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This study aims to explore the mechanism of abusive supervision differentiation on employee work-family conflict, and examine the chain mediating role of work-related rumination and organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior, as well as the moderating role of work-family boundary segmentation preference.

The authors designed two studies: Study 1 was a scenario experiment with 120 Master of Business Administration students. To further explore this finding, the authors conducted a multiwave survey in Study 2 with 345 employees from various organizations.

The results of Study 1 showed that abusive supervision differentiation had a positive effect on work-related rumination, and work-related rumination mediated the relationship between differentiated abusive supervision and organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior. The results of Study 2 not only confirmed the conclusions of Study 1 but also revealed that organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior significantly affected work-family conflict. Abusive supervision differentiation had a positive effect on work-family conflict through work-related rumination and organizational citizenship behavior/deviant workplace behavior. In addition, work-family boundary segmentation preference negatively moderated the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and work-family conflict.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first paper to test the spillover effect of abusive supervision differentiation on the family domain through a chain mediation model. It extends the research on abusive supervision differentiation from the work domain to the family domain. Second, previous research has highlighted role conflict or role insufficiency as significant factors contributing to work-family conflict. However, this study suggests that abusive supervision differentiation from workplace managers can also trigger work-family conflict, providing a new perspective in the study of precursors to work-family conflict.

The high-pressure nature of the construction industry, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, triggered abusive supervision (i.e. workplace bullying and incivility behaviour) that has diminished workers' well-being. However, despite the growing prevalence in practice and increasing concern in academia, abusive supervision remains largely unexplored by construction management scholars. This study aims to fill the gap in the current literature by analysing the effects of abusive supervision on construction workers' well-being, the mediating role of guanxi closeness and the moderating role of trust in the manager.

A questionnaire survey was completed by 258 Chinese construction workers. The data underwent mediation and moderation analyses using PROCESS macro 3.5 for SPSS.

The results revealed that managers' abusive supervision reduced construction workers' well-being at work and in life. Guanxi closeness between manager and workers mediated the relationship between managers' abusive supervision and construction workers' well-being. Additionally, trust in managers moderated the mediating effect of guanxi closeness. This study further revealed that the emotional connection between construction managers and workers, such as expressive guanxi closeness and affective-based trust, is important in handling the impact of abusive supervision on the workers.

The findings of this study provide support for recent calls to address negative manager behaviours such as abusive supervision in construction management. They aid the development of a more comprehensive internal mechanism that considers the influence of guanxi closeness on the outcomes of abusive supervision by managers at construction sites. Additionally, interventions that develop trust in managers may be particularly effective in alleviating the tension of abusive supervision. More attention should be paid to managers' emotional connections in daily construction project management.

Rather than concentrate on positive leadership, this study shifts the focus to negative leadership in construction project management by identifying abusive supervision as a negative primary antecedent of workers' well-being. While prior research has highlighted how negative manager behaviours affect workers' well-being from the conservation of resources theory (COR) perspective, this study is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to adopt a social exchange theory perspective by introducing guanxi closeness as a mediator. It contributes to a greater understanding of how trust in the manager alleviates the negative effect of the person's abusive supervision on construction workers.

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study aims to develop a resource-based model depicting a decreased level of psychological resourcefulness – relational energy, as a novel explanatory mechanism that accounts for the harm of abusive supervision, and we further investigate the role of leader humor as a boundary condition.

We applied multilevel path analysis to test our hypotheses with three-time-point survey data collected from 226 supervisor-employee dyads in a telecommunication company in China across six months.

Our results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to employee relational energy, leading to a subsequent decline in employee job performance. The predictions of the depleting effects get alleviated by leader humor.

This study foregrounds the importance of employee relationship management in the workplace and reveals that some abusive supervisors may manage to sustain employee performance and relational energy by using humor in their interactions, which necessitates immediate intervention.

These findings offer novel insights into the deleterious impact of abusive supervision by demonstrating the critical role of relational energy in dyadic interactions. We also reveal the potential dark side of leader humor in the context of abuse in the workplace.

Today, psychological well-being is increasingly valued by organizations because it is integral to employee performance. The style of leaders supervising their subordinates is an important influence on their psychological well-being. Abusive supervision can lead to a depletion of resources among their subordinates by inducing psychological stress, leading to a decline in psychological well-being. In this research, the authors use the conservation of resources (COR) theory and self-determination theory to examine the mechanism between abusive supervision and psychological well-being. This study can contribute to previous research by applying the COR theory and self-determination theory, which were not discussed, to explain the relationship between leader's leadership behavior and psychological well-being of organizational members.

The authors conduct a multi-time data collection method of two waves with six-week intervals. The authors received 322 samples and conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to test result validity and used multiple regression to examine the direct and moderating effects. Additionally, the authors used the bootstrapping method to test mediating effects.

The results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to psychological well-being and self-determination plays the mediating role between them, while perceived person-organization fit is the moderator between self-determination and psychological well-being.

The authors identified self-determination as the mediator between abusive supervision and psychological well-being and perceived person-organization fit plays the moderating role between self-determination and psychological well-being.

On the basis of affective events theory, this study aims to examine the connection between work-related events (i.e. supervisor role ambiguity and role conflicts) and abusive supervision via emotion (i.e. supervisor frustration). This study also examines the moderating role of supervisor personality traits (i.e. neuroticism and conscientiousness).

This study collected lagged and multisource field data (472 subordinates and supervisors dyads) from the service organizations.

The data collected supported majority of this study’s hypothesized relationships regarding determinants of abusive supervision.

This study underlines what triggers supervisor abuse. This study also enables organizations with the intervention opportunity to reduce the effects of supervisor role ambiguity, role conflict, negative emotions and personality on triggering abusive supervision.

