Abstract

The current research was conducted on 339 office workers in South Korea to investigate the serial-multiple mediation of self-compassion and dysfunctional anger expression (anger-in, anger-out) in the relationship between workplace bullying and burnout. Results revealed that self-compassion, anger-in, and anger-out was each found to be a mediator of the relationship between workplace bullying and burnout. Also, the serial-multiple mediation of self-compassion and anger-in in the relationship between workplace bullying and burnout was found to be statistically significant, whereas self-compassion and anger-out did not successively mediate this relationship. These results suggested that for officeworkers who experienced workplace bullying, sequentially intervening to prevent anger-in after improving self-compassion was effective in reducing burnout. Implications for research and managerial practices were discussed.