Exploring the relationship between bullying in the workplace and Entrepreneurship Intentions (EI)

Abstract

This research aims to examine the role of the bullying on the employees’ Entrepreneurship intention (EI), taking into perspective the effects of job satisfaction and psychological contract breaching. This study conducted research on 208 Saudi employees working in Saudi Arabia. The main findings are the workplace bullying affect the EI directly and not mediated by job satisfaction nor psychological contract breaching. Workplace bullying affects job dissatisfaction and psychological contract breaching positively, but the job dissatisfaction and psychological contract breaching are not found to influence the EI. Surprisingly, as interpreted by Stockholm syndrome, this research found that physical bullying affects the job satisfaction of employees. There are some gender implications. Men are facing bullying more than women. Also, there are no differences of the relationships between men and women except for the effect of workplace bullying on the EI as men has more significant effect while women are not. There are academic and practical implications of this research. This research offers a new perspective to understand the consequences of bullying on the employees’ attitudes, perceptions, and intentions. The practical implications of the HR and employers, for improving the organisations’ performance, policies and attentions are required not only for assessing employees’ performance, but also for protecting them against bullying. Bullying has negative serious consequences affecting the whole firm such as the job dissatisfaction, psychological contract breaching and EI.