Workplace Quality and Exposure to Bullying During a Crisis: The Inhibiting Role of Positive Leadership in Nursing

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic created an extremely stressful situation for hospitals by intensifying a range of stressors like workload, death and dying, lack of support, inadequate preparation, uncertainty, and conflict. Stressors like these operate as an avenue for the proliferation of bullying. Grounded on Leymann’s Work Environment hypothesis and Baillien’s et al. Three-Way Model which predict that bullying may develop from work-design factors, but at the same time mitigated as a result of the quality of the work environment, it is explored whether positive leadership styles (ethical, supportive, and authentic) would buffer the relationship between the quality of work environment and bullying in hospitals during a crisis. A cross-sectional study was designed collecting data from 234 hospital nurses working in Greece during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moderation analyses showed that leadership styles interacted with stressors in the predicted direction in relation to various types of bullying (work-related, person-related, and physical intimidation). Ethical leadership emerged as the style that significantly interplayed with a range of stressors and buffered their effects on all types of bullying behaviors measured. Theoretical and practical implications in terms of leadership development and its role as a higher-order job resource in the development of high-quality hospital work environments, as well as for proactive crisis management, are discussed.