Factors Affecting Workplace Bullying in Korean Hospital Nurses

Seonyoung Yun; Jiyeon Kang

doi:10.7469/kjan.2014.26.5.553

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Yun and Kang: Factors Affecting Workplace Bullying in Korean Hospital Nurses

Original Article

Korean J Adult Nurs 2014;26(5):553-562.

Published online: NaN October 2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7469/kjan.2014.26.5.553

Factors Affecting Workplace Bullying in Korean Hospital Nurses

Seonyoung Yun, Jiyeon Kang

Department of Nursing, Dong-A University, Busan, Korea

Corresponding author: Kang, Jiyeon Department of Nursing, Dong-A University, 1 Dongdaesin-dong 3-ga, Seo-gu, Busan 602-714, Korea. Tel: +82-51-240-2871, Fax: +82-51-240-2920, E-mail: jykang@dau.ac.kr

Received 14 May 201424 September 2014 Accepted 29 September 2014

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing workplace bullying among Korean hospital nurses.

Methods

Subjects in this study included 178 hospital nurses who attended two nationwide nursing educational conferences in 2013. The data was collected using self-report questionnaires which were used to identify the subjects’ characteristics, self-esteem, perception of nursing organizational culture, and workplace bullying experience.

Results

The results showed that 19.1% of study subjects reported being victims of workplace bullying and mostly experienced person-related and work-related bullying. Multiple regression analysis was done to identify factors affecting workplace bullying. The perception of relation-oriented culture, task-oriented culture and self-esteem turned out to be variables that explained nurses’ workplace bullying, and these factors accounted for 32.0% of the variance.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that nurses experience more workplace bullying in task-oriented cultures. However, they experience less bullying and report higher self-esteem and awareness in relation-oriented cultures. Interventions focused on the characteristics of the organization need to be developed to prevent workplace bullying in hospital nurses.

Keywords: Nurse, Bullying, Self-concept, Organizational culture

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Table 1.

Comparison of Workplace Bullying Score according to the Subjects' Characteristics (N=178)

Characteristics	Categories	n (%)	Workplace bullying
Characteristics	Categories	n (%)	M±SD	t or F (p)
Gender	Male	6 (3.4)	30.67±9.61	-0.96 (.338)
Gender	Female	172 (96.6)	35.84±13.05	-0.96 (.338)
Age (year)	≤25	92 (51.7)	35.30±11.40	2.98 (.054)
	26~30	57 (32.0)	38.42±16.74
	≥31	29 (16.3)	31.38±6.59
Religion	Yes	121 (68.0)	35.76±13.66	0.15 (.884)
Religion	No	57 (32.0)	35.46±11.42	0.15 (.884)
Marital status	Single	157 (88.2)	36.25±13.18	1.68 (.096)
Marital status	Married	21 (11.8)	31.24±10.37	1.68 (.096)
Total career (month)	≤12	35 (19.7)	34.51±11.82	1.91 (.130)
	13~36	66 (37.1)	37.42±13.95
	36~72	50 (28.1)	36.76±14.53
	≥73	27 (15.1)	30.81±6.30
Department	Internal medicine^a	50 (28.1)	43.18±17.50	12.19 (＜.001)
	Surgery^b	46 (25.9)	36.04±9.86	a＞b, c, d
	ICU^c	54 (30.3)	32.54±8.88	b＞d^†
	Others^d	28 (15.7)	27.64±6.04	b＞d^†
Career in present ward (month)	≤12	43 (24.2)	35.19±14.24	0.77 (.512)
	13~36	73 (41.0)	37.04±13.59
	36~72	47 (26.4)	35.21±12.29
	≥73	15 (8.4)	31.73±6.31
Education	Diploma	62 (34.8)	35.13±12.27	0.11 (.894)
	Bachelor	107 (60.1)	36.04±13.79
	≥Master	9 (5.1)	34.89±6.51
position	Staff nurse	169 (94.9)	36.09±13.13	5.03 (＜.001)
position	Charge nurse	9 (5.1)	27.56±4.10	5.03 (＜.001)

ICU=intensive care unit;

^† Tukey's range test.

Table 2.

