Workplace Bullying and Job Performance: The Mediating Roles of Well-Being, Engagement, and Anxiety

Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) and Conservation of Resources (COR) frameworks, bullying was conceptualized as a social job demand that depletes employees’ personal resources and triggers strain. A sample of 250 employees from the Greek private sector completed validated measures of workplace bullying, psychological well-being, work engagement, anxiety, and three dimensions of job performance—task, contextual, and counterproductive work behavior (CWB).

Correlational and regression analyses revealed that bullying was negatively associated with well-being and engagement and positively with anxiety. Mediation analyses using PROCESS Model 4 confirmed that well-being and engagement partially mediated the negative effects of bullying on task and contextual performance and the positive effects on CWB, while anxiety transmitted additional variance, particularly to counterproductive behaviors.