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Does employees’ gender matter? Investigating the indirect effect of abusive supervision on employee creativity through job insecurity in Indonesia

Syamsidah Syamsidah (Department of Family Welfare Education, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Makassar, Indonesia)
Hillman Wirawan (Department of Psychology, Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, Indonesia and School of Psychology, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia)
Rudi Salam (Department of Administration Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Makassar, Indonesia and Department of Administration Sciences, Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, Indonesia)

Gender in Management

ISSN: 1754-2413

Article publication date: 19 April 2023

Issue publication date: 16 November 2023

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the effect of abusive supervision on employees’ creativity through the mediating role of job insecurity and the moderating role of subordinate gender in Indonesia.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from various sources using online recruitment methods. The abusive supervision scale, job insecurity scale and employee creativity scale were the three measures in this study. Participants completed a three-wave data collection procedure using an online survey platform. After removing participants with incomplete and careless responses, the final data set contained 515 usable responses.

Findings

The results suggested that the negative effect of abusive supervision on employees’ creativity was mediated by job insecurity, and employees’ gender moderated this adverse effect. Gender roles shaped how employees respond to their leader’s hostile behaviours. In Indonesia, abusive supervision increased employees’ job insecurity and consequently reduced their creativity. However, the damage was more profound for the male employees than the female employees.

Practical implications

Gender role theory and perspectives are essential in explaining leader–employee interactions and must be included in leadership strategies. Also, support and resources must be provided equally for both male and female employees. However, more attention must be given to male employees to ensure their security working in organisations. Finally, some interventions are necessary to mitigate the effect of abusive supervision.

Originality/value

This study offers insight into how male and female employees, in a traditional gender role culture like Indonesia, respond to their leader’s abusive behaviours.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Funding: No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

Compliance with ethical standards.

Conflict of interest: On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee (the ethical clearance was approved by the first author’s affiliation) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study.

Data availability: The data sets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to some restrictions but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Citation

Syamsidah, S., Wirawan, H. and Salam, R. (2023), "Does employees’ gender matter? Investigating the indirect effect of abusive supervision on employee creativity through job insecurity in Indonesia", Gender in Management, Vol. 38 No. 8, pp. 1075-1091. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-07-2022-0243

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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