Examining the Relationship between Academic Mobbing and Meaningful Work in Universities

This study aimed to examine the relationship between academic mobbing and meaningful work according to the views of academics. The research sample of the study consists of 489 academicians working at various state universities in Turkey. Research data were collected through e-mail using mobbing and meaningful work scales. The t-test was used for pairwise comparisons between variables. One-way ANOVA was preferred in triple or more comparisons. Pearson correlation test was used to reveal the relationship between academic mobbing and meaningful work. Also, regression analysis was used to determine whether academic mobbing predicts meaningful work. According to the results of the research, while the academics found their professions to be moderately-high-level meaningful, they stated that they perceived academic mobbing at a low level. It was observed that there were differences in the high motivation dimension of the meaningful work according to the gender variable and that there were differences between the views of male and female academicians in all dimensions of academic mobbing, except for the dimension of attacks on social relations. According to the gender variable, it was observed that there were differences between the opinions of female and male academics in the high motivation dimension of meaningful work and in all dimensions of academic mobbing except the dimension of attacks on social relations. According to the title variable, it was found that academicians with a high title in all dimensions, except for high motivation, found their works more meaningful. Still, the perception of academic mobbing did not differ according to the title. In addition, it was found that there is a significant and negative relationship between academic mobbing and meaningful work. What is more, academic mobbing was found to predict meaningful work. Based on these results, some suggestions have been made for practitioners and researchers conducting similar studies.