Bullying at the workplace, organizational commitment and employee satisfaction relationship with performance: A research in higher education in Iraq

The importance of the study emerges from the importance of the higher education sector as one of the drivers for the development in any country. Furthermore, the scarcity of research on bullying in higher education institutions in Iraq imposes a risk through the lack of identification of the issue, as well as the lack of diagnosis of its implications on other key indicators. Intervention measures that are supposed to be taken in a timely manner to alleviate the effects of bullying in the workplace are hindered by incapability of understanding and analyzing the problem. The main purpose of the research is to investigate the effect of workplace bullying on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and performance. Statistical analysis will also include examining the relationship between concepts and their sub-dimensions. A total of 398 qualified questionnaires were collected from a random sample of employees in higher education institutions in Iraq. In the exploratory factor analysis, most of the items of the four scales were loaded with high factors that showed good correlation between the scale items. In the correlational analysis, Spearman's rho test analysis showed negative, moderate to strong associations between workplace bullying and the other three variables. Path analysis was performed with Smart PLS 4 for the four variables of the study. Based on the model, workplace bullying has a negative effect on organizational commitment, employee satisfaction and performance, while organizational commitment has a moderate positive effect on performance. The mediation relationship between organizational commitment and employee satisfaction in the effect of workplace bullying on performance was tested with a process macro analysis. Analysis results showed that both variables mediated the relationship. It is expected that the research findings will guide the Iraqi education sector and authorities and contribute to the researchers. KEYWORDS: Bullying İn The Workplace, Organizational Commitment, Employee Satisfaction, Employee Performance, Higher Education, Iraq