Effects of Workplace Bullying on Employee Emotional Exhaustion in Hospitality Industry Zanzibar

Zanzibar economy is dependent on tourism because 85% of the country’s foreign exchange comes from this sector and it makes up close to 1/3 of the GDP (World Bank, 2019). Owing to its nature the sector is a labour-intensive sector, thus, it could be an ideal source of employment opportunities and, hence, poverty reduction in Zanzibar. However, the sector has limited contribution to employment in Zanzibar since the majority benefiting from tourism employment in Zanzibar are non-locals. The industry needs to attract and retain and encourage the training of more locals to ensure its sustainability, however, the image of the tourism industry as a hostile work environment with unfavorable conditions would not help attract employees. Stories of bullying incidents therefore would damage not only the employees and hotels but also the whole industry and the economy. This study aims to investigate how workplace bullying leads to employee emotional exhaustion by testing mindfulness and psychological distress as mediators between workplace bullying and employee’s emotional exhaustion. Specifically, it investigates the degree to which psychological distress, and mindfulness predict employee emotional exhaustion under workplace bullying in the hospitality industry. To test the hypotheses that workplace bullying is positively related to employee emotional exhaustion, and psychological distress and mindfulness mediate the relationship between workplace bullying and employee emotional exhaustion, this study used data from the hospitality industry in Zanzibar in which 426 full-time employees were involved in the data collection and PLS SEM was used to analyze the data. The study results affirm that employees are emotionally exhausted by workplace bullying in hospitality industry in Zanzibar, and that mindfulness state is a mechanism through which bullying is related to exhaustion. On this basis, the issue of workplace bullying should be well addressed in the employment policy and accordingly be administered. Keywords: workplace bullying, psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, Zanzibar.