Katarzyna Durniat

Objectives: The aim of this study was to psychometrically validate the Spanish version of the Polish SDM-20 questionnaire ( Skala Doświadczania Mobbingu ) as a screening instrument for assessing workplace mobbing in occupational health settings. Material and Methods: A cross-sectional online...

Purpose: The study compared perceptions of workplace mobbing and psychosocial job stressors between Ukrainian migrant employees and demographically matched Polish employees, examining differences between groups and assessing tenure and gender as moderators. Design: A matched-pairs design was applied to 198 Ukrainian and 199 Polish employees matched by age, gender, and sector. Mobbing was measured using the SDM-64 Questionnaire, distinguishing behavioural exposure from psychological victimization. Job stressors included organizational constraints, workload, and interpersonal conflict. Non-parametric analyses were conducted. Findings: Ukrainian employees reported lower levels of mobbing, victimization, constraints, and workload than Polish employees. Tenure effects emerged only among migrants, with increased stress during the second and third years of employment. Women in both groups reported higher victimization; migrant women additionally experienced higher structural stressors. Research limitations: The cross-sectional design limits causal inference. Longitudinal research should examine adaptation trajectories and contextual moderators. Practical implications: Organizational support should extend beyond onboarding, particularly during intermediate tenure stages, and include gender-sensitive monitoring of workload. Social implications: The findings underscore differences in stress appraisal between migrant and native employees despite shared working conditions. Originality: The study advances understanding of the “contented migrant” paradox by integrating resource-based and social comparison perspectives within a matched comparative design.

Background: Currently, the predominant approach in mobbing research employs “behavioural experience methods” (BEM), which have certain limitations. BEM primarily gauge the frequency of exposure to negative behaviours, while neglecting the perception and harm caused by these behaviours. This study aimed to refine and abbreviate the original, 64-item Polish SDM (Skala Doświadczania Mobbingu) mobbing questionnaire, which encompasses behavioural, cognitive, and emotional mobbing indicators. Participants and procedure: The study was conducted on a sample of 2,500 Polish employees. A mixed-method approach, incorporating both quantita-tive – exploratory factor analysis (EFA), item response theory (IRT), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) – and qualitative methods, along with a cross-validation procedure, was employed in the study. Results: EFA revealed that the SDM Questionnaire has a hierarchical structure with two primary factors: behavioural (IDM scale measuring exposure to mobbing) and cognitive-emotional (ODC scale; 7 items, α = .92; measuring harm and victimization). The IDM scale includes person-related (IDM_P: 7 items, α = .91) and work-related (IDM_W: 6 items, α = .86) subscales. The SDM-20 shows a good fit (RMSEA = 0.067 [90% CI: 0.063, 0.071]; SRMR = 0.037; CFI = 0.941; TLI = 0.933), and exhib-its robust, positive correlations with the NAQ-R mobbing test, as well as the ICAWS, QWI, and OCS scales measuring job stressors. Conclusions: The revised 20-item SDM Questionnaire is an innovative, validated, reliable, and concise yet comprehensive psychometric tool for measuring and diagnosing mobbing. The instrument allows a distinction to be made between mobbing targets and mobbing victims.

Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate whether Organizational Climate and its dimensions: Co-workers, Leadership, Work Organization, Information and Communication, Representation of Employees’ Interests, Promotion and Rewards (Rosenstiel, Boegel, 1992) can predict Work Engagement and its components: Vigour, Dedication, and Absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002, 2003). Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2022 on a heterogeneous sample of Polish employees (N = 229). The study used a Polish adaptation of Rosenstiel and Boegel’s Organizational Climate Questionnaire (1992; cf. Durniat, 2012, 2018), which includes 55 items across 7 subscales (Cronbach's α = 0.81-0.90), as well as a Polish adaptation of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Szabowska-Walaszczyk et al., 2011) in its 17-item version (3 subscales; Cronbach's α = 0.81-0.88). Correlation and linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between the studied variables, with the expectation of significant and positive associations. Findings: Two factors of organizational climate, i.e. the ‘Leadership’ and ‘Co-workers’ interactions’ emerged as key predictors of work engagement, while other climate factors demonstrated weaker or non-significant impacts on employee engagement. Surprisingly, the ‘Representation of employees’ interests’ negatively predicted work engagement (especially ‘Vigour’). Moreover, the ‘General perception of organizational climate’ may be more impactful for work engagement than specific climate dimensions. Research limitations: The cross-sectional design prevents causal inferences, and the relatively small sample size constrains the generalizability of the results. Practical implications: Managers and organizations should foster a positive organizational climate, especially investing in leadership development and team-building initiatives - key factors enhancing employee engagement. Originality/value: The findings offer a valuable contribution by identifying organizational climate factors that enhance work engagement, and appear to represent the first study of this kind conducted in Poland. Keywords: organizational climate, work engagement, UWES, relationships, predictions. Category of the paper: Research paper.

