How Workplace Ostracism and Bullying Influence Employee Outcomes: Evidence from the Education Sector

Abstract

This research explores how workplace bullying and ostracism affect employee performance within Pakistan's higher education sector, focusing specifically on administrative staff. It also examines whether supervisor support can reduce the negative impact of these harmful behaviours. The topic is important in the local context, where such issues often go unnoticed or unreported, and legal protections are either weakly enforced or absent in many institutions. A key gap in the existing literature is the lack of studies that connect these workplace issues with performance outcomes in Pakistani universities, especially using established theories like Social Cognitive Theory. The study follows a quantitative, time-lagged design and uses a convenient sampling method to collect responses from 220 administrative staff members working in private universities. Data were gathered using structured questionnaires based on validated scales and analyzed through SPSS software using correlation, regression, and moderated regression analysis. Results showed that workplace bullying significantly harms employee performance, while ostracism, although theoretically expected to be damaging, did not show a significant effect. Supervisor support was found to play a positive role overall and successfully weakened the link between ostracism and poor performance. However, it did not reduce the negative impact of bullying. The findings suggest that universities need to focus more on the role of supportive supervisors and implement strict anti-harassment policies to ensure a healthy working environment.