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The purpose of this research is to examine the narratives of victims of abusive supervision. We explore the meaning or “lessons” victims derive from those experiences and how they shape the victims’ views of self, work and organization in relation to navigating their subsequent jobs.

We analyzed how appraisals of supervisory abuse transform victims’ narratives and their consequent work attitudes through sensemaking processes. Semi-structured interviews with the past victims of abusive supervision generated a four-stage model of how sensemaking shapes victims’ future work attitudes. Our interpretations were guided through narrative thematic analysis based on the constructionist approach.

Victims’ lessons learned are predominantly framed by their retrospective post-event appraisal of abuse (based on its severity) once individuals are no longer subject to abusive supervision. With greater distance from the abuse, victims can process the abuse and better understand the motivation of the abuser, enabling the process of causal attributions. These attributions further shape victims’ narratives and future work attitudes through a complex interplay of retrospective and prospective sensemaking mechanisms. The victims broadly reported proactive (with higher self-awareness and endurance) and reactive (self-protection, and emotional scars) lessons. A four-stage model was proposed based on our findings.

Abusive supervision remains a persistent issue experienced by many individuals at some point in their working life. However, little is known about how victims make sense of the event post-abuse and how this sense-making guides their future work behaviors. Understanding this phenomenon provides insight into how employees navigate through adversity and construct a more positive future. The contribution of this narrative inquiry is threefold. First, it explores how individual appraisals of supervisory abuse frame their (1) mechanisms of narrative construction; and (2) future work attitudes. Second, our findings demonstrate how narrative construction is a fluid process often informed by the process of retrospective and prospective sensemaking. Finally, our research suggests two broader categories of lessons that victims internalize and carry forward to their subsequent jobs.

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.

Supervisory abuse is a form of destructive leadership. Research has continued to document many deleterious consequences associated with such improper behavior at work. This study further extends its consequences by testing a model linking abusive supervision to job apathy through a climate of fear.

This study drew on affective events theory in investigating the role of the climate of fear in instances where casual workers perceive abuse in commercial banks. A three-wave and three-week time lag approach was adopted for data collection from 245 casual workers in southeastern Nigeria.

Results from partial least squares structural equation modeling supported the model by showing that abusive supervision had a direct positive relationship with the climate of fear and job apathy, while the climate of fear related positively to job apathy. Results also revealed that the climate of fear partially mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and job apathy.

Managers can be trained to become more supportive and less abusive to address the problem of abusive supervision. Furthermore, casual workers are encouraged to report any abuse from their manager to higher authorities inside or outside their workplace.

This study sheds new insights and advances the abusive supervision literature by investigating the climate of fear as the underlying mechanism.

Aged-care work has become an extreme form of work. Anti-violence HRM, comprising practices to combat workplace violence, is important in an industry with widespread violence. In this paper, we employ social exchange theory to better understand the effect of anti-violence HRM and trust in the manager on perceived nurse and PCA cynicism working in Australian aged care facilities and their subsequent intention to leave.

This study used a mixed method with two stages. Stage 1 comprised semi-structured interviews with 10 managers and 50 nurses and PCAs working in Australian aged care facilities. Stage 2 comprised a survey of nurses and PCAs with a total of 254 completed responses in Time 1 (first wave) and 225 completed responses in Time 2 (second wave).

We tested three hypotheses and reported that interestingly anti-violence HRM was positively associated with organisational cynicism. Organisational cynicism mediated the relationship between anti-violence HRM and intention to leave. Worker trust in the manager moderated the relationship between anti-violence HRM practices and organisational cynicism, such that high levels of trust in the manager increased the effect of anti-violence HRM practices to reduce organisational cynicism and subsequently reduce intention to leave.

We find evidence that in aged care, workers' trust in their managers is critical for effectual anti-violence HRM. We argue that implementation of HRM practices may be more complex in extreme work settings. It is crucial to study HRM in situ and understand the root of social exchange(s) as a foundation for HRM to influence employee attitudes and behaviour.

Using the theoretical lens of appraisal theory, this research aims to investigate the interrelationship between employees' organizational justice perceptions and counterproductive work behaviours (CWBs) through the mediation of negative emotions.

To this end, a sample comprised of 207 banking sector employees of Pakistan was utilized to test hypothesized relationships. The collected data were analyzed through the partial least structural equation modelling technique.

Results show that counterwork behaviours are influenced by distributive and procedural justice perceptions. The mediating effects of negative emotions were also statistically significant between procedural, interpersonal and informational justice perceptions and counterwork behaviours. No gender differences were found between distributive, interpersonal and informational justice perceptions and counterwork behaviours. However, the authors found that procedural justice perceptions of female employees are strongly related to CWBs as compared to male employees.

This research contributes to the existing organizational behaviour literature by empirically testing the hypothesized relationships using the theoretical lens of appraisal theory with advanced quantitative data analysis techniques.

Despite extensive research on the detrimental work-related impact of customer mistreatment, there has been limited investigation into the outcomes that encompass both positive and negative connotations (i.e. unethical pro-organizational behavior [UPB]). This study aims to test whether, how and when daily customer mistreatment leads to hospitality employees’ daily UPB.

This study conducted a two-phase daily diary study. In the first phase, participants completed measures of their sense of power and provided demographic information. During the subsequent two-week period, participants completed questionnaires twice daily. The analysis included data from 87 hospitality employees, with 781 surveys remaining. This study performed multilevel analyses using Monte–Carlo simulations.

This study revealed that hospitality employees experiencing daily customer mistreatment exhibited heightened perceptions of status threats, resulting in increased daily UPB. The moderating effects of employees’ sense of power were found to be significant in both direct and indirect relationships.

Hospitality managers should recognize that customer mistreatment can threaten employees’ social status and result in daily UPB. To protect employees, implementing daily training programs is essential. Moreover, hotels and managers should provide HR management/recognition programs and empowerment initiatives to boost employees’ sense of power and counteract the harmful effects of customer mistreatment on their status.

This study makes contributions to the existing literature on customer mistreatment by establishing a positive relationship between daily customer mistreatment and daily UPB through the mechanism of status threat. Furthermore, thise study highlights the importance of enhancing hospitality employees’ sense of power as a protective factor against the negative consequences of customer mistreatment.