A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON AND EXAMINATION OF WORKPLACE BULLYING IN SINGAPORE AND THE UNITED STATES

This study explored the levels of exposure to workplace bullying in Singapore and the United States and investigated how victims in the two countries coped with the bullying. Furthermore, this study assessed the extent to which face concerns (self-face and other-face) relate to the use of coping strategies. A questionnaire was administered to employees from Singapore and the United States. In order to participate in this study, participants had to have previous working experiences or they had to be currently working in a full-time or a part-time position. The sample size had a total of 721 participants, of which, 295 participants were Singaporeans and 369 participants were Americans. The results of this study supported the proposed hypothesis, whereby employees from United States reported that they experienced higher levels of exposure to workplace bullying than employees from Singapore. Moreover, a factor analysis revealed that there were three types of coping strategies used by both Singaporeans and Americans: negative reactance, indirect/passive fielding, and active solution.
Results further showed that both Singaporeans and Americans tend to use indirect/passive fielding most frequently, followed by negative reactance, and then active solution. Self-face needs were directly and significantly correlated to the use of negative reactance and indirect/passive fielding for both Singaporeans and Americans. However, correlation analyses indicated that there were no significant differences between self-face concerns and active solution for employees in the two countries. Additionally, results revealed that other-face needs were not related to the use of any of the three coping strategies for Singaporeans but there was a significant negative correlation between other-face needs and negative reactance for Americans only.