Search results

This chapter provides an overview of research on dispositional supervisor characteristics as well as specific individual-level antecedents, correlates, boundary conditions and processes of supervisors who display hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviours towards their followers (i.e., abusive supervision). More specifically, empirical research findings on the relationships between specific supervisor characteristics and subordinate-rated perceptions of abusive supervisor behaviours are summarized and critically discussed. To better understand what contributes to abusive supervision, the moderating role of follower characteristics and the greater organizational context are taken into account as well. The chapter closes with an integrated process model of abusive supervision, an outlook and suggestions for future research.

This study aims to examine the impact of leaders’ abusive supervision on employees’ work engagement in the health sector. The study further examined the interactive effect of leaders’ abusive supervision and employees’ proactive personality on work engagement via employees’ silence.

Data were collected from 343 health workers in five hospitals in Ghana. The Hayes Process Macro and AMOS were used to analyse mediation, moderation and moderated-mediation relationships

The study findings indicate that leaders’ abusive supervision has a detrimental impact on employees’ work engagement. The study further found that employees’ silence did not mediate the relationship between abusive supervision and work engagement. Employees’ proactive personalities positively moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ silence.

This study advances understanding of how perceived leaders’ abusive supervision affects health workers’ work engagement. This study contributes to the literature by confirming employees’ silence as a pathway linking abusive supervision to work engagement. The study further identifies employees’ proactive personality as a moderating variable in the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ silence.

Abusive supervision has been a prevalent issue in the workplace. This study aims to explore the consequences of abusive supervision on employee affective organizational commitment and general health in the hospitality industry and further explores the boundary conditions of employee assistance programs (EAPs).

The participants of this study were 231 frontline employees from the hospitality industry in Taiwan. Quantitative data was collected using questionnaires from two time periods separated by a two-week interval. The data was analyzed using PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The findings from this study suggested that abusive supervision have negative impacts on both subordinates’ affective organizational commitment and general health. As expected, perceived effectiveness of EAPs moderated the relationship between perceived abusive supervision and affective organizational commitment, whereas the moderating effect of perceived effectiveness of EAPs on the relationship between abusive supervision and employee general health was not significant.

The results of this study showed that EAP practices can mitigate the negative effects of abusive supervision. It is expected to encourage managers in the hospitality industry to minimize or even prevent abusive supervision. Further, the authors suggest organizations implement specific strategies in their EAPs to assist employees in coping with the negative emotions accompanying abusive supervision.

This study offers empirical evidence that illustrates the importance of EAPs and how they may reduce the negative impacts of abusive supervision.

Utilizing affective event theory (AET), this paper aims to understand the affective reasoning behind choosing to speak up for or against abusive supervision. For this purpose, the authors examine the underlying mechanism of employee state paranoia in the relationship between abusive supervision and promotive and prohibitive voice of employees.

Data from 307 microfinance bank employees were collected using supervisor–subordinate nested design and time-lag approach. The analysis was performed through partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling using Smart PLS software.

The results support the direct relationship of abusive supervision with promotive and prohibitive voice. They also support the mediating relation of paranoia arousal between abusive supervision and promotive voice. However, the results do not support the mediating relationship of paranoia arousal between abusive supervision and prohibitive voice.

In light of the literature drawn from AET and empirical data, this study forwards robust recommendations for theory and practice and may assist future researchers interested in the role of employee paranoia arousal.

This study aims to investigate the differential roles of self-esteem and co-rumination in the mediated relationship between abusive supervision and knowledge hiding via psychological safety.

The study used a three-wave time-lagged design and data were collected from 388 full-time employees in India.

The results show that psychological safety mediated the impact abusive supervision had on knowledge hiding. Further, this impact was weakened by higher self-esteem as employees with higher self-esteem were less affected by the impact of abusive supervision on psychological safety and knowledge hiding; but this impact was amplified by more co-rumination as employees who co-ruminated more were also more affected by abusive supervision in psychological safety and knowledge hiding.

A cross-sectional design and the use of self-reported questionnaires are a few limitations of this study.

This study took a purposeful deviation from the traditional path of organizational justice to the study of abusive supervision and psychological safety and endeavored an alternate route, one of resource conservation. Further, employees have diverse reasons that heighten or dampen their inclination to hide knowledge from others in the workplace. The study examines co-rumination and self-esteem as possible boundary conditions.

