In the current COVID-19 pandemic, this paper attempts to empirically find out the increasing workplace bullying effect on project performance with employee deviant behaviour as a mediator, internal, and external locus of control as moderators. The random sampling technique was used to gather data from 777 employees, working in construction companies in Pakistan. The examination was established using WarpPLS software version 7.0. The results revealed that workplace bullying is positively associated with employee deviant behaviour which in return negatively affects the project performance. It can be inferred from the results that the “moderating role” of internal “locus of control” is insignificant; whereas the external “locus of control” significantly moderates the relationship between workplace bullying & employee deviant behaviour. The proposed research and hypotheses support social exchange theory and social behaviour exchanges. This study has clarified some unique points that are equally important for the managers, employees, and project-based construction organization as a whole. It is also recommended that once the pandemic COVID-19 passes, it would be the dire need of that time to re-evaluate that, what has been changed in terms of professional thinking, working & behaving as for as their project work and communication between the team members is concerned.

Occupational stress has been known as a major cause of safety and health issues among sales people in retail organizations. Despite this, numerous studies have indicated the importance of factors and outcomes of occupational stress in several occupations, a knowledge gap on occupational stress remains a hot topic of interest for academics and practitioners. This study aims to examine the workplace bullying as a factor and task performance as the outcome of occupational stress among salespeople in the retail industry in Malaysia. Questionnaires were distributed to salespeople in the large-scale retail organization. Data from 222 salespeople suggest that workplace bullying was positively related to occupational stress and in turn, it affects employee performance. These findings contribute to understanding how workplace bullying affects the occupational stress and how stress may affect the performance of salespeople. Implications were presented for employers and employees who should be viewed with caution, in turn, to reduce the occupational stress at the workplace.