The Bystander Typology Scale: Development and Validation of a Workplace Bullying Bystander Response Measure

Bystanders, organizational members who witness but are not directly involved in workplace bullying, are increasingly viewed as integral in addressing bullying. However, empirical evidence about how bystanders act and why is limited, having been hampered by the lack of a validated measure to capture bystander behavior. Drawing from previous typologies and extending a sensemaking model of bystanders, we theorize that there are four main classes of bystander behavior and that individual and organizational factors influence which of these is enacted when workplace bullying is witnessed. We develop the Bystander Typology Scale (BTS) to test our propositions, validating the new measure across three studies (NStudy 1a = 588; NStudy 1b = 361; NStudy 1c = 251), which show that the BTS captures four distinctive bystander behaviors: active constructive (e.g., confronting the perpetrator), passive constructive (e.g., offering emotional support), passive destructive (e.g., ignoring the situation), and active destructive (e.g., revictimization). Our main study (NStudy 2 = 374) shows that self-efficacy, dark triad traits, and organizational conflict cultures influence bystander behavior in distinctive ways. Our research contributes to a greater understanding of how bystanders behave when witnessing bullying and why, alongside a tool for researchers to examine bullying bystanders systemically and for practitioners to evaluate interventions.