The role of job stress and phychological capital on the relationship between interpersonal mistreatment and individual job outcomes

Abstract

Detrimental effects of interpersonal mistreatments at workplace have drawn unprecedented attention of researchers over the last couple of decades. This research is an attempt to fulfill the gap by examining western theories of interpersonal mistreatments in non-western settings. This research examined major (sexual harassment and workplace ostracism) and minor (workplace incivility) interpersonal mistreatments categories together with the underlying mechanism and consequences. Besides that, the mediated role of job stress with interpersonal mistreatments and their job outcomes (job burnout and turnover intention) was also studied. In addition, this research studied the coping mechanism of job stress by examining psychological capital as a moderator in relationship between job stress and job outcomes. A three wave study design was employed in the research. Multistage sampling technique was applied whereby the respondents were 1850 employees from the telecom sector in Pakistan. In the final wave, 523 responses from the same respondents were used in the analysis. Correlation, regression and structural equation modeling were used for data analysis. Findings suggested that interpersonal mistreatments were positively related to job stress, job burnout and turnover intentions. Job stress has been shown to partially mediate between interpersonal mistreatments and job outcomes. Moreover, results suggested that the relationship between job stress and job burnout was weakened when psychological capital was high. Similarly, the relationship between job stress and employee turnover intention weakened when psychological capital was high. This research generalizes the findings of western theories on interpersonal mistreatments in the non-western culture (Pakistan) and suggests that psychological capital be applied as a strong personal resource to cope with workplace stressors and stress related job outcomes.