Job demands are factors that are associated with a physical and psychological cost when it comes to coping with them, but which can also positively affect the motivational process. Demands such as overload, defined as an excessive workload, have not presented positive results in any of the studies that have related it to employee engagement. The present study aims to delve into the possible positive effect of this demand on the intellectual bonding of employees. It is hypothesized that: (a) Initially, the increase in the perception of work overload will show a negative influence on the intellectual engagement of the employees; but (b) high perceptions of overload will change this effect, producing an increase in the intellectual dimension of engagement. The sample is made up of 706 employees of a Spanish multinational company. The results support this asymmetric curvilinear influence. The level of intellectual engagement is significantly reduced when the role overload increases from the lower values of the scale. However, upon reaching high levels of role overload, the intellectual engagement response begins to grow. These results challenge the conceptualization of overload as only negative and opens the door to consider that the positive response to a demand can also occur at high levels of it.

The paper looks at theoretical and methodological problems, as well as legal and ethical issues, connected with diagnosing and counteracting workplace mobbing. Firstly, the author briefly presents the mobbing research tradition and points to current international approaches to and methods of measuring mobbing in the workplace. The author comments on the possibilities and limitations of the implementation of some methods, which are commonly employed in mobbing research and shares some doubts about the universality and international usage of the “mobbing/bullying tools”, which were developed under specific socio-organizational circumstances. Then, the paper discusses the legalities and practicalities of preventing and fighting mobbing in the context of Polish and European legislation. The author points to a wide spectrum of ethical and legal aspects of counteracting and dealing with mobbing. In conclusion, the author recommends that corporations and businesses should take all possible preventive steps to minimise the risk of mobbing, given that, apart from adversely affecting employees’ health, career, work engagement and job satisfaction, it substantially damages their reputation.

Aim: This paper presents the construction, validation and psychometric properties of the Polish basic version of a workplace bullying questionnaire (called the SDM questionnaire ¹ 1 . The abbreviations used in the text: SDM (for the bullying questionnaire name), SDM-IDM and SDM-ODC (for the names of the bullying questionnaire scales) come from the Polish language and should be treated as proper names. Thus, for the sake of consistency, they cannot be changed or translated into English. View all notes ). Method: The tool was developed in phases, in reference to the international bullying literature and Polish socio-organisational background. The study from 2005/2006 (N = 347) established the structure of the scales’ reliability, while the questionnaire’s convergent validity was tested in 2018 (N = 500). Among the main statistical methods used were: exploratory factor analyses, estimation of internal consistency with Cronbach’s α and correlations analyses. Results: The main version of the SDM questionnaire comprises two consistent, correlating scales: the main behavioural scale (SDM-IDM scale; 43 items; Cronbach’s α = 0.96) used for diagnosing exposure to bullying behaviours and an auxiliary emotional-cognitive scale (SDM-ODC scale; 21 items; Cronbach’s α = 0.97), which completes the psychological picture of bullying interaction Each of these scales may be divided into three, more specific subscales. All the SDM questionnaire scales positively correlate with the Negative Acts Questionnaire-R (NAQ-R) and with three self-report measures of job stressors. Conclusion: The SDM questionnaire is an accurate and reliable psychometric tool for measuring workplace bullying in Polish conditions.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze cross-national and cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceptions and conceptualizations of workplace bullying among human resource professionals (HRPs). Particular emphasis was given to what kind of behaviors are considered as bullying in different countries and what criteria interviewees use to decide whether a particular behavior is bullying or not. Design/methodology/approach: HRPs in 13 different countries/regions (n=199), spanning all continents and all GLOBE cultural clusters (House et al., 2004), were interviewed and a qualitative content analysis was carried out. Findings: Whereas interviewees across the different countries largely saw personal harassment and physical intimidation as bullying, work-related negative acts and social exclusion were construed very differently in the different countries. Repetition, negative effects on the target, intention to harm, and lack of a business case were decision criteria typically used by interviewees across the globe – other criteria varied by country. Practical implications: The results help HRPs working in multinational organizations understand different perceptions of negative acts. Originality/value: The findings point to the importance of cultural factors, such as power distance and performance orientation, and other contextual factors, such as economy and legislation for understanding varying conceptualizations of bullying.