Mean Scores of Workplace Bullying (N=178)

Variables	Categories	M±SD
Person related bullying	Being shouted at or being the target of spontaneous anger	2.02±1.07
	Repeated reminders of your errors or mistakes	1.98±0.96
	Being humiliated or ridiculed in connection with your work	1.86±0.94
	Being ignored or facing a hostile reaction when you approach	1.66±0.90
	Having insulting or offensive remarks made about your person, attitudes or your private life	1.64±0.92

	Being ignored or excluded	1.63±0.89
	Spreading of gossip and rumours about you	1.61±0.85
	Having your opinions ignored	1.61±0.79
	Persistent criticism of your errors or mistakes	1.57±0.87
	Excessive monitoring of your work	1.52±0.90
	Having allegations made against you	1.46±0.75
	Being the subject of excessive teasing and sarcasm	1.38±0.74
	Subtotal	19.94±8.42
Work related bullying	Being exposed to an unmanageable workload	2.65±1.25
	Someone withholding information which affects your performance	1.95±0.93
	Being ordered to do work below your level of competence	1.92±1.07
	Having key areas of responsibility removed or replaced with more trivial or unpleasant tasks	1.78±0.88

	Being given tasks with unreasonable deadlines	1.39±0.69
	Subtotal	9.69±3.46
Intimidation related bullying	Pressure not to claim something to which by right you are entitled	1.35±0.70
	Intimidating behaviors such as finger-pointing, related invasion of personal space, shoving, blocking your way	1.26±0.70

	Threats of violence or physical abuse or actual abuse	1.17±0.60
	Hints or signals from others that you should quit your job	1.15±0.52
	Practical jokes carried out by people you don't get along with	1.11±0.45
	Subtotal	6.03±2.29
Total		35.66±12.96

Table 3.

Mean Score of Nursing Organizational Culture and Self-esteem (N=178)

Variables	M±SD	Range	Min	Max
Nursing organizational culture
Relational-oriented culture	3.36±0.67	1~5	1.40	5.00
Rank-oriented culture	3.62±0.43	1~5	2.60	4.80
Task-oriented culture	3.00±0.49	1~5	1.75	4.50
Innovation-oriented culture	3.09±0.58	1~5	1.17	4.50
Self-esteem	29.73±4.16	10~40	19.00	40.00

Table 4.

Correlations among the Study Variables (N=178)

Variables	Bullying (total)	Bullying (person)	Bullying (work)	Bullying (intimidation)	OC (relational)	OC (rank)	OC (task)	OC (innovation)
Variables	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)
Bullying (person)	.97
	(＜.001)
Bullying (work)	.85	.73
	(＜.001)	(＜.001)
Bullying (intimidation)	.81	.70	.65
	(＜.001)	(＜.001)	(＜.001)
OC (relational)	-.52	-.52	-.44	-.40
	(＜.001)	(＜.001)	(＜.001)	(＜.001)
OC (rank)	.13	.13	.16	.02	-.22
	(.091)	(.098)	(.036)	(.760)	(.003)
OC (task)	.16	.16	.13	.13	.01	.22
	(.033)	(.038)	(.073)	(.088)	(.89)	(.003)
OC (innovation)	-.24	-.21	-.26	-.19	.58	-.22	.33
	(.002)	(.006)	(.001)	(.010)	(＜.001)	(.003)	(＜.001)
Self-esteem	-.22	-.26	-.22	-.27	.13	.12	.06	-.02
	(.003)	(＜.001)	(.004)	(＜.001)	(.097)	(.120)	(.469)	(.820)

OC=organizational culture.

Table 5.

Factors affecting Workplace Bullying (N=178)

Variables	Categories	Model 1		Model 2
Variables	Categories	β	t (p)	β	t (p)
Control	Position^† (Staff nurse)	.08	1.20 (.231)	.06	0.98 (.329)
	Department^‡ (Internal medicine)	.53	5.35 (＜.001)	.37	4.27 (＜.001)
	Department (Surgery)	.27	2.73 (.007)	.16	1.83 (.069)
	Department (ICU)	.17	1.75 (.083)	.10	1.14 (.257)
Independent	Self-esteem			-.14	-2.22 (.028)
	Relational-oriented culture			-.46	-5.83 (＜.001)
	Task-oriented culture			.17	2.58 (.011)
	Innovation-oriented culture			.05	0.57 (.570)
Adjusted R²		.16		.39
ΔR² (p)				.23 (＜.001)
F (p)		9.53 (＜.001)		14.99 (＜.001)

ICU=intensive care unit;

^† Dummy coded (staff nurse=1, charge nurse=0);

^‡ Reference=others department.

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