Prior research on abusive supervision has extensively focused on its outcomes, leaving a noteworthy research gap about what triggers abusive supervision. To fill this important gap in leadership literature, this study proposed and tested a research model of determinants of supervisor abuse. Thus, this study contributes to leadership and abusive supervision research. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

This study aims at analyzing the detrimental cross-level serial effects of leaders' Machiavellianism and abusive supervision on subordinates' burnout and task performance. The general aggression model and conservation of resources theory guide our research model.

The authors developed a multilevel design and used multisource data. The authors collected data from 50 bank branches located in Pakistan. A total of 50 branch supervisors participated, which yielded 200 supervisor-subordinate dyads. Machiavellianism was self-assessed by the supervisors who further rated the specific task performance of each of their respective subordinates. Burnout and abusive supervision ratings were provided by the subordinates. Abusive supervision scores were aggregated at the group level.

Machiavellianism has an indirect negative effect on individual-level task performance through the serial cross-level mediating effects of abusive supervision at the group level and attendant individual-level burnout.

Findings provide practical implications for the management of task performance and human resources.

This study offers a comprehensive cross-level model to analyze the effect of Machiavellianism on group-level and individual-level outcomes known to affect the effectiveness of leaders.

Goal orientation shapes employees’ approach to and interpretation of workplace aspects such as supervisors’ behavior. However, research has not fully examined the effect of goal orientation as an antecedent of abusive supervision. Drawing from victim precipitation theory, this study aims to fill this research gap by investigating how employees’ goal orientation influences their perception of abusive supervision.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, 181 employees in 45 departments participated in the survey, and multilevel confirmatory factor analysis, two-level path model and polynomial regression were used. In Study 2, 108 working adults recruited from a professional online survey platform participated in a two-wave time-lagged survey. Confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical linear regression and polynomial regression were used.

This study found that employees’ learning goal orientation was negatively related to their perception of abusive supervision. In contrast, performance-avoidance goal orientation was positively related to their perception of abusive supervision, whereas performance-approach goal orientation was unrelated to this perception. Moreover, employees’ perception of abusive supervision was greater when learning and performance-approach goal orientation alignment occurred at lower rather than higher levels, and when performance-avoidance and performance-approach goal orientation alignment occurred at higher rather than lower levels.

This research identified two novel victim traits as antecedents of abusive supervision – employees’ learning goal orientation and performance-avoidance goal orientation. Furthermore, adopting a multiple goal perspective, the authors examined the combined effects of goal orientation on employees’ perception of abusive supervision.

Abusive supervision (AS) provides insights into the darker aspects of leadership behavior and its effects on employees. Understanding and addressing AS can contribute to creating healthier work environments and promoting employee well-being. The effect of abusive leadership (AS) on counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) in nursing staff is examined through the theoretical lens of the social exchange theory.

Data were collected from 302 nursing staff working at public and private hospitals through a self-administered questionnaire. Measurement scales were adapted from the literature and the data were tested for validity and reliability before performing hypotheses testing through structural equation modeling in SmartPLS 4.0.

AS positively affects CWB, and psychological contract breach mediates this relationship. However, employees with high Islamic work ethics (IWE) are less concerned with supervisors' dysfunctional behaviors and pay less attention to them; thus, IWE buffers the effect of AS on CWBs.

A positive and supportive organizational climate is crucial for attracting and retaining skilled healthcare professionals. When healthcare professionals are subjected to abusive behaviors, their ability to share knowledge, adopt safety protocols and provide the best patient care may be hampered. Therefore, addressing AS in hospitals is vital to promoting a positive work environment, enhancing employee well-being and improving patient care.

Based on the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior through two different paths: bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation. Besides, the moderating effects of bystander uncertainty tolerance on the two paths are also explored.

In this study, 438 employees and their direct leaders from eight Chinese companies were surveyed in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.

Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to develop assertive impression management motivation and, thus, to exhibit more proactive behaviors. At the same time, peer abusive supervision also causes bystanders to develop defensive impression management motivation, which reduces the frequency of performing proactive behaviors. In addition, this study finds that bystander uncertainty tolerance plays a moderating role in influencing bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation in response to peer abusive supervision.

Starting from the bystander perspective, this study verifies the double-edged sword effect of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior as well as the mechanism of differentiated effects through cognitive appraisal, which broadens the scope of the research on abusive supervision, and deepens the academic understanding and development of the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress. At the same time, it also provides new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behavior.

This study aims to examine the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace incivility using a dual theoretical framework. First, it draws on the ego depletion theory to investigate the relationship between abusive supervision and incivility by exploring the mediating role of ego depletion. Second, it integrates the job demands–resources model with the ego depletion theory to examine how perceived co-workers’ support functions as a buffer in mitigating the effects of ego depletion on incivility.

The authors tested our moderated mediation model using hierarchical linear modeling through an experience-sampling study based on data collected from a participants across five consecutive workdays.

The findings reveal employees subjected to abusive supervision are more likely to experience a depletion of self-regulatory resources. Moreover, the authors found a positive association between ego depletion and workplace incivility, suggesting that diminished self-control resulting from abusive supervision contributes to a higher likelihood of engaging in uncivil workplace behaviors. In addition, perceived coworkers’ support emerged as a significant moderating factor that attenuates the indirect impact of abusive supervision on workplace incivility through ego depletion. Specifically, when perceived coworkers’ support is high, the negative influence of abusive supervision on ego depletion, and subsequently, on workplace incivility, is mitigated.

By exploring ego depletion as the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions imposed by perceived coworker support on the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace incivility, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of the intricate dynamics of this relationship. Based on the research findings, the authors advocate that organizations should establish and integrate support services, such as counseling and employee assistance programs, to reduce the emotional turmoil caused by abusive supervision.