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This study aims to develop a unified theoretical framework that presents a cohesive picture of workplace cyberbullying to better understand the interplay between cyberbullying, its effects on organizations and organizational controls enacted to contain these effects.

The study conducts a theoretical review of the workplace cyberbullying literature between 2005 and 2021 drawing upon existing literature and two important theories, the routine activities theory and control theory. The final sample of 54 empirical papers represents a comprehensive body of literature on cyberbullying published across various disciplines.

A theoretical model of workplace cyberbullying is developed, which highlights major antecedents to workplace cyberbullying and its impact on individual employees as well as organizations.

As firms increasingly rely on information and communication technologies (ICTs), the misuse of ICTs in the form of cyberbullying is also increasing. Workplace cyberbullying severely hurts an organization’s employees and compromises the efficacy of its information systems. Fortunately, various controls can be utilized by firms to minimize workplace cyberbullying and its attendant costs. In all, eleven propositions are offered, providing a robust agenda for future research. The authors also offer insights for practitioners on how to minimize cyberbullying in the workplace and its damaging effects.

While the rapid adoption of information communication technologies (ICT) in organizations has been linked with a higher risk of cyberbullying, research on the influence of cyberbullying on interpersonal behaviors in the workplace remains limited. By drawing on the ego-depletion theory and the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, this research investigates how, why and when workplace cyberbullying may trigger interpersonal aggression through ICT.

The authors collected data from 259 employees and 62 supervisors working in large ICT organizations in China through a multi-wave survey. The authors performed multilevel analysis and used hierarchical linear modeling to test the proposed moderated mediation model.

The results revealed that workplace cyberbullying has a significant and positive influence on interpersonal aggression in the workplace via ego depletion. The authors found that differentiation in LMX processes at group level moderates the indirect relationship between workplace cyberbullying and interpersonal aggression (via ego depletion). Furthermore, the positive indirect effect of workplace cyberbullying was found to be stronger in the presence of a high LMX differentiation condition in comparison to a low LMX differentiation condition.

The data were collected from Chinese ICT organizations, which may limit the generalization of this study’s findings to other cultural and sectoral contexts.

This paper provides the first step in understanding how, why and when workplace cyberbullying triggers interpersonal aggression by investigating the role of ego depletion as a mediator and LMX differentiation as a boundary condition. This is the first study to empirically examine the relationships between workplace cyberbullying, ego depletion, LMX differentiation and interpersonal aggression in ICT organizations using multi-level modeling.

The purpose of this paper is to test a moderated mediation model that links the experience of cyberbullying, perceived stress and job satisfaction among Australian employees.

A survey of 254 white collar Australian employees was conducted from a wide variety of business corporations to investigate the role of workplace cyberbullying and job outcomes. A moderated mediation analysis was conducted.

Results indicated that workplace cyberbullying resulted in perceived stress, which in turn predicted employee’s job dissatisfaction. The results further revealed that cyberbullied female employees as opposed to male employees were more likely to report greater perceived stress and to be dissatisfied in their job.

Overall, the results suggest that cyberbullying is a potential resource drain for employees and has detrimental implications in their organisational life. Importantly, male and female employees reacted to workplace cyberbullying differently suggesting the need to address the issue of workplace cyberbullying more gender sensitively.

This study provides empirical evidence that workplace cyberbullying can be a gendered phenomenon. Furthermore, COR theory and gender role theory is combined to reveal the differences between men and women in terms of their vulnerability towards different stressors.

With the spread of information communication technologies (ICTs) at work, online voice has become an emerging form of employee voice. Online voice is a double-edged behavior for organizations and employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine a model in which online voice is positively correlated with workplace cyberbullying and to examine the moderating role of chronic job strain and moral efficacy on that correlation.

A total of 760 cases from 152 full-time Chinese workers in public sector employment were collected through the experience sampling method.

The results showed that online voice is positively correlated with workplace cyberbullying on a daily basis. Chronic job strain amplifies this relationship, while moral efficacy buffers it. Furthermore, the amplifying effect of chronic job strain is mediated by a lack of moral efficacy.

This research has implications for understanding the boundary conditions of the relationship between online voice and workplace cyberbullying.

This study aims to investigate the effects of workplace cyberbullying on creativity directly and through psychological distress. Furthermore, this study proposes that psychological capital (PsyCap) buffers the harmful effects of workplace cyberbullying on psychological distress and creativity.

The data were collected in two waves from 329 nurses working in four large public hospitals located in a metropolitan city of Pakistan. The data were analyzed through PROCESS (Model 8) using SPSS.

The results demonstrate that cyberbullying negatively affects creativity through increased psychological distress. The findings also explicate that PsyCap moderates the effects of cyberbullying on psychological distress such that the link was weak (vs strong) for those (victims) who had high (vs low) PsyCap.

This study recommends management to develop and promote PsyCap among employees because these positive resources help them to regulate their emotions and cognition to overcome negative consequences of cyberbullying and other workplace stressors.

Psychological distress as an underlying mechanism between cyberbullying and creativity as well as buffering effect of PsyCap is the novelty of the study.

Little research has explored individual experiences of cyberbullying in working contexts. To start bridging the gap in our current understanding, we used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore individuals' shared experiences of cyberbullying encountered through work. In-depth interviews, conducted with five cyberbullied workers from the pharmaceutical, charity and university sectors, resulted in five superordinate themes: attributions of causality; crossing of boundaries; influence of communication media richness on relationship development; influence of communication explicitness and openness; and strategies for coping. Overall, some similarities emerged between cyberbullying experiences and traditional bullying research, yet the complexities associated with managing relationships, both virtually and physically, were central to individuals' subjective experiences. Practical implications in developing effective leadership and business policies to support virtual groups and manage behaviours are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of cyberbullying at work on employee creativity with moderating role of family social support (FSS) and mediating role of job burnout.

Using convenience sampling technique, data were collected from 212 employees working in manufacturing sector. The partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

Results reveal that cyberbullying has found to be negatively associated with employee creativity and positively linked with job burnout. Furthermore, job burnout has negative connection with employee creativity; however, job burnout does not mediate the link between cyberbullying and creativity.

This study provides comprehensive insights in the literature about the negative workplace context (cyberbullying) as antecedent, job-linked psychological exhaustion (job burnout) as mediation and generation of original thoughts by employees (employee creativity) as consequence.

Examination of FSS as coping strategy and job burnout as underlying mechanism between the cyberbullying and employee creativity is the novelty of the present research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore health- and work-related outcomes of cyberbullying behaviour and the potential mediating role of social organisational climate, social support from colleagues and social support from superiors.

Altogether 3,371 respondents participated in a questionnaire study.

The results of this study indicate that social organisational climate can have a mediating role in the relationship between cyberbullying behaviour and health, well-being, work engagement and intention to quit. Contrary to earlier face-to-face bullying research, the current study showed that cyberbullying behaviour had stronger indirect than direct relationships to health, well-being, work engagement and intention to quit.

Communication through digital devices in work life is becoming more prevalent, which in turn increases the risk for cyberbullying behaviour. Organisations need therefore to develop occupational health and safety policies concerning the use of digital communication and social media in order to prevent cyberbullying behaviour and its negative consequences.

Cyberbullying behaviour among working adults is a relatively unexplored phenomenon and therefore this study makes valuable contribution to the research field.