Abstract:
The most important objective of the present research study was to test the relationship
between personal bullying (PB) incidents and nursing staff turnover intentions (TI) in the major
public sector hospitals of Pakistan. In addition, the role of job stress (JS) as mediating and
political skill (PS) as moderating variable were also assessed in the present study. In present
study, we used explanatory sequential mixed methods research design. Explanatory sequential
research has two phases, quantitative followed by qualitative. In Phase 1, data was collected
from 324 nurses through questionnaire and model was tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS).
In phase 2, for qualitative part, 11 nurses were interviewed so that they can explain results in
more detail. Results from the quantitative survey and qualitative part showed that there is a
significant positive association between personal bullying and nursing staff turnover intentions
and the link between personal bullying and turnover intentions was partially mediated by job
stress. Furthermore, political skill (PS) weakens the relationship between personal bullying (PB)
and job stress (JS). The most important limitations of the present study were the sample used,
which was from six public sector hospitals of Islamabad/Rawalpindi area. The present study is
the first to use a sequential explanatory mixed methods design to assess the mediating role of job
stress (JS) as well as to examine the moderating effect of political skill between personal
bullying and job stress linkage.
