Psychological Science ›› 2017, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (4): 927-933.

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The Effects of Employee’s Social Identity Differences on Workplace Bullying: The Mediating Role of Team Identity

1, 2,   

  • Received:2016-09-14 Revised:2017-02-28 Online:2017-07-20 Published:2017-09-21

员工社会身份差异对职场欺负感知的影响:团队认同的中介作用

付美云1,乐国安2,马华维3   

  1. 1. 南开大学滨海学院
    2. 南开大学社会心理学系
    3. 天津师范大学
  • 通讯作者: 马华维

Abstract: TWith the application of the work team, workplace bullying in team situations become the focus of researchers and managers. Team members are different in gender and region. Power imbalance caused by these social identity differences between employees in teamwork will lead to further escalation of interpersonal conflict into workplace bullying. The existing theoretical models for explaining the cause of workplace bullying mostly emphasis factors related to the organizational characteristics and job characteristics, ignoring the effects of group interpersonal interaction. Based on social identification theory and self-categorization theory, the social identity differences in gender and region force the individual into a stressful situation. If the individual's assessment of identity differences is stressful enough, and cannot adjust himself or herself to adapt to the new environment, he or she is more likely to be bullied. So we hypothesize that the bigger the difference from the other members of the team in gender or region, the individual is more likely to be bullied. Meanwhile, team identity can trigger employees to seek social support within the organization, thereby reducing the negative assessment of workplace bullying. So we also hypothesize that team identification plays a mediating role between social identity differences and workplace bullying. The present study examined the frontline staffs’ social identity differences influence on their perceptions of workplace bullying and the mediating role of team identification, using a sample of 331 frontline staffs from 22 production teams in four manufacturing enterprises in China. A structured questionnaire was employed as the research instrument for this study. It consisted of five scales designed to measure the variables of workplace bullying and team identification. All scales were well-established in the literature. The social identity differences are calculated by Euclidean distance. SPSS 21.0 were adopted to perform a series of statistical analyses. Hierarchical regression mode was used to test the hypotheses. The results of this study show that gender differences and geographical differences have significant influence on the five dimensions of workplace bullying. The mediating role of team identity in the relationship between social identity differences and the five dimensions of workplace bullying are different: On the dimension of deprivation of rights, it does not have intermediary effect, but it plays a complete mediating role in the relationship between gender differences and social exclusion. According to the research conclusions, this study puts forward some suggestions and implications for future research: In order to reduce the incidence of workplace bullying, managers should pay more attention to the majority of the team's influence on the minority and the threshold ratio of minority groups. For the employees' mental health management, managers need to pay attention to the basic unit of the "team", form team identity through effective new employee socialization strategy and transformational leadership and reduce the incidence of workplace bullying events. In view of the deprivation of rights cannot be changed by team identity, the establishment of employee participation in the management system and the upward feedback communication channels, may be an important way to improve workplace bullying situation.

Key words: Social identity difference, Workplace bullying, Team identification

摘要: 以社会认同理论为基础,通过对制造业22个团队的331名员工进行问卷调查,探讨一线员工在团队内的社会身份差异(性别差异和地域差异)对其职场欺负感知的影响,以及团队认同在这一影响中的中介作用。结果表明,员工的社会身份差异对其职场欺负感知的五个维度均有显著性影响,团队认同在社会身份差异对权利剥夺型欺负的影响中未起到中介作用;而在性别差异对社会排斥型欺负的影响中,团队认同起到完全中介作用。

关键词: 社会身份差异 职场欺负 团队认同