphas are in parentheses on the diagonal.

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

In addition, weighted least-square estimators were employed to assess the theoretical model in this study. This model involved two partial mediation models in Table 3. This study predicted two paths by which workplace bullying would be related to facades of conformity through psychological strain and to WFC through psychological strain. Compared with the three alternative models in Table 3 of this study, the best model showed a perfect fit—χ² (569) = 1.83, df = 1; RMSEA = 0.03; CFI = 0.99, and AGFI = 0.98. Under the principle of model parsimony, therefore, these findings suggest that the theoretical model best fit the data in this study.

Table 3.

Comparison of structural equation models for employee’s psychological strain.

Model	χ²	df	Δχ²	RMSEA	CFI	AGFI
Theoretical model	1.83^**	1	–	0.03	0.99	0.98
Alternative model 1	313.88^**	3	312.05	0.43	0.61	0.28
Alternative model 2	105.95^**	2	104.12	0.30	0.85	0.57
Alternative model 3	167.69^**	2	165.86	0.38	0.75	0.36

Note: Alternative model 1: Two full mediations. Alternative models 2 and 3: One partial mediation and one full mediation. RMSEA: root mean square error of approximation; CFI: comparative fit index; AGFI: adjusted goodness of fit index.

**p < 0.01.

Figure 1 shows that the direct effect of workplace bullying on facades of conformity was significant (β = 0.41; p < 0.01), supporting Hypothesis 1, and workplace bullying was related to WFC (β = 0.55; p < 0.01), supporting Hypothesis 2. This model included direct effects from workplace bullying to psychological strain. Thus, workplace bullying was positively related to psychological strain (β = 0.47; p < 0.01), supporting Hypothesis 3. The results of this study indicate that employees’ responses to workplace bullying influenced their behaviors at work and at home. These positive correlations indicate that, as workplace bullying increases, the manifestations of psychological strain, facades of conformity, and WFC increase. In addition, according to Preacher and Hayes’s (2008) bootstrapping approach, the indirect effect of workplace bullying on employees’ creation of facades of conformity through psychological strain was significant (z = 2.69, p < 0.01, with 95% bootstrap confidence interval ranging from 0.01 to 0.06). The indirect effect from workplace bullying and the partner’s WFC via psychological strain was significant (z = 6.19, p < 0.01, with 95% bootstrap confidence interval ranging from 0.11 to 0.22). Overall, Hypotheses 4 and 5 were supported.

Figure 1.

Summary of results. Results are obtained from the structural equation modeling. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

Discussion

This study draws on AET to investigate how workplace bullying produces psychological strain, which results in unfavorable outcomes (e.g., facades of conformity and WFC). The results of this study reveal that workplace bullying is positively associated with psychological strain, facades of conformity, and WFC. Workplace bullying appears to generate psychological strain in victims, consequently creating inauthentic behavior at work and interfering with family demands. This is a critical result because it helps to explain how workplace bullying is associated with WFC from the work domain to the family domain using the crossover model, which is consistent with prior studies (e.g., Raja et al., 2018). In addition, this study provides an important contribution beyond Raja and his colleagues’ (2018) research, because the results of this study extend prior research on bullying and employees’ psychological strain and, in particular, employees’ creation of facades of conformity by investigating the role of workplace bullying. This study suggests that employees choose to suppress their own values and engage in inauthentic behavior when workplace bullying occurs. Consistent with Hewlin et al.’s (2016) study, employees who experience a threat at work are more likely to suppress their own values and pretend to accept organizational values.

In addition, this study addresses another important concern in the literature on workplace bullying: the emphasis on a direct relationship between bullying and the partner’s experiences of WFC without considering the likely indirect influence of workplace bullying (Samnani & Singh, 2012) and the process by which employees carry psychological strain, which allows work to interfere with family demands (i.e., WFC) through the crossover model. In particular, an important point in terms of understanding the link between workplace bullying and WFC is the development of psychological strain as a mediator. Consistent with AET, the findings of this study suggest that psychological strain as a mediator role can help to explain the link between workplace bullying and WFC. This study provides theoretical and practical supports for the view that psychological strain is likely to play an important mediating role in the relationship between workplace bullying and WFC and is also mediator of the association between workplace bullying and facades of conformity.

