Abusive Supervision and Employee Outcomes: The Influence of Contract Violation and PsyCap

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on recent work that has found that when subordinates are abused by their supervisors, they are likely to retaliate against the organization and/or organizational members by withholding actions that benefit the organization (e.g., organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB); Zellars, Tepper, & Duffy, 2002) and engaging in behaviors that harm the organization (e.g., deviant behavior; Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007; Tepper, Henle, Lambert, Giacalone, & Duffy, 2008). We extend this research by examining the mediating effects of employees’ perceptions of psychological contract violations on the relationship between abusive supervision and subsequent employee behaviors. Additionally, we examine the moderating effects of psychological capital on the relationship between psychological contract violations and employee outcomes. Our findings suggest that subordinates who are abused by their supervisors experience violations of their psychological contracts, which in turn influence their engagement in OCB and antisocial behavior. Additionally, our results suggest this mediated relationship remains significant only when employees are low on psychological capital.