직장내 괴롭힘(workplace bullying)이 우리나라에서도 매우 중요한 경영상의 문제로 인식되기 시작했다. 본 연구는 조직을 제대로 기능하도록 하는데 결정적인 지식공유(knowledge sharing)와 보복행동(organizational retaliatory behavior: ORB)에 괴롭힘 당함이 끼치는 영향을 검토하고, 고용력(employability), 고용형태(employment status)의 조절변수들과 직장내 괴롭힘 간 상호작용효과(interactive effects)를 분석하는 데 그 목적이 있다. 연구에 사용된 데이터는 수도권에 소재한 3개의 대형마트에 근무하는 311명의 현장직 근로자들로부터 획득됐다. 분석의 결과, 직장내 괴롭힘은 지식공유에 대해서는 부(-)의 영향을, 보복행동에 대해서는 정(+)의 영향을 각각 보였다. 이러한 주효과 외에도 직장내 괴롭힘과 지식공유의 관계는 고용형태(비정규직에서만)에 의해 조절되었으며, 보복행동에 대해서는 지각된 고용력이 두 변수 사이를 조절하는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 조직학습과 사회적 교환의 질에서 비롯될 수 있는 조직건강(organizational health)에 위해한 직장내 괴롭힘을 넘어서 반생산적 행동에 대한 기존 지식의 확대와 현실적인 대응책 마련에 기여한다.
Workplace bullying has received increased prominence in the last few years. Evidence clearly suggests that being the target of bullying is stressful, left unmanaged it can severely affect both targets and organizations. However, a significant area the remains to be explicitly explored is the potential detrimental impact of workplace bullying on knowledge sharing and organizational retaliatory behavior(ORB), which are critical to organization functioning. Therefore, one purpose of our study is to examine what is the influence of workplace bullying on employees` knowledge sharing and retaliatory behaviors. Knowledge sharing is important for any organizations today to make them into a competitive advantage because it provides a link between the individual and the organization by moving knowledge that resides with the individual to the organization level (Hendriks, 1999). As recent organizational learning theories have become a central focus in this field, successful knowledge transfers are increasingly seen as requiring an ongoing process of learning interactions (Szulanski, 2000). Retaliatory behavior refers to something antisocial and akin to unethical behaviors (Barclay et al., 2005). Since organizational retaliatory behavior places a stronger emphasis on the situational context in which the behavior occurs as the main catalyst, it may play an important role in illuminating the detrimental effect of bullying in the perspective of organizational administration. Next, consequences of workplace bullying, largely organizational costs, have been studied mostly with respect to its main effects. Accordingly, our second purpose in this research is to detect its interactive effects with such moderator variables: employability and employment status, instead of only simple associations between bullying and its conventional outcomes. Despite the fact that research on workplace bullying has focused almost exclusively on victims`perceptions, little is known about the role of target characteristics (Hoel, Rayner, & cooper,1999). As a person`s ability and readiness to identify and realize career opportunities, perceived employability and employment status―the type of employment, i.e. a temporary or a permanent employee―are critical to predict realistic responses to bullying given that both have an important influence on a worker`s attitude or awareness toward an event (e.g. Clarke, 2008; Virtanen etal, 2003). By studying their joint moderating effect on the stressor-strain relationships, research knowledge about workplace bullying as well as both moderators could be advanced. Valid and reliable self-report evaluation measures were administered to a sample of 311 workers in big three discount stores in South Korea. Discount store jobs present an exemplary case to study our research questions because there has been M&A and contingent employmentare largest in that industry, which are vulnerable to bullying. According to the results, exposure to bullying behaviors was negatively related to knowledge sharing and positively related to ORB, providing support for the respective hypotheses. Furthermore, employability moderated the relationship only for knowledge sharing, whereas employment status had moderating role only for ORB. That is, the negative relationship between bullying experience and knowledge sharing was stronger for those respondents rating their employability to be high. For contingent workers who are generally the last hired and first fired, the positive relationship between their bullying experience and ORB was weaker than permanent ones. The value of this study lies in increasing understanding of workplace bullying phenomena, as well as suggesting a potential prescription to maintain a bullying-free workplace.