Implications

This study provides significant contributions to the current workplace bullying literature and practical contributions. Despite the design limitations, this study is theoretically important, because it is the first to examine the value of workplace bullying on employees’ behavior of creating facades of conformity in organizations. Prior studies have focused on the effects of workplace bullying on victims’ health and well-being (Adams, 1992; Einarsen, 2000; Hoel et al., 2004), turnover intention (Djurkovic et al., 2008), and absenteeism in organizations (Magee, Gordon, Robinson, Caputi, & Oades, 2017). The findings from this study indicate that a high degree of workplace bullying can result in victims’ facades of conformity. Facades of conformity are untruthful statements that employees generate to act as if they accept organizational values. When facades of conformity occur, employees are likely to have decreased job performance and an increased intention to leave the organization.

In accordance with the crossover model, the results of this study show that the main effects of workplace bullying on WFC within the family are affected by psychological strain, through which employees are likely to experience isolation and rejection from the organization carry over into nonwork areas. Compared to prior studies (Raja et al., 2018; Viotti et al., 2018; Yoo & Lee, 2018), this study supports the opinion that employees’ workplace bullying may crossover to produce WFC in family life. It seems that employees are likely to transfer their psychological states to their family domain, producing harmful strain and experiences at home (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). This study also suggests that the experiences of workplace bullying relate to negative psychological strain, leading to WFC in the home. The findings of this study on WFC suggest that experiences of social isolation from the group are likely to serve as a mental exercise field for negative home encounters. That is, employees with positive beliefs in the organization may have positive experiences and thoughts with family members. As such, this study may lead the way to uncover work mistreatment that has the possibility of crossing over into family life.

Finally, this study adds to the relevant research by increasing human resource (HR) managers’ and employers’ understanding of workplace bullying. The current study demonstrated that some potential factors are necessary for employee’s survival in an organization, at least for employees who engage in reasonably high degrees of conformity. Therefore, this study also suggests that HR managers should consider that workplace bullying may result in fake conformity by employees and convey negative stress into the family domain in ways that affect employees’ interactions with their partners at home. In addition, employers should encourage employees to build social relations to avoid workplace bullying. Organizations and leaders have to generate environments where employees support each other. The bullied targets may request social support from their work colleagues to improve their satisfaction at work. Therefore, when victims experience a sense of support from their team members, their psychological well-being may increase (Hobman, Restubog, Bordia, & Tang, 2009).

Limitations

This study should be considered in light of several limitations. First, the study sample was Taiwanese, which raises generalizability issues because of the collectivist culture in organizations there. Asian employees may tolerate greater levels of workplace mistreatment from their colleagues and employers to save face and their reputation. Therefore, future studies may examine diverse cultural samples to reduce generalizability issues. Second, although this research used a study design of two time periods, a possible reverse relationship between workplace bullying and psychological strain at Time 1 is possible. Based on AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), however, workplace bullying can initiate negative reactions and influence negative outcomes in organizations by affective processes that might not be easily influenced by the theoretical model of this study. Third, even though this study used data collected from employees of a large plastics corporation from and their partners, due to practical constraints, this study might not shed light on broad issues at the supervisor level (e.g., leadership types) that are likely to reduce employees’ job burnout and personal accomplishment (Lai, Chow, & Loi, 2016). Therefore, future studies should manipulate variables at the organizational level that are likely to impact the links between managers and employees. Fourth, although 569 employee–partner dyads were used in this study, the nonrespondents’ information, such as their age, gender, and work hours, may have been useful in understanding potential issues of victims. The nonrespondents could have presented their tolerance for work mistreatment. Asian employees are generally considered to belong to a collectivist culture that values protection of the group’s reputation (Park & Ono, 2016). Future studies may examine the differences between respondents and nonrespondents to understand these issues.

In conclusion, this study demonstrates the unfavorable effect of workplace mistreatment on victims’ creation of facades of conformity in organizations and the experiences of interrole conflict that carry over from work to the family domain. Furthermore, this study discusses how individuals’ social isolation and rejection from an organization affect their partners’ WFC through psychological strain. This study can provide new directions for understanding the outcomes of workplace bullying at work and at home.

Footnotes

Article Notes

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