Despite burgeoning interest in knowledge hiding (KH), there are still significant gaps in the understanding of the boundary conditions under which KH is more or less likely to occur. To address this research gap, the researchers examined abusive supervision as an interpersonal antecedent of KH. In addition, this paper aims to investigate the moderating roles of negative reciprocity beliefs (NRB) and moral disengagement (MD) in the relationship between abusive supervision and KH.

Two-wave data using a non-experimental face-to-face method was collected from 257 service employees in Pakistan, which supported the hypothesized model. Considering minimum sample size requirements (i.e. n = 208) in partial least squares structural equation modeling, the researchers analyzed a two-stage approach to test the measurement model and the structural model.

The study found that abusive supervision was positively related to evasive hiding and playing dumb but not associated with rationalized hiding. Further, the results confirm the moderating roles of NRB and MD. The positive relationships between abusive supervision and evasive hiding and playing dumb are intensified at high levels of NRB and MD.

Given the complicated nature of KH, this is one of the few efforts that outstretch the boundary conditions of KH.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between abusive supervision and knowledge hiding. The study also examines the mediating role of distrust in the relationship between abusive supervision and knowledge hiding.

The procedure used in the study is a systematic literature review covering abusive supervision, knowledge hiding, distrust from 1994 to 2021. The studies were explored using the keyword search such as, “abusive supervision,” “knowledge hiding” and “distrust” from the selected databases including Emerald, ScienceDirect, EbscoHost and Google Scholar.

The study found that abusive supervision is positively related to knowledge hiding and distrust mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and knowledge hiding. The study also proposes procrastination as one of the dimensions of knowledge hiding.

The study is an attempt to uncover a series of relationships between abusive supervision, knowledge hiding and distrust, which may enhance academic discussion and also offer clarity to the conceptualization of these two fields.

Cyberloafing (employees' non-work-related online activities at work) has become a common workplace problem for many organizations. Research investigating the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions under which abusive supervision influences cyberloafing remains largely underdeveloped. Drawing from social exchange theory and conservation of resources theory, we developed a moderated-mediation model in which emotional exhaustion was theorized as a unique mechanism underlining why employees are more likely to engage in cyberloafing under the supervision of abusive leaders. In addition, we proposed that organizational commitment to be a relevant boundary condition to influence such a relationship.

We collected 255 data from employees working in public listed companies in Malaysia and used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data.

The results showed that the influence of abusive supervision on cyberloafing through emotional exhaustion is only significant when organizational commitment is low.

This study constructed a moderated-mediation model by introducing the potential mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and the moderating effect of organizational commitment to reveal the mechanism through which abusive supervision related to cyberloafing.

Adopting the social information processing theory and social comparison theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how abusive supervision and abusive supervisory climate jointly influence salesperson creativity, sales team creativity, and team performance.

The study conducted hierarchical linear modeling and hierarchical regression to analyze the paired data from 102 sales teams comprising 319 salespeople and 102 managers.

At the individual level, abusive supervision had negative effect on salesperson creativity via psychological safety. Abusive supervisory climate played a cross-level moderating role in the relationship between abusive supervision and psychological safety. At the team level, abusive supervisory climate was negatively related to sales team creativity via averaged salesperson creativity and negatively associated with sales team performance through sales team creativity.

This study adds to knowledge of how abusive supervision and abusive supervisory climate jointly affect salesperson psychological safety and creativity. It also contributes to abusive supervision and creativity literature by linking abusive supervisory climate and sales team creativity by integrating social information processing theory and social comparison theory.

The purpose of this paper is to test a mediated moderation model of the joint influence of abusive supervision, high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and organizational commitment and intention to leave on employee silence.

Data were collected from 456 employees and 78 human resource managers in 78 Chinese organizations.

The results revealed that abusive supervision led to subordinate silence, and HPWSs intensified this effect. In addition, such moderating effect of HPWSs was accounted for by employees’ organizational commitment and intention to leave.

To reduce the occurrence of employee silence, organizations should not only monitor and restrain abusive supervisory actions, but also be aware of subordinates’ work attitudes driven by organizational HPWSs.

This is the first study which demonstrates that HPWSs can foster employees’ organizational commitment and hinder their intention to leave and consequently strengthen the relation between abusive supervision and employee silence.