Situational and dispositional factors influencing workplace bullying among police officers in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

This study investigated the situational and dispositional factors influencing workplace bullying among police officers in Limpopo province, South Africa. Situational factors such as power imbalance and organisational climate and dispositional factors such as personality traits contribute to the escalation of workplace bullying. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 208 participants, using the simple random sampling technique. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26.0 was used to perform descriptive and inferential statistics (Correlation and ANOVA) on the obtained data. Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised was used to collect data on workplace bullying, Big Five Inventory-10 was used to collect data on the dispositional factors, and Riverside Situational Q-Sort was utilised to collect data on the situational factors. The results revealed that there was a positive significant relationship between dispositional factors and workplace bullying, and there was also a positive relationship between situational factors and workplace bullying. Therefore, this study concludes that dispositional and situational factors have an influence in bullying amongst police officers.