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The present research aims to empirically test the “Barriers to abusive supervision model” to find how employee-related (core self-evaluations) and situational factors (perceived job dependency) make an employee trapped in the spiral of supervisory abuse. In addition, the work–family spillover lens is used to explain how employees' retaliation is targeted at their families in response to abuse from their bosses.

The current study has employed a three-wave longitudinal moderated mediation design and analysed data from 265 employees working in the hospitality industry of Pakistan.

The results of this study have shown that low core-self evaluations put employees in a spiral of supervisory abuse and they instil aggression towards their families. This association is further strengthened when employees are dependent on their job.

This study is one of the first to use the “Barriers to Abusive supervision” model to answer who and in which conditions tend to trap in the spiral of abuse and integrate the work-to-family interface model for elaborating the outcomes to the family domain.

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated teleworking, which inadvertently led to an impaired communication between supervisors and employees, resulting in abusive supervision. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory and the social identity theory, this study aims to address this negative association by examining the mediating role of state mindfulness and the moderating role of COVID-19 corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the relationship between abusive supervision and counterproductive work behaviors.

This research employs both qualitative and quantitative research designs. Data collection involved an experimental design with 117 participants (Study 1), a cross-sectional survey with 243 participants (Study 2) and semi-structured interviews with 24 full-time employees (Study 3).

The results reveal that state mindfulness acts as a mediator in the positive relationship between abusive supervision and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). Furthermore, COVID-19 CSR mitigates the relationship between abusive supervision and CWB within the organization, but not with the supervisor. Additionally, COVID-19 CSR moderates the impact of abusive supervision on state mindfulness.

The results emphasize the crucial role of CSR when employees encounter abusive supervision during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations and managers should adopt appropriate strategies to enhance employees' perception of CSR. Prioritizing the cultivation of state mindfulness is also recommended, and organizations can provide short-term mindfulness training to improve employees' state mindfulness.

This research contributes to the understanding of abusive supervision and CWB in the context of forced teleworking.

Using the lenses of social exchange and reactance theories, this study examines the relationships between abusive supervision and both turnover intentions and job satisfaction. The moderating role of employee depression in the relationship between abusive supervision and these specific work outcomes is also investigated, by incorporating the conservation of resources theory.

Quantitative data were collected from a sample of 221 frontline retail employees, across shopping malls in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad. A 3-step multiple hierarchical regression analysis was performed to test the relationships.

The findings provided support for the propositions that abusive supervision predicts job satisfaction and turnover intentions, respectively. Employee depression moderated the relationship between abusive supervision and job satisfaction but did not moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intentions.

While existing research has explored the relationships between abusive supervision, job satisfaction and turnover intentions, limited studies have investigated the moderating role of employee depression. This study contributes to understanding this pervasive workplace issue by investigating a relatively unexplored moderating effect.

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.

Despite the literature on subordinates' destructive responses to abusive leadership, an emerging body of literature proposes that subordinates may react constructively to abusive supervision under certain conditions. The authors contribute to this line of research by proposing and testing the moderating effects of performance-approach and -avoidance goal orientation on the relationship between abusive supervision and task performance, and by testing work effort as a mechanism underlying this moderating effect.

The study hypotheses were tested in two studies. In Study 1 (field survey, N = 230), the moderation hypotheses were tested. Study 2 (experiment, N = 116) extended Study 1 and examined the mediated moderation model.

The study empirical evidence from the two studies showed that (1) abusive supervision was more positively related to an employee's task performance when that employee's performance-approach goal orientation was high (vs low), (2) abusive supervision was not more positively related to task performance when performance-avoidance goal orientation was high (vs low) and (3) the employee's work effort mediated the moderating effect of performance-approach goal orientation.

This research suggests that organizations and subordinates should be aware of the positive contextual role of performance-approach goal orientation, which may shape subordinates' subsequent work behavior in response to supervisors' hostility, and should invest more time and effort in reinforcing subordinates' performance-approach goal orientation.

This study has identified a new condition and offers new evidence of the potential functional effect of abusive supervision. Specifically, the study finding of the positive moderating role of performance-approach goal orientation adds to the literature examining when abused subordinates respond constructively to abusive supervision. The study analysis of the mediating effect of work effort further reveals the mechanism of this effect.

To propose the use of indirect survey protocols, in general and the item count technique (ICT), in particular, that ensure participant anonymity in organizations to explore the effect of employee perceived abusive supervision on job performance.

We apply ICT to a sample of 363 employees (52.6% female) from Greek organizations. Utilizing multivariate statistical techniques, we investigated how employees assess the impact of their personal encounters with abusive supervision on job performance. This approach allowed us to explore the percentage of employees perceiving negative effects on job performance, distinguishing our study from previous studies that primarily focus on quantifying the extent or magnitude of abusive supervision in organizational settings. Also, we investigated how employee socio-demographic characteristics, human capital characteristics and affective traits relate to the evaluation of experienced abusive supervision as a negative factor for their job performance.

We found that approximately 62% of the respondents evaluated personal experience of abusive supervision as negatively affecting their job performance. We also found that the likelihood of employees evaluating personal experience of abusive supervision as having a negative impact on their job performance is: (1) higher for female employees, (2) does not depend on employee age, job tenure and education; (3) is lower for employees with managerial roles and (4) increases with employee trait negative affectivity.

The study is a response to the call for researchers to use innovative methods for advancing abusive supervision research. The study highlights the significance of taking a proactive stance towards addressing abusive supervision in the workplace, by using indirect survey methods that ensures employee anonymity. The results have implications for organizational strategies aimed at increasing awareness of abusive supervision and its impact on employee performance.

The existing literature on abusive supervision, defined as a perception by subordinates that their supervisor displays hostility toward them (but falling short of physical abuse), is deficient insofar as it fails to account for workgroup differences in employees' perceptions of abusive supervision. We therefore sought to study such differences, which refer to as “abusive supervision dispersion (ASD).”

We interviewed 40 employees from a variety of organizations in Australia, focusing on the role of affective events in ASD dynamics, with a view to understanding how this phenomenon relates to individual and team processes.

We found that ASD stimulates employees to harbor negative emotions and resentment toward their supervisor, causing them to perceive even positive events negatively. We found further that, while low ASD facilitates team-member exchange by forcing abused members to band together resulting in low team conflict, high dispersion facilitates formation of subgroups and high team conflict.

These findings illuminate the paradoxical nature of ASD and suggest that employees experience dispersion through three paradoxes: (1) dispersion paradox, (2) resentment paradox, and (3) team paradox. Overall, these findings suggest that subordinates' perceptions of high ASD are associated with detrimental impacts on team performance.

This study aims to understand how abusive supervision influences employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). In particular, the mediating effect of moral disengagement and moderating role of traditionality on this relationship were examined.

This study conducted a two-wave questionnaire survey using data collected from 629 employees from different companies in China. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The results show that moral disengagement mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ UPB. Employee traditionality enhances the relationship between abusive supervision and moral disengagement as well as the indirect effect of abusive supervision on employees’ UPB via moral disengagement.

First, by exploring the positive impact of abusive supervision on UPB, the authors enhance the current understanding of the role of negative leadership in the development of UPB and enrich the research on the antecedents of UPB and outcomes of abusive supervision. Second, based on social cognitive theory, this study enriches the literature on abusive supervision and employee UPB by identifying moral disengagement as a mediator. Third, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors are among the first to incorporate traditionality to tell a Chinese story about how traditional employees respond to the effects of abusive supervision on UPB, providing a new lens for the cultural boundary condition in the occurrence mechanism of UPB.

Cyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.

Using a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.

Based on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.

This work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.