The influence of leader workplace aggression on work engagement, moderated by timing

Abstract

One of the sources of tension in the workplace is leader workplace aggression, which remains a significant challenge among organisations. Leader workplace aggression presents in various forms – bullying, incivility, and unjustified rage against an employee; when these destructive behaviours manifest, employees, managers, onlookers, and organisations suffer. A toxic culture is created, and that creates challenging conditions for organisations to retain talent, resulting in business performance being compromised and employee dissatisfaction leading to an increase in turnover. Leader workplace aggression is considered one of the key reasons behind the reduction in employee performance, dissatisfaction, and disengagement. It has also been found to affect employee work motivation and attitudes adversely. The conduct of leaders, whether it be leaders being uncivil towards employees, shouting, demeaning or making unwarranted threats, which can today be described as abusive, is not new in the workplace; however, it is only in the last two decades that dedicated scholarship on the topic of leader workplace aggression has emerged. Whilst there has been significant progress in the development of literature relating to leader workplace aggression, much more is still unknown, such as the extent of the influence of organisational context in enabling leader workplace aggression, as well as the influence of certain organisational events, such as going through a time of crisis, business reporting times and other busy periods, on the relationship between on leader workplace aggression and work engagement. In this study, the researcher developed a composite leader workplace aggression scale by combining three related scales measuring supervisor behaviour, incivility and workplace bullying. A questionnaire comprising of the leader workplace aggression scale and Timing factor was distributed to a sample of Financial Services professionals. The results revealed that while leader workplace aggression is negatively related to work engagement, timing, as hypothesised, is not a moderator of the relationship between leader workplace aggression and work engagement, as the effect was insignificant.