BATTLING THE TOXIC WAR AT WORKPLACE THROUGH THE INTRODUCTION OF SPECIFIC HR PRACTICES: A CASE OF HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR OF PAKISTAN

In the era of stiff global competition, organizations are focused on the stabilization of the workplace environment as a contingency requirement of its productivity and growth. To achieve the apprehension of the quality environment at the workplace, this study is intended to determine to adverse effects of a toxic workplace environment (TWE) for the employees and its remedial path in the form of specific HR practices. As an independent variable, the complete spectrum of toxic workplace environment (consisting of multiple dimensions named as workplace ostracism, workplace incivility, workplace harassment and workplace bullying) was used. While emotional exhaustion (EE) was used as a mediating variable, job productivity as dependent and most specifically specific HR Practices are treated as controlling/moderating variables. For this, a self-administered close-ended questionnaire was used to collect the data from employees (N=267) including faculty and administration both of the HE sector of Pakistan. To analyze the collected data, CFA (Confirmatory Factor Analysis) was used to address the validity concerns of the factors. Moreover, AMOS 22 was used to determine the direct, indirect and moderation effect of selected variables. The results revealed that the bundle of toxic workplace environment has a significant negative association with job productivity, while emotional exhaustion was proved as a statistically significant mediator between a bundle of toxic workplace environment and job productivity. Furthermore, Specific HR Practices demonstrated the controlling/moderating impact on the positive association of TWE and EE. Finally, we conclude that organizations need to battle the war of toxic workplace environment in order to ensure their prosperity and success